Fall Semester Wraps Up

CNet Seminar Series

. . . is drawing to a close – or at least the first series. We are excited to present the final two speakers. The Spring Series will be announced in the first week of Janaury.

Friday, November 23

Michael Tippett of NowPublic is hosting the CNET 100 Seminar for a tour of NowPublic’s downtown Vancouver offices and Q/A session on the history and art of running online citizen journalism sites. For an expanded sense of what NowPublic is all about check out an interview from May 2007.

Friday, November 30

Kate Armstrong – Vancouver-based new media artist, writer and critic – is speaking on the digital arts in Vancouver. Time and Location TBA. This will be an on-campus event.

Eyes + Ears: Vancouver-based NowPublic.com

Largest Participatory Journalism Website in the World

On Saturday, the Globe and Mail British Columbia section opened with a feature article on Vancouver-based NowPublic.com. Jonathan Woodward’s article notes that NowPublic.com has ballooned into the world’s largest participatory journalism site with 60,000 contributors in 140 countries.

More interesting, however, is the recent agreement with Associated Press which lets AP tap into the NowPublic.com posts for scoops and photographs. This marks an interesting shift in how contributors to sites such as NowPublic.com are being viewed as potential news sources and indeed as a new breed of freelancer.

Vancouver is also home to a second crowd-sourcing news organization: Orato.com