#TedXlp Liverpool’s ‘social journalism’ demonstrated at tech conference

“With social journalism, the more noise the better,” said the final speaker wrapping up at the first TED X North event in Liverpool yesterday.

Completing a talk, ‘Networked news; the rise of social newsgathering’, the Liverpool Post and Echo’s executive editor of digital, Alison Gow demonstrated how local newspaper reporters were facing up to the challenges, and opportunities, that social media platforms presented.

Using a case study involving a local news story about a crane collapse which had, in part, been covered by the newspaper’s reporters finding and sharing updates on Twitter and Flickr, she said journalists now had to “give back and engage with online communities” before predicting a future which would entail “fewer papers with fewer people doing more in depth investigative journalism”.

(See more commentary from this talk on my FriendFeed here.)

It seemed a fitting end to an event conceived around an offline-online-offline conference – an independently organised series of events across the north of England which involves screenings of online videos filmed originally at the TED conferences.

A heady mix of journalists, tech entrepreneurs, artists, engineers and educators packed into a darkened auditorium in the city’s ICDC To see the films and also to hear the live speakers.

As one of those involved in bringing the TED material to the new venues, Herbert Kim admitted the idea of inviting a group of people to get together to view a film they could just as easily watch at home had been a step into the unknown – see the video for more on this.

Attendees also heard from;

* Microsoft’s Steve Clayton, who showed the audience some of the projects his company is working on including photosynth.net which, among other zoomable features, enables the creation of panoramic photos generated from a bundle of individual snaps and the Surface interactive table top which was available to try out at the venue.

* Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino from Tinker.it! who is inspired to move away what she identified as a ‘black box’ culture of expertise to innovations where users can see under the bonnet and feel enabled to get their hands dirty as in this example.

The film clips viewed included this criticism of the education system from Sir Ken Robinson and this delightful film experiment with marshmallows which the audience were also asked to participate in – predictably unsuccessfully!

The Ted X North events now move to TEDxLeeds – 10th September, TEDxSheffield – 16th September TEDxNewcastle – 30th September  and finally TEDxManchester – 2nd October.

What did you think of the event? Will you be attending the next one? Let me know below.

* The Liverpool Post’s report on the event can be seen here.