The good news: I was by far the king of Twitter curation/reporting at NYPA 2011 today (granted, it’s easy climbing to the top of a fairly small pile). “Live-tweeting” (will I ever get used to that horrible word?) was a bit of a challenge but a fantastic alternative to note-taking; summarizing key points for an audience forced me to make better conclusions and focus on the most important parts of today’s sessions.

Unfortunately, as the day progressed, it seemed like some momentum was lost. By the end of the day, I felt like I was taking notes for myself and no one else.

Effective Use of Social Media - Regina McCombs
The day started out at full speed. @RebeccaTRecord, editor of Latham Life & River Life, was also tweeting and, between the two of us, we did a pretty great job of covering the main points of the discussion on social media.  

Some discussion bullet points:

• Older users of Facebook are the fastest growing demographic. This is good news for those of us working for community newspapers; our most loyal subscribers are baby boomers and higher.
• Post your own content, guide discussion and curate news from across the web. The Austin Statesman (@statesman) is one example of a paper curating content, both from their sites and from others. (Example of user interaction: @statesman responded to my tweet with a “thanks!”)
• Only 7 to 12 percent of Americans “actively use Twitter,” while about half of Americans are on Facebook; this validates my efforts, which have been primarily focused on Facebook.
• Facebook is the 4th largest source of traffic to news sites. This aligns with our experience; after search, Facebook is our largest referrer. 
• Journalists can develop relationships with readers through their personal accounts. Journalist Jason DeRusha (@derushaj) posts the stories he’s working on every morning and gets user input; he’s not concerned about other news outlets competing for the story first. [DeRusha responded within a few minutes: “Who’s talking about me and social media while I’m in Minneapolis talking about social media?”]
• Location-based services like Gowalla can be used to create maps/guides to a night out, great restaurants around town, etc.
• How can we grow on Facebook? Carefully curate. Don’t post everything, post our best stories. Post early in the morning, as early as 5 a.m., to begin a discussion. Involve the whole staff in posting.
• Edit! Tweeting two to four times a day can encourage more followers than a fire hose of information.

All of the links from the discussion are available on Delicious.

Computer-assisted reporting - Doug Haddix
After lunch, I attended a session on computer-assisted reporting with Doug Haddox. It was eye-opening! I think we’ll bring a lot of these ideas back to our papers. Among the possibilities Haddix discussed were:

• Bringing non-profits’ employees’ salaries to your readers. “Some people put the ‘profit’ in ‘non-profit.’” Guidestar.org is one such resource that provides that information.
• Pet licenses and hunting/fishing licenses are public information. They can be used to find contact information for unlisted sources.
• Useful, searchable data can attract thousands of unique visitors.
• Data can provide a factual context for stories, combatting “he said/she said” journalism.

Haddix’s full presentation, which includes hyperlinks, can be found at mediafire.com/nypaHaddix.

Live-tweeting an event with very few followers
I received some positive attention for my coverage of NYPA. A journalist from Long Island thanked me for my coverage, and a journalist from Rochester suggested me as part of “Follow Friday.” It would be fun to cover an event with more followers/buzz online. Nevertheless, I’ll continuously go back to my old tweets over the next few weeks as a resource, so, even if no one had been following me, the exercise wouldn’t have been in vain.

Editor’s note: I’ll come back and flesh this post out with hyperlinks later. [Done.] I have to get to the continental breakfast at the Gideon Putnam in a few minutes!