Liveblogging, con't.

Because this a blog, you may have to look to the previous entry to get the sense of what is going on in the session. Now Lisa Williams, of h2otown and placeblogger.com is talking. Some interesting stuff is coming up about how you make money off sites.

Journalists are not lazy. But journalism is becoming a high-tech profession and that is changing things. Here are some of her ideas:
How to survive J 2.0 and keep your sanity.
1. It is boom or bust. You will get a job, get laid off, get a job, etc. Can't count on always being employed.
2. Journos get paid in social capital and not always in money. Her expy with the Pulitzer hallway at the Globe, like mine when I visited the NYTimes old building, brings up this question, at least for Lisa--"Can you survive in the suburbs?"
3. For suitable values of "work." In software, stuff is never 100% working and complete. Can't "tuck in the edges." Stuff is not always or EVER complete. You try to get stuff "done" but it breaks -- the site "breaks" and it always has something to done with it.
4. Shaving the YAK -- try to fix one thing, but must do something else first. Can't solve problems "for good" and if you don't watch out, soon you are in the mountains shaving a Yak...
5. Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again..." You need to have an experimental mindset. There are no "failed experiments." Failure is an option if it easy and safe. She notes that open source is cheap, and it encourages experimentation.
6. Self-propelled, cheap, aand safe -- go for small projects. 15 min. per day.
7. RTFM Read the manual -- where are you going to fit in something you don't know the parameters of? Work on something for an hour or so a day. Here example about learning Ruby on Rails.
8. Understand where you fit -- where is news? Spot news will be done with camphones , what more is there?
9. The web rewards narrow comprehensiveness -- their examples of getting details about the restaurants because the restaurants don't do that.
10. Collapsing v. enriching -- make value by taking something you used to have to pay for and making it free. Turns trad value on its head and make money.
11. Don't think of the noble dying breed model.