Digital Editiors Network Meeting - Preston UCLAN 3rd Feb 2009

Yesterday I attended the Digital Editors Network meeting at the UCLAN buildings in Preston (UK).

I have wanted to attend in the past with my colleagues Christian Dunn and Martin Wright but work commitments have got in the way. Christian and Martin have always felt the events valuable and I was glad to finally get a chance to get in on the act.

I was unsure of how much I, as a developer, would benefit from the event but wanted to go out of interest anyway plus the line up sounded good so off to Preston we went battling through snow drifts of up to ...... well about 3 inches!!

Mark Skipworth, Executive Editor of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph opened the event and I was impressed with Mark's honesty and openess where he discussed the way the Telegraph work and the challenges they have faced and in some cases still do face in getting people to change their working practices to fit in with web AND print.

Mark made it clear that they are very much a Web First company and do now see themselves as an Internet service first and foremost. With all of their copy being selected for Internet and then copy for print is selected from that list and expanded on where necessarry for in paper.

All subs are trained to put news online first and then subbed again for paper.

Second up on the agenda was Patrick Fleming from the British Library who was going to discuss digital archiving. Unfortunately though Patrick got snowed off which brought a laugh to the room as there where attendees there from South Africa, North America and of course people from all over the UK, who had managed to make it.

So the next speaker was Kevin Anderson, who was in my opinion the best speaker there. Kevin is the Guardian Blogs editor and recently covered the US elections by driving 4,000 miles across the states in 3 weeks updating the world with his journey via a combination of tools. Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and of course the Guardian blog.

His experiences really got me thinking and made me realise just how far we have come in the past 15 years or so.
Back in 1995 I spent a fair bit of time in the United States. My parents where working out there at the time so I went to spend a few months with them.
At one stage a friend of mine and I decided whilst in the States it was only right that we do a road trip. We didn't really look at a map or plan anything we just decided to head West!
Our starting point was a small town in Ohio called Willard. It was a great little town full of really friendly people and from there we planned to get to L.A. via Las Vegas. But that was the extent of our plans! The journey lasted just 12 days, but that journey covered just over 4,700 miles!

What struck home to me though was that apart from some great memories I have no record of that journey I made. Had I made that journey now I would have gone about it's record in exactly the same way as Kevin and would have that record indefinately.

However the beauty of the internet is that I can probably retrace my journey using those same tools which I intend on doing in the next week or two. I'll post the info on here for anyone interested.

Erik Ulken's presentation was hit by the dreaded live link problem of not being able to establish a connection. Which was a pity and obviously hindered would have been a popular presentation. Erik is the former L A times online editor and was talking about various forms of story building. I'll find some links to some of the things he's been invloved in and update on here later.

The meeting in whole was very good. I certainly hope to attend again.
I am not going to say I learned anything new and amazing but what I did learn is that the way we are trying to do things for our company is much the way others are trying to do things too. Christian, Martin and myself are trying to put together a great site for NWN Media and it was reassuring to hear that other larger businesses than us suffer the same niggles and set backs as us.
To hear that kind of thing from the likes of the names above, well it makes me believe we are on the right track.