 Good afternoon everybody. I want to thank you for coming. I know it's been a long conference So when we're reaching the point where everybody's kind of wilting in their seats Okay, more stuff. Oh god, but And especially for like an editorial thing any designers and developers CMS conference I'm really thankful that you are here with me And I am thankful that you are willing to be part of what it's become a little bit of an experiment I started this up on and again. It was going to tell you all about the CMS tools and the things of coral and then What has happened over and over again news happened? And so if you've been reading the news, we're not going to go too in-depth it right now But you open up your news and it's just like oh, oh god time to change everything again and I wanted to do something different and Based on my assumptions it might have been good, which is great So this is the title of this is lessons learned from open source journalism. My name is Sidette Harry I am currently editor at Mozilla. I was project I was community lead for the coral project and I'm editor at large of the coral project and I wanted to talk about Journalism But more importantly I wanted to talk about communities. I am speaking today as Sidette I am going to talk about some of the tools we've built with coral and then talk about the work that I'm going to go forward in doing with Mozilla, but what's really important to me personally is that I talk with you and we talk together as people I am a person trying to work a problem Do not hold anyone who who employs me responsible for anything I say that you don't like if you like it to tell them I'm wonderful, but It is very important to me that we talk about Communities and it's we talk about people because Drupal is open source content management it's communities and Mozilla is open source and corals builds open source and I as with most of my life love the idea of it, but then kind of want to poke the wound because St. Thomas was my favorite saint and Think about how that relates to journalism and what we do and what we need to go forward So I like to reference books because I'm made me mainly a research head and this is considered one of the seminal books about communities Benedict Anderson's imagine communities and It believes that there are three levels social historical and the imagination where print media and he talks about print capitalism and it goes off and off and off into the idea of Cong of we congregate spread identifiers into communities. So we all decide we are a thing we decide that that thing has to get together and We need something to codify that thing. So we make a tool or we make print and we Center around this and one of the things that I've always looked at looking at this book and whether or not it translates to the common Age both in journalism and coding in context is it doesn't necessarily talk about how creators work in this So creators and makers of tools and how we've streamlined things help develop cultures of community We don't they don't talk about that But a lot of how we do the things is part of the cultural community and I want to pull that in there and the I kind of just went we and we did this is I Really in one of the big things I want to think about is I Feel that often Programmers coders people who make the things are left out of the discussion about what we need to change about journalism What we need to change about communities Because those skills aren't as valued as they should be and not in a monetary way But in a very these are the people who notice patterns these are the people who put things together and We don't think about how do we bring that voice into the room and It's work and working with journalism Especially at the last two years who there has been a lot of discussion About who we are and what we do and who aren't we listening to and I think that that often goes external But I also think it needs to come internal as well Who does not feel empowered to speak within and because that will also influence who does not feel empowered to speak without So the first thing I like to talk about because I always love to big up my project And I even though I am now editor at large deep love is coral project Started in 2014 Washington Post New York Times open news, which was under Missila at the time. We're now under Missila Specifically Sasha corn Aaron pill Hall forget to get an angle comments are terrible. This is not untrue how do we build better comments and They said that 2014 we got an endowment from the Knight Foundation. We thank you so much and in 2015 They hire our project lead Andrew Lozowski and then me So it's the two of us and we promptly get together with a Technical advisor who becomes our tech lead and we get a whiteboard and we decide We're gonna put this together and what do we need to do and we look at it and we go Nah We don't need to build better comments. We need to think about the communities around news This is what happened and it was I did because it is modular So it was like little bits of coral and we're gonna build multiple things and they were gonna fit together The first tool we built was not a comment system. It was ask and I have all of these up and if necessary I have the slide deck together But it was based off of a story. I read possibly powerful possibly not About Benjamin Franklin when he was asked, how do you get someone who dislikes you to like you? Get them to do you a favor So he asked someone for a small book and Benjamin Franklin it found the school I went to so that's probably part of how I received it and He asked for someone for a small book and rather than giving something He made that person feel that they were useful that they were part of that community they were part of his community because he had taken something from them and When it comes to content management and developing for systems One of the things we found was that there's so much of this development was done in spaces that was like Google form or type or Survey monkey or something for doodles where it was designed not for the journalistic workflow It was not designed for the way journalists work. So we're trying to take people who work in a very literary Put together way and then asking them to use data that doesn't work for them as well news is happening People personal identifying information People's Addresses their trauma all of this when they are submitting things They're just sending it willy-nilly from immigration rates to anything you're soliciting information and people go You are the one place I can send information because journalism is where we go to tell people things and we don't have a way of saying Okay, I want your story, but I don't necessarily need all of this I don't have a way of being good at intermediaries. So what we did was Did a lot of research and we figured out a way to solicit asks how to put together personal identifying information separate from Original information how to look at if I edited this. How can we backtrack? How can we track those things? How can we maintain the integrity of a journalistic process? While also being kind of warm and being able to control what happens and deal with debate and deal with polarization It's been used in Philly comm by the Boston Globe and Newsday And I use those three examples because Philly comm it was used the day after the election and We used emojis to ask people to tell us how we feel about the election So it had a plug-in and it was able to be moderated. So we got to see what you said before we put it on We'll get to that in a second Boston Globe Boston Globe did that very big race story That is a touchy subject in the city of Boston. It's a very topic touchy subject and parts of it Good didn't go the way it necessarily needed to go but people submitted thousands of stories and We were able to anonymize them talk to them get back to them and keep that in a way that the story presentation the ability for people to combine in you was preserved and Newsday we asked the We asked people how the current administration was doing and we allowed them to grade them and it produced graphics so it plugged into the back and people were able to produce graphics and Talk about it and what was important for this is that it both the Benjamin Franklin story and the idea of When you think of a community when you think of a community how it participates You think holistically letting people just ride and yell at each other would not have been a good idea in this current Climate there's a lot of that and one of the things I say is I designed for communities that I would kick myself out of but How do you start to deal to get people who see themselves as together in some way but can't necessarily talk to Participate how do you ask? And we built that tool before we built talk which was strange to some people, but there is this Thing with communities where it's always. What do we tell? What do we sell? What do we tell and that what do they need? Who are they? What do they feel? How do we get better in journalism? You think that would be the first thing we do We are not in a culture of that so we built this and I love everything my team is fantastic, but this is the fact that this came first has always Made me really happy Because this is how you show people you're interested you ask questions you connect to them The other thing we built which is now at the Washington Post the Wall Street Journal the intercept Which said they would never have comments, but now they do and IGN register is How do we make it possible to have the conversations that best serve the purposes of the community? People feel however they feel about comments a lot of people will like you'll never ship anything comments are terrible You don't need comments, and I'm like you are completely correct comments are awful People are often shot when people go so what do you do when what do you think we should do for our comments? How should our comments be I'm like you shouldn't have comments You specifically should not have comments You don't have the bandwidth. You don't have muscle you your arms are not long enough for that fight But You should have a way for people to give you feedback How does your community tell you what they need and even if you decide not to use our fantastic service when you talk to us? What do you want? What do you what is your purpose and in a lot of failures people go? Well, I'll build this tool. I'll build this new thing and our tools are great. They're wonderful Please go to our website. Look at them what we find is not a failure of tools But a failure of purpose not that they don't have purpose. But like can you tell me that your community now? And with core we were very specific about an interdisciplinary approach. So the next thing we built were guides Strong community is about more than software How do people know what to do when they get to a community space? When you look at a community space from software to design to journalism to theater to sports I actually used a lot of theater of the oppressed from Augusto Boal So kind of like circle back to myself. I was talking about news newspaper theory and newspaper theater Do you know how to act I Use the fact that I'm from New York and I'm from far Rock a lot because there is this deep there's an unspoken thing of These are ultimately literary forms. We are dealing with forms that deal with the spoken word We haven't expanded to different ways of communication different levels of a community of expression different modes and We like people who talk a certain way. We like people who display a certain amount of education a certain kind of education We prioritize English speakers So when I asked these questions, I asked them how would ask people where I'm from and what does it mean that you can or Cannot understand that and it is important because that is how your users are going to come into a space If your users are hit by jargon if they're hit by people who do not seem to have an onboarding process where you're looking around going I just got here. I just wanted to know about this and there's no space Who lets them know what the space is people talk often derisively about eternal September? Where oh we were always onboarding newbies and it's there's it's like September and they're all moving in and I like We feels like eternal September because you don't have any way from to move to October It feels like eternal September because someone is always coming in and you have no place for them to go Here's where you learn here's where you go where you learn how to act and then this is how you participate in the rest of it And I think that that is super important So the thing that was most important in the lesson that I thought was most useful is we are people We design and build for people If that is the one lesson I could take and give to everyone that is the most important thing We have to people better and we have to give space for people to people better and What does that mean? Let me save you some time. We will all fail There is no one who will hit a hundred that a thousand we will not be perfect at this We will have spectacular failures one of our first communities I forgot one of the basic rules I tell everyone and left the comments on over the weekend and watch them include it was gifts happened Lyrics happened. I just I came back on Monday. It was like, oh That's not the problem. It's sending places and processes for people to fail and then moving forward Based on a purpose is a question. We have to answer It's not a moment. We are often within I shipped. It's done I wrote it's done in the process of making community of improvement of iteration of making every change We're looking at process. We're looking at how do I handle this thing? How do I have space for this thing? How do I? Make some room for if something goes terribly wrong who has the stop button who has the start button Who knows how this works and can my community tell me that So the question I often ask is not How do we inclusive this is like what is your process? so That's why I said this is an experiment and we're doing things very differently You're gonna indulge me for a little bit. Do you mind indulging me? Okay, because this is a very big on permission and consent and we're going to do this together and We might share because it's small enough that I'd actually like y'all to talk to each other If you might if you want to if you don't you can stay and then we have a question and answer But we want to ask three questions And I'm going to do it with you and I'm also going to jump off the stage and walk around But I'm going to give you time and when I say I'm going to give you time I mean I have a timer and I am working it and I want you to take Three minutes per question and I'm going to set it up and then say But whatever your project whatever you're thinking of wherever you're thinking of making a community I want you to think about These three questions. Who is we? Bam them is capitalizing with emphasis because I'm from New York City and Too often with communities. There's this idea of we're making a community and we who's the we do you mean The programmers. Do you mean the consumers? Do you mean your advertisers? Do you mean content contributors? Who's that we and here's the thing I believe you can I might not like your answer But you've got to have one the thing that is most terrifying to me is not you have an answer that I don't like We work across the political spectrum. We have there's certain there are certain people I don't talk to but we work across the political spectrum It is more frightening for me to hear someone say I don't know who I'm doing this for Then for them to say I don't say an answer I don't like because if you don't know that means that someone is not being thought of and someone is walking into a Space that is not safe for them and someone is walking into a space where you might not want them there And they're going to feel that And it is better for someone to know out the gates You don't want them in the space then for them to come and invest in a space and then feel unwanted So that's question one The next question Why is we here? And I phrase it that specifically both for the vernacular But moment to moment every single moment You want someone to do something you want your community to do something you want people to be present So at that moment, what do you want those people to do? Can you answer that question? Can they answer that question? Where would they go to find it? And Three what is we fixing to do? I talked in the beginning about imagination And they are imaginations realities And what I think is often derided so much is that people make fun of dreamers dreamers or innovators dreamers or creators Just because a dream don't mean I don't work But if you want to make something that's never been made before You have to be able to envision it you have to be able to think about it And too often in our workspaces we go real real fast and we're not supposed to think we're supposed to innovate and lean and agile And It's not a thing we do And we have to do and there's also the reality of The tabula rasa does not exist There is no blank slate. We are formed the moment We are in society and we are trying to make something happen And we're fixing Things with ourselves, but we're bringing our whole selves in and we want to do a thing Even if it's to sell add dollars we want to do a thing So how do we do the thing? And Write it down even if it's notes for each questions Imagine people overjoyed and please don't you don't have to do it yourself You don't have to share for sharing time, but I would like you to take a moment whatever projects in your head with these questions and do it Think about not the project, but the people on the other end the goals and the things that you are trying to accomplish And it is 406 And i'm not going to do it so that we all have three minutes per question. I've realized that that's going to be shorter I am going to say for Five minutes just five minutes Can you work on those three questions and I will do it as well with you? sound like a good plan Everybody feel okay anybody writing material water anything? Okay. I'm on the timer Go Welcome if you want we're working on a five three questions Two minute 30 second warning and if you're sharing that's cool if you're not that's cool, but we will have time to share just to let you know okay So that was five minutes And I love that I can walk around with this like I hate standing we had podiums But how did it feel to answer those questions and we're a small enough group? I think you can like pop up How did it feel to answer those questions? Oh, that's important because transcripts are important and No, because accessibility is important and that's another thing that we have to think about is it a lot of people go Well, I have theater training and I can be loud, but it's like well if we don't have the transcript. What about everybody else? but These are the questions in almost anything if you deal with you deal with me is that I'll ask is like so who is the we and That is an important question to ask And When we think of people How did you decide you're who the we was and I'm now that remembering the recording if anybody would like to tell Would you come up to the mic so people can hear? But how did you decide who the we was? I'm interested in processes We found somebody who had an interesting project going on they talked to us about what their project was cool Come on. It's a conversation. So, um, we're a client service agency. So it was kind of weird because We're not Them they hired us to help and so we're kind of becoming part of that team, but we're not like in that community and the current client is trying to You ask them who their we would be and it would be residents of the region that they're providing news to But the problems that we're finding are a lot within their own Organization and my thought in the last couple minutes was like we is we need to fix you first Before you can go out to the space Or the region But that is a really excellent thing to figure out and to do Because what is often because the interesting thing is the problems you have within your own group of people creating stuff Are usually the problems you walk right out into the other groups and make So if you can't communicate you ain't gonna communicate well with other people and Does anybody else have a we that they're interested in talking about or want to open up to the room? I think we all are right. Um, and so Oh, sorry. Yeah, um, I landed on the weave that is the reason I am here Which is I work for a college. Okay But even there we are a lot of weeks We we get siloed into staff faculty student Um, we get siloed into I am in communications, which is different from admissions, which is different from this Um, but it's more interesting to me to to talk to to think about who are we the college who is our identity who who Who would Who am I allowed to be in a space with that? I wouldn't be if I weren't at a college and on top of that a small college. We're only 2000 people, right? um And so looking at at you know who who we are as a community of learners as a a community that does service and I I positioned myself in that but I don't know. Um, I decided to answer on behalf of the college, but I don't know that that was If that was my week And here's the thing. I like those answers Because I think that there is it was very important to me that we bring this that I did not have an answer That we started and we are going to continue to do some more work with questions. I see a hand communications and publishing and you know in journalism Um, oftentimes the problems that we have to solve are these kind of internal the internal we But we have to think about them in terms of what we're trying to do with the audience the people that we're trying to reach Because if we're too inward facing If that we is only inward facing then then we just get caught up in the cycle of what Inner problems are rather than actually our whole purpose for being there, you know And that's the second question Why is we here? Who has ever been to a meeting that could have been an email You get somewhere around minute 15 and you're like this could have been a bullet point And that is an important thing the questions as I have fine-tuned them and redone them is They're not necessarily supposed to be answered in sequence. It's in total So sometimes why are we here if I'm being proper versus why is we here? But usually I'm like, why is we here? It Helps us to find the who we are So it might be we just need the we of the folks who Are doing x thing and if we only need the we of the folks that are doing x thing we need The this is our way And what are we trying to do if we need the folks who are doing x thing? And the thing that we're trying to do is do x thing We might be trying to do it better We might be trying to do it faster and that might inform who is or is not in the room One of the big issues that I think comes up a lot In journalism and programming and whatever Is that because we don't define these things you get a lot of people who stand up and go This is the we and we are going to do the thing and we're gonna and who is we Like I stand there and go I actually speak french. So no one's telling me. Yes. I don't there's a lot of french going on I did not sign up for this thing so that is important to think about and think about it in aggregate because It's not necessarily bad To start small. It's not necessarily bad to be clear What happens and I think that this is what happens over and over again is the disappointment And this is what I think specifically that I've learned from community journalism when you ask people Is the disappointment people face when you tell them that you're there for them and you have no process to actually be there for them You have no way of taking in their feedback. You have no way of adjusting yourselves for this isn't safe for me This doesn't work for me. So you're not there for them And that is this very specific kind of resentment that you have to work through That is different than Hey, do you think you could do that thing that you do really well for those folks for us? The second one does always get you a lot more Space than the you promised me. You told me you were here for us And then you weren't We're going to do This exercise again But and this is from one of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors and she has a new one out But I like to recommend it to people Is sarah walker walker doctor is Design for real life And she talks about stress cages over edge cases and What I would like to do with this Collection of questions and we'll get another five minutes going is What would you do for that group this group that you've imagined in your head? And we're going to work it a little more we have Do we do it? We set the well in time Go me is In notes Imagine this group is under stress Something the worst thing has happened terrible thing has happened for the group that you are thinking of How how does this is so weird how does that Change these Can you imagine them under stress? Can you imagine them under duress and I'm going to give you five minutes again and then I'll share my own is Think about it and see how it affects and I'll give you a half minute warning And then the one minute warning But how would that change if they were not an edge case? But a stress case Because edge cases imagine that no one will ever need this But what happens is something terrible happens and everybody's stressed Everybody needs some care or concern or guidance. How are we going to handle that? How does that change how we do this? and I'm keeping time I'm on my mr. Rogers Go And if you had a group reconvene Two minute warning 30 seconds Okay, okay, we get it apple So How did that change the exercise? How did that feel for folks with any remember as we are recording? People have to go to the mic, but did anything change substantially? For anyone What we are trying to do I had to drop out the creativity part, you know a little bit So I work with a content delivery team We are providing the tools that creators and editors use to produce news content and in a stress case All sense of you know, this would be really cool And let's be super creative about this kind of goes out the window in favor of Speed and time to market Yes, I got the thinking of Identifying a point person. So one person who the community can go to Preferably somebody who is calm and can listen And take in feedback, but not necessarily respond or do something But somebody who could be that person who helps calm the people in the stressful situation So mine isn't journalism related. It's local government related. I work for a local government and we have a number of Local governments that in our region who are now all using Drupal and those of us who all use Drupal Nobody talks to each other and the people who live in our jurisdiction in our region When they need help or services or information, they often don't know which You know, which agency provides it which government they don't care if it's the county or the city They need to know when their garbage is getting picked up or if it's the regional government So my we is a group who You know meets up of all of those people who touch Drupal for the different local governments And in the situation of a stress situation You know now that people all know Hopefully have all known each other because they've connected through this one becoming a we We spend a lot of times either having an emergency We have to spin up a website because there's this new collaboration between the city and the county And nobody knows who to do it or where to do it. So somebody goes off and gets a square space site And or there's now been a dissolution of this partnership And somebody has to own the website going forward and nobody knows each other So these things just kind of float around and they get kicked back and forth and it wastes a lot of time So hopefully after this we has been established this we can then be more efficient when situations like this arise Anyone else and I share my mic if you haven't guessed I don't necessarily like the standing on the podium thing So i'm also in higher ed and my we was my marketing communications team And we are always under stress From from the other we's around us. There's a lot of silos. I think someone here had mentioned before And breaking those down but something I just heard in a leadership seminar last week Was about the owning Who you are first before trying to bridge gaps with others? So we we have a hard time saying no, we don't feel empowered to say no to anyone We're not we're not a charge back scenario. So we have to do stuff and we can't just say well bill you more No, they just keep coming So what I would like to do and I think it's going to get a little more stress But then hopefully get more comfortable would be to Own who we are own our expertise more identify who we are and say listen. We're the communications professionals We want to help you but let us help you with Our expertise so I think one of the important things about this is sometimes know is the best answer That one of the things that's like one of the reasons and I talked about ask and just so you know It is very important for me to say this coral is compatible with Drupal Ask and talk are compatible if you're wondering I have cards is some when you do specifically for these group of three exercises that I think about and do is It's okay if your answer isn't software It's okay if your answer isn't the same software for the same thing So you might have a situation where you have one piece of software for we have time We are easy. We are breezy. We are a couple girl and we can do whatever we want And then you might have something that's just like nope This just has to get out that has to be a different thing and you might have that the your question was a Process question this might need to be a better process Now there are tools we can build there are things we can do And that was part of what we did with ask and tell where we put parts of those process into the software But that is a thing where you start thinking about how do we do this thing? And that is what curl was and that is one of the biggest lessons I learned from journalism is that To actually Design for people we have to remember people and so often so so often it becomes just the task It just becomes just the thing But that task and that thing is going to be done by a person and in the spirit of sharing I am going to tell you a little bit about the thing that i'm doing now in addition to coral is I don't want to get back on the stage. I just want to hit the space bar So now I am editor for mozilla foundation And one of the things that we are thinking about and this is part of the reason I wanted to come in addition of telling you how wonderful coral is is We work right now and trying to work around the language of internet health So how do you help people think of a healthy internet? How do you help people talk about a healthy internet? And also, how do you help people become involved and speak a language? And when people ask me, what is my way my way is People who need the people who use the internet and don't understand why they have to And don't understand how they're doing it because it's very easy to get in a room of people who know exactly what's up And you talk to everyone and they talk about bitcoin and blockchain and I understand those intellectually and then I roll my eyes and go Can anyone say that in a paragraph under? Of 170 words anybody My kingdom I got $50 No, I seriously to this day. I laid out a bet That I will give 50 bucks to the person who can explain electronic currency bitcoin at all to me in under 170 words No word can have more than two syllables I still have my 50 bucks And Also, how do we look at we started with Benedict Anderson and the imagined communities So how do we look at a community and make them feel? Included not just in the I want to include everybody so must say it a lot But how do you make design and the words and the work include people and I get to look at fun stuff But it also makes me look further afield. I'm looking right now at churches I've never known so much about painted doors in Dublin in my life Did you know that in the Gregorian England English time period people in Dublin painted their doors to indicate that they were resisting or non-resisting People the way we set up churches the way we put up iconography if you look up a lot of those symbols tell people What happens here?