October 16.2009 - October 17.2009

American University
Washington, DC

NPR and PBS’s first national Public Media Camp. Plans will be announced this week, says Andy Carvin, NPR senior strategist, social media desk. The low-budget, informal camp will be held at American University in Washington, in cooperation with AU’s Center for Social Media.

It’s an “unconference,” like the deliberately unstructured BarCamps that are popular for brainstorming and spontaneous code-writing among open-source web technology activists.

One major objective for the event, Carvin says, will be to demonstrate how stations and other public-media groups can use such meetings locally to hook up with local web developers. So it makes sense to invite nonbroadcasters to this national camp as well. Carvin expects one-third will come from public TV and radio and the rest from the overlapping realms of civic journalism, open-source code and media activism.

Similar web-oriented camps have been held by Minnesota Public Radio and by KUSP-FM in Santa Cruz, Calif., Carvin says.