On 16 July 2015 we attended news:rewired, a one-day conference organised by journalism.co.uk in London. We had the opportunity to present REVEAL and participate in a panel discussion that dealt with sourcing stories on social media. Obviously, verification of eyewitness material played a big role.

news:rewired was a packed day of presentations and discussions well worth attending. Journalism.co.uk had managed to gather about 300 people, all interested in or very knowledgeable about transformation in journalism and how digital technology is impacting the media business.

REVEAL’s involvement

We had been invited to give a presentation and participate in a panel session entitled “Sourcing stories on social media.”

Together with Dhruti Shah of BBCNews / BBC_HaveYourSay and James Neufeld of SAMdesk, various aspects of sourcing content from social networks were discussed. Previous to the discussion round, moderated by John Crowley of the Wall Street Journal, everyone gave an introductory presentation focussing on their respective areas of expertise. It all raised considerable interest among the expert audience and resulted in new contacts being formed afterwards, while old ones were refreshed.

Now instead of trying to sum up the session in our own words, let others do the talking – or better: let’s link to sites where you can re-live the session and find out what was being discussed. Overall, the event created quite a buzz, and a fair amount of material was produced around it.

Things that were said, written and recorded

To start with, you can view presentation slides and listen to the audio of two of the three speeches delivered on the news:rewired website. This includes what we had to say about Reveal and verification.

Then, there’s a collection / extract of “ten tips for sourcing stories from social media”, based on what was said in the session. This has been compiled by Maria Martinez Ugartechea.

The session itself, including tweets as they came in, is summed up nicely in a post by Emily Shackleton.

Also a great and very useful undertaking: the notes taken of many conference sessions (including ours) by Corinne Podger, shared in this Google doc.

Finally, journalism.co.uk conducted interviews with some of the speakers, including one with Jochen Spangenberg, in which, on the one hand, we talked about the Reveal work and approach, while, on the other hand, various aspects concerning verification of eyewitness media were raised. The video is available on YouTube, or you can watch it by clicking on the link below.

A great and very worthwhile event

Summing up, it can be said that participating in news:rewired was very worthwhile. It provided us with an excellent platform on which to showcase some of the Reveal work. Furthermore, we had the opportunity to network and exchange thoughts and ideas with numerous experts active in our domain, as well as in other areas and undertakings dealing with the future of journalism and digital media.

And finally: to get some more visual impressions of the day, we recommend looking up John C Thompson’s photo stream on Flickr where the owner and publisher of journalism.co.uk captured quite some memorable moments of the day. A selection is included below.