Boy, that Boris Mann sure is persuasive. So here’s a link to the (gasp) PowerPoint that I delivered.

NorthernVoice.ppt (8.9 MB)

Some notes.

- I retitled this “Big Media Strikes Back: Bluffton Today and the Future of Print.” I tried to make it really sound cool because of the schedule (see below).

- Bluffton is an experiment. We don’t have all the answers. But I think we’re asking the right questions.

- It’s just not the same without my marvelous delivery. (See photo below)

- Read Seth Godin on how to avoid really bad PowerPoint. Like Julie Leung, my slides are designed to be evocative, then I talk about them. This PP has some more words in it, because there are some quotes I like to get right.

- Disclosure: I removed 4 slides that contain private company information. Sorry.

- This talk was originally given at the University of South Carolina, to a room of 100+ j-school students.

- There is an audio file towards the end, this is an actual phone message left on reporter Tim Wood’s work answering machine in response to one of his stories. The staff posted it to the web site along with Tim’s rebuttal. (He had criticized parental behavior at a sporting event.) The point to including this is that it shows some commitment to Transparency about what reporters actually do.

- It wasn’t an ‘unconference’ presentation. I delivered it in response to some naive negative accusations being thrown at ‘big media’ earlier in the day. But at least it was open and honest.

- Roland was nice enough to find me a spot on the schedule. He was evil enough to put me opposite Robert Scoble and the Windows Vista demo. Oh well. Those that came seemed to like it. We had about two dozen, I think.

- Someone really did shout ‘get him!‘ during the conference wrap up. But it was funny.

My one second sound-bite takeaway for you to quote: “The newspaper in Bluffton serves to amplify the voices of the community.”

For more, go check out BlufftonToday.com.

Tech note, BT runs on Drupal 4.5.