Alison Gow, executive editor digital of Liverpool Daily Post and Echo, talked about the rise of “social newsgathering” and how bloggers and Twitter users are changing the face of news.
She highlighted the recent crane collapse in Liverpool, where users of Twitter and photo-sharing site Flickr broke the news quickly online. The Daily Post and Echo used the contributions from those “citizen journalists” on its websites and in print – and the papers posted their own updates on Twitter to keep people informed.
Gow said that showed how vital it was that traditional print media engaged with online communities.
She said: “'It's very easy when you work in a newspaper to think you know everything, but there's so many people out there who can ask great questions. It's arrogant to say journalism belongs only to those who are paid to be involved.
“Social journalism – the more noise the better.”
Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, of London consultancy tinker.it, talked about how technology needed to change to become more user-friendly. It needed, she said, to be transparent, rather than opaque.
She said: “Cameras, phones, these are things we just carry round without thinking about it. We know they work and don’t know or care what goes on inside them.”
Ms Deschamps-Sonsino contrasted that with older technology, such as cassette players, which seemed much easier to understand and could be fixed by their owners, unlike the digital technology sealed in black boxes whose content is only known to their manufacturers.
But she said digital technology could be made more accessible.
She talked about Arduino technology, a publicly-available system that allows people to create their own robots.
Across the stage from her was a popular example of Arduino technology in action.
The Bubblino device, built by Liverpool developer Adrian McEwen, blows bubbles whenever certain words are mentioned on social networking site Twitter.
On Friday, it was set up to blow bubbles whenever the phrase #tedxlp – the chosen Twitter tag for TEDx Liverpool – was used in a message.
Mr McEwen was one of the organisers of the Howduino conference on Arduino technology in Liverpool in May.
He said: “It’s good to see things like this happening in Liverpool.
“The day went really well, with a good mix of videos and live speakers. The lecture room seemed to be packed with a who’s who of Liverpool’s Twitterati.
“I would hope there would be more events because this shows there’s an appetite for this in Liverpool and the North West, as do events like Howduino and (technology gathering) Barcamp.
“Within the geek community, there is an eco-system of people getting together and discussing things.”
Web developer Dave Coveney, a director of InterconnectIT, in Liverpool, said: “TED is pretty well-known, at least on the geek side of things. It didn’t surprise me that this event was fully booked and it helped to inspire and motivate people in the industry.”
Andy Goodwin, from ICDC, one of the event’s organisers, said: “It was great to see so many enthusiastic people there, and it was a very different experience to watching the TED videos at home alone.
“There were lots of discussions afterwards and it was a really successful event.”
