For the next few decades, journalism will be made up of overlapping special cases. Many of these models will rely on amateurs as researchers and writers. Many of these models will rely on sponsorship or grants or endowments instead of revenues. Many of these models will rely on excitable 14 year olds distributing the results. Many of these models will fail. No one experiment is going to replace what we are now losing with the demise of news on paper, but over time, the collection of new experiments that do work might give us the journalism we need.

My work with TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin has been fascinating and rewarding in this context of massive change in the media business model and questions about the future of journalism as craft and practice. I think that what is important during this transformation is to unpack, unbundle and reconfigure the elements that we think of when we think about “broadcaster” or “newspaper” and reimagine how they can be reconfigured to deliver more value to more people. Value that people want to pay for.

The Agenda: on the Road project is an interesting experiment along the lines of what Shirky describes above. What began as a way to bring TVO’s flagship current affairs program into local communities has developed into an ongoing experiment in open source journalism and community engagement.

The editorial direction of this series of on-the-road broadcasts was conceived last summer, before the true depth of the economic crisis had taken shape. It was to focus on Ontario’s changing regional economies, to reflect local realities and to bring as many local voices into the conversation as possible. AgendaCamp became a full-day unconference event to explore these issues with passionate community leaders and citizens prior to the live-to-air broadcast of The Agenda. Participants created fantastic digital artifacts of highly informed conversations that would never be able to be fit inside the parameters of a 60 minute broadcast.

While all this user-generated content is being created and uploaded to TVO.org, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, etc., the editorial team from The Agenda and Steve Paikin himself mix and mingle through up to 40 conversations on topics proposed and led by over 100 participants. Steve Paikin says it best, that every time he does this, he learns something new. He is learning from the community with locally relevant knowledge, he is able to further inform how he approaches the panel of experts, politicos and pundits during the broadcast and identifies interesting ideas, questions and people to call upon in the audience. Overall, we notice that the pre-planned questions to the panel tend to be completely reworked based on the new insights the editorial team glean from AgendaCamp participants.

So it came to be that I sat down with Sandra Gionas, The Agenda Producer responsible for the next in this series of on the road broadcasts, this one taking place in Waterloo on Sunday, March 29th and Monday, March 30th and focused on Ontario’s innovation economy. (AgendaCamp spaces still available.) In the interest of further experimentation and to encourage earlier, deeper engagement with the content, Sandra agreed to “open source” her research and thinking as she produced the show with the AgendaCamp community, via the blog, the wiki and her Twitter stream.

The idea is to both reveal a little bit of the work that a producer undertakes to help assemble a show like this one, and to share with the community some of the source material and research that have been undertaken. People with an interest in the topic of the innovation economy can edit the wiki page, suggest experts, link to reports and online resources, and otherwise add to Sandra’s research space that she’s sharing with the community.

Is this a signal of an open source future of journalistic media? Are we seeing possible new models for public media renewal? Time will tell.

We just love our participants’ passion and we felt their desire to come together as a community to make the place they call home a better place. They tackled the big questions of economic renewal in the context of a rapidly declining auto industry, and they planted their seeds of their own future.

The next step is to support this budding community as they continue their work together, providing them with tools to help their collaboration and ongoing conversations. I hope that we can find a way to connect this grassroots energy and enthusiasm to power and influence in a way that can meaningfully effect change, but that really depends on the community.

The thing we’re most interested in seeing evolve is how AgendaCamp participants and content interact with the broadcast. With five events, five shows and five different producers in five communities, we’ll get to see a number of variations on this combination of bottom-up engagement, online interaction and major current affairs broadcast platform. So much fascinating stuff! We’re excited for the next event in Sault Ste. Marie November 16th and 17th.

Sunday is the first TVO AgendaCamp, taking place at the Art Gallery of Windsor, Windsor’s jewel overlooking the beautiful riverside walk and the Detroit skyline. A stunning location for an innovative new format in citizen-powered exploration and social-media enhanced journalism.

Creative facilitator-ninja Dan Rose and I will be helping to run a 3-ring circus of citizen journalism and economic policy thinking.  Linking social media, a BarCamp-inspired unconference and one of Canada’s premier public issues broadcast journalism platforms is a very exciting opportunity for me. The topic – Ontario’s changing economy with a focus on the manufacturing sector and places like Windsor that depend upon it – couldn’t be more relevant or timely.

For those of you who can’t make it to Windsor, TVO.org will be the place to be from 10:00 am Sunday until 4:30pm. Arm-chair policy wonks and social media junkies can follow along as video is streamed live, as citizen-journalist YouTube videos and Flickr images are uploaded, the Wiki is populated with content and the whole event is live-blogged and Twittered. Use and follow the tag: AgendaCamp. We have MacBooks and FlipVideo cameras available on-site for participants, plus pro equipment and staff from TVO helping to capture the content and stories.

The strategy and platform for this was built by TVO.org’s great production team, helped along with insight and guidance from Sean Howard.

We have a great platform, an amazing group of on-site participants, a bunch of technology and a beautiful and inspiring venue. I really can’t wait! I hope you can join us online and help us start an important new conversation.

How will this instability in the system affect citizens and businesses in the places they call home?  Even before the Wall Street meltdown, Ontario’s local and regional economies were under stress and changing rapidly. The current crisis appears likely to accelerate and exacerbate these changes.

It is said that all politics are local. What about economies?

Dan Dunsky, Executive Producer of TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin, believes that we need to think about Ontario’s economies in the plural and his team has identified that major sectors of Ontario’s economy correspond to our geographic landscape and its people in specific places. How do these places and people adapt to global forces that are largely outside of their control? How can we get ahead of the change curve and make our regions more resilient and adaptable to accelerating change?

To tackle this critically important question about our future well-being, TVO is launching an innovative new project that brings together collaborative events and social media together with premier broadcast journalism and expert inquiry.  I am advising and supporting TVO for this project, “The Agenda with Steve Paikin: on the Road” & AgendaCamp.

We’re looking for participants – like you. More after the jump…

Ontario’s trade manufacturing economy is concentrated along the highway 401 corridor of southwestern Ontario particularly close to the US-Canada border. Ontario’s natural resources sector dominates our vast northern expanse.  Eastern Ontario is home to a rich rural economy located in places with storied histories since before Confederation.  Ontario’s native people made a sustainable living from the lakes and forests across Ontario long before Europeans arrived. Ontario’s burgeoning knowledge-based and technology-driven economy is concentrated in places like Waterloo, Greater Toronto and Ottawa but is also popping up anyplace where talent and connectivity can find a suitable home.

The Agenda is going on the road to find these economies and their people and engage them in a new conversation about their challenges and future opportunities.  The first show and event will take place in less than three weeks in Windsor (October 19th and 20th), followed by Sault Ste. Marie (November 16th and 17th).

The audacious format looks like this:

1. AgendaCamp: an all-day Sunday participatory event, similar to the Barcamp model of unconference, that takes place face-to-face and is also live-blogged, with video capture and other social media content uploaded to the web in near realtime
2. The Agenda on the Road: a live-to-air broadcast hosted Monday evening by Steve Paikin featuring a panel of invited guests and a studio audience, where the best AgendaCamp ideas can find a larger audience

AgendaCamp is looking for:

• local citizens and business-people
• academic experts and bloggers
• policy-makers and politicians
• artists and technologists
• bankers and social activists

- really anybody who has a stake, an opinion and a passion for the subject of the economy and it’s impact on our communities and our lives.  If you are interested in participating in AgendaCamp please register your email address at http://tvo.org/agendacamp/ for more information or email me at mark@remarkk.com.

Thanks to collaborators Sean Howard and Daniel Rose for being part of this project. We’re enjoying working together with Steve Paikin, Mike Miner and the rest of the TVO team.

My dream list of participants from across the web and blogosphere includes: Richard Florida, Anthony Williams, Naomi Klein, David Eaves, Deborah Leslie, David Wolfe, Meric Gertler, John Britton, David Crow, Jevon MacDonald, Warren Kinsella, Andrew Coyne, Kate Trgovac, Bob LeDrew, Canadian Silver Bug, James Bow, Kate McMillan (small dead animals), Uncorrected Proofs, Steve Janke (Angry in the Great White North), Zednik (A View from the Right), Graeme Steward (Nunc Scio),  More Notes from the Underground, Canada’s World, Another Point of View, Dr. Dawg (Dawg’s Blog).

Who am I missing? You?