Tuesday, May 08, 2012

New World of Informal/Unstructured Training

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Jenna Wortham: What I Read - Entertainment - The Atlantic Wire

    • I wake up around 7 or 7:30 a.m. and check the news on my iPhone. I usually sleep with my laptop nearby, but the phone is quicker.
    • I've set a few select Twitter feeds to push their tweets to my phone via SMS from 7 in the morning till 2 at night.
    • I listen to music while I get dressed. I’ve done that since high school. It prepares me for the long day ahead.
    • During the ten minutes it takes me to walk to the train, I’ll quickly check Twitter for the news of the day, Tumblr for reactions to the news and Instagram for social news, to see if anything is heating up that might make for a good daily story or blog post -- a big news event, a backlash to something, a particularly timely meme, viral video or some other important topic.
    • During the first half of my commute, I listen to podcasts on my ride into the city. I use a terrific app called Instacast to keep track of the ones I like
    • I also read most of the New York Times through our iPhone app on my commute in.
    • I try to absorb at least an article a day.
    • For the second leg, I start preparing myself for the office. I reply to as many emails as I can in the last 15-20 minutes of my ride.
    • Once I get to work, around 10, I open Twitter and Facebook -- these stay open throughout the day and I stick my head back into them repeatedly to keep an eye out for any news that might be bubbling up.
    • I’ve got several secret Twitter lists that I use to help filter the news. The two that are the most useful contains all the founders, investors and start-ups that I'm keeping a close eye on and the other is full of reporters, tech and beyond, whose work I admire, so that I can see what they're tweeting about and linking to.
    • I favorite about 50 things (or more) a day on Twitter -- articles to read, ideas I liked, books to read, songs. I use ifttt recipe to send my Twitter faves to my Gmail inbox so I can sift through them later.
    • While I skim, I take notes the old-fashioned way: With a fine-point Sharpie and a stack Post-it notes. I do a lot of pattern matching -- emerging themes among new start-ups, the types of companies that are getting funded, a VC or entrepreneur catches my eye -- and make a note or a list, and I keep these in a row on my desk for easy reference.
    • For my beat, I need to see what new service or app is bubbling up and pay attention to how people are using the web, their mobile devices and new technologies, but it can often take awhile for things to catch on, so I'm constantly monitoring for that groundswell when a new service or behavior breaks out beyond my professional and social circle and starts to catch on in a bigger way.
    • often take photos of these handwritten notes and file them in a separate folder on my iPhone for easy perusal later.
    • I keep a fresh Steno notebook for each cluster of stories and blog posts I’m working on each week, and I always keep a graph-paper Rhodia notebook on me for longer to-do lists, general observations, story ideas. I avoiding spending a lot of time in my inbox -- it’s the equivalent quicksand -- so instead, I keep an eye on the emails to address anything urgent that comes in and make a list of people to reply to via email during a late-afternoon coffee break or before bed at the end of the night.
    • f there's no breaking news that requires immediate attention, I'll file a blog post or two and then transition into interviews and reporting for the features I'm working on that week and calls and meetings with sources that last until late afternoon, when I have lunch. Then, I’ll go back to those same sites and see what I’ve missed.
    • During lunch, I check in on my favorite writers. In my regular rotation each week: Willa Paskin at Salon, Mary H.K. Choi at MTV and Wired, Edith and everyone at The Hairpin, Mat Honan at Gizmodo, ParislemonAmanda Peyton on Tumblr, Robin Sloan’s blog, Shortform blog, Chris Dixon, Silicon Filter, Anil Dash, Waxy.org, Liz and Peter at All Things D, Guernica, The New Inquiry, Jonah Lerer, Clive Thompson, Vulture’s Mad Men and Game of Thrones recaps, The New Yorker’s Culture Desk, the picks of Longform, Rembert Browne and Jay Caspian King at Grantland, Anthony de Rosa at Reuters, David Carr and Brian Stelter, RConversation, Daring Fireball, Farhad Manjoo, Fred Wilson, Matt Buchanan and John Herrman at BuzzFeed FWD, Matt Stopera, Whitney Jefferson and Katie Notopoulos at BuzzFeed, Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic, Rebecca Greenfield at The Atlantic Wire, Tim Carmody at Wired, Kashmir Hill at Forbes, to name a few
    • I really admire iPad apps like Longform and Percolate. Lately, I use Pocket or Flipboard to see if I can unearth any new content that I should be paying attention to, although between Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook, I get sent down enough unusual and satisfying rabbit holes to keep me awash in new content.
    • At the end of the day, I crave time away from the screen. I’ll go on a run, or to a show, or a tech event or a drinks thing to catch up with friends -

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.