The Area of my Expertise

How to support news mavens to explain how they reached their

conclusions, visually, on the web.

Neema Moravejihabits.stanford.edu

Who are mavens and what do they do?

Maven: a trusted expert in a particular field, who seems to pass knowledge on to others.

News mavens: people who follow or write about the news and have to explain how they come to their conclusions.

Supporting good habits: I am a world expert on helping these people explain their paths to insight with technology.  I design the technology such that it supports effective explanations.

Tools for healthy habits: I understand the tools these mavens use to read news and translate their insights.

Tool #1: Blogs

Prominent bloggers use plain prose to get their points across.  

They gain notoriety/reputation by:a) being unique, novel, and producing non-obvious insightsb) linking to a web of other known people who scratch each other's backsc) develop expertise in a particular domain and are known for itd) being clever with headlinese) having high quality links, no spam, no junk

Tool #2: Twitter

Mavens can use their wit to have 140-character tweets that get their point across and echo through the Internet.

They talk with like-minded people who are basically talking to one another (not to the general public so much).

They RT each other, give respect where it's due.

They develop unique perspectives on topics.

They monitor their list of people they follow and get updates on them regularly throughout the day/week.

Tool #3: Facebook

They can do a link+comment share, or just a status update, and people they know will see their notes.

They will get feedback via likes and comments - and this is very gratifying.

They can't tell if their work is being "RT'd"

They are seen by some friends as 'experts' and this feels great, even if they know they aren't true experts.

Tool #4: Email/listserv

They often get into conversations where they explain their points in prose in a semi-private form.

They include links, images, and make their arguments.

They still use brevity for effectiveness.

Tool #5: RSS Aggregators

It becomes a habit: every day/hour they get updates from a wide variety of sources and perhaps share parts.

Wrap-up