Input from the masses

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Q&A about my idea

Question: I have read your idea and I would like to understand a little more about it. What need does this idea fill? Is this a need that you have yourself? Who would share this need?

Answer: This idea fills a niche of people in the Seacoast area who are very interested in the arts scene that the area has to offer, with an easily accessible calendar that takes events from different towns and venues and compiles them into a single website. Portsmouth especially is known for its cultural events, but it can often be difficult to know when everything is going on. I think that it will be used by people who live in the area and tourists who are looking to come to the area alike. 

Q: At this point you should have some idea of who the average user of your product will be. What is the profile of that person?

A: I think the profile of this person varies. The people who I see using this website the most are residents of the Seacoast area who are into the arts scene and are looking to see what is happening on any given night. I also could see tourists using this website as well, to look up dates that they may visit the area based on the events that are going on on any given day. 

Q: On Page 149 of your reading the "sticky test" is described. When you ran your idea through the "sticky test," how did it fare? How sticky is it? Go through each of the criteria specifically.

A: Simple: I want the interface of this calendar to be very simple and easy to use, complicated enough that it gives the user something unique but not so complicated that it difficult to use, understand or start using. The format will be uniform throughout, so it will be clear on how it works. 

Unexpected: I wouldn’t say it’s unexpected, but it would be something relatively new to the area as a different mode to consume information regarding arts. It isn’t exactly the most creative, original idea, but I think that it will be unique enough to draw interest. 

Concrete: I think because it is going to have a uniform format and an unchanging way of using it, success can be defined by how easy it is to use and how many people use it. 

Credible: It will be credible because the journalists behind it will be trained, unbiased, clean, good writers, and will be promoting the events to generate general interest, not to make a company or person look good as PR. 

Emotional: This product isn’t exactly emotional, but for some will really provide an outlet for something that they are very passionate about. 

Story: The story here is that nothing like this has been done before, and it will become an entirely new way the region consumes its arts news. 

Q: What problem or need are you satisfying for your customers? (Remember, the customers aren't necessarily the people who will be using your product. For example, television audiences aren't customers unless they pay for the product, as in HBO. The customers are advertisers.)

A: I am satisfying a need for multiple events to be compiled in a single, easily-usable interface, so that people looking for the best that the area has to offer do not have to search around on various websites. Instead, we will do the work for them to combine everything into one place and keep it as updated as possible. The fact that this will be linked to social media will keep everything updated and relevant, and will keep users engaged throughout. 

Q: We all have to live. Where is the money in this product?

A: There will be money in this product because it has many different areas of advertising available. Because it is directed solely toward the Seacoast area, businesses will want to get their ads in, especially knowing that many of the users will be looking for a night out. Restaurants will want to advertise, and there might be able to be some kind of deal promotions that can be worked with the website. 

Q: You are a journalist. Where is the journalism in this product?

A: The journalism is straight arts preview coverage, gathering information, interviewing sources, generating buzz about the event. It wouldn’t be PR because we wouldn’t be doing it for the event, but in general, the site would be used to publicize and promote all arts events in the area, provided that we know about them. There may also be room for coverage of events too, but the main focus will be on previews. 

Q: We've read that passion is key to success of a new venture. Money alone will not sustain it. So where is the passion in your product?

A: I have a tremendous amount of passion for this website. I have always enjoyed reading and writing about the arts scene, so being surrounded by it constantly will be fun and entertaining for me. I also get a lot of joy introducing people to the arts scene and what is out there, so an entire website that does so will definitely bring that about. 

The Idea

I have an idea to create a website that will cover the arts scene in the Seacoast area. The template for the website will be half blog-style, half calendar-style. The blog portion will list the day’s events, while the calendar can be broken down into a week format and a month format. When clicking on an event, a tab will pop up on the page with a short preview of the event, and ways to share the event via social media, and ways to check into the event via social media. It will color-code types of events into music, theatre, arts, dining and concerts, and the calendar will be able to filter the types of events as well.

Brief sketch of the website's interface 

Entrepreneur Bio with David Hand

David Hand in Ireland 

This Q&A is with my dad, David Hand, who started his own business "Hands On Video" with a focus on videotaping and editing local sports games in the area. 

 

Describe your background prior to starting Hands On Video: 

I started in video when I took a class up in Rockport, Maine about video production and operating a video camera. This started my interest in video production and I started doing things ... part time, doing weddings, working for the Chamber of Commerce. I job shadowed Tom Meagan in Concord as a tape operator to see if I liked it ... and I did. I started working full-time, on my own inn 1994, or '95 after working at a local cable station doing replay, a station that covered local sports. There was a segment called "Coaches Corner," we did a show called Pitstop about auto racing, and this, this is what I think sparked my interest in local sports. 

Is this when you saw that there was a need in the community for ways for viewers to see local sports?

I think so, yeah. I think I noticed that there were many different ways I could have gone, many sports that people wanted to see, locally. Anyone can turn on the TV and watch a Red Sox game, but for many people, a lot of what they want to see is local. They want to see their kid playing baseball when they can't watch the game; they want to re-watch a game that they weren't able to record. 

Sometimes to be an entrepreneur, you have  to go off the beaten path 

So would you say that Hands On Video explores the niche of local sports?

I would say so, yes...yes. Hands On Video was never a full-time gig for me, I was still doing freelance work on the side with local programming, but as something that I figured I could explore to make some extra money and do something that I was interested in, local sports seemed like a pretty good outlet for that. 

What's your favorite part about owning your own business? 

Well, I think that it's nice to make money doing something I love [laughs]. It's not bad when you're getting paid to watch a decent sports game and then edit together the best parts of it. I've always been a sports fan, and having this ability, this prior knowledge about local sports, and the talent to be able to edit things together has made a huge difference in being able to be a part of my kid's athletics over the years. 

What are you up to right now? 

Right now I am working with a buddy of mine, Greg, who has been a friend and occasional business partner over the years. We're, um, we're doing local programming in the Sunappee and Vermont areas with local sports. This is a little more official because we have a commentator usually right there with us, so it's my job essentially to videotape these local sports games and get them ready in time to air on local television. I usually have, what, a day, a week to do it? It varies. 

And the name, Hands On Video. Where did that come from? 

Honestly, it was so long ago I can't even remember [laughs]. I had it throughout the '80s, even when I hadn't "officially" started my own business yet. It seemed like a good name, and well, if you have a last name like this, why not play off of it? 

$5 million plan

Maybe it's just me, but I left class the other day feeling excited and realistically invigorated by the plan my classmates and I came up with during our group discussion in class. After much deliberation, we settled on an idea that would involve an online calendar that would list events that are being held in a town/on a campus, etc. The way we saw it, it would list the event, and when you clicked on it, a tab would pop out with a preview written about it, and with relevant social media information on it. Each even could come with a hashtag that could be used via Twitter and Instagram and could be linked to the article. When the event is actually occurring, or after the fact, there could be a live feed of information via Twitter, Facebook and Instagram so that when you click on the event, you could see a live feed of pictures from the event.

I can just see this working out in my head if the interface was easy to use and aesthetically pleasing. I think it would work in a small town or on a college campus where there are many events, but not so many that it becomes overwhelming. The money spent on printing, we decided, would be spent on reporters so that the news that is being delivered would be accurate and well-written.

We also figured that since we would be reporting on local events, many local businesses would want to advertise with us, knowing that there would be many page views and a very central, local audience.

As I mentioned before, I think that this kind of idea might not just be something that I pursue in class and then forget about. It could really be something.

Short attention spans, multi-tasking and news

I want to elaborate on a thought that I had in class the other day about our generation having short attention spans and the effect that is going to have on the kind of journalism we consume. It is no secret that many prefer to watch the news on television rather than read it in a paper. Why is that? Well, when you are watching television, you can be audibly consuming the news while, say, chatting with a friend online, making dinner, even doing homework. When reading a newspaper, these tasks are harder to do (although not impossible).

As I know many other people my age do, I often find myself multi-tasking for no good reason. Chatting online with a friend, watching a video on Youtube, reading a news article online — these are activities that I can usually do all at once. Now how is a 1,000 word news article supposed to compete with that?

For myself, if something can't engage me immediately, I won't waste my time reading or viewing it. I get most of my news from Twitter, where a constant feed of headlines from The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, CNN, The Boston Globe, The New York Times,  and other local media outlets such as WMUR and The Portsmouth Herald give me up-to-date news. Sometimes it is enough for me to read the tweet and nothing else. I get the information I need, and decide that I probably won't benefit from any more. Other times, I'll click on the link, read the first few paragraphs of the article, and then move on. Rarely do I get through an entire news story in one piece, and I'm a journalism major. What does that say about the average person who doesn't have an intense dedication to news and staying informed? Would they even click on the link in the first place? Would they even seek out news.

The problem with these times is that there is such a fight to get an individual's attention, an attention that can only be held for so many hours of the day. We are bombarded, every day, with possible distractions: TV, social media, videos online, games, music, etc. that to get someone to pick up a newspaper, flip through it and read every single story is just not a realistic goal. As much as I don't like it, newspapers will not remain a central way to consume media, especially with my generation. News outlets must think of new ways to attract readers, or else they will lose them.

Innovation really is our only chance

Our talk last week with Terry Williams was honestly one of the most informative journalism-related talks I have been able to hear during my time at UNH. It was straightforward, interesting and gave a comprehensive view of today's struggles in journalism through a local outlet that many of us could relate to and put in context. I think it's easy to see stories of newspapers being shut down or scaled back, but they don't really touch us until we get the straightforward facts of the Telegraph's 50 percent revenue cut in the last five years and 35 percent decline in readership. Those facts made the issue that much more real to me.

One thing that really stuck out to me about the talk was his first question "Will innovation save journalism?" It made me think about what it would mean for the journalism industry if an individual or group of individuals managed to come up with a brilliant idea that would redirect journalism back into a profitable industry. Now, the gears in my head are turning, but alas, I haven't come up with anything world-changing quite yet.

In my opinion, coming up with something new and different is probably the only way that the journalism industry has a fighting chance of staying profitable. If we look at how much the world has changed even in ten years, imagine what it could possibly look like in another ten? The newspaper business model simply cannot keep up with these rapidly developing changes, and I think that only moderately updating the way that news is delivered will not be able to keep up with the changes that could occur within the next few years. Sure, we can move headlines onto Twitter and have tablet and mobile interfaces for stories, but no one knows what could happen within the next few years. The journalism industry cannot afford to be left behind again, and must set its sights far in the future to be able to combat a world with shorter attention spans, and more outlets to consume media.

Entrepreneur Bio

For my entrepreneur, I have decided to do I bio of my dad, David Hand. In the late 1990s, after many years of working in the video and local television industry, he started his own business, "Hands on Video." His locally based business involves videotaping and editing various kinds of events in the area. He saw that there was a need for highlight videos of local sports teams throughout their season that would show clips from good moments throughout their seasons. A lot of his work was focused on Gilford High School, who's volleyball team was well known for its championship streak. He began filming the postseason, tournament games, and after Gilford either made it to the championship, or won it, he would put together a highlight video to be bought by parents and students of the team.

This started when he noticed that parents either didn't have the equipment to record their child athlete's accomplishments, or if they did, did not have the expertise to either use it or know how to edit together a piece that wasn't just a straight video of the game. Put together with inspirational music and behind-the-scenes moments with the team (such as doing team cheers or getting pumped up in the locker room) his videos were something that parents could take home with them and show off.

Since then, he has started putting together videos for other kinds of sports teams, including Plymouth, my hometown. While I was in high school, he would tape my field hockey games, and make a highlight video at the end of the semester that he would sell to parents. He also found another niche with parents who were looking for personal highlight videos of their children to send off to colleges for recruiting purposes. His business has moved toward that quite a bit, because of the competitive edge it gives athletes in showing off their skills to coaches.

With these types of videos, in addition to the various other kinds of videos he makes, my dad is a successful entrepreneur who managed to find an area that could use some attention, and make a profit off of it.

Entrepreneurs according to Spongebob

So this has no academic value in the slightest, but I remembered this from my childhood and thought it was funny in the context of this class.

Young Entrepreneurs

If you Google "Entrepreneurs," the most common example that comes up is children entrepreneurs or very young adult entrepreneurs. Our society is obsessed with them. From Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, to the 8-year-old girl who invented the Makin' Bacon dish, something about someone very young who has a genius idea is something that our society simply cannot get enough of. I mean, look at "The Social Network." That movie netted Oscars and all sorts of awards because of its primary plot of a young person, who was not taken very seriously, who had an idea that changed the world.

Because of 8-year-old Abbey, I have one of these in my kitchen

Although I get a deflated sense of self-worth when I hear stories about children entrepreneurs (Why couldn't I have thought of that???) it is important to note that these kids used the same entry point to putting their idea into practice as we could. They all had ideas for something new, and found a niche of people who needed it. Sure, the idea is only half of the battle and implementation is important, but it is vital not to get put off by these kinds of stories and feel like if you didn't accomplish this by age 10, you never will.

All it takes is one idea at the right time, and the rest, they say, is history.

Lemonade stands are not built overnight

During our in-class assignment to come up with a game plan to build a lemonade stand business, I thought it was going to be a piece of cake. Throw together some lemonade, put it on a table, and voila, you have a business.

However, things got very complicated very quickly, and then spiraled out of control.

We decided that we wanted to give our lemonade an edge and make it frozen, in order to take a step up against our competition. We first wanted to put the stand on Rye Beach, but then changed our minds to Water Country because it would be a place where there was definitely a market for sweet drinks that would cool you down on a hot day.

We started mapping out our costs with the basics: cups, a blender, ice, lemons, and a stand. Then, things began to get a little more detailed. We would need straws and spoons, because it was frozen, a cooler to keep the mixture cold, sugar to sweeten it, a scooper/mixer, napkins, a lemon squeezer, an umbrella for hot and rainy days, a chair, and then we decided to make our creation even more unique by adding Torani flavor shots to make flavored lemonades.

We realized we would have to come up with a name, trademark it, then come up with a banner and a logo for the stand.

We divided our costs into up front costs, and then daily costs, and worked to do the math to see if we would be under, break even or make a profit. We decided to check out our competition and prices, and figure out our target sales vs. the supplies we'd need.

Along with more things we figured we would have to do before we even began squeezing lemonade, the biggest realization was how much thought and work goes into something as simple as a lemonade stand. It's intimidating, definitely, that something as basic could take that much work, but it also helps to know that we are working from the bottom, and that some basic business strategies work from the bottom up, from the least complicated to the most complicated.

And, if being an entrepreneurial journalist isn't going to work out for me, I have a pretty good game plan to open up my own lemonade stand!

The changing face of journalism in action

Last week, I had the opportunity of a lifetime when I received a press pass to cover President Obama's speech at Strawbery Banke in Portsmouth. The experience was amazing in itself, being able to hear Obama speak, but what really stuck out to me was looking around at all the different journalists and thinking about how different the media section would have been, say, ten years ago. Journalists walked in with their laptops and instantly set up at tables inside the media section, typing their notes. Many members of the media seemed glued to their phones, many of them young, tweeting live updates from the event and putting up pictures from the crowd online.

I like to pretend he was waving at me 

Throughout the speech, there were a slew of tweets with quotes from Obama, or updates about who was speaking. I tweeted a few of Obama's quotes and was surprised to see how many people instantly retweeted me. That kind of instant journalism made it so anyone with access to "#Obama" could be a part of the event by just holding their phone in their hand, miles and miles away. So while I felt like I had the greatest opportunity in being able to attend the speech, I also appreciated the accessibility those who couldn't go had through the constant social media updates from various mediums.

Editors as gatekeepers

While reading "Newsonomics" for class, I found that I was intrigued first and foremost by the concept of editors being gatekeepers. It never occurred to me that pre-Internet, an individual or a select group of individuals had great power in deciding what news was worth being printed. With such few media outlets, the span of news that could be consumed was very limited. As much as I sometimes wish I could have been released into the real world during "the good old days" of journalism, this concept has shifted my thinking.

The idea that I can go on the Internet at any given time and scour it for news that I personally find interesting is something that I have been taking for advantage. With the countless media outlets between the Internet, newspapers and television, there are seemingly endless topics of news stories to be read and explored. Before, I could have read the New York Times, watched the evening news and read my local paper, and that would be mostly the span of news that I would need to read. Now, we have access to so much more, and it is really something that shouldn't be taken for granted.

The dissolving power of editors as "gatekeepers" is causing a huge shift in journalism, and I think its for the better. Being able to consume news that is specifically interesting to you is a privilege, and as much as we want to hate on the Internet for "killing journalism," this concept is truly revolutionary.

How do I get my news? I'll tell you.

The way I consume my news on any given day varies, but I can tell you that it is certainly different than the way someone consumed news, say, five, ten years ago. I normally access most of my news when I am at my desk at work, since journalism is already on the brain and at least for me, once I start absorbing news, I usually have a hard time stopping.

This may be different for many people in the country, but I do not get much of my news from television. If it happens to be on, great, but I never turn on the TV specifically to watch the news. Maybe it is because I am a fan of print journalism, but I tend to get most of my information about current events online.

Although I do often go directly onto the New York Times website, Huffington Post, CNN or the Associated Press website, I find that Twitter is my best outlet to get all the information I need at once. I follow major news outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Huffington Post and the Boston Globe, as well as smaller outlets such as Seacoastonline, Foster's Daily Democrat and WMUR. Combined, my Twitter feed becomes a nonstop stream of various headlines ranging from trouble abroad or local stories.

Although I'd like to say I'm not, I am definitely a child of this generation, with a shorter attention span and a need to absorb vital information very quickly and efficiently. Therefore, Twitter works perfectly, with its character limit. If I find the headline or blurb interesting enough, I will click on the link and read the rest of the story, but many times, simply the headline will be enough information for me to decide whether or not I want to pursue the rest of the article or not. Some aren't interesting enough to pursue, while others are just so direct and to the point that it isn't even necessary to read the follow-up information.

I think that in this shifting age of journalism, it is important to note the needs of the readers. As I previously mentioned, I need a news outlet that I can sift through quickly and efficiently, as I decide in a split second if a story is worth a read or not. This is coming from a journalism major who enjoys being in-the-know about current events, so how are we, the journalists, going to change our platforms to entertain the masses that may not be as committed to keeping themselves informed? We are going to need to adapt with the times and be innovative, creative and forward-thinking to keep the public informed in a way that is both effective on our end, and meets our readers' needs on the other.

Some thoughts on risk-taking

I'm not a risk-taker, not even in a way where I can spin experiences to make myself sound like one. Therefore, the "risk-taker" aspect of entrepreneurialism that we discussed last class is something that I feel might be one of my biggest barriers in letting some of my ideas come to fruition. It's true, that in the media we are barraged with stories about entrepreneurs who go from having nothing to suddenly finding that one idea that completely revolutionizes the world. Think of all the stories of children entrepreneurs, nearly-broke entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs who just happened to think of the right idea at the right time and made millions. These are the stories that we are fed because the rags-to-riches story is classic and rewarding in society's eyes. These individuals took a risk, and were rewarded.

This little guy has more guts than I do. 

That being said, it is less often that we are presented with stories of failed entrepreneurs. I have a feeling that the profession would be less glorified if we were allowed access to the stories that aren't told as often, the risk-taking ventures that never paid off or took off the ground at all. This here highlights my fears about entrepreneurial journalism, the fear that there will be a moment that you have to throw all of the data aside and just take a leap of faith that this idea is worth one pursuing and putting yourself behind, even when the end goal isn't exactly clear.

  In today's day and age, many journalists yearn for the good old days. Sometimes even I, who have grown up in an era where tools like Facebook and Twitter are almost second-nature, wish that the industry could be its simple, come in every day, edit, then leave industry that it once was. With the journalism industry practically shifting further and further away from that model by the day, journalists have to think of new ideas and new ways to do things in order to stay on top of the changing landscape. It seems, almost, that risk-taking isn't just a luxury for entrepreneurs anymore, but a necessity for anyone looking to make any kind of ripple in the journalism industry.

That being said, while I do not look at myself and see someone who is necessarily willing to jump out of a plane or scale an icy cliff, but I think one of the valuable skills that I will learn in this class is being able to take a little bit of the "risk" out of risk-taking by learning how to identify aspects of a project that are promising and those that are a red flag. Maybe that way, I will be able to produce something that requires a small leap of faith, but not a blind flight off a cliff.