On Thursday, I had the opportunity to attend The Sourcing Through Texting Summit. Although the entire summit lasted from Wednesday to Friday, I was only able to attend the one day. The summit had three basic goals:

Public Insight Journalism (PIJ) is a new mode of news reporting where the Public Insight Network (PIN), a project developed by American Public Media, uses the public through text messaging as sources to be contacted for future news stories. News outlets like Detroit’s NPR station, WDET, could contact people that are participants to get their insights into stories that have to do with them and their community.

In addition to private citizens, local independent media and representatives from the social service sector, there were people from:

• Mobile Commons (developed the texting technology that was used
• Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school)
• The Takeaway w/John Hockenberry and Celeste Headlee

Thursday began in TechTown around 8AM. I arrived into one of the conference rooms and saw that it was filled with people. There was a combination of locals representing various sectors and people from out of town. Thursday’s activity consisted primarily of teams of attendees planning, developing and, ultimately, implementing campaigns that used the same texting technology used by the PIN.

According to the facilitator, there was reason for precisely picking groups. Mine consisted of Jerome Vaughn from WDET, Antonio Guevara with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Detroit, as well as Melody Ng and Michael Arnold from the Minneapolis NPR station. After tossing out some ideas, we decided that we were going to develop a texting campaign to showcase the beautiful homes and yards of Southwest Detroit—an excellent way to shine some positive light. We would distribute flyers in Southwest Detroit to get the community to text a number code to WDET and begin the process. Finally, they would then receive a response text where they send the address of the home to finish.

After getting some bilingual flyers (English on one side and Spanish on the reverse) printed up at Techtown, we split up into two teams. Antonio and I both had vehicles so we divided transportation duties. My team started off on the west side of Southwest Detroit, while Antonio’s started off on east side. We peppered as many spots as we could until both teams ended up meeting up at Cafe con Leche across from Clark Park. The other teams congregated there as well, since there was a shuttle that dropped off people and picked them up later to take them to Los Galanes for dinner.

It was at Los Galanes where I would say the Summit had its high point. There were people that I’d seen earlier in the morning or had seen throughout the day but hadn’t had a chance to speak with. Between talking to the people like those on my team or with others that I met later, I ended having some great conversations. What stood out was that the out of town people had a legitimate interest in hearing what we, locals, had to say about the Metro Detroit region. The type of back-and-forth dialogue that we had is the type of conversations that we sorely need.

In the end, I liked the idea of using text messaging technology like what has been developed by Mobile Commons. In editing Mi Estilo, I have had to learn about social media and how to use it to spread the word. I have met people, made friends and found collaborators through social media. However, the downside of Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. is that not everybody has an account. Yet, with text messaging, this is something that is affordable to even somebody on Metro PCS. Only by finding ways of providing further opportunities for the public to have their stories heard will this become a reality.

Author: José A. Rodríguez