Episode Notes

Andy Carvin (@acarvin) is digital strategist for National Public Radio. He has helped NPR create their pioneering online presence, coordinated multiple crisis camps, and he’s organized the PublicMediaCamp unconference. In recent months, Andy has engaged in a globalized twitter-enabled form of tummelled journalism as he has curated, fact-checked, and shared news from the Arab democratic revolutions (and other international stories).

Heather Gold writes that Andy Carvin may be the most “successful” tummler on the web:

We’ve wanted to have Andy on for some time. I got to know him a while back and noticed how involved he was in the tech community , how open and vulnerable he was on twitter about his own life and things he’s personally coped with and how much he seemed to commit to crisis camps, in which web and IT folks get together and hack on problems to help an ongoing humanitarian crisis, such as the recent earthquake in Japan.

Andy’s commitment and knowledge about the web, community and human rights all converged into a really critical moment for the web on twitter at the end of 2010 as revolution began bubbling in Tunisia. Andy tummeled the hell out of what was going on there on the ground. He then became a key point on the web and for western journalism (possibly beyond the west too, but in the spirit of Andy’s work, we could not verify this so we’re not asserting it). Andy connected first person sources, organizers, social media participants, journalists and many regular folks around the world who just became all of these things as the world was astonished by the organizing and democratic movements that swept through Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen and Syria.

In doing so, Andy showed by example, how to create community, connect people, verify and ask for verification about news. And rather than just being a digital strategist and community advisor at NPR, he now seems to be a journalist and a story as the web, revolution and tummelling shift what all those things mean.

Enjoy our conversation with Andy!

News and Notes

• The Huffington Pose: Using the seductive and tantalizing tricks of a modern-day courtesan, the new media mogul puts a brave new world under her spell – Hephzibah Anderson in ADWEEK
• Here Comes Everybody – Tummlers, Geishas, Animateurs and Chief Conversation Officers help us listen – Kevin Marks at Epeus’ epigone
• The Human Blog – 2006 profile of Arianna Huffington by Emily Nussbaum in New York magazine
• Conversation is the New Attention – Christopher Fahey and Timothy Meaney at A List Apart
• The “Donahue” app – “Ideas and Experiments in the Art of Presenting”
• Heather Gold on Unpresenting
• My Sarah Jane: Remembering Elisabeth Sladen – Tor.com

At 18:08 in this episode, we starting diving deep into Andy Carvin’s work. Here are some links and stories related to his global tummelling:

• We highly recommend you check out the Chirpstory transcript of twitter conversation during the recording of this episode.
• Twitter and the Anti-Playstation Effect on War Coverage – Zeynep Tufekci (@techsoc)
• Report: “Digital Natives” a Myth – Suw Charman-Anderson at ComputerWeekly.com
• Marshall Kirkpatrick on Apple, Google and other socially awkward companies – TummelVision Ep. 33, Sept. 2010

While you listen, you can follow the smart comments from our lively chat room by replaying the CoveritLive discussion.

If you’re interested in hearing more conversation with Andy, check out the supplemental discussion in episode “62.5.”

Episode Notes

After the recording of our “official” episode 62 discussion with NPR’s Andy Carvin, we continued for another 45 minutes of in-depth conversation about his work, deeper themes of connectedness, and some insights on the tools and mobile phone Andy uses in his work.