Over the past year, I have been traveling around the country, meeting with a wide range of organizations who have some interest in blogging and citizen journalism and have an interest in working with or otherwise supporting the Media Bloggers Association and its members - educational institutions, foundations, media associations, financial services companies, law firms and legal associations, government agencies, book publishers, movie companies and many more. I have met with executive editors for major newspapers, supreme court justices, White House officials, deans of law schools, general counsels for major corporations. I have spoken at conferences for corporations, public information officers, major media associations, journalism schools. I have also personally met with hundreds of bloggers.
It became increasingly clear that the MBA is in a unique position to be a force for good in the continuing development of blogging/citizen journalism. Yet the more folks I met, and the more the opportunities multiplied, the more difficult it became to order and prioritize our various policies, initiatives and prospective partnerships. As you know, over the past two years we have engaged in legal defense, Tsunami video hosting, obtaining reviewing copies of books, organizing conferences, offering education and training and many other activities. There are many other amazing opportunities in development. While this is all to the good it was getting confusing even to me. Worse, since running the MBA has been a sideline my own involvement has been necessarily intermittent at times.
What was needed was a clear operational framework for the MBA. I trust you can understand why until I got all this straight in my own mind I was staying below the radar.
Over the past few months I have been working on just such a framework. The result is what I refer to as the "MBA Value Chain" - a one page table that explains how the MBA creates value for its members. For those not familiar with "value chain analysis", the document appears to be a simple, one page chart but rest assured there is a great deal of thinking behind each header, bullet point and dash. Without much effort, the value chain document can be turned into a 50 page powerpoint presentation simply by drilling down on each item in the value chain.
A document like this is never "finished" but I have been working with this basic framework for a few months now and am comfortable that it "works". In order to test out this document I have began sharing it with MBA board members, thought-leaders in the blogging/citizen journalism space and various stake-holders in the broader media landscape. The reception so far has been extremely positive.
There is no particular reason for it to be "secret" but my instinct suggests that I should not publish the value chain document but simply send it to members so please check your inbox for your copy.
