Author Archive: Daniel Pacheco

Juiced surpasses its fundraising goal

Juiced, the first student-run Kickstarter campaign to go through the Newhouse Kick it Up program, just reached its goal of $3,950. Now it’s moving past it. Warm congratulations to freshman Kate Beckman and the staff of 40 Newhouse school freshmen who made it happen.

As of this now the campaign has attracted 181 backers, so Juiced will receive an additional $1,500 match that comes from the Chair of Journalism Innovation, Newhouse Dean Lorraine Branham and Syracuse University Provost Eric Spina.

“The entire Juiced Team wants to extend our thanks to everyone who has believed in us and contributed to our campaign,” the team posted in a December 19 update. And while the rest of the SU community settles into Winter Break, the Juiced team isn’t slowing down.

“We’ve spent the first week of break finishing up articles and creating the design layouts, which are now in the process of being put together. We’re going to send our magazine to be printed on January 7th, 2014! We’re hoping to get our printed copies back by end of January.”

That’s great, but we hope they also relax for a few days and bask in their hard-earned success — perhaps over a fresh glass of orange juice.

Kick It Up_square logo_green_cleaned

‘Juiced’ magazine attracts 85 Kickstarter backers through Kick it Up

juiced_prevWe’re excited to see Newhouse startup Juiced Magazine spread its wings on Kickstarter. With the help of our new Kick it Up crowdfunding training program, they have already gotten 85 people to contribute from $1 to $250 to their campaign.

The team has 17 days to reach its goal of $3,950 — and we believe they will reach it with continued support — but thanks to their hard work they’re now also eligible for matching funds of $150 from the Newhouse school and Syracuse University. (Note that this will only happen if they reach their fundraising goal, since Kickstarter is an “all or nothing” model.)

Campaigns that go through the Kick it Up program have an incentive not just to reach their monetary goals, but also to do it with a broad base of backers. We do this because we know from experience that raising money alone is not enough for a startup. You need a community of committed customers to help you grow.

Once a campaign hits its fundraising goal, we “kick it up” a notch at these levels:

  • 50 or more backers = $150.
  • 100 or more backers = $450.
  • 150 or more backers= $900.
  • TOTAL: $1,500

What else will Juiced be able to do with those extra funds? As outlined on their campaign, it will pay for website hosting and future print magazines, ensuring that Juiced will have the best possible magazine in years to come. You can read more about Juiced and their journey in this article on the Newhouse web site.

If you’re a Newhouse or Syracuse University students and think you can be the next Kick it Up success story, reach out and tell us about what you want to do. This FAQ also answers a lot of common questions and tells you how to get started.

 

 

Second Drone Flight with SU Football

On Thursday we went back into SU’s Manley Field House with a camera-equipped dji Phantom drone to perform some new test flights. Our goal this time was to get aerial footage of a few typical football plays, including short passes, long passes and runs. You can watch the video here:

While it’s a little choppy (an issue that can easily be addressed with the addition of a gimbal), we got some good results and were able to show how aerial photography can be a safe, effective way to get footage that is difficult or impossible without the use of a drone. You can see the best example near the end, where the drone follows a player during a long pass.

Covering a casual practice is one thing, but it’s difficult at this point to say how this type of footage could be captured safely with more players on the field, not to mention a live audience in the stands and coaches and players on the sidelines. Thankfully, we’re not the first to attempt this, and we most certainly won’t be the last. Fox Sports in Australia is already well into its second year of drone-assisted sports journalism with its FoxCopter, and the FAA specifically mentioned “communications and broadcast, including news/sports event coverage” in a roadmap document about the introduction of unmanned aerial aircraft systems in the U.S. The question of using drones to cover U.S. football games is a matter of “when,” not “if.”

We want to thank Bob Brotzki, Assistant Football Coach, and Steve Scarnecchia, Director of Football Operations, for their participation. Both are featured in the video along with other SU football staff members.

Kick it Up Updates

We’re getting ready to feature and promote Kickstarter campaigns through Newhouse’s Kick it Up Crowdfunding Training and Acceleration program. Here are a couple of important updates.

Crowdfunding for Media Rescheduled to February

Due to some unavoidable scheduling conflicts at Kickstarter, the “Crowdfunding for Media” event originally planned for November 19 will be rescheduled to sometime in February. We know that many of you were looking forward to meeting with Kickstarter and getting advice on your campaigns, and we apologize for any inconvenience this causes you. Fortunately, Kickstarter’s Stephanie Pereira provided a lot of useful information in a Webinar in October, which you can watch here. We also highly recommend that you take an hour to go through the information at Kickstarter School.

But Keep Working on Your Campaigns!

While the crowdfunding event date is changing, we are still planning to start featuring and promoting Newhouse students campaigns beginning Wednesday, November 20. If you’re interested in receiving matching funds from Newhouse, make sure you do the following:

  1. Sign in to Kickstarter.com and request a connection with the Newhouse network. We can’t feature your campaign on the Newhouse curated page until you connect with us.
  2. Begin your Kickstarter campaign, and let us know it’s live so that we can feature it. We will feature any campaign from a Newhouse student as long as it meets the same quality standard for publication that you are used to in a Newhouse class, or a site like TheNewhouse.com. Since Kickstarter reviews and approves every campaign on its site, make sure you allow enough time for their approval.
  3. After your campaign is live, you can apply for matching funds from Newhouse.

Have questions? Fill out our contact form and we’ll get back to you.

Good luck!

 

 

 

Video from Waveables, Wearables and Flyables: Your Body is the Computer

We had a great turnout for our October 29 event focused on gesture interfaces, wearable computing and drones. We will post more video and photos soon, but in the meantime you can watch the archived YouTube video stream here. Thanks to Jason Kohlbrenner for manning the camera!

Dan Pacheco’s presentation at the UNLV Beyond Convergence conference

Professor Dan Pacheco gave a presentation at the University of Nevada Las Vegas’ Beyond Convergence, titled ““All your (data)base are belong to us : The rise of the empowered public and its impact on the journalist-source relationship.”

The full presentation can be downloaded here. It is made available for education use under a Creative Commons Attribution-Only License.

Have questions? Contact Dan Pacheco at drpacheco at syr dot edu, or click the Contact Us button above. Pacheco can also be contacted through Twitter at @pachecod or @JournovationSU.

Students’ Drones Take Flight in Syracuse University’s Indoor Sports Arenas

It’s been almost a year since Professor Dan Pacheco first brought drones into the S.I. Newhouse school to experiment with aerial footage for journalism, and a lot has changed since then. Most notably, the Federal Aviation Administration has begun to flex its regulatory muscles to effectively shut down outdoor drone flights by state-funded universities by requiring certificates of authorization that don’t yet exist.

Participants of the first indoor drone test flight at Syracuse University's Manley Field House on October 4, 2013. From left to right: Prof. Dan Pacheco, Pacheco and SU students Jay Getman, Arland Whitfield and Erin Miller.

Participants of the first indoor drone test flight at Syracuse University’s Manley Field House on October 4, 2013. From left to right: Gabriel Smadi, freshman in LC Smith; Prof. Dan Pacheco, Chair of Journalism Innovation at Newhouse; Jay Getman and Arland Whitfield, freshmen from SU’s iSchool; and Erin Miller, advertising student at Newhouse. (Photo by Lenny Christopher).

Because Syracuse University is not engaging in outdoor flights at this point, we have not received warnings from the FAA, but we are closely monitoring the regulatory environment as the clock counts down to September 30, 2015 — the date by which Congress has mandated that the FAA create a method to certify and authorize commercial drone flights.

Meanwhile, student interest in drones is increasing. The first multidisciplinary student-run organization, which is advised by Pacheco, is starting to form with representatives from several SU schools, including Newhouse, the iSchool and Smith College of Engineering.

With outdoor flights on the back burner, Pacheco, with the support of SU Athletics, is helping the student organization get indoor flight time in SU’s indoor sports arenas. The first flight happened on October 4, 2013 in SU’s Manley Field House using iSchool student Arland Whitfield’s Naza drone. Whitfield was accompanied by two students from the Newhouse school, another from the iSchool, and one from LC Smith college of engineering. You can see the results of their first test in this video.

Pacheco also recently sent two members of the student organization, Jay Getman and Erin Miller, to the DARC Drone & Aerial Robotics Conference in New York City. You can stay up to date on Getman’s research into drones on his blog, which is part of an independent study with Pacheco focused on new technologies for media.

So where do things go from here? Pacheco is actively discussing next steps with SU Athletics. Apart from what we may do with them, the area of Drone Sports Journalism is ripe with possibilities. Have an idea for using flying cameras in sports? Post your comments here.

– Dan Pacheco, Chair of Journalism Innovation

 

Press and Media Mentions

Here’s an ongoing collection of articles that mention or quote Professor Pacheco. A complete list can be found in this Diigo group.

Waveables, Wearables and Flyables: YOUR BODY IS THE COMPUTER

Digital Edge Seminar Series

First there were PCs, then mobile devices. What’s next? New advances use your body as the interface to create and explore media and journalism.


WHEN: TUESDAY, OCT. 29 at 6 PM

WHERE: JOYCE HERGENHAN AUDITORIUM,

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

Free and open to the public.

Join us for a fun evening packed with hands-on experiences and demonstrations that sound like science fiction, but are already shaping the world of tomorrow.

Sponsors:
Dan Pacheco, Horvitz Chair in Journalism Innovation.
Dr. Frank Biocca, VR pioneer and Director of the M.I.N.D. Lab.
Newhouse Global Leaders in Digital & Social Media Speaker Series.

Kickstarter Webinar Next Wednesday, 10/2 at 6 p.m.

NH_Kick It Up_full logo_green_cleanedup
Do you have a storytelling idea or project that could use some monetary support? Crowdfunding portals like Kickstarter are a way to get contributions from people who want to see your project happen. Just ask sophomore Luke Rafferty, who used Kickstarter in the spring to raise over $6,300 to launch The Timeless Artisans.

There’s a lot more to success than simply putting up a snappy pitch. You may be wondering: what kinds of pitch videos work best? How should you set up your rewards? How do you budget your campaign so that you can launch your site or service, and also deliver the rewards you promise?

Get answers to these questions and more in a webinar from Kickstarter’s Stephanie Pereira on Wednesday, October at 2 at 6 p.m. You’re invited to come to an in-person watching party with FREE PIZZA. Please RSVP to Dan Pacheco at drpachec@syr.edu if you plan to come so we can order enough food.

Can’t make it in person? You can also watch online from any computer via YouTube. Just RSVP through EventBrite for free and we’ll send you a link shortly before the event begins. If you’re attending from afar, please tweet your questions to @JournovationSU during the session. We’ll be monitoring our Twitter feed during that time and will pose as many questions as possible to Stephanie during the webinar.

Hope to see you there!