I’ve been talking a lot lately about the need to stop talking and start doing. We’ll here is some more of that as a list of projects to kickoff the Reynolds Journalism Institutes’ news collaboratory was put out by Amy Gahran.

In assessing the list of projects it’s important to keep in mind two things that were said at the introduction of new collaboratory.

The first came from Jane Stevens when she said journalism in this new era has to be participatory, contextual, solution-oriented and immediate.

“We are moving from news and information that is a mile-wide and an inch-deep to niches that are an inch-wide and a mile-deep.” – Jane Stevens

The example widely used – and there is much more evidence than what I present here – was West Seattle Blog. “People were blogging IN West Seattle; nobody was blogging ABOUT it,” says Tracy Record, editor, reporter and founder of West Seattle Blog.

The second important point came from Brian Boyer, who recently was a member of Team Crunchberry and helped built a series of fascinating conversation tools at NewsMixer.us. The exchange was shared in the event’s live blog.

RJI Collabortory:  Brian Boyer talking about “agile development” notes the need to start small and make it happen, rather than taking too long to build something that’s bloated

Mark Poepsel:  Brian Boyer: You know you’re going to screw up, so get it over with fast and move on, build half projects not half-assed ones.

With those two points being said, here is the initial round of projects, also found on the RJI ning site.

Relevance Matching: Map out what a taxonomy/relevance editor role is, how it can work in a news organization to better target coverage and enhance relevance-matching for ads.

Assessment: Community news business assessment tool: Interactive tool to gauge local info/news needs, local demographics, advertising potential, help figure out how to structure a local news biz, spot opportunities.

Apps & Widgets:  New apps or widgets would be more practical than efforts like better storytelling through multimedia

CMS & Mobile Alerts: How to connect your content management system to send out basic mobile alerts. Tutorial or recommended system.

Mobile App Standards: The Collaboratory can work towards creating standardized platform of mobile applications/interfaces

Twitter Business: Help Cedar Rapids Gazette figure out how to channel local businesses through twitter effectively

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