Voices For the Lake Online Survey

We're in the midst of our second survey with help from the Vermont Center for Rural Studies. Building on what we learned last year from the annual Vermonter Poll, this year's survey focuses on behavior changes and how people get information about local issues and the environment.

We've matched this online survey with a phone survey. I think the comparison of the two surveys will be fascinating and provide a great deal of insight about how Vermonters use the internet especially as a resource for information. Results will be posted on the blog as soon as we have fun crunching the numbers.

Just like many water droplets becoming one large body of water, your contribution to this survey will help create a stronger program for Voices For the Lake and ECHO. I hope you'll take 15 minutes to complete the survey and then pass it on to someone else!

Click here to start the online survey!

Thank you! ~Bridget, Voices For the Lake Manager

Voices Featured on Seven Days TV

Rockin' the Vermont Tech Jam

When I arrived in the office this morning I was asked "So, how'd the Tech Jam go yesterday?" My response, of course, was "It rocked." What else would you expect out of a jam session? Yesterday, my team and I attended the third annual Vermont 3.0 Innovative Tech Jam as an organization demonstrating the innovative use of technology.

Cathy Resmer of Seven Days, which sponsored the event, had called me weeks ago with the idea that we should be there because she viewed our project as a unique use of social media and video capture. As I thought about it, I figured I might be able to use the conference as an opportunity to talk up the second year of our project and feature some of the things we've been experimenting with in terms of video and social networking.

Thankfully the video capture kiosk fit in my little orange car, so I was able to hook it up at the conference venue and upload video live from the Jam to our YouTube channel. Along with the kiosk I brought the Acer Notebooks I've been using in the outreach programs, stacks of the recent State of the Lake Report and the quick response codes we've just started experimenting with.

The kiosk was a big hit with the highschool and college kids visited the booth. Adults were a little more wary of recording themselves, but still found the touch screen kiosk and the ability to upload directly to YouTube intriguing. As I talked about the direction of the project with people over the next year, the new microsite with a map mashup and the exhibit with touch screen map like the newsteam at CNN, I got exactly the response I was hoping for - a kind of "Whoa, ECHO's doing that? Cool!"

What seemed to create the biggest buzz for us at our booth were the beetags or quick response codes we brought. I got turned on to quick response codes or QR codes from visiting other science centers and then later from some ideas our marketing department had been playing with. As the project collected more video stories from the kiosk and from the interviews this summer, I was looking for ways to bring the videos to the exhibit floor and connect them with current exhibit pieces or aquaria.

I've gained a great deal of ideas from two art museums when it comes to quick capture video and the use of video both online and on the exhibit floor at ECHO. In a previous post on video capture, I talked about both the Brooklyn Museum and the Mattress Factory. Both these art museums blog and use Twitter, so I began to look through their archives. No need to reinvent the wheel, right? And wouldn't you know the Mattress Factory (MF) had just launched the use of QR codes to reduce the use of paper pamphlets at their gallery. Brilliant! Jeffrey Inscho who handles PR and Social Media had led the project and was blogging on his experience.

With the help of a how-to post from Jeffrey, my team member Linda Bowden and I worked to pull together a few beetags or codes to test first with staff and then coincidentally just in time for the Vermont Tech Jam. Our goal is to use the beetags to link a video from the Voices for the Lake project with something on the floor at ECHO. For example, we have a tank of Brook Trout and a video of a flyfisherman who started a water monitoring project on a favorite fishing river. Placing a quick response code next to the tank will link people to the video on our YouTube channel and the visitor can watch it right there at the tank.

At the Tech Jam, the beetags were a big hit. Most people had never seen them before. What really rocked was that the Jam's twitter feed #vt3 had folks talkin' up the beetags, so we actually had folks approach the booth with their smartphone in hand asking "What's this I hear about beetags?" I used my Blackberry to demonstrate if folks didn't have a smart phone and those that did were able to upload the app then capture the code and watch a video. In November we hope to beta-test some beetags with a variety of display designs on the floor at ECHO.

What I got out of the Tech Jam is this: ECHO has something really innovative going on with the Voices For the Lake project. And, it's unexpected. ECHO is known as a children and family place, and this use of technology both online and as an exhibit will appeal to a different demographic. With the second year of our project kicking off, I'm really looking forward to the launch of our website, the new exhibit and the opportunity to play and experiment with technology.

~Bridget, Voices For the Lake Manager

Joining the Innovation Jam

Voices For the Lake will be packing up all our video capture equipment and bringing it to the Vermont 3.0 Innovation Jam! The video capture kiosk will be taking a ride off-site to capture video for our YouTube channel's playlist. We're excited to be a part of the jam session this year as an organization using social media to inspire stewardship. Drop in on our booth in the exhibit hall and check out our video capture equipment and hear about the plans for the Voices For the Lake exhibit this spring.
~Bridget Butler, Voices For the Lake Manager

What I Learned this Summer

I was on the road this summer hosting library programs for Voices, attending watershed meetings at the both ends of the Lake, and capturing stories from folks working on watershed issues. As it is with any new project or program there is a great deal of tweaking that happens as you encounter hurdles, barriers and challenges along the way. Here are some reflections on what I learned this summer.

If You Build It, They May Not Come - The model for collecting stories in the communities throughout the Lake Champlain Basin involved working with libraries to offer a program to discuss watershed issues and collect stories about the local watershed. All the libraries I worked with this summer were very excited about the project, they were fascinated with the use of technology to tell stories. The bummer part was that no one came. It didn't matter how much press we got for the program, people just didn't turn out. As the librarians expressed to me this is often the case, offering programs for adults can be a hit or miss endeavor. I did have one library with participants, but they came to share historical stories. I gave it a go regardless thinking I would figure out a way to spin the stories back to conservation. This experience revealed another flaw in the program design, the process of interviewing people to capture their stories. Not one person wanted to use the laptops with the quick capture software, they all wanted to speak one-on-one with me. Which brings me to my next lesson...

Stories Are Personal - Even before going into the libraries, I began to set up one-on-one interviews with folks who were recommended to me because they were doing interesting work in the watershed. It took a while to cultivate these contacts. Explaining the program, talking to potential interviewees on the phone, and finally scheduling a time to meet. People were sometimes apprehensive about being videotaped, or they weren't sure their story was worthy of being shared and then - they just plain didn't know me! Stories are personal. If you think about sharing your summer vacation adventures, who do you tell? What's the setting under which you recount these adventures? Who do you share the most detailed information with? I needed to build trust with each person and meet them in a place where they felt the most comfortable. With some interviewees, I spent the day with them. We went to favor spots along rivers, looked at project sites they had managed for restoration, or paddled the bay where they were pulling invasive plants. We got to know each other and only then did the camera come out to capture their connection with their watershed. Back to the one library that had folks show up - now imagine trying to interview ten people one at a time in an hour and a half. Not very comfortable, we didn't have time to get to know each other and then there's the task of editing the video. Which brings me to...

Keeping it Simple - With a video capture project you need equipment to record an interview and software to edit the resulting video. There are numerous types of camcorders from big television type cameras on tripods to hand-held camcorders to a digital camera or smart phone. Keeping in mind that most people have some apprehension about being on camera and the idea that we want the project to be easily replicated by another organization, I looked for ways to keep the process simple. I settled on using the affordable Flip camera to record interviews and, even though I took a few classes with Final Cut Pro editing software and had a friend tutor me as well, in the end I returned to iMovie on my Mac and Movie Maker on my PC at work. The Flip HD cameras have worked out wonderfully. True, the audio can be a challenge as there isn't the capability for an external mic, but I've learned how to work within it's limitations. The small Flip camera also seems to be less intimidating to the interviewee. When I sit down to talk with someone the camera becomes less of a distraction and we fall into a relaxed conversation. It produces great looking video, it's easy to carry in the field, and with the USB port it's easy to upload the video to my computer. Editing was a barrier for some time as I struggled using Final Cut Pro. My learning curve wasn't as fast as I wanted and with the video queue growing I couldn't keep up. And then it dawned on me, I was the perfect example to learn from. One of the barriers to the project itself is helping to encourage people to become creators. I am an eager creator yet still a novice. Why not use that as a model for our project's audience? Once I let go of trying to use more advanced video editing software I realized the advantage of using the basic software. I am now approaching the capturing of video in the same way that I expect the general public to approach creating video. Basic editing software like iMovie and Movie Maker are now standard programs on computers. Flip cameras and smart phone video recorders are becoming more popular; just look at the new iPod. Voices will now be looking at ways to empower people to use the tools they all ready have and will be helping them develop the skills they need to use these tools to become creators and ultimately contributors to our project.

My biggest lesson of all this summer was how to constantly and confidently reassess and redirect. Barriers turned into hurdles, challenges were met or were not met but were always used to move the project forward. I'm reworking the outreach approach for year two, continuing to play with the emergent technology that seems to be changing each day and looking at how to empower people to use this technology to share information.

Voices is about to move into year two of the project which includes launching a submit-your-own-video webpage and the design and installation of both the online and on-site exhibit. Looking forward to it!

~Bridget Butler, Voices For the Lake Manager

Champ Tag: The Results

Three weeks ago, we began an experiment to study the reliability of visitor tagging, in relation to our "Champ Problem". At the time, I pulled numbers for the previous three weeks, and said I'd be back in 3 week with new numbers to compare. Well, those 3 weeks have flown by, and so it's now time to take a look at the results!

There were two questions I was looking to answer with this experiment. The first was whether the tags we present to visitors before they tell their story influence what they tell us about. We already know how many people talked about Champ overall during the control period (20), and we know how many people talked about Champ for the question we modified during the same period (9). We can therefore evaluate the influence by comparing the numbers we get from the test time period. The second question related to how accurately visitors tagged their videos. Could we automate a response based on how someone tagged their video?

Before we start looking at data, there are a few things we need to be aware of. First, ECHO's "Champ Week" just so happened to fall into the middle of my test period. With presentations and activities going on in the building talking about Champ, it would not be hard to imagine some inflation in numbers. Second, visitation and kiosk activity during the two time periods was not identical. The total number of videos recorded decreased 25% in the test period as compared to the control period. Clearly, the Champ tag discourages people from using the Kiosk! (Or maybe not...) Regardless, we need to be expecting up to 25% fewer videos about Champ during this time period in comparison to the previous time period, just because there were 25% fewer videos overall.

To start off, we'll look at survey responses. The "What would you like to talk about" poll is asked before visitors record a story. If the visitors abandon the recording process after that, or indicate that they are a child without an adult present, their poll response still counts, but they don't show up in the actual video counts. During the three week test period, 9 people selected Blue-green algae (1 recorded a video; it was not retained, because it consisted entirely of the top of someone's head as they repeatedly said "Balls"), 5 selected Invasive Fish (1 recorded a video, it was not retained, because it was a young child asking how many fish are in Lake Champlain, a question which has been asked and answered several times already), and 3 selected Phosphorus or Nitrogen (1 recorded a video, it was not retained, as it contained a child repeating "I like mud" over and over). The infamous "Something Else" got 26 selections (3 videos recorded, none kept.) and finally, the new "Champ" selection, got 41 responses (8 videos recorded, none kept on Kiosk).

The first interesting thing I've noticed is that we did not keep a single video for this question in all 3 weeks! During the control time window, we kept 10 of 26 videos recorded. During the test period, 14 videos were recorded, and we kept 0. This drop, of 46%, is higher than the overall drop in videos recorded (25%).

So, now that we've got THOSE numbers out of the way, lets get back to our two main questions. During our test period, we had 13 videos recorded about Champ, 6 of which were on the Researcher question. This is a 35% DECREASE over the previous time period. If I subtract the 25% decrease in Kiosk usage, we're still getting 10% fewer Champ videos overall than before we added the tag. The decrease in people asking researchers about Champ (That's the question we modified) was 33%, very close to the overall decrease, and still above the 25%. While far from conclusive, this initial research does not suggest that including a tag for a topic causes an increase in people talking about that topic.

Our second question was on accuracy of tagging. 100% of the Champ videos on the researcher question used the Champ tag. However, two videos using that tag did not make it into the YouTube playlist. Most likely, these videos didn't even mention Champ, and I just cleaned them up without realizing. While user sorting is successful, the moderating step wasn't taken care of - and that comes as no surprise at all, as there doesn't seem to be any way to convince certain people that their jokes aren't funny enough to feature on our Kiosk.

So what is next? Nothing right away. I'm going to leave the Champ tag in place on the question, and continue to monitor videos which use it. At some point, I will probably modify the upload script to place videos with that tag in the appropriate playlist, but I want more than 3 weeks of testing before I take that step. For now, I'm off to review the latest videos!

~Travis Cook, Information Technology Coordinator

Champ Tag: An Experiment.

What would you ask a researcher about Lake Champlain? If you're anything like the typical visitor to ECHO, you'd ask about something else. (Yes, I have had questions literally asking about "something else".) We give visitors 3 different topics that they can ask researches about, including Blue-green algae (102 selections), Invasive fish (73 selections), Phosphorus or Nitrogen (62 selections). If none of those match their question, they can select a 4th option - "Something else" (520 selections).

Of course, if you've read my previous post and done the math, you'll notice some inconsistencies in numbers. How can we have 757 selections, but only 269 videos recorded? Your response is saved as soon as you select it, but you have many options to abort recording your story afterward. If I filter it down to only people who have recorded a video, we have 25 responses for Blue-green algae (of which we kept 6), 21 responses for Invasive Fish (of which we kept 7), and 18 responses for Phosphorus or Nitrogen, of which we kept 4. The remaining 205 responses all chose "Something else" - and we kept 56 of them.

So, what can we tell from these numbers? Either we aren't offering the right tags, or visitors are not selecting the correct tags for their videos. As this Kiosk is meant to be an important prototype for our larger exhibit, I feel it is important to correct this issue while we still can test. After all, a map where the only way to get any videos to pop up is by using the tag "something else" isn't going to work.

I've used the YouTube channel to gather some additional data on the problem. I chose this, rather than trying to do an exhaustive analysis of all videos recorded, because a) it was a lot easier, and b) well, did you see reason a? The YouTube channel contains two things. Good videos, and Champ videos. So, I've taken the last 20 videos answering the "What would you ask a researcher about" question, and analyzed the response for tag accuracy.

Tag - Topic
Something else - Question about Champ
Something else - Researchers should communicate stewardship to boaters, not just farmers.
Phosphorus or Nitrogen - Fertilizers containing Phosphorus and Nitrogen make our local lake smell!
Something else - How many types of fish are there, and have any gone extinct from Lake Champlain?
Something else - How old is Lake Champlain?
Something else - Are you studying if Champ is real?
Something else - Is Champ real?
Something else - Is Champ real, or related to a Sturgeon?
Something else - Is Champ real? What is he?
Something else - How polluted is the lake in comparison to other lakes?
Something else - How long does Champ live, and how many eggs the female lay?
Something else - Does Champ live at the bottom of the lake? Is he Blue?
Something else - How long has Champ lived in Lake Champlain? What does he eat?
Something else - Why is the lake blackish, and not blue?
Something else - How did the Champlain Islands get their names?
Something else - How much pollution could you clean up in one day?
Something else - Do you ever plan on going on a really big search for Champ?
Something else - We love Vermont. Honor your ancestors.
Something else - Asking about Champ.
Something else - Do you ever find sea creatures in Lake Champlain?



So, what can we determine from this data? Well, as you already knew, everyone wants to talk about Something else. But what are they talking about? Half of them are asking about Champ. Pollution appears to be another theme, and while they don't all show up on YouTube, I can assure you that more than one person has asked how old Lake Champlain is, and how many different species can be found in the lake.

The next step was to filter this data into a time period. Between July 6th and July 27th (the past 3 weeks), 9 people asked researchers about Champ, and 20 people recorded videos about Champ.

So, with all this data in hand, the great experiment can begin.

Every time we get a Champ video, I have to do a few things. First, we remove it from the Kiosk. These aren't the kind of questions we're looking to gather for researchers to answer. Then, I have to remove the videos from the VFL playlist, and manually add it to the Champ Playlist. Why not let the visitors do this themselves? I could change the script to place videos tagged Champ onto the Champ playlist automatically. I could even set the kiosk to hide those videos by default, so I could review them less often (For example, each Monday morning, or Friday afternoon).

Based on this, I have decided to add a Champ tag to the list of possibilities for the researcher question. Over the next three weeks, I will evaluate what happens. Do the tags shape what people are talking about? Will we get more Champ videos than in the previous 3 weeks, because people see the tag and think "I want to talk about Champ!"? How reliable is visitor tagging? Will visitors use the tag? Will visitors misuse the tag?

Check back a little after August 17th to find out!

~Travis Cook, Information Technology Coordinator