The Online Journalism Review’s Robert Hernandez has posted an interesting interview with Burt Herman, former Associated Press bureau chief, CEO of new startup Storify and founder of Hacks/Hackers.
Herman gives a great insight into his journey from journalist to CEO, as well as the story behind his founding of the popular Hacks/Hackers event which recently started running meetings in the UK.
The first big difference is that being a journalist gives you a daily sense of accomplishing something by writing a story and having it be published. You then move on to the next story and get constant feedback. Trying to create a business and develop internet applications is a much longer process, filled with many ups and downs along the way. It’s exciting to be your own boss but also can be terrifying at the same time. I suppose dropping into crisis zones and new countries was a decent preparation for this, and also just being open to always learning new things.
Storify curates selected photos, videos, tweets and other notes by search, which can then be published as embeddable stories made up of original sources.
Here is a demo of Storify from Burt Herman posted on Vimeo.