Three Kinds of People

Matthew and I went peopling today. Our first time going out with the sole purpose of getting interviews! Very exciting.

We learned there are three kinds of people, and each group forms about 1/3 of the population we spoke to.

1) People who say 'no.'

These are the people who when we ask if we can take their picture, immediately say 'no' and hurry on their way. You get used to it--this is great training for dealing with rejection

2) People who say 'well....' or 'what?' or 'why?' or 'I don't know...'

These people tend to be self-conscious or suspicious--quite understandable when a random person initiates a conversation. Most of them said 'no,' though, even after an explanation.

3) People who say, 'okay.'

Most people who agree to being interviewed will assent immediately and readily. And so far, they have not indicated that they want to STOP the interview--I'm the one who steps away. Today we were interviewing at lunch time, and I didn't want to make anyone late returning to work. I do wonder, though....how long can I talk with a random person?

Things We Learned: Our Second (and failed!) Interview

In order to learn more about interviewing, we took a field trip to the local radio station, WPAX/WTUF. It's been on the air since 1922! It was a great opportunity, and we may have even gotten a Humans of Thomasville interview, except...

My phone battery died.

1) Charge your battery. 

We spoke with Chris Hurst about his interviewing techniques.

2) Learn their name.

It's terrible to get all the way through an interview and go to report and then realize you don't know the person's name. Learning their name is important, even if you don't report the name, in order to identify the person should they withdraw permission to use the interview and to make them feel more comfortable during the conversation.

3) Answer the 5 Ws.

This primarily applies to news stories, but learning who, what, where, when, why, and how can help you come up with follow questions during your interview. If you are missing one of those, you can develop a question related to it.

4) Ask the person what their story is. 

When you are finished interviewing, it's important to ask the subject if they want to tell you anything else. Most people have a story bursting within them--they simply want to be asked. So ask! What story do you want to tell me? Anything else you want to say? Is there anything you want me to know?

Things We Learned: Our First Interview

While taking pictures for our profile picture, we met Mr. Gibbs. I know him personally, so it was a great first interview.

Here's what I learned:

1) Take a lot of pictures.

I ended up with three good comments from the interview, but I only had one picture.

2) Compose the picture well.

I felt nervous and rushed, so I didn't take my time to compose the picture. I think that I missed out capturing the city life behind him because of the angel.

3) Slow down.

I had all the children with me, so I felt I needed to  move quickly. This left me dissatisfied. I want to allow time in the future to really talk to people and allow them to govern the conversation more. I felt that I pushed for answers a bit too much.

4) Consider recording the interview. 

I need to think more about this one. While I was able to remember what we talked about, I can see how it will be difficult to remember exact words when we interview multiple people or have long conversations. Need to think on this one.

Facebook Pictures

For the Humans of Thomasville profile picture, I used a picture I had taken of the courthouse last summer, but for our cover photo, I wanted one of all the kids together.

So, off we went to the courthouse to take pictures. And we snagged our first interview while we were there!

Setting Up

The next step in building Humans of Thomasville was building the infrastructure, the platforms we would use to spread the word.

We decided on a Facebook page and a blog. My older boys learned how to create a Facebook page, but when we went to set up the blog...it got complicated quickly.

I decided to take over that part of the project and establish the blog. I normally create blogs on Blogger, but this time I needed the features of WordPress. It's not my favorite, but we'll try to make it work.

I also decided to establish a Twitter account and an Instagram account. I'd like a photo blog page that shows the picture and a snippet of story, but I haven't found a platform that will allow that yet.


Blogger

Wordpress

Twitter

Instagram--must be accessed on a mobile device.

Learning about HONY

The first step in creating Humans of Thomasville was learning more about the original photoblog, Humans of New York

Here are the YouTube videos we watched to learn about HONY, it's creator, and how he goes about interviewing people:

Why Humans of Thomasville?

This year, I decided to design my homeschool curriculum around Doctor Who. We watched Season 1, Episode 7, 'Long Game' where a satellite controls all of the information and news media for the human race. We learned about journalism (and financial transactions and heating and air conditioning...you know...balance).

I love Humans of New York—the stories, the connections, the humanity—and I thought it would be neat to see similar stories about our local community. I got the kids on board and thus was born: Humans of Thomasville.

Humans of New York

Homeschooling with Doctor Who