Before that event, we surveyed the students about their expectations, their impressions, and their conclusions about the process. It was, without a doubt, a lot more difficult and time-consuming than they'd expected -- in fact, probably more than any of us had expected.

I was probably as surprised as they were. I came into this project with a set of operating assumptions about what this carefully selected group of journalism students would know and do, about how they would interact with digital technology, and about their levels of technological skill and expertise. Most of those assumptions turned out to be either incorrect or out of scale (more on that in the months to come; we're still developing the research and therefore the conclusions).

Turns out the students experienced the same kind of disconnect. There was a stark difference between their expectations about the process and the reality of what it meant to come up with an original idea, collaborate with a team to revise and refine it, develop it into a working prototype (of sorts), and present it to a public audience.

Turns out it was one heck of a lot more trying, exhausting, time consuming and frustrating than they had expected it to be.

And that realization was reflected clearly in the results of the survey they completed prior to their trip to Toronto. In that survey, the majority of students said the experience was not what they'd expected, and their qualitative comments suggested that many of them were counting the days (OK, hours) until it was over.

But that was two months ago -- before their success at the ONA, before their collective pride at a job well done, and before they had a chance to step back and consider -- in retrospect -- what they accomplished and what it means. In our most recent survey, the same students say they are better collaborators, more innovative, and better able to understand how to use new technologies to build community than they had been before they participated in the project.

And more than 60 percent of them say they want to continue working on the project as we take the ideas from concept to execution, as we partner with three news organizations to deliver their innovations to new kinds of news communities.

That's above and beyond the commitment they made when they signed onto this project.

It's confirmation that all their hard work and tenacity is paying off -- not only in results but in the degree to which they have come to recognize the contributions they can and have made to community news.

And that may be the first thing about this project that's not a bit surprising.

We figured that students who grew up with the Internet -- or, more accurately for this cohort, grew into adulthood with the Internet -- would come to the task of creating new approaches to community news not only with great ideas but with the skills to execute them.

We figured that the students who couldn't code or create a php MYSQL database would have at minimum a mastery or knowledge base about available tools.

Turns out, we figured wrong.

Yes, at least some of the students we selected -- and tellingly, who eagerly volunteered -- to participate in the project came to it with strong technical skills and understandings.

But most of them were far less prepared for the "execution" phase than we had expected.

We've managed to bridge the gap between concept and prototype, and we'll continue to work on making those connections more clearly in the months to come. But it has been a wake-up call for us -- each of us, representing seven different journalism schools -- in terms of the critical question we all need to be considering as we prepare the journalists of the future:

What skill sets will they need to put innovative ideas into practice?
How technically adept will they need to be?
We all bought into the computer-assisted-reporting craze in the 1990s, and most schools now require at least some exposure to or experience with database reporting. What's the equivalent in 2007?
And should journalists be clients and users of media software and applications -- or should they have some sense of how to create them as well?

We had some pretty strong operating assumptions about the answers to those questions when we started this project. Five months later, we're taking a closer look at some of those assumptions. We'll keep you posted.

About thirty-five students and faculty from seven journalism schools around the country are headed to Toronto tomorrow to present their projects at the ONA's annual conference.

They've been working on them since June, when the group first gathered in Ithaca to talk about creation netting, the process we adopted to develop some new and original thinking about -- and approaches to - -community news. We figured there was nobody better positioned than college students to think creatively about how to leverage digital technologies and social networking to drive reader connections to local news. And we figured that getting them all together to imagine the possible would inevitably generate big ideas and new ways to put together existing tools that we could then test with real audiences.

So far, so good. The students are ready (nervous, but ready), the faculty feel confident that the outcomes are valuable, and the deans and directors of the seven schools are proud of the progress they've made so far.

That said, there's also no question that it's been harder than we could ever have imagined, in ways we didn't expect expect and couldn't have anticipated. The big ideas turned out to be the easy part; as a friend once told me, the world is full of great ideas, but "God's in the execution." And so it has been the case with this project: the interpersonal interaction, the demands of collaboration across time and distance, and the "creative tension" that required students to abandon some ideas and embrace others....those were the real challenges.

That's the dynamic and insight that we'll be focusing on in our research in the months to come: How can we create more effective environments in which college students can not only envision but execute original concepts? How can journalism schools become innovation incubators for community news? What are the strategies that work best to help students separate their ego investment and ownership of their own ideas in order to contribute the best thinking to the collective good? And how do we build bridges between the academy and the industry so that journalism schools have a more constructive and productive role to play in the evolution of new journalism content and platforms? That's the stuff that intrigues those of us who instigated this project.

But for the students, the payoff happens this week. This is the big moment, the event they've been working toward: Thursday afternoon, they'll stand up in front of a full room (we hope) of media professionals to pitch their ideas and look for partners willing to test their projects with real audiences. If all goes well, the hard work, big fights, and intense commitment will have been worth it.

I talked to one of the grad students who participated in the project but who couldn't make it to Toronto, just to get his take on the experience. His response confirmed the value - and the challenge -- of the project. "It was the most miserable and hardest thing I have ever been involved in," he said, "but it was also the most valuable learning experience of my college career."

As I said, so far, so good....