Beyond Broadcast: My Thoughts on the Conference Overall

kenyatta and I just got back to Brooklyn from the Beyond Broadcast conference Harvard University's Berkman Center.

I was really excited to attend the conference to meetwork with attendees and learn how traditional public broadcast media could embrace new participatory web-based media to better serve public interest. My former excitement was fulfilled, and my latter was sadly overly-fulfilled not by the conference panels itself - but more through the dinner talks and casual in-between panel breaks.

I was disappointed with the substance of the conference b.c I felt like speakers were still trying to figure out how to make traditional public media work for them in a Web 2.0 world, versus public media institution embracing and implementing the entire Web 2.0 paradigm in it's practice, mission, process and goals. With the exception of the talk by James Doyle, Mark Cooper, Ezter Hargittai and Terry Heaton - I didn't feel any of the other presenters really daringly trespassed Beyond the edges of Broadcast.

What was also disappointing was that were so many individual attendees present working on projects exploring media that uses participatory tools and are truly exemplifying what a world Beyond Broadcast looks like. So it was hard to take the presenters seriously when so many attendees in the room could've contributed to discussing how their work is relevant to public interest media institutions.

I would've liked to see:

• Ryan Shaw from UC Berkeley to talk about his research in common-based production and development of automated media production standards
• Kenyatta Cheese from Unmediated to talk about content-objects as a new way of rethinking digital media ownership and tracking
• Shawn Van Every from NYU's ITP talk about development of tools that allow low-cost media making and interactivity possible
• Bryan Nunez from WITNESS on their proposal for distributed video-documentation through handheld devices for tracking human rights abuses
• Eli Chapman talk about his work with transforming handheld camera-phones as a more pervasive social device
• Dr. Jo Twist from Institute for Public Policy Research on exploring policy that can better service public interests.
• Kent Bye & Jennifer Myronuk on collaborative open-source digital story production
• Charles and Mike from Blip.tv on why their tool/service truly kick's Youtube's ass
• Michelle Halsell on how community activism can embrace participatory technology as a tool for economic sustainability and civic participation
• Hilary Mason on her work with web application development and social collaborations in Second Life.
• Jon Krossman from Podcast.com on all their tools and services
• Jay Dedman and Josh Kinberg on videoblogging and MNN's experience with letting it's users videoblog.
• and of course more time for Terry Heaton, James Doyle, Eszter Hargittai and Mark Cooper to speak.
• It also would've been nice to give more time to John Lester from Second Life.

here are some people/projects I think would've been cool to invite:

• Electronic Frontier Foundation: I'm specifically thinking of Jason Schultz and his recent posts on documentary filmmakers using Creative Commons License.
• Rocketboom to talk about their business model of selling advertising commercials on EBay and their news delivery format.
• Howard Reingold on technology for social change and how public broadcasting can embrace these tools.
• Hong Euntaek from OhMyNew's model for citizen journalism in South Korea
• Problogger's Darren Rowse to talk about earning money as a new media blognalist, refer to his post on 8 Reasons Why New Media is Growing

It was great to reconnect with Josh Kinberg, Jay Dedman, Rhea Mokund, and Jennifer Harris! I'll see many of you in Second Life.

Overall, I think this conference important in that it convened so many people who are working in this area and I definitely hope to see it take place again next year! If it wasn't for this, I would've have met a lot of new folks. I definitely learned a lot about digital gaming and beyond broadcast life during dinners and bathroom breaks - and plus now i am on Second Life! My name is Tricia Enzyme if you wanna meet me!

Because of this conference, I met so many more amazing people who are working on these themes that made me wonder why they weren't presenting. And these are just a few of the people!

ps for your conference addicts and if you happen to be in the Bay Area, attend the Netsquared Conference on remixing the web for social change.

Berkman in Second LifeOriginally uploaded by eszter.

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