WeMedia LiveBlogging-Intro+Community Forum

9:38: Introduction finished. Showing Where’s the Love community video. Random acts of media across the world. Set to the music of Where’s the Love by the black Eyed Peas and Justin Timberlake. Great photo collage showing some very interesting pictures filled with different emotions.

9:41: Shel Israel, Lisa Stone, Ian Rowe, Rich Skernta, and Jan Schaffer just took the stage. video finishing up.

9:46: Introductions taking place. Shel talking about Global Neighborhoods, his new book. Basis of the book: Geography is irrelevant. People are connecting around communities that matter to them. ie- hummingbirds.

9:50: Ian rowe introduced. Oversees the engaging issues for the MTV generation. MTV’s business is changing. Believes in the benefit of rewarding the youth for good. This is very important to me personally. We have the tools to change the world, and MTV can do this.

9:52: Rich Skernta from topix introduced. A few people speak to a large market.

9:56: Jan Schaffer talks about citizen journalism entering the passion space. This is big. To me, passion is the driving force of anything, especially entrepreneurship and the community. We just don’t see this anymore with journalists. Stories are a fusion of news and schmooze, unlike journalists that tell the full story.

10:01: Lisa Stone, the head of the BlogHer Network is introduced. I met Lisa last night. Her vision with BlogHer is awesome, and a much needed network of content. 60 editors in BlogHer… impressive. Niche networks, niche anything is the future.

10:04: Talking about connecting people locally to form a national conversation is brought up as a question from the community.

10:08: In Zimbabwe, only dialup access, 30 minutes to connect on the cell phone. Zimbabwe needs a method to deploy connectivity, but the government is crushing it. ie- Government fears the people. The community member speaking really shows us how privleged we are.

10:10: Dorian from MediaBistro speaking as a community participant. MediaBistro is a community online and offline. 700,000 members too. Eduardo houser, who is in the business of media distribution talking. Talks about product development and community. This is big. His company is DailyMe. He talks about the importance of new media distribution as well. Craig Newmark just got here as well. I’m waiting to talk to Scott Rafer, since mybloglog has errupted with spam. notice the free iphone members.

10:18: Shel talks about his experience with Naked Conversations on how his Grandmother was a librarian and couldn’t believe that he wrote the book without ever going to a library. Little mic error occurs.

10:21: New definitons of community brought up with Ian from MTV. The old definition was lots of people viewing one central item. Talks about balancing the business model for top down and down to top. Questions opened to the floor. I may ask one…

11:08: A-Ha moments from the crowd (credit the big screen:

• profileration of jorunalsits v profileration of sources Our real challenge is to bring sources together so journalists can add values
• people and connections- bringing them together to communicate with each other. Talk about how the audience talks to each other
• How are we going to create a vast social network where people can consume news? We currently lack the technological and other infrastructure to do that?
• One thing that big organizations still provide is an element of trust in the information that is delivered.  Can’t say that about all sources.
• Importat thing is not who is reading it, but who is creating a framework for enegagement and participation. Who si producing new output? It’s a platofrm for ptomotion not consumption.
• Not just about journalism, but its about information.
• We is a really hard idea.

[tags] wemedia, wemedia miami, miami, community, shel israel, lisa stone, blogher, media bistro, topix [/tags]