The Media and Entertainment Arts Alliance (the key union for Australian media workers) has recently begun to organise a series of events titled "The Future of Journalism", bringing together industry and citizen journalists, academics, and other media experts to explore future developments in the news media. The first of these was held in Sydney in May, covered by Jason Wilson at Gatewatching and Rachel Hills at New Matilda, and now it's Brisbane's turn - at QUT's Gardens Theatre on 13 September 2008.
Brisbane. The CCi conference is slowly drawing to a close - the next plenary is billed as a CCi Advisory Board discussion drawing together some of the threads from the three days of conferencing, and setting the agenda for future developments at the CCi. Henry Jenkins is the chair for this session.
Henry begins by opening the floor, and Kerry Raymond begins. She notes the relative absence of IT researchers at the conference, and thinks more IT people should attend conferences such as this - there is a need to break down institutional and disciplinary silos. Bob Hodge adds that there is a lot of revolutionary rhetoric here, but that the idea of a revolution needs to be further theorised - is this really a revolution or a more gradual change. A speaker from the Queensland government (didn't hear the name) would like to see further questioning of future directions - is where we going where we want to be going?
This should be of interest to a few readers of this blog: the submission deadline for papers for "Creating Value: Between Commerce and Commons", the conference of the Centre for Creative Industries and Innovation which takes place on 25-28 June, has been extended to 21 April. Both proposals and full papers can be submitted at this point.
Should be an exciting conference - the keynote presenters include Henry Jenkins, Mark Deuze, Margaret Simons, Pete Clifton, Norman Jackson, and Susan Greenfield, and that line-up alone should be worth the price of admission. The broad conference themes are:
My chapter in the book deals at its core with the 2002 Webcasting wars in the United States - a protracted and complex conflict between the recording industry and various groupings of large, medium, and small Webcasters each pursuing their own agendas, which was not so much resolved as put on hold by the eventual intervention of a few members of Congress concerned about the deleterious …
Last Friday I went down to Sydney to attend and speak at the ABC Digital Media Forum, an internal conference exploring innovative possibilities for the national broadcaster especially in the user-led online environment. The ABC is doing pretty well in this field already, and from what I saw at the conference, there are plenty more exciting projects in the pipeline - some of these remain firmly under wraps before they're officially launched, though, so I won't mention them here.
My own contribution was to a session exploring the potential of embedding produsage-based models within the ABC framework, and I've already …
This time next Friday, I'll be attending the 2008 ABC Digital Media Forum, an internal strategy conference that aims to develop innovative approaches to engaging with digital media (and importantly, digital media users) for our national broadcaster. I won't be blogging the full conference itself, as much of what will be discussed there will remain confidential for the moment, but I'm sure I'll be able at least to post my overall impressions. For some years now, the ABC has taken a markedly proactive stance towards exploring the potential of participatory new media models; it will be exciting to see …
Boston. After a very brief few weeks in Brisbane, I'm back on the road again, for the second leg of my sabbatical. This trip takes me to Boston, where I'm a visiting scholar at MIT for the next couple of months. I'll also present at MiT5 and Creativity & Cognition 6, and when I return to Brisbane at the end of June, I'll hopefully have most of my upcoming produsage book ready to send to my publisher.
For now, though, I'm taking it easy these first few days here, dealing with my jetlag (which doesn't seem too bad …
This is a Flickr badge showing photos in a set called Leeds 2007. Make your own badge here.
Leeds. Well, as the great mind and speedy fingers that is Robert Fripp might say (or type), my suitcase is about-to-be-becoming packed; my time here at the University of Leeds is at and end, and I'm flying back to Australia tonight. I'm spending a last few hours here at the office to say my goodbyes and gather my various notes and files. Time to reflect on the past two months, too, and to tie up a few loose ends. My thanks first of all of course to Stephen Coleman and the rest of the staff at the Institute for Communications Studies for making me welcome here; I hope to stay in touch with many of them even after I've left the place.
Leeds. The past few days have been nothing but productive, even if I've taken some time off my research for the book. Instead, I've completed and/or revised a number of conference papers and other articles that are due over the next few months - clearing the decks, or indeed the desk, before I fully descend into book mode.
2007 is going to be a very productive year for me, as far as papers, articles, and other publications are concerned. I've managed to combine my stays here at Leeds University and later on at MIT in Boston with a few conferences in the UK and the U.S., respectively, and there are a number of further conferences in Australia and elsewhere as well. There's also a couple of book chapters and at least another journal article, but most those I can't say that much about yet. I have now posted some of the completed conference papers on this Website, though, so please feel free to have a look (and to comment, of course!).
Leeds. Well, I'm here... I've been very warmly received at the University of Leeds by my host Stephen Coleman and the staff of the Institute of Communications Studies, and I've now taken up residency as a visiting scholar. I think I'm going to get some work done here - and I've already launched myself into tackling a couple of papers which need to be finished soon.
