We create the stories of the connected society

A friend at a relatively large media corporation recently asked me to evaluate one of that company’s newspaper web sites. I removed any references to the specific paper/company not so much because I’m avoiding picking on them, but because most of the things I list I’ve seen elsewhere and I want more people at more [...]

Online survey finds general public, media conference attendees agree that traditional news outlets could do a better job FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 15, 2007 A majority of Americans (55%) in an online survey said bloggers are important to the future of American journalism and 74% said citizen journalism will play a vital role, a new [...]

Joe Lewis wrote an interesting opinion piece, positing that Yahoo’s focusing on social search in an attempt to outflank Google. But that’s actually a positive spin on a negative situation for Yahoo. While it’s true that Yahoo has been doing significant development in terms of buying or building content sites powered by social networks, I [...]

One phrase, one song from one of the projects featured stays with me as I consider all the videos that were shown at the Grove Stage on Thursday night. “We’re all in this together”. This phrase, this song, I felt best represented and signified the entire video festival. The art of video to convey strong [...]

Everyone’s out on the grove, drinking mojitos and chatting away. Night has finally fallen, which means it’s dark enough for us to see the screen clearly. We’ll be watching some videos created for the web, and it’s a great end to a long, productive, thought-provoking day.

Carlos Garcia and Omar Ramos presented and did a live demo of Scrapblog: “Scrapblog is a free web service that allows everyone to create multimedia scrapblogs.”

Last night at a Miami/We Media bloggers dinner (hosted by Alex deCarvalho of Scrapblog)  Andy Carvin and I got into a discussion about how we got blogging…which got us thinking:  how do bloggers get to be bloggers?  Why do we take up self-publishing?  Where did the passion for media–that’s evident in so many of us–come from?

Communities exist in many forms, from chatter on a forum or bulletin board through to multi-player 3D virtual worlds. But what engagement models work and how can media companies nurture communities without alienating them as devices of corporate interests? In our open discussion on Thursday at 12.30pm at the WeMedia conference in Miami we hope [...]

For the past twenty years, P.O.V. has presented groundbreaking documentary films on PBS, working with filmmakers both emerging and established to present their perspectives to a national audience. The series has always challenged the notion of television as a one-way medium by pioneering innovative projects such as our Talking Back and Community Engagement campaigns, which [...]

Broadly speaking, “community” can mean a locality, a school, a vocation, even an entire ethnic group or religion – any group bound by a common interest or condition. It may be small, it may be big. The fact is, we all belong to many communities at the same time. Some even overlap because they share [...]

If you’ve been a little bemused or underwhelmed by the goings-on in Second Life (Swedish embassy, Reuters news bureau) this Get a First Life parody will probably hit the spot. First Life is a 3D analog world where server lag does not exist. Find Out Where You Actually Live! Go Outside!  Membership is Free! What’s especially [...]

 Coming from the perspective of both a technology person working on international peace-building campaigns and a professor teaching a video-conferenced course entitled “Globalizing Social Activism and Information Technology,” I have been concerned both practically and theoretically with what it means to build community. Community in a connected world all too often means a broad range [...]

If you have some time, check out the webcast of Jan. 27th’s Web 2.0 session from the World Economic Forum, called “How Web 2.0 will mould the future.” The panelists focused on social networking and some discussion of the emerging 3D avatar worlds like Second Life and World of Warcraft. . .

I’m not sure there’s a better-defined “community” than the members of a college or university. Student, faculty, staff, alumni and friends generally have strong feelings and ties to the institution where they teach, work, study, play and spend (or spent) a good part of their adult life. With ready access to computers, cell phones, personal [...]

The modern world powered by technology has drastically altered our traditional understanding of what a community is. However, in a shift from physical to the virtual, the term “community” has retained its validity, contrary to the gloomy predictions of doomsayers terrified by the atomization of individuals and the disaggregation of communities that never happened. Instead, [...]