We Media fringe event, 3 May 2006 (London)

The We Media fringe event this week was an example of poor event programming and the arrogance of some (self-appointed) members of the citizen journalism crowd.

[Image from noodlepie]

The 'official' We Media Global Forum: The Power of Trust has been taking place this week between BBC Television Centre and the Reuters Building in Canary Wharf. Noting that it was expensive to attend, Robin Hamman (who runs the cybersoc.com resource) proposed a We Media fringe event [initial link], which took place at 01zero-one in Soho, London.

As someone who had wanted to attend the We Media Global Forum, I was interested in attending. An interesting crowd turned up, and a different one from those at other 01zero-one-hosted events, some of which I have programmed with InSync. However, the dearth of information about the  event on cybersoc.com should have alerted me to the lack of programming that had gone into the event. While there were some useful contributions from the presenters (see below) the key lessons from the event were about this model of programming.

The event started half an hour late and then went on for the best part of three hours. There was little context about the objectives or content of the We Media conference for which this was a fringe event. Most of the presenters weren't involved in the We Media Global Forum, and most of them just 'did their thing' anyway and didn't attempt to relate their presentations to the Forum, so the notion of it being a 'fringe' event was notional. Alan Connor [not Conner], the event 'maitre d'' (as he was styled), was very engaging but also failed to provide any context or attempt to tie the talks back to the themes of the Forum. From Hamman's final comments it was clear he had had even less involvement in programming the event. "This whole thing has been quite a strange experience for me", he concluded. And for this audience member too.

There is something of a vogue for 'self-organising' events, from the extensively considered Policy Unplugged 'open space' model to the leaderless Barcamp approach (see Barcamp London, which at its present rate won't happen "sometime in June/July"). But too often this seems to be an excuse for not creating well-considered and -designed events. Hamman was clear that he didn't have much time to put the event together given his day job as a Community Producer for BBC English Regions, but even with this limited level of input this event could have been better.

It is not entirely Hamman's fault that many of the speakers failed to address the supposed themes of the event, or willfully spoke for more time than they were allotted. However, it is a bit much to hope that eight speakers will all stick to their five minutes, and the over-runs multiply. The irony is that for all the 'citizen journalism', 'coming up from the streets', 'empowering the demos' rhetoric that pervades these discussions, speakers who don't stick to time clearly aren't interested in engaging with the responses of their peers -- let alone with the people for who they supposedly advocate.

Not only did they fail to engage with their peers, but I noticed a number of speakers having private conversations at the back of the room while the other speakers were presenting. For all of Suw Charman's legitimate comments on the mis-match at the Forum between what was on the stage and what was happening on IRC, I will bet the speakers and panelist there either listened to one another or discreetly left the room rather than rudely distracting from the presentations. (And at least IRC, snide as it often is, doesn't audibly interrupt presentations.)

For much of the Fringe event, many of the attendees were also chatting at the back of the meeting area, again demonstrating the disingenuous nature of their advocacy of media democracy. The embrace of this outlook by organisations such as the BBC and Reuters has given some of its advocates a particular sense of importance -- and a license to behave rudely. New Labour politicians exhibit a similar contempt for the people they supposedly champion, but at least they were elected, and they have the good grace to be polite.

Another slightly surreal aspect of the event was the number of people filming and photographing the activities, writing Weblog posts, and recording interviews with one another. This slightly obsessive activity gave it even more of a feeling of being insular and detached.

Key points from the presenters:

Dr Chris Yapp, Head of Public Sector Innovation, Microsoft: Koji Kobayashi, future head of NEC, coined term 'convergence' in 1962, and convergnence has finally arrived. [See note on 1977 announcement on the integration of computers and communications technologies on NEC Group History site, 1964-1977 .] IT was about labour substitution. No longer about access but also about contribution. UK creativity has the possibility to help ensure people are creating content that is relevant to them. [I was a little unclear about the last point.] If we get it right this city/country has the possibility of empowering the world. Focus on the 2012 Olympics. "We can change the world. You are going to do it!"

Suw Charman, Executive Director, Open Rights Group: [Charman was an online curator for the conference but critical of it] There was a mis-match between what was on the stage at the Forum and what was happening on IRC. The BBC and Reuters on stage were very smug. How can you have a conference about citizen journalism with one citizen journalists attending? "Let's kick some arse tomorrow, for the sake of my sanity". [During the discussion] You can't buy a community and then exploit it. This is harder than it looks! Giving back is the source of the success of Flickr or Friendster.

Ben Metcalfe, Project Lead for backstage.bbc.co.uk [speaking in a personal capacity, discussed his concerns about the BBC considering putting adverts on the international Web site]. There is a danger of content becoming advert-friendly, including content generated for home users. Will the revenue come back to the content that drives the ads? What about user-generated content? 

Michael Tippett, founder of NowPublic.com: NowPublic is a site to which anyone can contribute, and it is easy to use the content on your site. [His demo of the interface for commenting material was impressive.] We have 2,000 people contributing [?] from the affected area of Hurricane Katrina. [During the discussion] We are trying to create a person-to-person news channel.

Tim Ireland, online marketing expert and activist who blogs at bloggerheads.com: [Discussed the importance of search engine optimisation. Update: see his comments below.] In comparison to personal home pages, Weblogs allow people to represent themselves a paragraph at a time, and through what other people say. It is important to understand the value of permalinks, comments and trackback -- and particularly the blogroll -- for promoting your Weblog. A small community of Weblog posters can influence many readers. Often bloggers stories  are becoming the story. I can get the top search result for such a story because bloggerheads.com already had the reputation. For instance, if you search for Vote Labour you will get backingblair.com. "If you want to vote Labour, we give you a f***ing good reason not to".

Paul Evans, who manages a project called Councillor.info [and works for Poptel Technology Ltd.]: We are [involved in?] training councillors, some of who think you can turn the Internet off. We need a network of bloggers who bring policy issues to the masses, and get around the media. [See an outline of his talk on his site.]

Neil Dixon, creator of BritCaster.com: Blogging is over. I am a podcaster!

A political blogger who goes by the name of 'Guido Fawkes': I started this Weblog as a result of despair with 'Fiskers' writing longer articles taking apart other articles. The key is having good writing, vs Tim's emphasis on search engine optimisation. As a result of publications lifting copy from me, I started the Press Plagiarist of the Year Award, which lead people to start paying me.

In conclusion...

I won't reflect extensively on the talks. There were many interesting ideas, stories and examples, albethey largely unrelated to the Forum. It was interesting to learn from Tim Ireland how easy it was to gain presence in the search space, though unfortunate in his case as his politics are so unoriginal, poorly argued, and bile-driven.

We sorely need more thoughtful, well-programmed (and -organised) reflection on themes such as media democracy, and we also need to avoid taking for granted their value.

Comments

[Matthias Spielkamp]

Thanks for the work of blogging the event. I think you are right on target, although for someone who had attended the WeMedia Forum, it seemed ok to have people talk about other things than during the day. But they should have taken the Forum as a starting point, indeed.

And I still don't see the point in Chris Yapp's yap about convergence. It has always been, and always will be an ongoing process. There's just no sense whatsoever in saying that it has finally arrived. We will have different media in the future. Will someone then get up on the stage and say: convergence will be there in five years?

[Alan Connor (with an "o" ;))]

It's a pity that you found the event to have an unclear focus: ISTR Robin explaining in his intro the strange genesis of the evening, and its tangnetial relationship to the forum (which was itself quite nebulous).

However, it doesn't have to be the last one; and if it isn't, we can all work out the focus we prefer, maybe?

[Tim Ireland]

Apologies for not making this clearer on the day, but my 'emphasis on search engine optimisation' was actually an emphasis on the importance of integrating with the community. Obviously you need to communicate effectively to do this. Oh, and it's backingblair.co.uk

[Bill Thompson]

Nico
It's worth noting that the 'political blogger' Guido Fawkes is in fact Paul Staines, a libertarian conservative who was central to the UK rave scene and is now close to Cameron's inner circle. Far from just being a maverick troublemaker he has a clear personal agenda - and it's always useful to know this sort of thing about those who appear on the public stage.

more on Mr Staines at http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Paul_Staines

[Paulie]

Nico,

I've just seen this. And I promise you that I did NOT say that local democracy is meaningless!

However, I have put a full transcript of what I did say on my blog - here:

http://nevertrustahippy.blogspot.com/2006/05/e-democracy-20.html

[Nico Macdonald]

I have corrected Paul's comments. I did take notes at the time and thought I recorded his comments accurately. However the only audio recording on the event I can find, at Podcast Nation, doesn't include his presentation, so I can't check.

At another time I will address the idea that the problems of democracy are partly a result of poor understanding of the Internet by legislators. I don't believe IT can fix a problem that it was not related to creating.