One of my big regrets this week (you couldn't tell by the photo, right?) was not being able to attend more of the sessions at the We Media Conference at the University of Miami. The panels covered some very interesting topics, but a recurrent one was the emergence of blogs in the media. Although there are some who view blogs with disdain, they should be reminded that freedom of the press is a human right as John Maxwell states in his column today: “Freedom of the press does not belong to the press, as many imagine. Freedom of the press is a human right derived from the freedom of expression guaranteed supposedly in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and documents such as the Jamaican and Trinidad Constitution. Freedom of the press, being a human right, cannot belong to corporations.”
On the positive side, I did meet (as opposed to meeting/reading online), Georgia Popplewell (Global Voices and Caribbean Free Radio), Alice Backer (Global Voices and kiskeyAcity ), Lisa Stone, (BlogHer), Melissa, Luis Carlos, and Oso.
Georgia has posted photos (the picture of me is from the set) of the Conference on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/georgiap/sets/72157594525075779/
Alice has written about the Conference:
http://kiskeyacity.blogspot.com/2007/02/we-media-miami-session-on-internet.html
Here are my three photos after the conference:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/51858402@N00/sets/72157594529598403/
Next time, around I hope that I’ll be able to attend more of the sessions, but Black History Month is never the shortest month of the year for me.
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Tags: we media
5 comments:
WOW! Cool. I'm envious. And FYI the current _Nation_ has a good article on Egyptian bloggers exposing and fighting torture.
It wsa great to be associated with Global Voices, who for example have now: "enhanced its multimedia offerings, with the addition of a branded compilation podcast and the launch of the Witness Human Rights Video Hub pilot program, a collaboration with Witness that resulted in a human rights video editor being added."
Truly some impressive work.
Also impressive were the multi-tasking/ networking skills of Georgia Popplewell, who while engaged in a serious discussion about human rights, could use her keyboard, move seamlessly to her cell phone, and take pictures all at the same time.
They had a similar conference at University of Maryland in Baltimore (UMBC). I wanted to attend, but didn't get the opportunity. Great photo though. :)
Also, looks like a great post above. I'm going to read it during my break. Peace~
I don't know how Georgia managed to take that picture with all that she was doing!
We Media is interesting because it provides a space to talk about blog and emerging media. I just hope they realize that truly now with blogs--WE got the power.
I saw Georgia do this at the CSA conference in Port-of-Spain, last June. She really is amazing!
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