I was at Media Re:Public in LA over the weekend, a conference co-hosted by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the USC Annenberg School for Communication.
It was very interesting, and a number of people have blogged about it in an intelligent fashion, including Martin Moore, Richard Sambrook, Victoria Stodden on the Internet & Democracy Berkman Blog, David Weinberger, and Ethan Zuckerman.
The conference aimed to bring together scholars and practioneers and survey the state of the field of participatory media (or citizen media, or public media, even the terms are unclear) within the overall news and information environment. The conference demonstrated its own necessity, so to speak, in that most of those present seemed to leave mostly confused at a higher level–that’s great, of course, nothing against sophisticated confusion, but also a great illustration of how murky the waters still are, and a great illustration of why the project is valuable.
They have a blog here.
rasmuskleisnielsen.net 