The Oxford Media Convention 2014 was great. Interesting keynotes, panels, and discussions, very well organized by Damian Tambini and co. Superb tweeting from Emma Goodman and the LSE Media Policy Project and lots to look at under the #OMC2014 hashtag for those interested.
It also struck me—and many others, judging from conversations had and overheard—that the stuff that was missing was often as important as the stuff that was featured.
As Damien Tambini rightly said in his closing remarks: “we can’t do everything.” And what was done was done well. But many important issues that it would have been useful to take up with this intelligent and diverse group were mostly taken up, if at all, in questions from the audience.
Things not addressed to the same extent included—role of new US-based global digital intermediaries like Google, Facebook, and the like, concerns over copyright in content production, regulation in an increasingly converged media market, impact of NSA revelations on future directions for media policy, balance between national media policy, European Union media policy, and potential transnational/global policy frameworks, (there was a panel which dealt more directly with data/privacy issues, but I missed it).
What was debated was mostly fairly well-known national (UK) media policy issues. Domestic media plurality. The role of the BBC. The possibility of industrial policy when it comes to the creative industries. The role of Ofcom as a regulator. Many speakers articulated fairly well-known views and defended well-known positions. (Tony Hall from the BBC thinks the BBC is value for money but can always be better, etc.)
This is important, for people to remind each other where they stand, nuance their position, evolve, etc. And all the issues discussed have been and remain very important (and there were other panels I didn’t attend and where I’ve only seen the tweets). But there are larger and perhaps more future-oriented media policy questions that were not discussed in similar detail.
In part this is probably due to the nature of the OMC and the crowd there. It is a conference for discussion, and it is co-sponsored by a think tank, it does draw academics. But it is also a very public event. It is an event where a lot of stakeholders and interests are represented. It is a quite political event. Not the best place for difficult questions with few answers and for blue sky thinking perhaps.
We hope to arrange some seminars for constructive, future-oriented discussions around media policy at the Reuters Institute in the fall. We’ll build on all the discussions coming out of the OMC and then see if we can find a format and a line-up for also taking up some of these bigger issues.
rasmuskleisnielsen.net 
As someone from a commercial background, I would agree with most of this. One of the challenges is pulling together the right range of people – take copyright for example, which is beyond the remit of DCMS – one of the reasons why, as Harriet Harman observed, the IPO has not been a strong defender of the creative industries on IP policy. I think the biggest question today is what to do (if anything) about the transnational nature of digital media challenging local regulatory norms – when Google does not accept that UK citizens are entitled to the protection of UK privacy laws, how long before someone takes a similar approach to something that will upset the Daily Mail more?
I agree with both, global players are a key issue and it is hard to create a forum in which all the relevant parties can have a frank discussion about this.