A little over a month ago, I attended a conference on “ideas, techniques and technologies for building community dialogue” called New Connections. It was a great, shambolic and inspiring event. At the time, I blogged about Mark Pesce’s keynote address – his renaissance span of ideas is totally inspiring – but I always meant to cover a few of the other sessions.
Only a few days after the Australian federal election, and organised by Tom Dawkins and Cassie Charlton from Vibewire, politics was always going to be a crucial part of the “community dialogue” discussed. In the first hour, we heard from media communications academic/lobbyist Julie Eisenberg, founder of the Internet Advocacy Roundtable Alan Rosenblatt, Carol Darr from George Washington Uni, online strategist for the Kevin07 campaign Camilla Cooke, and Brett Solomon the director of Get Up! Australia. An impressive panel. Or it would have been if phone connections worked (the US speakers were on a glitchy line).
“Lack of understanding of the medium did the Liberals a disservice,” said Camilla Cooke. But while there was a general feeling among the Australian attendees and panelists that the election result repudiated the Howard Government, the reality, as pointed out by Brett Solomon, was that only a few per cent of the population shifted. It’s no Rudd-slide (in fact, final numbers look even closer – looks more like ambivalence on the part of the electorate). And with 250,000 active members, Solomon’s online organisation, Get Up!, had the potential to make a difference in swinging electorates, with, he said, “thousands added to crucial electoral rolls.”
US blogging culture is different to Australia. Per capita and real numbers are far far bigger there, and the move to mainstream acceptance here has been slow. There are similarities, however. As Carol Barr pointed out, “People engaged in these blogs tend to be very influential in their local communities. Tap into them, and there are clear benefits.” (Or was she just trying to get all the bloggers onside? – it worked with me).
“It’s still just 9am!” she announced, with respect to online take up in politics. She emphasised the importance of constituent relationship management, micro-targeting, but warned of privacy implications. And, what I found interesting, was IP-targeted advertising by postcode. Camilla Cooke said this was carried out in the 2007 Australian election. That is, ads served up on your favourite website that relate to you, because you’re in a marginal seat, because there’s a hot local issue, and so on. Seems later than 9am, but I guess politicians get up early.
Much of the greatness of this day was about the informal chats between sessions, the race across to Single Origin for great coffee, the not quite tangible flashes of inspiration at ideas. Later, Tom Dawkins announced he was abdicating the throne, moving to the US to work with comparable organisations (Vibewire’s been his baby from day one) – I suppose there’ll be a new leader, I wonder how the organisation will make the transition?
I joined a panel on print media – “why bother with print?” – with Rachel Hills (New Matilda) and Matt Khoury (City News). I’m not sure how interesting it was for the audience, but I basically discussed the Cyclic Defrost model. How it works. Why we do print. To cut a long story short, print’s great for reaching new readers, and Cyclic’s focus is exposing readers to artists they aren’t familiar with (web’s great on the other hand for building relationships with established readers and people who are looking for specific artists); print’s portable and very readable; and there’s a sense of finality to the printed word you often miss online. There was a lot more, but I could go on all day.
Speaking on that panel, I missed discussions of the legal issues around digital technology, health and technology, and engaging young people in rural areas, but after wolfing down one of the last sandwiches (our panel ate into the lunch break), it was time for the session I’d really hoped to catch, on web 2.0. The interactive web if you like – though a lot of the audience had trouble getting their heads around it, let alone get into any real discussion. Conversation swirled around corporate and government influence; the shift from “god-like” journos making pronouncements from on high to the user-generated content model, and the related shifts in quality; egocentric networks, preening parlours (myspace), and the modularising of the web. Heady stuff.
Vibewire has just relaunched with a social media/web 2.0 look too.
I found myself wondering what all this social media is doing/will do to our social abilities. Communities develop by adults reinforcing childhood growth, and children imitating adult behaviours. But where people communicate primarily online, do we run the risk of evolving into otaku?