Thanks to a late-breaking tip on blogTO I coerced my friend Emily into going with me to the Drake Hotel last night to hear a panel discussion on The Future of Media.
Despite yours truly being the lucky recipient of a Digital Journal-branded Flip Minio HD camcorder both of us were left with more questions than answers once everything was said and done. Here are some of the specific thoughts I thumbed into my Nokia during the event -- I couldn't live blog it as there was no carrier signal in the Drake's basement venue.
The most interesting thing for me was seeing how organizations represented by the panelists were engaging with their audience -- specifically, whether or not they "get" new media:
- Keith McArthur, senior director of social media for Rogers Communications - I guess his gig in customer relations on Twitter could be called new media, but it's a bit of stretch, ain't it?
- Tim Shore, founder of blogTO - every bit the media maverick you would expect him to be, but his rather unsubtle "new media vs. old" jabs weren't always appropriate to the discussion.
- Rachel Nixon, director of digital media at CBC News - gave the consistent impression that CBC knows what they're doing in the new media space.
- Richard Mcilveen, producer of CTV's “Webmania” - a direct quote from my notes: "Doesn't know shit about anything."
- Chris Hogg, CEO of DigitalJournal.com - gave me the uneasy feeling that this event's hidden agenda was to prop of the street cred of Digital Journal, which I had never heard of prior to last night and which honestly didn't impress me much when I came home and checked it out.
For me, the evening could be best summed up by this unfortunately irony:
After criticizing CNN's iReport for siloing off user-generated content in a site separate from CNN.com the producers of this panel discussion did the exact same thing by segregating audience participation into the standard Q&A block at the end of the evening.
But hey, thanks for the camcorder!
