Ethan Zuckerman leads off with a fast forward history of the Internet from 1969 that demonstrates how a technology not meant for personal communication became a site of incredible, spontaneous creativity. Presenters show off a range of participatory sites that intersect with but go way beyond public broadcasting. One recurrent question is about the role of public media professionals as curators, aggregators and organizers. How much editorial control should public media have over community content? Are these sites community-driven? Three test cases are reviewed: Brendan Greeley, blogger-in-chief at Radio Open Source, "a blog with a radio show", talks about the project as a site of dynamic public participation. His suggestions include: permalinks for talkback; using Technorati; acting like you mean it; not asking for links, but for opinions. Gather.com, the brainchild of Tom Gerace, a public media project where users create and organize content that brings together communities, raises questions that reverberate throughout the conference: How can we bring public media strengths (credibility, trust) into a changing media landscape and maintain that audience? How can we transform a listening audience into a broad source network? Editorial control? How do we monetize traffic? Listenup.org, a space that brings together a network of youth organizations around the world (117 in North America) to share resources and funding to create productions seen on TV (including public media) and elsewhere, demonstrates its ideology that "video production is a team sport". Rhea Moklund describes its roots as a public service campaign for broadcasters, and evolution from PSAs into a "real space for youth media," helped out by its creative use of unused PBS server space. This closed network is curated by the young people who use the site (no addresses, etc), with only hate messages censored.
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