Here I am liveblogging the first sessions at WeMedia. This will be point-form for now, hope to add more later.

The first panel discussion is on “The Power to Change The World”. Katrin Verclas is from MobileActive, a global network of people focused on the use of mobile phones in civil society. She picks up a very interesting idea of mapping the physical world (the “here and now”) and the digital world (”information & knowledge”), arguing that traditional media needs to be more creative in this area. Mentions as example “qr codes“, very familiar from a Japan perspective. (Reminds me of some ideas that came up in a recent interview with Japanese IT journalist Sasaki Toshinao (in Japanese). ) Later on in the discussion she makes the point (very much in line with what we argue at GV) that it is not about “traditional media” vs. “new media”, but about both working together in new and different ways.

From United Nations University in Tokyo (only one in the world, didn’t know that) comes Jean Marc Coicaud, who outlines a series of key problems: (1) aim is to produce internationalized knowledge, but most knowledge is very national or nationalized. (2) How do you go from information to knowledge (translate information into knowledge). (3) The problem that mainstream politics is actually interested in short-term gains, not interested in ideas per se. (4) There is an increasing fragmentation of the media audience. Connects to the idea that the “customer is god”, brought up earlier in the session.

Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., president of the Hip Hop Caucus, starts off by thanking independent media and bloggers who made the hip hop caucus for allowing him to be here. Argues that media is truly a “life and death situation”, because media is the “mechanism to tell the story”. Uses the example of Hurricane Katrina where YouTube, Myspace, Facebook etc. took over when mainstream media got “Katrina fatigue”. Nice line: “The television will not be televised, but it will be uploaded.” Says that media is even more powerful than ever, which I would personally agree with.

Jim Brady, executive editor of the Washington Post Newsweek interactive, disagreed though, explaining that mainstream media is working with smaller budgets, smaller staffs. When the point is brought up that there are thousands of NGO’s in the D.C. area that would love to have their ideas heard in the Post, he says that WP would like to do it, but there are limited resources, not everything can be done.

Solana speaks toward the end, says she feels sorry for Jim Brady: tools are becoming easier to use, people can tell their own stories so they don’t really need the WP anymore. The new media is about taking the power of tools and using them to communicate something to reach a goal. What used to be different online divisions within organizations have now become newsrooms. These words summed it up: “Less fetishization of format, more focus on content.” Amen to that.