Personal Democracy Forum: Rubbing elbows with heroes and peers

This weekend was Personal Democracy Forum 2007. It had an incredible roster. From Lawrence Lessig and Yochai Benkler, to Clay Shriky and Seth Godin, it was a who’s who of internet thinkers.

The speakers weren’t the main appeal for me. The audience was filled with everyone I’ve wanted to meet from almost every important organization on my radar.

Just walking around on the first day I’d look left and see Craig Newmark from Craiglist and to the right I’d see Josh Marshall from TPM and looking straight ahead, oh, that’s J.D. Lasica talking to Dave Winer (East Bay represent). All talking to people from Debatopedia, the Sunlight Foundation or The Center for Responsible Politics. A meeting of minds — taking internet cultures and letting people shake hands in person. I love it.

It was a rare experience for me — not only to rub elbows we these thinkers, but because of my work with NewAssignmen.Net and Assignment Zero — some will actually listen to me. I walked up to Jeff Jarvis and said "Hi, I’m David Cohn and …" before I even explained who I was he retorted "ah yes, I like your stuff."

Jeff Jarvis likes my stuff. (just wanted to repeat that).

But enough about the people. What did I get from the whole thing?

First the low point: Tom Friedman from the New York Times. He may have a book on the "flattening of politics" — which is an "account of the great changes taking place in our time," but that account is for laymen. This was not his crowd. And most people I talked to felt the same. The conference could have used less Friedman.

The high point: Yochai Benkler: My mind exploded by the end of his rushed talk. He was the most abstract speaker — but that appealed to my college background in philosophy and rhetoric. It reminded me of The Open Book which I want to one day write — on the philosophy of open source and the diasporic spread of that philosophy via the internet to other aspects of our culture.

The evolution in the exchange of information is changing our world. This conference focused on how that shift is spreading to politics. Micah Sifry (who is obviously the brains behind PDF) mentioned that we are in the middle of that change for the media. I do not think we have even begun to see that change in politics. But this is only natural, since the democratization of information exchange does not change the arcane manner in which laws are created and augmented. Changes are afoot — at least if you asked anyone at the conference.

Throughout the conference my mind was buzzing with ideas of what I
would want to try in the future for distributed journalism. And since this was an opportunity to talk with people, I tested the waters a bit with some of my ideas (more below).

My favorite panel was the debate on the amateur – whether or not everyone being able to take part in media is destroying our culture, with Robert Scoble and Craig Newmark
on one end of the debate, Clay Shriky ridding the middle and Andrew
Keen at the far end. Robert Scoble was hilarious (as I expected).

I’ll give Andrew Keen credit for having the balls to say to this crowd
of bloggers that the democratization of media was a bad thing. I kept
waiting for someone to throw rotten produce at him.

But the debate seemed like a red herring to me. Should we only have
professionals doing the media or just let the amateurs have it?

Why is it an "either-or" decision?

Maybe
I’m bias — but it seems to me that the whole point of the media
revolution is that professional (old gatekeepers) of the media are no
longer required, but they help create standards. There are benefits in
allowing the crowd access, just as there are benefits to having those
standards implemented. All that’s needed is a means for the two to
collaborate. Is that so hard? If it is now — it won’t be soon.

Finally:
In the unconference on the second day I had my own session: "networked
journalism — the wisdom of the crowd applied to journalism."

It
was a nice round-table discussion. I talked about what has and hasn’t
worked at Assignment Zero. The good news: We know what didn’t work very
clearly. This first attempt was a bit like throwing spaghetti at the
wall to see what sticks. We are lucky in that there aren’t any strings
of pasta that are hanging on by a thread. They either fell on the
ground or stuck completely. We know how to move forward from here.

And
forward we must move. Jay announced the Huffington Post project’s name
"off the bus" — because it’s "off the bus reporting" to cover the 2008
campaigns. I am only peripherally involved at this moment — as an
adviser of sorts. And I refuse to give it too much thought while
Assignment Zero is still going on.

In truth, what I want to do
is an investigation into the consequences of No Child Left Behind. It
seems like a perfect investigation that lends itself to local coverage
by individual citizen journalists that can add up to a national story.
Everyone benefits by covering locally and sharing nationally. And of
course, it’s timely.

I’m currently working through the in’s and out’s of this: and while I
laying out the way I see it so far, someone from Congresspedia (of the
Sunlight Foundation) mentioned that they are working on something
similar — and perhaps a collaboration could be formed. Sunlight was
one of the first funders of NewAssignment.Net — so I know they want to
encourage networked journalism — and Congresspedia is a perfect
plateform to collect information: the only next step is to find a way
to do journalism on top of their research: But I have an idea!

Again — I’m working through the details right now, and while I don’t
have a green light from Boss Rosen yet, I intend on harrasing him until
he sees how brilliant of an idea it is.

But enough rambling.
This was a long post — still it was a long weekend and it deserved a
long post. I truly had a good time meeting everyone and I’m left
re-energized and motivated. The future is exciting for someone like me.
I’m young and unlike many of my collegues at Columbia’s journalism
school — I’m well aware of the changes taking place. I’m almost in a
position to act on them myself — and I hope to be able to soon.    

Other people I had fun finally meeting.

Ed Cone (who started calling me Cousin David — because of our last names)

Steven Peterson (although we have "talked" a lot via email. I have yet to be un-impressed by Steven. Absolutely a fantastic blogger).

Tish — always a pleasure to see her face to face.

Chris Messina — who I found out was involved in the Dean Campaign and I will interview for my thesis.

Josh Levy — from Personal Democracy Forum — he seems to hold a
similar position there as I do at NewAssignment.net — the young
"associate editor." I wonder if one day we will be old farts on a panel together?

NoNeck — my all around homie. I can never say enough good things about Noel.

Chuck Olsen — I’m a big fan of Blogumentary and his work in networked protesting in Minnesota — so it was nice to finally meet him.
Tikva — from ITP who is working on an interesting thesis which I think is the therepy for Internet Multitasking Syndrome.

And the rest: Met so many people I can’t remember them all. Again. It was just a very fun weekend for me. Like a kid in a candy shop.