If you’re in London Ontario this Saturday afternoon come to the Central Library for the Indie Media Fair. I’ll be doing a workshop at 3 pm on the convergence of social and independent media.
I didn’t come up with the theme but it certainly resonates with me. I went to the fair last year and was sort of surprised by how analog-centric it was. Open House Arts Collective and From My Bottom Step were the only exceptions I know of remember [correction needed?].
It led me to write a rant about how we ought to be using the web to document the city’s culture and ultimately recognize the best of it:
There’s a false assumption that blogs [and any use of social media more generally] are these fleeting, in-the-moment things. That’s certainly how they are made, but in the process they also leave behind concise threads of enduring information…
Social media bridges between us better than anything else (hence calling it “media” — what mediates our experiences). It’s no replacement for meeting face-to-face, but before even getting to that there’s no better way to identify shared interests with people we may have assumed were completely different. It happens to me every week. It’s amazing to learn how much we have in common with so many different people.
Thomas Cermak at LondonFuse is one example of someone I stumbled upon through the web — and he’s the one who approached me about participating on Saturday. We’re of the same mind when it comes to the need to bring a broader mix of people together.
This is where I understand the idea for a workshop on “the convergence of social and independent media” came from. Just as I was surprised by how analog the Indie Media Fair was last year, the indie media milieu seems to be equally unsure of what to make of the Geek Dinner crowd. It seems odd to have this split — after all, both groups tend to be both social and independent.
I’m looking forward to the discussion. I’m not quite as preachy as I was when I ranted about it last year. I’m hoping to kickstart an actual dialog — and hopefully cultivate a little more convergence. It isn’t a big city; there are a lot of fascinating opportunities to complement each other’s efforts…
Are there any related ideas or issues you’d like us to address there?
The other scheduled workshops are:
• 1 pm » Kane X. Faucher — “scholartist” — how academic and artistic work can be made to contaminate and resonate to produce new media forms.
• 2 pm » Iconoclast on “intellectual self-defense”: combating propaganda in our society.
Tables to showcase your creative, independent work are only $5. Contact indie.media@lpl.london.on.ca or 519-661-5100 Ext. 4986.
