Saturday, October 17, 2009

An Unconference First

For the next two days I will be attending Public Media Camp. PublicMediaCamp (PubCamp) is an initiative to strengthen the relationship that public broadcasters have with their communities through the creation of collaborative projects. Beginning with the national kickoff event in Washington, DC scheduled for October 17th-18th, 2009, PubCamp will be followed by local events hosted by participating stations. NPR, PBS, and American University Center for Social Media will host the launch event in conjunction with iStrategyLabs.

PublicMediaCamp is going to be organized as an unconference – a term I had not been familiar with previously. I quickly learned that an unconference is an event without a rigid, top-down programmatic structure, with the sessions organized by the participants themselves. We’re modeling it on other unconferences like Barcamp and Podcamp, which have successfully spawned similar volunteer-driven events around the world, as well as public media unconferences that have been hosted by Minnesota Public Radio and KUSP in Santa Cruz, CA.

I am excited to meet interesting people and learn about new ways public media can actively engage publics. The official Twitter hashtag for the event is #pubcamp. So log on and get a real time impression of what is going on at PubCamp.

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