Changing Media Landscape wrap-up

OK, vacation’s over and it’s past time to catch up.

Last week, I was in New York at Columbia University for the Changing Media Landscape panel. You can still watch the panel online, although I’ve heard the audio is a little troublesome.

Other panelists included:
• Sewell Chan, editor of the New York Times’ City Room blog;
• David Cohn, founder of Spot.Us;
• Adriano Farano, executive editor of CafeBabel;
• Jacob Weisberg, chairman of Slate.

The New York Times’ Shifting Careers blog has a wrap-up.

As usual, great conversation took place on backchannels — Mogulus and Twitter. I wish I’d been able to play, but my battery died a few minutes into the discussion. (The hazard of an older computer… And an electrical outlet that didn’t work.) Smart Twitter users created a hashtag, #cml2008, so I was able to catch up a bit, but I missed out on most of the conversation on Mogulus. (Audio trouble prompted Amy Gahran to buy the URL offwiththeirmics.com. I love it!)

I was surprised by the number of Twitter doubters. Especially after sitting in on part of an journalism entrepreneur class where a group was, for all practical purposes, trying to reinvent BrightKite. (One of the founders of SomeECards was also there — amazing to learn the company is just three people — the founders and a developer.) It was pretty clear, though, that people in the class used Twitter, but about a third of the panel’s audience wanted nothing to do with it.

One of the first people I met was Hofstra University assistant professor Mo Krochmal, whom I follow on Twitter. I met a few others that I knew through Twitter, which is always fun. Later, someone asked for blogging tips on a particular topic and I was able to connect her to Anika Palm via Twitter. Others had questions that I was able to solve via Twitter. I picked up several new Twitter followers, and started following several new people. If anything, my faith in the power and usefulness of Twitter is stronger.

Thanks to everyone who played (and blogged) during CML last week!