It’s 1156. I suspect this event will continue in this vein. And I’ll leave dissatisfied at how the talent of the participants is not utilised.
Assertiveness is tough. People go so passive. Sit as an audience. Maybe taking time off, resting. But they are not the authors of their own day. They are recipients.
The panel know that young people today want to do, to make their own shows. Apparently, without realising it, the panel disempower the audience. Eoin began with several questions. he knew something was needed after the last slot. He knows we need participation to bring this experience alive. He has an intuitive grasp of all this.
Talking heads. Listening heads. If there was another blogger here, we could have fun between different rooms. One blogger in one room and other bloggers in other rooms. The laptop could be open with several windows, all there on one screen in front of you. You could see what going on over there.
We could compare notes on the processes at work in each room. Obviously there would be big differences in content but process is everywhere. We can easily have dialogue around process.
I feel like putting a timer on each speaker. I feel like screaming at Eoin.
He’s turning it out to us. He’s said we are in the room.
The man in the audience asks a question. The panel replies and we and we are back into the same dynamic. I better think of something else to blog about…
How about having the panel in the middle of the room?
Another question: I make a programme. How do I use the web to enhance what I do. I don’t know.
Answer from Eoin: You may have to cede some control. Conn chips in with his experience. Let it expand organically… Let people call in…
RTE project: Storylines from drama dept. Scripts collected, broadcast, public vote. Reality show. One winner. Depending on the quality of the product, they’ll be funded to produce it professionally.
There are a lot of people who don’t have original ideas.. says RTE. Blogs are there, useful
I am given the microphone:
I don’t have a question, but a fundamental philosophical psychological difference with the last speaker. I make an impassioned plea for a different point of view. I try to say I differ. I try to say ‘you’re wrong’ without saying ‘you’re wrong’.
The panel speak as if they know.
Conn isn’t interested in authority. He’s staking out the consumer’s point of view. I’m a consumer. I quit the media, because the authority of editors, and managers. Their concerns were making enought money to pay everyone’s mortgage. That authority restricted me from producing the kind of programmes I wanted to produce.
Now the panel have taken it back, the authority to speak. They privilege their own talk from the platform above the 100 people sitting here watching them.
The room is full of watchers. The few doers who do the talking have the floor, and I made myself one of them.
What I said was too complex to be coherent. I wasn’t clear enough yet .
Briefly please, the chair says.
The internet provides an opportunity…. You can find an audience for your film. I remember what it was like in the 1990s. We made our own videos. It was so exciting. Now another speaker from platform.
No one has responded to what I said. But I’m glad I said it. There may well be someone down here who has heard me stuggle to express my dissatisfaction. I remember how I went to other conferences, what it was like at UCD in 1968-71. How we protested at being lectured at. We could go into the library and read the books. What we craved was dialogue. Full on engagement. We hated being traditional students.
How little things have shifted over the years. I thought the sixties would revolutionise the relationship between people so that the future would be multi-voiced. There would be a breaking down of traditional authority-filled discourse. Out would come a more exciting cauldron, a steamy flow of cut and thrust.
They would be better to be in a circle and the audienc could listen in and watch what they are doing . The audience could have their own computers and could blog their impressions, responsed, reactions, feedback, resolutions. Their comments could be recorded. And there could be a follow-up session where the panel gather knowing what the audience have been thinking. How different would Act 2 be? Imagine convening a conversation after you know what your audience starting point is.
This model of a workshop is workshoping in the dark, being clueless as to what non-talkers are thinking.
A woman on the stage says ‘twitter is really good’, followers on twitter.
Conn: that’s cultivating…
I love the energy that flows through that word ‘cultivating’.
How many people here would call themselves ‘artist’?
How many here would call them selfs ‘not creative’?
My gut feel is that there must be people here, who have said nothing, who are checking out what sort of ideas are flowing around. A small ‘not-yet-a-band’.
"That’s marketing".
To which I say "marketing" is such a limited word.
The question we haven’t answered or asked is can these tools be used to create.