include Conn O’Muineachain.  I told him I’d been depressed for over a year and that I’m well now.  He said he liked my question to Andrew Keen.  That was good to hear because even thought my main reference point for whether my action is good lies deep within my self, I still value what others think.  If he’d said that was a rubbish question, I’d have taken that as telling me something new about him.

Eoin Purcell, Mercier Press I met too.  Great to run into him because I ran a training course on strategic planning in about October 2007, after I got depressed.  First met him there.  It was good to tell him about my depression because I was bothered by whether I’d been awful that day.  Explaining how I was now better, and asking him if he’d like to meet up for coffee in  Cork, helped me too.

Otherwise, I met a pleasant guy from UCD who teaches on the MBA course there.  He’s dipping his toes into the blogging water.  I offered to help him if he wanted another sounding board.

Next, I’m at the workshop "New Media in Practice".  Most of the people here, about 100, are bloggers.  A small number of ‘twitters’.  Lots of ‘Facebook’. 

"Anyone live-blogging here?" asked Eoin Purcell.

One, yours truely…

On this panel:  Conn O Muineachain (New Media Specialist and Blogger)

Sheila de Courcy (Head of Young People’s Programming RTE)

She’s speaking now:

text doesn’t work for youngsters

they like being first, so they can show their friends

something slightly different and strong

four different age groups

know your audience.

Maura McHugh (writer and blogger)  talks about what she does.  Her remit is to deliver a limited range of info to members.  (What members?)  Newsletter email as well as the blog.  There are writers who don’t use computers. ‘Text is dead’ is not right.  A lot of places pay authors for their work.  Social networking sites can be very good.  Electronic submissions make it easier these days.  You used to be a loca artist.  Now you can relate to a much wider arena.

Nicky Gogan (Film maker, Darklight Film Festival) talking about a model of collaboration between teenagers: videos on U-Tube.  We pick the ones we like - we go run workshops for them.  The final ten films are there now.

Why isn’t there a lot more engagement with us the audience.  We seem to be using the most traditional  model of relationship between panel and particiapants. Now we view a funny film probably made by teenagers.  Funny.  Laughs in the audience.  A spoof programme.  Good fun.  Light relief.  We need it because this is so wordy.  The panel of 4 go on and get to talk.  What are we to do sitting here.  At least I have this tool for screaming out how  much better this could be.  The audience sits here, translating everything into its frames of reference.  We are incredibly active as listeners.  But we are treated as passive. 

Eoin turns and brings the audience in.  Thank goodness.  But we are quickly into question and answer mode.  Question followed by another long panel spiel.  I’, being very critical but I do know they are doing their best - within an ancient paradigm.