Brain candy, follow-up

Earlier this month, we shared a couple of events of interest to those who care about the vibrancy of our public debates. In case you missed them, here are the highlights of two and links to where you can learn more.

TEDxTO was excellent. Kudos to the organizers. The Torontoist's summary is a good one and the videos should be on at the TEDxTO site soon. Almost all the talks were fantastic, so we won't pick favorites, but those interested in the changing media environment will be particularly interested in Mathew Ingram's talk on the five ways new media will save old media. What are the ways, you ask? This will happen, he argues, by:

1. Enlarging the size of the media pie. Tools are cheap and widely available. The more the merrier!
2. Making media a process and not a product that occurs in a time-specific package.
3. Making the media more human, instead of a faceless institution designed to hide mistakes.
4. Making media more multi-directional. People "formerly known as readers" know and think stuff too, and can now be included.
5. By allowing greater choice and opportunity for trade-offs (e.g., Twitter can allow people to trade off accuracy for immediacy).

Underlying all this are ways of strengthening relationships with readers, and using trust and relationships as a key competitive advantage.

And on the topic of the media, The Canadian Journalism Foundation held its first discussion of the year, an exploration of the changing media environment. It featured Rem Rider from the American Journalism Review and Ira Basen, the producer of an excellent overview of the news in the age of social media for CBC Radio's The Sunday Edition (scroll to the June 21 and 28 podcasts). You can read the event report or watch a webcast of the discussion here.

If you recently attended other events of interest, please get in touch if you'd like to include details of them on this blog.