July 02, 2007
Blogference 2007
I'm at the IDC Herzliya, about 30 minutes north of Tel Aviv, where the Sammy Ofer School of Communications is hosting Israel's first conference on blogging, the "Blogference 2007." The InterDisciplinary Center Herzliya is an interesting new phenemonon in Israel—it's the first private university in Israel and is really cutting edge. We got a tour of the communications school yesterday, which is only a year old, and has about 100 students (the whole school has about 800). They've got some incredible production facilities here and some impressive radio and audio editing suites, better than most newsrooms I've ever been in.
I spoke yesterday (below) on journalism and blogging and the challenges of the proliferation of media sources and points of view. Then today I spoke about the thesis of my book about the transformative technologies coming to play in the 2008 presidential race.
(photo by Niv Calderon)
I've also sat in some discussions of the Russian blogosphere, the Israeli blogosphere, and then a great film-making and online video panel by the the Askaninja.com guys. The conclusion of the Russian discussion? A blogosphere is no substitute for democracy.
