The Fresh Media Unconference

On Saturday October 24, 2009, Fresh Media hosted a one-day forum to re-imagine media and celebrate innovation in the 21st century. We brought together media innovators, artists, technologists, citizens and the online community and provided an engaging, generative and interactive space where we could create media together. Our ultimate goal is to inspire, inform, motivate, share practices and skills and create visions and practices for moving media forward. 

This forum and unconference-style event involved several elements, all happening at once in an exciting, collaborative cacophony of creation and idea-sharing.

1. Hands on how-to workshops (arts/ new media) - Inspiring participants to create their own new forms of media and information-sharing.

Workshops included: How-to DJ with The Funkhunters; Photography in a social media world with Tris Hussey, Blogging with Miss 604, Express yourself with Twitter with Raincoaster Media, and more from True North Media, Vito Levieux and Lupe Martinez, W2, etc.

2. Rapid Fire Showcases: A series of short presentations on innovative media/arts/tech projects, products or practices.

3. Media Arts Exhibition: An interactive art-sharing and collaboration space for all to exhibit projects and create new crowd-sourced pieces on the spot.

4. What is Media Now? - A live streamed interactive panel and discussion about media, journalism and art in the 21st century with some of media/journalism’s biggest doers and thinkers.

Speakers included: Amber Mac, acclaimed new media journalist; Dave Brindle, innovative radio producer and host for TALK1410; Alden E. Habacon, manager of diversity initiatives CBC, founder of schema mag; Monica Hamburg, writer & social media evangelist, David Eaves, open data evangelist; etc.

5. Meet a Blogger corner - a series of featured bloggers will share their blog in a ‘world-cafe’ style format — displaying new ideas, philosophies, design, and content — for time slots of 15-30 minutes.