Eventful Media

This is a big week for events in NY. The world leaders are all at the UN. In other parts of town, though, I went to two forums celebrating innovation in media.


On Tuesday evening, Ashoka, the leading social entrepreneurs organization, hosted an event to introduce three Fellows from their News & Knowledge Initiative (http://knowledge.ashoka.org/) Senior Fellow Jimmy Wales spoke about the vision for Wikipedia, and the new fellows, journalist Juanita Leon from Colombia, film entrepreneur Stefan Kaspar from Peru, and tech entrepreneur Nicholas Reville, founder of the Participatory Culture Foundation, presented their programs and took questions from a group of NY media pros. Their ongoing initiatives - an independent, participatory online news site; a network of micro-cinemas in rural Latin America; and free open-source video players -- all serve the broad mission of providing access and inspiration to people globally through information. It was refreshing to be in a room of people who celebrate media for its social and political value.


Yesterday, I dropped in on several of the Advertising Week sessions at Times Center and the Paley Center - where the interests are far more commercial. All very well-attended. Most notable was COO Sheryl Sandberg's presentation about Facebook. Her pitch was aimed largely at making the case for Facebook as a marketing platform (a partnership was announced with Nielsen Online and Sony Pictures' Michael Lynton took the mike to share Sony's successes in promoting movies through the social network). More interesting was the opportunity to soak in the sheer numbers of people in 'the conversation' (300 million Facebook users, 50% who visit the site daily) and the mounting evidence about how Facebook has infused itself into the pop culture. Not just a platform for connecting friends but also, occasionally, a network that's filled in the missing links in a crime investigation or through which people have turned first to send SOS signals in an emergency. (Sandberg's advice: Call 911 first!)