Last year, CitizenShift and Parole Citoyenne launched the Citizen Media Rendez-vous, a one day event bringing together social and citizen media users, publishers, bloggers, journalists. Most in attendance were from Montreal, but the panellists were from across, including folks from Rabble, the Tyee, the Real News Network, among others. The Media Co-op had a table and we managed to meet and make links with a lot of folks in attendance.

At the time I was also working for CitizenShift and had the pleasure of helping to organise the event, which went great and saw about 300 people come by throughout the day.

This year the CMRV is taking place August 23rd and the Media Co-op has been invited to speak on one of two panels during the day. I'll be representing the MC on the morning panel looking at access and appropriation of citizen media. I'll be focussing on the MC model, and our successes and challenges in building an open, co-operative, grassroots and democratic media network in Canada.

And if you've heard about the MC, you should come out anyways to hear from the other rad folks on the panel with me, including Norm Cohn from IsumaTV, Georgia Popplewell, from Global Voices in Trinidad and Tobago, Craig Silverman from OpenFile, MediaShift and, of course, the wonderful Regret The Error blog. Jean Noé Landry from Montréal Ouvert will also be with us. I'm particularly interested in hearing what he has to say - Montréal Overt is spear-heading pushing the city of Montreal to open up their data, which as a journalist in Montreal is really exciting to me...

All the details for the day, including the second panel on citizen media and human rights, is in the press release below.

International Panelists to Present Communication Innovations
at Montréal's 2nd Citizen Media Rendez-Vous

Montréal, Thursday, August 12, 2010

Montréal's 2nd Citizen Media Rendez-Vous will host an impressive list of international panelists who will show Montréalers how their work is revolutionizing the way people communicate with each other. On Monday, August 23, 2010,  bloggers, engaged filmmakers, citizen journalists, media experts, independent media practitioners will gather at the Palais des congrès de Montréal for two panel discussions to learn about how citizen media is being practised around the world to better inform and mobilize  the public.

Montréal's 2nd Citizen Media Rendez-Vous
Monday, August 23, 2010
9:30am-6:00pm
Palais des congrès de Montréal
Free Registration
http://citizen-media.ca

The morning panelists will consider access to and the appropriation of citizen media. Norman Cohn will bring his experience as co-founder of IsumaTV, an interactive network of Inuit and Indigenous multimedia using new networking technology that specializes in low-bandwidth accessibility. Tim McSorley will explain how the Media Co-operative, a network of member-supported, news organizations across Canada, is rapidly increasing membership. Georgia Popplewell, Managing Director Global Voices is coming in from Trinidad & Tobago to share her advocacy expertise with citizen media training, Open-source tools and freedom of expression. Craig Silverman will speak about a Toronto-based crowd-sourcing news funding project, OpenFile. His experience as Managing Editor at MediaShift will also provide perspective to his input. Jean-Noé Landry in one of the founders of Montréal Ouvert, a new open-data standards project to make Montréal civic data accessible to all Montrealers. Discussions will be moderated between panelists and with the audience by Patricia Bergeron, independent producer and blogger, working primarily on documentary film narratives for crossover platforms and the big screen.

The afternoon panel discussion will focus on the citizen use of new media for the defence of human rights. Included on the panel is Jaroslav Valuch, Haiti Project Manager at Ushahidi, an open-source web application built for information collection, visualization and interactive crisis mapping in post-election Kenya that is now used around the world. Priscila Néri, Program Coordinator, Witness in New York, will join him bringing her knowledge of Witness' video advocacy training and distribution hub to the discussion. Shubhranshu Choudhary, will join the discussion via Skype. He is a Knight International Journalism Fellow from India who is creating a news outlet for tribal communities to share reports about tribal issues with local and national media: CGNet Swara. Martin Lessard is a Montréal-based blogger, published author, radio reporter, WebCamp host and social media guru, who will bring a broad perspective to the issues brought up during the discussion. Amanda Garcés is coming to share her media project Mobile Voices, a platform for immigrant workers in Los Angeles to create stories about their lives and communities directly from cell phones. Discussions will be moderated with the panelists and the audience by Frédéric Dubois, a reporter and independent media activist and web coordinator on the National Film Board's GDP project.

The event is bilingual and simultaneous translation will be available in English and French. For more details about this not-to-be-missed event visit: < http://citizen-media.ca >. Online registration is free but mandatory.

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For further details, contact:
David Widgington, event : media-rdv@citizenshift.org - cell: 514-235-0386
Reisa Levine, CitizenShift producer : reisa@citizenshift.org - 514-934-5999 ext. 230