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Global Forum | May 3-4, 2006 | London

Hi from London. Whether you're meeting us here or not we wanted to let you know what The Media Center is doing this week in London, and invite you to follow along online. On Wednesday and Thursday of this week we're conducting a large international conference called the We Media Global Forum, in partnership with the BBC and Reuters. This continues and, we hope, furthers The Media Center's unique agenda: to enable a better-informed society. Over the years we've become known both for our research and trend watching and for our ability to stage unusual events that engage and inspire an eclectic mix of executives, entrepreneurs, researchers and activists who care, like we do, about the emergence of a world connected by digital networks. The forum will kick off Wednesday with release of a 10-nation opinion survey on trust, which we commissioned jointly with the BBC and Reuters. Trust is our major research focus for the year, and this is our first major piece of research on the topic. Among other things, the study reveals the extent to which people's decisions about which news sources they use are based on whether or not a news source retains or loses their trust; and the level of trust in blogs around the world may be surprising to some. With trust as context we'll then dig further into how information - and trust - flow in a world connected by digital networks. The discussions will include representatives of the United Nations, actor Richard Dreyfuss, an MTV host, a group of middle school students, and many others. Here's the full program and participant list: http://www.mediacenterblog.org/events/06/wemedialondon/program/ The day at the BBC concludes with a worldwide broadcast of a radio show called World Have Your Say. I was a guest on the show a few weeks ago and I can't begin to describe the magic of a live, worldwide, realtime conversation. Wow! This week's show will be driven by our forum agenda: a conversation about trust in the media. Who do you trust and why? Along with the formal trust research we're releasing Wednesday, this week we're also conducting a non-scientific e-survey on a similar theme. So far, more than 28,000 people have responded! You can take it yourself, or link to it, here: http://globalnin.com/branchedsurvey/?surveyid=43&languageid=2 The entire forum, both days, will be webcast and archived, and blogged - along with live and mobile chat options - so there are lots of ways to follow along and be a part of the conversations. We'll have online curators monitoring and reporting on the blog and chat discussions. Finally, if you're writing about the forum, or what's said there, or about anything at all related to the We Media Global Forum, please use this tag so we can try to aggregate the online conversation: Tag: wemedia Here's the link to the conference web site: http://www.mediacenterblog.org/events/06/wemedialondon/home/ You can follow along starting at 9 a.m. BDT/4 a.m. EDT/1 a.m. PDT. Yes, that's right - if you're on the West Coast of the US you can make an all nighter of it. BYOB. Feel free to pass all this on to friends, family and colleagues. I'm serious about friends and family. We're trying to reach as many people as possible - not just tech, media and business insiders. The second day of the conference will explore the global nature of the connected society, with sessions focused on Asia, the Middle East and Africa, and blogger Salem Pax live via satellite from Baghdad. Then we'll try to follow the money. We'll look at how the changing nature of communications in the connected society drives investment decisions. In the past our research, conferences, engagements and projects have helped to jump-start or incubate new projects and new relationships - but we're raising the stakes in London. We'll wrap up Thursday with a challenge to the world - a Call to Action to commit time, resources and money to fulfill the promise of a world made better through the enlightened use of media and communications technology. We'll share more about this initiative soon and I hope you'll find opportunities to become involved. Thanks for your continuing interest in what we do and how we do it. Andrew Nachison and Dale Peskin Co-Directors, The Media Center email: gpan@mediacenter.org phone: 703-620-3611 web: http://www.mediacenter.org

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posted by Annamarie at 5:50 PM