I just got back from an event called The Great Blend, which was basically a panel discussion about the present and future of online media.
The event was run by Russell Brown of publicaddress.net, and he oversaw the panel of local and ex-pat guests. We had Kristine Garcia, of the NZ Herald, Ben Goodger from Google/Firefox, Rob McKinnon of theyworkforyou.co.nz, and Rick Ellis from TVNZ.
First up though was an hour of discussion with the guys from Back of the Y. They came across as good guys, totally aware they were producing extremely poor video content, which definately has a certain charm. We were shown the trailer for their first feature film (The devil dared me to), and it actually looks pretty good. Well done to our boys from Dunedin.
After a short break admiring the fantastic venue (the brand spanking new conference centre on top of the Auckland Museum), we got down to business.
The panel discussed issues about DRM, paticularly for the back catalogue of TVNZ shows, and how most of the back catalogue currently can't be released due to copyright laws. Rick Ellis seems to care greatly about this, and is trying to get the laws regarding copyright changed, so that those shows can actually be seen again. Aparently there are a few lawyers at TVNZ that are trying to push for them to be released under creative commons, which is great to hear.
Kristine got a bit of flack from Rob McKinnon about the redesign of the Herald site. She was staring daggers at him for the rest of the night. Rob definately seemed to have an agenda of holding other panelists accountable for various things, and took every chance he could to push the importance of open source software.
It was a great experience, and I'd highly reccommend it to anyone in New Zealand with any kind of interest in online media. Thanks to everyone involved with organising it, and hopefully we continue to get interesting events such as these, and Wellington's Webstock more often.