Day One Cont’d: The Panels

Video is Everywhere:
This panel, moderated by CommandN’s Amanda MacArthur, was most notable for me for it’s discussion around Canadian online rights to American content – and why we can’t watch shows on NBC.com from Canada.
Sparks flew when the panelist from CBC suggested that ads might soon appear in torrent-distributed content. An audience member took exception to “paying twice” for content – once through taxes and again via advertising. He seemed to think that CBC should be completely devoid of advertising. I’m not sure the room agreed.

The New Front Page
This panel interested me for many reasons – not the least of which was that I had interviewed for job with panelist Candace Faktor(ourfaves.com, Toronto.com) once upon a time. This was perhaps the most entertaining panel of the conference thanks to the bold critisms of traditional media offered by Daniel Burka, Creative Director at Digg.com. At one point he called CNN.com’s homepage ‘embarrassing’ and indistinguishable from The Onion. He later called the newspaper business model “insane” and predicted the demise of the “paper” newspaper within a few years – much to the chagrin of moderator Mathew Ingram, a newspaper columnist.

Related posts:

1. MESH08 Day One (part 3)
2. Mesh08 – Day 1 (part 1)