IVOH World Summit 2010

Sometimes everything works out perfectly. And that’s how it was at this year’s Images & Voices of Hope Summit. There were the full moon cresting the mountains on the opening night, the four days of warm sunshine, the 15 students, the moving memorial to Lindsay Gund ... and that's just for starters.

Our theme was “Inspiring Media in an Open Source World,” and it was both — inspiring and open source. We opened on Friday morning hearing the swelling voices of Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir. Then he joined us via Skype from London to tell us how it was done and the impact it’s had. Public Radio International’s VP for Interactive Media, Michael Skoler, steered us through the Open Source waters – from Rob Baker’s fascinating account of Ushahidi, to David Cohn’s account of community powered reporting at Spot.us, to Leonard Chien’s explanation of Lingua, the ambitious and successful Global Voices translation project, to Be the Media author David Mathison’s advice to media makers on creating and widely distributing their content.

In Arts and Culture we heard about Pablo Corral’s photo collective, Nuestra Mirada, about the uplifting KarmaTube website from Birju Pandya. Fred Ritchin of NYU’s Tisch School took us to the world "after photography” with the story of Pixel Press and the work he does with talented photographers like Joseph Rodriguez.

Journalist Connie Schultz of Parade and The Plain Dealer moved the room with accounts of how social media can give voice and power to readers. Dan Grech of WLRN Miami Herald News played a radio story of how a single guitarist brought a vast tent of earthquake victims in Haiti to their feet singing in gratitude.

From Simon Mainwaring and Larry Kopald we learned about the re-invention of marketing and advertising in this modern connected world.

The gaming session was all new and fascinating. Games for Change’s co-president Asi Burak, joined by Hypernia’s (very funny!) CEO James Vollard Costa and Ann DeMarle, director of the Center for Emergent Media at Champlain College, showed us the gaming landscape both in scope (bigger than film and music combined) and originality – games about peace-making in the Middle East and about “gaming the news.” The Champlain students talked about their experience of working on a game for stopping violence against women and girls for the UN.

There were professors in the room from South Florida, Miami University, NYU and Champlain College who talked about how Open Source is changing teaching. Miami University’s Knight Center for International Media director, Sanjeev Chatterjee, asked us to consider whether students will learn more from reading a textbook about Haiti, for example, or from shooting digital video in post quake Haiti.

Venezuelan singer Maria Rivas charmed us and dancer Zuleikha took our breath away. Each of the winners of the Awards of Appreciation touched us deeply: Len Morris, Michele Mason, Zuleikha, Pablo Corral and Vu Thanh Thuy (Her daughter An Duong spoke of Thuy’s work).

The dialogue wove through the four days raising questions about personal impact and social mission. And the conversations continued over tea and in the walks in the brilliant woods.

As the Summit came to a close most commented on how moved they were by the reflective component of the Summit – hearing the Thought Leader Dialogue participants read their essays from the Voices & Values of Journalism project, pausing for a minute on each hour for traffic control and the high regard for the perspectives shared. Fred Ritchin posted his reflections as soon as he arrived home at afterphotography.org.

Once again, you just had to be there. And next year, maybe you will! Hold the dates for 2011 — September 22 – 25.