Susan Mernit has been a friend, collaborator and advisor for many years. I’m pleased to announce she’s taking on a new role at iFOCOS - Entrepreneur-in-Residence. It’s a virtual residency. She’ll still be based in Palo Alto, where until recently she was a Senior Director of Product Development for Yahoo! Susan will contribute to a variety of projects at iFOCOS.

Last month at We Media Miami Susan led and moderated two sessions - one focused on social media and social experiences in business; the other focused on women in media and technology. If you don’t know Susan, you can get to know her through her widely-read blog and connect with her through the We Media Community [here's her profile]; and starting now through her contributions to guiding and growing iFOCOS. Welcome Susan!

And, for those of you reading this who know Susan but don’t know iFOCOS and We Media: Welcome to you too! We hope you’ll dive in, join the community, and find people, ideas and activities here that make a difference in your work and help you make a difference for others.

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Here’s a chance for members of the We Media Community to get involved in something new, practical and ambitious. Bread for the City, a food bank, health clinic and social services provider for the poor in Washington, DC, wants to use the tools of media creation and distribution to help its clients and community members tell their stories. You can help.

Adrienne Ammerman, the organization’s media and communications organizer, attended We Media Miami 08 - and she came home inspired to take action. She’d like to launch a Bread for the City blog “to create dialogue and action around the issues we address every day: hunger & poverty, food & nutrition, access to legal services, medical care, and affordable housing… to name a few.”
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With Jeff Gomez, author, Print is Dead and Roger Black, Principal, Danilo-Black

Blogged by Barbara Iverson: post one, two, and three.

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Andrew Nachison and Dale Peskin, Co-Founders, iFOCOS

Blogged by Barbara Iverson: post one, two, three, and four.

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With Richard Sarnoff, President, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, and William C. Weiss, Chairman &CEO, The Promar Group, Chairman, iFOCOS

Blogged by Barbara Iverson: post one and two.

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With the traditional media losing its monopoly on information, opinion and storytelling, all sectors of society now have the power through media and communications to make themselves heard. How can we use this new power to make the world a better place?

Session Chair: Andrew Nachison, Co-Founder, iFOCOS

• J. Sebastian Traeger, CEO, Razoo
• Jim Brady, Executive Editor, Washingtonpost.Newsweek.Interactive
• Katrin Verclas, MobileActive
• Jean Marc Coicaud, Director, United Nations University
• The Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., CEO, Hip Hop Caucus
• Darya Shaikh, Executive Director, OneVoice

Closing Thoughts from Brian Reich, author, Media Rules!

Blogged by David Cohn, (with additional commentary from Jillian York, and comments on UNU from Renata Avila)

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It’s supposed to be the YouTube-MySpace-power-to-the-people campaign. So why are online political junkies so frustrated with what they’ve seen so far?

Session Chair: Brian Reich, author, Media Rules!

• Ellen Miller, Sunlight Foundation
• Catherine Geanuracos, Live Earth
• Carolyn Washburn, Executive Editor, The Des Moines Register
• Michael Silberman, EchoDitto
• John Della Volpe, SocialSphere
• Amy Schatz, The Wall Street Journal
• Anthony Wojtkowiak, MTV Street Team

Blogged by Nathaniel James, (with additional commentary from Jillian York)

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Who can you trust in the We Media landscape? Where’s the line between commerce and information? No more is it a question of parsing the biases of individual media outlets: It’s time to define a global media-education agenda so everyone can understand how today’s media works, and how best to use it. Our goal: Create a set of guidelines for media literacy today.

Session Chair: John Bell, Managing Director, 360° Digital Influence, Ogilvy

• Vinita Srivastava, Assistant Professor, Ryerson University
• Sam Grogg, Dean, University of Miami School of Communication
• Sara DeWitt, Senior Director, PBS KIDS & Parents Interactive

Blogged by Travis Smith, (with additional commentary from Renata Avila)

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If you can’t google it, does it exist? Search functions unlock the Internet’s potential, but how can we make it easier for everyone to find relevant information and act on it? Innovative thinking about metadata, permissions and trust could provide the necessary breakthroughs.

Session Chair: Jim Kennedy, VP Strategy, The Associated Press

• Fabrice Florin, Executive Director, NewsTrust
• Mary Hodder, Founder, Dabble
• Josh Cohen, Director, Business Development, Google News

SEARCH WORLD - Trust, Relevance and Rights (Breakout): Blogged by Jonathan Hendler

Afternoon sessions:

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Sponsored by the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, AARP, Kaiser Permanente and Microsoft

Leading edge thinkers discuss one of the most important and personally meaningful issues of the 21st century: How communications technology and the content delivered through it will be used to improve the health and quality of life for people worldwide.

Introduced by Dr. Pascal Goldschmidt, Dean, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine

Session Chair: Kendall Lockhart, Co-Founder, Nenuphar Mobile Media

Keynote conversation with Scott Mowbray, Editorial Director, Health.com

Forum conversation:

• Bert van Hoof, Director, Microsoft Health Solutions Group
• Don Jones, VP, Health & Life Sciences, Qualcomm
• Emilio Pardo, Chief Brand Officer, AARP
• Dr. Andrew Wiesenthal, Associate Executive Director, The Permanente Federation
• Grant Harrison, Vice President, Integrated Consumer Experience, Humana

Blogged by Jacqueline Kreinik: post one, two, three, four and five, (with additional commentary from Zita Arocha)

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Women and girls are a powerful force online: They users, creators and participants, as well as marketing targets for advertisers. Yet women-led businesses and gender-balanced teams in new media are more an exception than a rule. What can some of today’s female media leaders tell us about building successful businesses, leading strong teams and creating a more egalitarian workforce?

Session Chair: Susan Mernit, Senior Director, Yahoo! and blogger, Susan Mernit’s Blog

• Mary Hodder, Founder, Dabble
• Judith Meskill, Co-Founder, Crowd Fusion
• Carolyn Washburn, Executive Editor, The Des Moines Register
• Barbara Kahn, Dean, University of Miami School of Business
• Jan Schaffer, Executive Director, J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism

Blogged by Jessica Mikulski, (with additional commentary from Renata Avila)

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Founders and would-be entrepreneurs pitch their big ideas to a panel of business-launching experts. Even if you’re not pitching an idea, come watch the competition to start the next big thing.

Chair: Rick Ducey, EVP, BIA Financial Network

• Suha Araj, Founder and VP of Strategy, Real Girls Media
• John McKinley, Founder, LaunchBox Digital
• Joe Natoli, SVP, Business & Finance, University of Miami

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How can media and technology be used to facilitate meaningful and measurable change in our society?

Working Group Chair: Brian Reich, author, Media Rules!

• Ruth Behar, professor of anthropology, University of Michigan
• Luis Ramiro Beltr√°n, Bolivian journalist and scholar
• Andrew Karanja Githeko, Chief Research Officer & Head: Climate and Human Health Research Unit, Kenya Medical Research Institute
• Tom Kennedy, Managing Editor for Multimedia, Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive
• Pedro Paulo Poppovic, Editor, Sur International Journal of Human Rights
• Tini Tran, correspondent, The Associated Press
• Wang Wei, Senior TV anchorwoman and journalist, Shanghai Media Group

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In a networked culture, innovation and creativity emerge everywhere. This workshop will illustrate how small networked teams of part-time employees and volunteers collaborate to produce Global Voices Online, a human-powered aggregator of ideas emerging from every corner of the planet.

Session leaders: Solana Larsen and Georgia Popplewell, Co-Managing Editors, Global Voices

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Join a fascinating group discussion on how to find good journalism online, hosted by NewsTrust.net, our social news network. We will have a diverse group of journalists, educators, technologists and community leaders for this conversation. After a short presentation about NewsTrust, we will break into small work groups. First, groups will review an article together and then talk about how to discriminate between good and bad journalism. We will also discuss best practices for helping citizens sharpen their news literacy skills.
Some of the questions we’ll discuss in this one-hour event include:

During the meeting, we will introduce what we’re doing at NewsTrust to address these questions– and ask your thoughts on how to best expand this public service — to help more citizens make informed decisions about their lives and governments.

Session leaders: Fabrice Florin, Rory O’Connor and David Cohn, NewsTrust.net, a non-profit social news network dedicated to good journalism.

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