The links point to the recorded audio of each panel.

Creeping Deeper: Advertising and Commercialism - This was fun and interesting with lots of scary/absurd anecdotes of adverts printed on bananas and eggs and scary/scary info about Video News Releases and other “fake news”.

Saving the Internet - This panel on net neutrality was actually a bit disappointing. Any opposing view was completely absent - I could have been better informed by sitting at home and reading articles on the net (like Lessig’s Wired article, other Lessig writings, Ed Felten’s paper, etc). Tim Wu gave a basic overview of the concept, Matt Stoller was just a comedian, Azlan White told a strange story, and I don’t remember what the other panelists discussed.

Citizen Journalism: Making an Impact in a New Media Landscape - Dan Gillmour, Chris Rabb, Chris Nolan, and Jay Rosen all gave different perspectives and injected lots of ideas to chew on. I especially appreciated Chris Rabb’s presentation of the issue of having pretty much all “citizen journalists” being privileged, white males.

The Growth of Wireless Internet: From Community to Municipal to Corporate - Perhaps the coolest panel I attended. Harold Feld discussed the basics, Michael Calabrese talked about the FCC/legal issues, Michael Lewis discussed his own Wireless Harlem project, and Sascha Meinrath talked about CUWiN and inter-connecting community wifi nets with dark fiber (which has the side effect of toppling entrenched business models) - very cool.

Bubbling Up: MySpace, YouTube, Social Networking and Political Change - This was a disappointing panel. James Rucker talked about various “new media” campaigns including Video the Vote, which was cool. Dina Kaplan’s presentation on Blip.tv was decent as was Joan McCarter’s discussion about new media and DailyKos; I suppose my expectations were a bit too high. Or perhaps it was just Dina Kaplan’s comment that Youtube’s removable of copyrighted content was simply “acting legally” and carried no threat of further censorship. Or maybe it was the panelists’ complete dismissal of a question about Myspace removing content and entire profiles of some activists. Blah.

Watchdogging the Media - This was neat, I suppose. At this point, I was paying more attention to hunger than to the discussion, though. Sorry.

The FCC: A Guide for Beginners and Tips for Experts - This was informative and helpful. We got an overview of the structure and powers of the FCC as well as a tour of the FCC website and how to use it for media activism.

All in all, it was a very fun, hectic, informative weekend. I learned a lot, met some great people, saw Bill Moyers, David Brancaccio, and Tim Wu, and felt engaged. I only managed to take 3 non-suck photos that were worth sharing, but that’s 3 more than nothing: my ncmr2007 photos, all photos tagged “ncmr2007″.