JD Lasica

Last June, Oh Yeon Ho, founder and CEO of the pioneering South Korean online news publication

OhmyNews, welcomed a global gathering of citizens media representatives to Seoul. This July 12-15, OhmyNews is doing it again, with a kicker: They're paying for round-trip air fare and deluxe hotel accommodations for three representatives from Ourmedia. I'll be attending, plus one or two others.

If you've done some citizen journalism for Ourmedia and want to attend, drop me an email. (I may not get back to you right away; i'll be on the road starting mid-week.)

Mr. Oh writes: "The door is wide open again this year to new media practitioners and citizen reporters around the world. Building upon the success we saw last year, we are aiming to invite the who 's who of citizen journalism to Seoul and identify the best practices forward in this still-fledgling field."

Sounds like an absolutely amazing event. Who wants to go to Seoul?

Ourmedia has two new board members:

Joining our Board of Directors is John Seely Brown.

JSB (he's another initial guy) is one of the most revered figures in Silicon Valley. For many years he was the Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and the Director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). He describes himself as being "deeply involved in the management of radical innovation and in the formation of corporate strategy and strategic positioning of Xerox as The Document Company." In 2004 he was inducted into the Industry Hall of Fame. He is also the author of several books.

Joining our Board of Advisors is Susan Wu, whom I hope to meet in person on Friday.

Susan is Chief Marketing Officer of the Apache Software Foundation, where she helps define the organization's overall strategy and leads its PR, branding, partnership and marketing activities. The Apache Software Foundation is one of the world's most influential open source software organizations, with over 1,200 contributors, 35 major product groups, and 70% global market share in web server software.

Susan's roots in the open source community stems from her long-abiding interest in how technology catalyzes social and economic change. She began her career as the chief architect of a multiplayer gaming environment hailed by Sony Online Entertainment's Chief Creative Officer as revolutionary and one of the best of its time. In Susan's spare time, she has remained active in online gaming. She was the Executive Producer of GXMod, a widely popular, award winning Quake 2 modification. Susan also contributed as a developer and project manager to the open source Nebula 3D Graphics and Game Engine. She was also one of the leaders of a 1,000 person guild within the MMORPG Asheron's Call.

Which sounds pretty impressive, even to us non-MMORPGies.

First, a quick note: If you post something here that's off topic -- like your poetic meditation on your dream state dalliance with the Dali Lama -- I'll yank it in a heartbeat.

Go create your own Group. This Group is about citizen journalism.

What does the term imply? A few things.

It's more than blogging. 99% of blogs are about personal reflections, rants, musings, insight, drivel. Everything under the sun.

To qualify as citizen journalism (and admittedly there's a lot of latitude in decidng whether something fits under the citizen journalism label), an assumption arises that what you're writing about, or taking video of, or recording audio of, or shooting photographs of, has some civic and community value. That it resonates beyond the "me" and extends into the "we."

It's harder to define than to point at, frankly. You might want to begin with the "We Media" whitepaper Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis wrote and I edited in 2002. And my series in OJR about citizen journalism and participatory media. Then move on to Dan Gillmor's "We the Media" book, and into examples of citizen journalism that are sprouting up all over.

The survivor of the London bombings who shot fellow passengers in the tube with his camera phone.

The people chronicling their communities through photographs and video at sites like Northwest Voice and New West and the Bluffton (S.C.) Today.

Sites like NowPublic.com and Bayareaistalking.com and IT Conversations and Blogcritics.org.

The most important point, though, is that any of us can do citizen journalism, on your personal blog or website, or elsewhere, without having to run a "citizen journalism" site. That's what this Group is here for: to encourage that kind of independent media creation.

I've been dabbling in video citizen journalism lately, lugging my camcorder around and capturing interesting people here. Would love to hear of similar examples.