In another of our series of videos from the 9th Annual Symposium, David Birdsell, Dean of Baruch’s School of Public Affairs, offers an incisive and cascading summation of the day’s conversation about “audience.”

We’ve posted photographs from the 9th Annual Symposium.  Take a look!

(x-posted at Cac.ophony.org: please visit to comment)

In this final segment from Gardner Campbell’s workshop “Speaker, Listener, Network: The Concept of Audience in a Web 2.0 World” from the 9th Annual Symposium on Commumication and Communication-Intensive Instruction, Gardner and the participants look at the “Mother of the All Funk Chords,” a Youtube mashup by the Israeli musician Kutiman, they discuss the implications of the notion that “you choose a channel; your audience will choose the channels after that.”

This video is 12 minutes long.

(x-posted at Cac.ophony.org: please visit to comment)

(x-posted at Cac.ophony.org: please visit to comment)

In this second segment from Gardner Campbell’s workshop “Speaker, Listener, Network: The Concept of Audience in a Web 2.0 World” from the 9th Annual Symposium on Commumication and Communication-Intensive Instruction, Gardner and the participants look at an advertisement from Kaplan University (featuring Uncle Phil) and explore the nature of authenticity and credibility in a Web 2.0 world, the implications of tools that empower the audience on “for-profit” higher education, and the challenges producers of information have in maintaining control over their intended messages once they get out.

(x-posted at Cac.ophony.org: please visit to comment)

(x-posted at Cac.ophony.org: please visit to comment)

In this second segment from Garnder Campbell’s workshop “Speaker, Listener, Network: The Concept of Audience in a Web 2.0 World” from the 9th Annual Symposium on Commumication and Communication-Intensive Instruction, Gardner and the participants explore the concept of speaker and audience in the Emily Dickinson poem “This is My Letter to the World,” unpack the meditation on connectedness in the segment “Truck Stop” from the film 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould (the Youtube version of this film is embedded below workshop video for more easy viewing), and discuss some core defining principles of the Web 2.0 world.

In response to a question about how these tools have altered or challenged the our sense of time, Gardner offers this wise nugget, which just about sums up his approach to thinking about all of this stuff:

Thinking at that meta level as much as we can without driving ourselves bananas is the only kind of thinking that persists through whatever the next tool is going to be.

This clip is about 25 minutes.

“Truck Stop,” from 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould.

(x-posted at Cac.ophony.org: please visit to comment)

(x-posted at Cac.ophony.org: please visit to comment)

This is the first in a series of posts presenting video from our 9th Annual Symposium on Commumication and Communication-Intensive Instruction.

We’re going to start off with four videos (we’ll publish them over the next four days) from Gardner Campbell’s workshop “Speaker, Listener, Network: The Concept of Audience in a Web 2.0 World.”

What I love about this particular workshop is the generous balance in Gardner’s approach to Web 2.0: he talks with equal interest about the inanity present in much online conversation (and offline conversation) and the new implications for connectedness offered by the Web 2.0 world. Unlike many thinkers who’ve chimed in on communication in a Web 2.0 world, he sees it as neither a panacea or a harbinger of doom. His interest is in exploring the rich ideas generated by these new methods of communication, and in generating more questions than answers. We were so fortunate to have Gardner play such a significant role in our Symposium for the second straight year. His enthusiasm was infectious, and his social note taking was prodigious.

In this first segment, Gardner and the attendees of his workshop explore Twistori and Twittervision, two Twitter apps that offer provocative examples of how “connectedness” is changing in the Web 2.0 world. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to catch the beginning of this workshop; we pick things up a few minutes in.

(x-posted at Cac.ophony.org: please visit to comment)

One of the oft cited highlights of the Symposium is the evening portion of the event, which consists of cocktails, dinner, and a closing keynote address. As in previous years, we’re inviting Symposium participants to bring a guest to the evening portion. If you choose to bring someone, please let us know in advance so we can accommodate him or her. If you  need to, you can let us know when you register on Friday.

This year, we’re back at the beautiful Players Club on Gramercy Park, which was once the home of the American Hamlet, Edwin Booth (he had a famous brother too). We’ll provide transportation the the Players Club, but you are certainly welcome to get there on your own if you so choose — the walk is short and quite nice. If you’d like, you can join us for a historical walking tour of the Gramercy Park area on the way to the Club. The tour will be led by Stephen Petrus of Big Onion Walking Tours. Stephen is a historian specializing in NYC history and a former Fellow at the Institute. Those who went on his tour last year, raved about it. It’s well worth doing if you are so inclined.

At the Players Club, we’ll be joined again this year by composer and jazz pianist Ben Waltzer, who will play during our cocktail hour starting at around 6:00pm. At 7pm, Dr. William F Baker, the former head of New York’s Channel Thirteen and accomplished journalist, producer and speaker, will take the stage and deliver what promises to be a fascinating evening keynote address.

We’re looking forward to an exciteing event and hope you can stay for dinner.

The staff of the Institute feel that it’s important to capture and preserve as much of the thinking that takes place at each Symposium as possible.  Our fellows will be taking notes at the morning table discussions, and we will be photographing and filming much of the day.

We encourage participants to share their thoughts about the event, in real time if possible, using Twitter.

WiFi Access
If you wish to use Baruch’s wireless network while at the Symposium, we’ll need to register you for access. If you’re planning to bring a laptop or some other wifi enabled device and would like access to Baruch’s wireless network, please let us know by the end of business on Wednesday (4/29) by sending an email to Thomas.Harbison@baruch.cuny.edu with the subject line “Wifi access.”

Twitter
If you are a Twitter user and wish to comment on the day’s activities, please use the #blsci hashtag in your updates. We will set up a large display in our break area and will follow Symposium tweets in real time. Placing #blsci in your tweets will make it possible to easily aggregate all the day’s tweeting.

One of the challenges of producing content in the Web 2.0 world is developing an awareness of the audience for whom we are producing.

In this blog post, the Internet artist Ze Frank deconstructs the process by which he imagines his audience,  and explores the particular challenges posed by collaborative work. In many cases, one’s vision of the audience is jumbled; Frank argues that this makes producing work online very exciting, but can also pose challenges for one’s critical eye.  He suggests some methods for envisioning the audience:

When you write a comment, or a facebook status update, or anything that goes out to a group of people – pay attention to how you imagine it being perceived. Are you imagining each person individually? Have you created some in proxy individual for the group? Are you aware of an unknown audience? What are they like? Is there a mood associated with them? How did it all come to be?

He also suggests some methods for embedding a vision of the audience into collaborative work:

First you can directly state what you consider to be the intended audience: “write as if speaking to a child”, or “give advice to new buyers”. Second, you can reference a specific style (which takes the place of an audience): “like a soap opera”, “in the style of an encyclopedia”. And third, you can add a “final presentation” to the project: “Fifty entries will be displayed at this location when the project is done” or “images will be included in a book”. This at least creates a shared context for how all the contributions will be viewed, and can point to a broader audience (this ad will be shown during the superbowl), or to a very specific audience (this will be displayed at the children’s hospital).

Finally, Frank asks several well-known artists and writers how they view their audiences as they work, and offers some additional thoughts in response to emails after about his original post.