Live Blogging: Journalism conference as a participant observer

Journalism students will be working in a converged media world. How will they learn to do that when technology and opportunities change every six months? A conference group hosted by the Tennessee School of Journalism and Electronic Media is discussing that right now.

The inaugural ICONN conference (Inter-Collegiate Online News Network) brought together professionals, students and faculty to discuss opportunities for collaborative connectivity.

Collaborative connectivity was the theme behind the scenes, too. As panels discussed and students listened and took notes, participants from many universities used wireless connections to report from the scene.

A back row seat offered a great vantage point for a participant-observer. On laptops, Blackberries, iPhones, etc., participants were communicating through:

• Twitter

• Publish2

• blogs from every imaginable CMS

• JProf

Participants used the hashtag #ICONN as a searchable term to make the content easy to find. They Googled speaker bios during sessions, blogged on their own sites and published updates to students back home. The communication was live, constant and interactive.

ICONN will use a content management system (CMS) called Ochs, developed at Tennessee for a student news site using Django, to connect student journalists from around the country.

How exactly will that happen? That's the subject of the next session.