Digital issues from the local to global being debated this month

After the seasonal break – and then the mad rush to get everything caught up – we’ve settled back to work here. Happy New Year!

As well as a full diary of client work and preparing for the next couple of workshops on Teesside, there’s a few events coming up which I’m attending in the UK and further afield this month which Talk About Local followers might find interesting to tune into.

Firstly, I’m thrilled to be off to South Africa next week for an event, titled ChallengeSSS of the New Age with the International Press Institute’s News Innovation Platform.

The day long conference takes three themes – sustainability, security and self-regulation.
Sustainability – features an interview with Burt Herman, co-founder of Storify and founder of Hacks/Hackers.

Security – includes a workshop on digital security for journalists, facilitated by Danny O’Brian, international director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Self-Regulation – features a panel discussion on online media regulation, moderated by award-winning journalist Gwen Lister, with the participation of veteran media practitioners from Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa.
I’ve been invited as co-founder of the recently launched collaborative journalism platform Contributoria which was an IPI award winner. I’ll certainly blog and tweet about the event and have also been backed by other Contributoria members to produce an in-depth report about it for March.
The hashtag is #IPINIP.

Then it’s off to London for this panel event about new ways of doing journalism chaired by Professor George Brock at City University.

The other panellists are ex-Observer editor Andrew Jaspan, founder and CEO of The Conversation, a site publishing news and commentary by academic experts; Luke Lewis, editor of the UK edition of Buzzfeed.com and
 Anette Novak, ex-editor and CEO of Sweden’s Interactive Institute, which experiments with interaction design and data visualisation.
The hashtag will be #citynewjournalism.

Finally for this month, a hook up using the power of Google Hangout will see me join a group of students at the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai India. The panel event chaired by Richard Sambrook, professor of journalism and director of the centre for journalism at Cardiff University, and includes fellow hyperlocal-er Ian Wylie of Jesmond Local and Newcastle University and looks at Journalism in the Digital Age.
The hashtag is #digitaljournoacj

Two north east journalists, chaired via Wales for an event live in India – ‘aint technology just great 🙂