Yesterday was the first day of the Changing Media for World Benefit workshop in Washington DC. I found out about this workshop through The Omidyar Network and it fit together very nicely with the work I am doing with ‘Investigative Blogging’.

When I first got to the conference, I checked my emails and found that between getting on the train in Stamford Tuesday and 1 PM, and checking my email at a coffee shop in Washington a 9 AM yesterday, 422 new emails had come in. I managed to whittle this down to about 250 waiting for the conference to start, and during breaks. However, this morning I’m back up to over 400, so if I don’t respond for a few days, that is why.

The conference has been an inspiring and growing experience for me. This post won’t capture all that has gone on, but I hope it will give a little flavor. Initially, we broke into workgroups to get to know each other and share ideas. I didn’t have access to my laptop at this time, so I am relying on my memory instead of notes. If I mess up a name or an idea, I apologize.

In the first group, Kit Turen, who is amongst other things, a story teller, spoke about the need for a ‘new story’. My thoughts went to the discussions on Greater Democracy about the need for a new master narrative, to Joseph Campbell’s ‘Hero of a Thousand Faces’, and thoughts about how there aren’t any new stories, it is only the same old stories told in new settings, and to Trucandygirl’s blog.

Candy is the wife of a marine who is serving in Iraq. Her writings are personal and wonderful. I’ve spoken before about how we all need to be reading the blogs of the soldiers serving in Iraq, and their loved ones at home. It is an important part of the new story and the new master narrative.

Paul Anderson was also part of that group. He is, amongst other things, a choral director. The idea of a chorus of stories, with people all connecting on a deeply personal level came up out of talking with him.

The key focus was to try and define what positive media is. In my mind, positive media is media that enables this sort of connection, thereby empowering people to go out and help their neighbor.

To tie this back to the master narrative, it seems as if the Republicans have focused on family values, moral values, or religious values. All of this is really about the longing to be connected and to help our neighbors. Yet the Republican leaders are particularly lacking in these values and seem to be driven more by greed. This same greed permeates the mainstream media.

I believe the conference is aimed at being non-partisan, so that is my own editorial comment, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the conference, or others attending.

As I think of my own story, I go back to Joseph Campbell, and think about my own journey through this conference, the challenges it presents to me, and how I take this back to my own world, al a, the return of the hero. I am still at an early place on the journey, so I don’t know what I have yet to discover.

What I have written so far really only covers the first part of the conference. I need to run to catch the Metro for day two, so I will skip a bit of the other parts.

In a breakout about systems, Norie Huddle spoke about her site, Best Game. She had some very interesting thoughts about systems, and the discussion about blockages in systems particularly resonated with what I am focusing on for the investigative reporting.

I don’t know a lot about investigative reporting, but it seems as if a key element is overcoming blockages in the flow of information. By getting better citizen involvement in investigative reporting, we may be able to remove some roadblocks that investigative reporters face.

At the end, we saw some videos that various people had produced. In particular, there was an incredible video from http://www.commongood.tv/ about a camp in Colorado where girls from Israel and Palestine come and confront the issues of their homeland. Very powerful.

Also, there was a wonderful presentation by Search for Common Ground. They are doing incredible work. A good phrase that came up during their presentation is that, “instead of Crossfire, we need Ceasefire”. I will be writing more about Search for Common Ground in the future.