After the first day of WeMedia, many folks headed to the WeMedia Fringe event in London’s Soho for alternative speakers and discussion. Certainly one of the general observations was the disconnect between the “leaders” on stage during the day with the real bloggers and citizen journalists.

Suw Charman, Executive Director of the Open Rights Group, was right on target with her criticism titled (from memory) “Why the first day of We Media sucked.” Strong words, and not meant to offend, but just to reflect a general frustration with the disconnect between the “leaders” on stage from the MSM, and the bloggers and grassroots people in the audience who felt there was not much engagement with what they do.

From Blog of Funk:

She was articulate in her despair regarding the them-and-us attitude, dismissive of the greats assembled on stage, and their lack of interaction with conference floor and the outside world. Her views on the differences between the traditional media and the truly interactive, fundamentally reciprocal nature of blogs, podcasts etc were put with clear emphasis on the need for the big corporations to understand what it is that they are attempting to deal with.

After she had finished speaking, I felt real hope – Suw is somebody just like me, I saw, telling everyone that it was bollocks, and then explaining why it was bollocks, unafraid, loud, clear and truthful. Good on you Suw.

Audio of the session found via Blogger News Network right here (MP3, 67 minutes, 27 Mbytes).

A selection of photos from last night from my Flickr set and others here.

TAG: wemedia wemediafringe