IVOH Summit

My experiences in the Catskills are among the most amazing of my life, but I wasn't sure that was going to be the case.

I arrived not knowing what to expect. I was nervous about whether journalists and filmmakers who were giving voices to those who wouldn't ordinarily have one would accept me and my cause of personal finance education. My fears were unwarranted.

Peace Village was the most accepting place I've ever been. Bloggers were treated with the same respect as traditional broadcast and print journalists.

Drizzling rain masks the emerging autumn colors of the hills of the Catskill Mountains. It's 11:00am on Sunday and most of the people in attendance at the 2009 Images & Voices of Hope Summit have taken to their cars off to Albany and other NY airports. With them they take enriched spirits and heads full of ideas about the impact of media messages on our world and our personal lives. More than ever the uncharted, uncertain and seemingly unstable state of our media expands the conversation to places equally uncharted.

The images and voices I saw and heard at the IVoH Summit still resonate. There no longer seems to be a boundary between "old media" and "new media." We are all working to interpret our world and make it better.

Like most of the people I met this year at Peace Village, I am an obsessive journalist the way other people kayak or collect star trek trinkets. I can't help seeing the world the way I want to write it or shoot it or edit it for others. And then, I can't help reporting it.

Well – you just had to be here.  The Summit was fascinating, inspiring, warm, funny, and rejuvenating.  David Fanning reflected with us on the impact of the Web on television (“We’ve changed the contract.  We are creating films for the ages”) and shared a newly released FRONTLINE segment on the war in Afghanistan.  June Cohen told us how they prepare “TED stars” for their 18 minute “talk of a lifetime” and showed us some of her picks of TED talks.  Mike Hughes gave us a reprise of his deeply moving commencement address to the graduates of the class of 2006 at Virginia Comm

Friday was all about screening each other's work and being in conversation.  We heard from composer Joan Tower about her experience composing for community symphonies -- how community symphonies play for the love of music.  She told us about the inner workings of her Grammy winner Made in America and played a few minutes for us.  Kim Spencer told us about his 10 year journey to create Link TV and played a sequence which showed how different the reporting on Global Warming is around the world.  We heard from Thuy Vu about how Radio Saigon in Houston served as a beacon for the Vietnamese

We held our opening session of the 10th World Summit last night.  By the end of the day today there will be about 90 of us -- journalists, artists, playwrights, advertising executives and creatives -- all of us considering the impact of our work in media.