Given that Roy Greenslade has beaten me to blogging about my own event, I thought I’d better go ahead and blog about it here. I’m talking about JEEcamp of course – a conference-cum-unconference about journalism experimentation and enterprise. Put another way, if you read this blog, the sort of stuff I talk about.

It’s on May 21st at The Bond in Birmingham. Here’s what we’ve got:

• Keynote from Simon Waldman, Author, Creative Disruption, and Digital Director, Guardian Media Group. (When I started blogging this was one guy I always read – and he’s still ahead of the game.)
• Panel: What does the election result mean for publishers and startups? Confirmed so far: Tom Loosemore (ex-Ofcom, -BBC, now-Channel 4), Talk About Local’s Will Perrin and outgoing Creative Industries minister Sion Simon.
• Please nominate who you would like as the fourth panellist.
• Closing keynote: Stewart Kirkpatrick, founder of Scotland’s first online-only newspaper, Caledonian Mercury (@calmerc), which launched earlier this year.

More importantly, in between all of that are a whole bunch of fringe meetings, chats over coffee and group discussions. You decide what to talk about here. Because, really, that’s what we go to conferences for, isn’t it?

And in the spirit of the internet, there’s a low barrier to entry: tickets are only £30

For those who haven’t been before, there’s coverage of last year’s event here and here. For those who have, feel free to post a comment.

You really don’t need to use any more brainpower on this. Book a ticket by emailing Kelly.ONeil@BCU.ac.uk (invoices available!) and sign up on the Facebook page or wiki.

The final select committee on ‘The future for local and regional media’ took place Tuesday, with Liberal Democrat MP Adrian Sanders apparently writing off the whole of the web as being incapable of holding power to account.

Here’s some of the rather bizarre exchange with Creative Industries Minister Sion Simon, who was giving evidence before the committee (also on BBC’s Today in Parliament around 18 minutes in – worth listening to for the tone with which Sanders delivers his dismissal):

Sion Simon MP (Labour, Birmingham Erdington)
Who will go to the council? Hyper-local news-sites like Pits n Pots in Stoke on Trent will go to the council meetings – as they do. Stoke on Trent has got a successful local newspaper but it also has a very successful hyperlocal news site in Pits n Pots who, if you want to know, what’s happening in the council and behind the back stairs in the council and everything to do with local government in Stoke on Trent you’re at least as likely to go to Pits n Pots as you are to go to the Stoke Sentinel.

Adrian Sanders MP (Liberal Democrat, Torbay) – Interrupts
I’m not convinced.

Sion Simon MP (Labour, Birmingham Erdington)
The point here is that it is news that’s important and it’s scrutiny of democracy that’s important to the citizen and we need to be clear that as it migrates from one platform it migrates sometimes onto another…

Adrian Sanders MP (Liberal Democrat, Torbay) – Interrupts
But it’s not news, it’s just tittle tattle, which is what you appear to be describing as the alternative to the Stoke Sentinel which you’ve just mentioned.

Sion Simon MP (Labour, Birmingham Erdington)
Have you read Pits n Pots?

Adrian Sanders MP (Liberal Democrat, Torbay)
No [Disdainfully]

Sion Simon MP (Labour, Birmingham Erdington)
It’s frankly a bit rich of you to dismiss it as tittle tattle if you don’t know anything about it.

Adrian Sanders MP (Liberal Democrat, Torbay)
It’s a website

Sion Simon MP (Labour, Birmingham Erdington)
That doesn’t make it ….. You think that anything that’s online is tittle tattle?

Adrian Sanders MP (Liberal Democrat, Torbay)
I think, most of it …

Sion Simon MP (Labour, Birmingham Erdington)
I think that’s a ridiculous view.

Adrian Sanders MP (Liberal Democrat, Torbay)
Most of what’s online is indeed tittle tattle, and opinion.

Sion Simon MP (Labour, Birmingham Erdington)
That’s just nonsense and a ridiculous view

What is particularly ironic is that the MP’s dismissal of hyperlocal blogs as being incapable of monitoring local power should be reported verbatim by… a website. As for the commercial media, they only reported what Michael Grade had to say. Tittle tattle.

I spent today at the hyperlocal C&binet event, organised by Creative Industries MP Sion Simon at the Department for Culture, Media & Sport. I’ve already blogged my thoughts leading up to event but thought I would add some more links and context.

For me, it is significant that this happened at all. Normally these sorts of events are dominated by large publishers with lobbying muscle. Yet here we had a group combining hyperlocal bloggers, successful startups like Facebook, Ground Report, Global Voices and the Huffington Post, social media figures like Nick Booth and Jon Bounds, and traditional organisations like The Guardian, BBC, RSA and Ofcom. Jeff Jarvis pitched into the mix via Skype.

As for the event itself, it began the previous afternoon with a presentation from Enders Analysis, embedded below:

The following morning saw more experiences thrown into the pot – Jeff’s CUNY business models for hyperlocal; Rachel Sterne’s experiences at Ground Report, embedded below:

US Hyperlocal News Market –

Nick Booth’s experience from Podnosh followed, then my own contribution, and The Guardian, Huffington Post, and Northcliffe all took centre stage at various points too.

Following that exchange of perspectives attendees put together 2 lists: what they thought government should or could do, and what they thought government should not do. These are listed on co-chair Will Perrin’s blog and some reproduced in their glorious fluorescence below:

You can read more about the day on that Will Perrin blog post and Hannah Waldram’s post for Podnosh.