Wrapping up the U. of Florida symposium

Here are some photos from the University of Florida’s Symposium on Converged Journalism, including Elizabeth Spiers of Gawker/New York mag fame (left).

I was happy to see Buzz Bruggemann drive down from Orlando and join us for the conference on April 1. Dave Winer, who was in the area on family business, also joined us for dinner. I joined Buzz, Dave, Kate Trammel and Kristen Landreville for a terrific discussion at Emiliano’s. (Thanks for picking up the tab, Mindy!) Politics, open source and participatory journalism were among the items on the menu. Kaye moblogged the dinner, tho the pic is way dark. (I need to get a picture phone one of these days.) Dave and I need to talk about taking the idea of an open news wire to the next level.

It sounds as if Dave may remain back East after his fellowship at Harvard’s Berkman Center ends in June. He says he’s mulling his next move. Had Dave arrived earlier in the day, I would have singled him out for some well-deserved praise. Dave is credited with kicking off the blog craze 7 years ago Thursday.

Before dinner, I cornered Dirck Halstead of the Digital Journalist and brainstormed some ideas about launching a video conservancy archive so that amazing examples of personal journalist, such as photographer David Leeson’s work with a Georgia regiment in the desert of Iraq last spring, doesn’t disappear once it appears in the mainstream media.

I almost forgot to mention that on the flight from Gainesville to Atlanta, I saw in the row behind actor William Macy (Seabiscuit, Pleasantville, Fargo, etc.). He looked a bit tired, and it was only the first leg of an itinerary from Atlanta to New York to Spain to Morocco.

So far, Jen is the only one I’ve seen who has blogged the conference (this, despite the fact that she arrived at 3 am Thursday).

JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.