The 2008 Allied Media Conference, which will once again be hosted here in Michigan, will take place from June 20-22 in Detroit. The conference--now it its tenth year--is titled "Our Evolution Beyond Survival: Media Strategies for the Next Ten Years." The conference's "vision statement" says:
"The 10th annual Allied Media Conference is a milestone for the media movement. Over the last ten years, we've broken silence and built movements. We've become the media and created our own communications tools. Now we want to use this gathering to project ourselves another ten years into the future.
Amidst the threats we face as individuals and organizations, our survival is cause for celebration. The AMC provides the opportunity for us to celebrate and strategize as a community around common problems: how can we sustain ourselves and our organizations financially without getting caught up in commercialism or the nonprofit industry? How will we ensure there are people to do this work well into the future?
Powerful corporations and unaccountable politicians are advancing their vision of the future. What kind of future are we working towards and what role will our media play in shaping it?
Now rooted in Detroit, we continue to look to sustainability strategies growing from within the current disaster caused by militarism, systematic oppression, failing schools, and the growing planetary emergency. That is where we find people, out of necessity, using media as part of solutions to the problems many more of us will soon face. The AMC is a laboratory and a showcase for these innovations.
Since 1999, the AMC has brought together students, journalists, artists, educators and activists to push the boundaries of participatory media. We are intergenerational with a focus on youth. We all share in the teaching and learning of practical skills for making media and using media to organize for change. This June, we'll come together to share tactics for living in the world that is and for shaping the world that we want. Please join us."
To that end, the conference is seeking proposals for workshops and panel discussions. It should be an amazing opportunity to step outside the online media box and challenge ourselves to consider new ideas about what constitutes "media" and how it can be used for social change.
There is also an excellent video recap of last year's conference online:
