In one sense, I didn’t learn anything new in the day, my inner geek is alive and well and not too out-of-date, although I’ve pulled back from daily blogging. But I began thinking about things in a different way, which is always exciting.

However much I enjoyed Charles Leadbeater’s presentation, opening the audience up to the vast possibilities of the internet and the new sociability that it brings, I was invigorated by Andrew Keen’s counter-argument, lamenting the cult of the amateur, and the erosion of authority. Not that I accepted it, but it did make me wonder about how, in the rush to embrace the new media, the not insignificant matter of valuing creativity might be lost. His insistence that we have to consider how to monetise it is directly relevant to artists, and not to be sneered at. He rightly points that those who succeed in the new media world are self-publicists, and that the “good old days”, when talent scouts and music label managers would find shy, naive but talented artists and groom them for success, are over.

And yet for every shy artist there is someone else who notices them and wants to help them – and isn’t it better that the route to publicity is so much easier now? (For example, someone came up to me afterwards and said that his wife was shy about promoting herself, how should he go about it? Within hours he had set up a Facebook profile, linked to me, pointed out Andreja Volenec’s MySpace page, I listened to it and loved the track there. I then emailed my lovely colleague Naomi who blogs Off Her Rocker at Hot Press, and said hey, this may not be your thing, but have you heard this?  That’s how it’s done.)

In the last session, Damien Mulley had a dig at David McKenna about why RTÉ wasn’t allowing archive material to be released to Youtube etc etc. The thing is, it isn’t his fault, and, to a tiny degree, it’s mine.  McKenna is perfectly right – it is a legal minefield, largely because of ancient contracts drawn up between Irish Actors’ Equity and RTÉ, protecting the rights of actors against exploitation. I was on the Executive Council of Equity for many years in the 1980s. (Although I don’t think that quite justifies the one line tweet from Mulley I spotted in the ether: “dermod=establishment”).

The struggle to stop artists being exploited is an ongoing one, and may explain why the arts community is so suspicious of the internet. In the polarized and often bitter relationship between TV/Film companies and the actors they employ, too often the actor gets paid off cheaply to give up their residual rights and, in perpetuity, their work is used over and over again, making lots of money for the company.

I once had a stinging email from a musician who spotted that I had recorded on a tiny little camera one song at a unique concert in which he took part, and posted it to my blog. He was furious and demanded I take it down, bitterly lumping me in with all the others who pay no attention to artists and performers. When I pointed out that I don’t make money from this blog, he softened and apologised, and then got the point – I was an enthusiast, marking something special, and adding to the reputation of all concerned. It could never have resulted in any loss of income for anyone involved, but only enhanced their reputation. But his response is typical of many people who have a creative talent and are trying to make a decent living from it.

John Kelly of The View asked me afterwards who did I think was missing from the panel. My response was that someone from the music industry would have been very useful – the subsidized arts community tends to think and network only among themselves, and not have much to do with other artforms such as popular music – and yet how musicians themselves are adapting to the internet (at the speed of light) has a lot to teach us about its strengths and weaknesses. Musicians are way ahead of the music industry in this regard. But on reflection I would also have asked Irish Actors’ Equity to sit on the panel because they have to be part of the solution to free up the archives as well as come up with new contracts that permit work to be released on the Net. YouTube pays royalties for every song that’s lipsynced in its catalogue, meaning that music royalties, in the UK at least, have increased since the advent of Youtube, instead of decreased. The same sort of arrangement could be made about other copyrighted material.

Andrew Taylor’s presentation was the most mind-expanding for me, and it is here. He was looking at the metaphors we manage by, and so it got me thinking, when it got to our session in the afternoon, sitting beside Siobhan Bourke (Saffron Pictures), Damien Mulley, Dermot McLaughlin (Chief Executive Temple Bar Properties), and Jessica Fuller (Still Point Productions). I went off on a flight of fancy about this new social media, the speed of it, and how artists and arts organisations could see their audience/customers like a flock of chattering birds, able to fly as fast and as collectively from one tree to another before they settle. Just watching a public Twitter feed explains what I mean – the continuous stream of consciousness, invisible before the internet, now visible.  Artists/Organisations need to start learning this language and start talking and chattering as much as they can to those online, enter into rapid dialogue, seek out those who mention them and link to them, respond to critics authentically and enthusiastically, and before you know it the critical mass of attention has turned your way, and the chattering crowd has landed on your tree. (Sadly, it appears the sound quality of our session’s podcast wasn’t good enough to put online.)

Organisations have to dialogue with those in social media. The old PR way was just to issue press releases, put up posters, send out fliers. Now, there has to be someone willing to talk, to respond, to defend. The funny thing is that the old way was expensive cashwise; the new way is expensive timewise. The new way suits a recession, don’t you think? In the US, one theatre, PS 112, hosts a bloggers’ night early on in the run of a show, giving away free tickets to bloggers, so that they can notch up the online chatter to Volume 11 for a day or two. (Whereas here, last week, the Abbey Theatre sent me a nice email asking me to put a video for their show up on my blog. I pointed out that they hadn’t replied to my letter of a year ago offering exactly such a space to them, in return for review tickets. I’ve heard nothing since. )

John Kelly was also mischievously asking whether anyone during the entire day had mentioned the phrase “vanity publishing”, referring to blogs? I replied that those of us who are in the vanguard of blogging are, indeed, all flaming narcissists, and find our world incredibly interesting, even if no one else does. But look at the tsunami that’s coming – when the Bebo teenagers grow up and leave home, everyone will be online, twittering away their thoughts, actions, GPS positions, live camera feeds, and most probably bowel movements. Privacy, in the future, will simply mean switching off your phone.

Lastly, enormous praise must go to the brilliant Annette Clancy, who was the organisational genius behind the whole gig, and to the Arts Council for facilitating such a fascinating and necessary meeting of minds.

I suppose I could live-blog with a running commentary with photos, in an as-it-happens kind of way, but you know what? Life’s too short. The conversations will all be available on podcast here.

I enjoyed the afternoon, even though much of the material about Oscar Wilde and Micheál MacLiammóir I knew already, having been a puffta thespian who has read practically everything that has been written about both men. It was interesting to hear from UCC’s Dr Eibhear Walshe just how safe MacLiammóir felt he had to play it in the 1960s, when doing his one-man show The Importance of Being Oscar; but it was precisely his caution that ensured the rehabilitation of Wilde’s reputation. I was greatly taken with UCD’s Dr Katherine O’Donnell’s presentation on the topic of Camp, which was highly entertaining and thought-provoking. Quoting Susan Sontag, Katherine said, “to talk about camp is to betray it”, saying that it’s a bit like trying to explain a joke – you either get camp or you don’t. I was struck by her notion that camp is a triumph of style over substance – but that the same could be said of gender itself. At the end of her presentation I was left wanting more. From the audience, there was a telling point that the amazing plays of Frank McGuinness from the eighties and nineties with gay themes, most especially in my view Carthaginians and Innocence, haven’t been revived since. They are much too good to be forgotten.