Welcome to Amsterdam: The first day featuring luminaries of the bloggeratti such as Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, and Philip Rosedale, founder of 3D virtual world Second Life, explaining why his service is a lot like Hotel California.
And the President of MTV Networks Europe says that convergence is "bullshit".
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9am: First up is Dr Michael Johnson, a senior figure at Toy Story-to-Finding Nemo-to-Monsters Inc maker Pixar speaking on the creative process.
The first thing in making any great piece of content, which, rather obviously, starts with the idea. Johnson quotes one of his colleagues with the idea that you "want to fail as quickly as possible". By this he means get ideas developed, films out into the market and learn from each to make the next project better.
Cue elaborate multi-media clip of the creation of The Incredibles.
The clip from the film showed how an original storyboard idea that had someone die - to prove the animated world is evil - was collaboratively improved upon to have the "mom" character reinforced as a hero and protective of her children, without the need for death.
I'm not sure how useful learning how the snow impact on the Monsters Inc characters' fur is done. Clever though. Although I am realizing, from all the films quoted and clips being shown, that Pixar has made pretty much every decent animated film in recent memory.
10am: Gary Carter, chief creative officer of FMX, Fremantle Media, on The Next Big Idea. Following him is John Underkoffler, advisor to Steven Spielberg on Minority Report.
The FMX division looks at multimedia platforms and Carter opens by stating that he will look at whether television is, effectively, dying in this new world. But he is not here, he says wryly, to say whether people will watch TV on mobile and if people will pay for it.
Everywhere he looks people are saying reality TV, advertising etc is dead and Google and iTunes are winning. Except gameshows, they are back big time.
Is television dying, he asks, and if so how will we know which way to point our furniture?
He is a bit of a jokester, half of his comments are tongue-in-cheek, the crowd love it.
He wonders if audiences are perhaps deserting TV as content simply isn't so good anymore. He quotes the possibly over-laboured reality TV format and the millions of pitches in this area on a daily basis.
He cites previous historical examples of the introduction of new technology that supposedly spelt the death of what were then "traditional" media. New media isn't a death knell for TV.
He argues that TV formats can certainly survive on new platforms such as the internet and mobile.
TV takes on different forms for different generations. For "his mother" it was revolutionary, a window on the world. Television as social instrument, a push technology marking the rise of the public broadcaster.
"His generation" of the early 1980s grew up with it. Its conventions had been "codified". The medium became a mirror, not a window, as regular people could start to become famous - Warhol's 15 minutes of fame possibility.
For "His son's" generation it is totally different. It has become totally personalized. And it doesn't represent reality anymore, it is a pseudo-world. And celebrity can now be divorced from any form of achievement at all.
This generation has grown up with the likes of games - a media that can be altered - and crucially the audience can now, because of digital for example, control distribution.
TV is not a push medium anymore but it is also not yet a pull technology. However, the audience has taken control means of production and distribution. Media has become "my space".
Shows like "funniest home videos" and "cops" first bought user-generated content to the medium.
Building from those beginnings he quotes an adaptation of the Warhol line for today: "In 15 minutes everyone will be famous."
The important question, he argues, is not really is TV dying but what we will do with new media and who will control it.
10:30am: Mr Underkoffler, who must win an award for trickiest last name at this conference, steps to the microphone.
He immediately gets really technological and detailed about Minority Report. I think we'll leave this one here.
12pm: Citizen journalism: its rise, the idea of "acts of random journalism", problems with authenticity and what it all means for traditional media and journalists.
The speaker is Dan Gillmor the founder and director of the Center for Citizen Media (US) and author of the book "We the media: Grassroots journalism by the people, for the people".
The era we live in is about media becoming democratized, participation is a catch-cry because the tools of producing media are in everyone's hands.
Consumers are now developing "The Daily Me".
This means much more than blogs, which get all the attention, it is about video, SMS and podcasts and 'mash-ups' of material.
A powerful example he cites is the 'mash' of Government crime data with Google Maps to make a powerful piece of content that is "Important in a journalistic sense and community sense".
The new digital landscape means that citizen journalists can 'beat' traditional journalists. 'Newsmakers' can't hide.
(In the background is an amateur picture that exposed the torture of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers at Abu Graib).
Shots such as this - and 9/11 and the London bombings - show examples of "an act of random journalism" where someone who has no aspirations to being a journalist gets the story at that moment.
However, the problem with citizen journalism is accuracy and trust.
Digg, a site which ranks the importance and value of postings by reader votes, was recently rigged by a group of posters continually recommending each other.
Moving forward, Mr Gillmor argues that the biggest concern is that audiences will need better media literacy - audiences need to be sceptical and adjust the 'trust quotient' they value sites, blog postings and content by.
Ranking systems, or popularity, is "useful but not enough". There must be systems developed to take into account the reputation of the story, or posting, and also levels of trusted recommendation from users.
He is also concerned that if business models aren't found great user-journalism might disappear.
Blogs are moving to 'micro-publishing' taking in some advertising.
And in Korea is OhMyNews, a citizen media network of 40,000 reporters that is a 'hybrid experiment that is working well' and is moving to japan and, eventually, the USA.
The next step also involves a mind shift. Ultimately, he argues, that we are moving beyond individualism, the idea of 'me' and 'my', to 'we' and 'ours'.
1.15pm: Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist, comes on as part of a panel. It includes Marc Canter, seemingly serial entreupreneur and co-founder of Macromedia.
Unfortunately, instead of being a panel discussion Canter, an ample man in a bright orange t-shirt, spends most of the time harassing Newmark.
This is going nowhere. Apparently the wave of the future, according to Canter, is thorugh his new social networking platform. An open-style platform where everyone can be identified everywhere on the internet - not with different sign ins on different sites.
This means he spends the next 30 minutes arguing how Facebook has "opened" up and Newmark's craigslist should too.
The moderator is elbowed out of the picture and eventually, lamely, offers that this conversation should take place "out the back".
This one's over. KO in the 9th minute.
2pm: Jerome Mol, co-founder of reality TV pioneer Endemol, on why the TV and the traditional advertising industry will not die.
It is true, he argues, that the next five years will see more change in the TV industry than has occurred over the last 50 years.
TV viewing is changing but the medium will continue to be the "natural aggregator in coming decades" for viewers.
He argues that free-to-air broadcasting will retain its role as a social hub and cultural connection providing people with similar moments and experiences to discuss.
The internet is a method of production, transportation and communication rolled into one. This doesn't mean it is replacing TV, more that it should be viewed as an enabler.
There is always a transition period when new technology launches: when TV launched it was considered to be radio with pictures. Mobile was telephones without cords.
Going forward the 30-second TV spot won't suddenly cease to exist but broadcasters can't depend on its revenue value and advertisers can't depend on awareness levels.
True convergence is just taking off - the internet takes just a few per cent of online ad spend and hardware is still not ubiquitous in homes - but it is coming.
We are now moving into the "application" phase of marrying TV with IPTV (internet protocol TV) and other platforms.
Regardless of the platform there is a common-denominator to success and that is that content has to be delivered. This means that creativity does, and will continue to, play a massive role.
He argues that creativity is the key and technology is the instrument. Advertising will have to get smarter, interruption will have to change to engagement.
3pm: Philip Rosedale, founder 3D virtual world Second Life, gets up to explain, er, what 3D virtual world Second Life is.
Second Life is a great product, it has its own currency, Linden Dollars, and brands including the BBC and Duran Duran have created cool 'virtual gigs'.
Rosedale has to be pleased - here he has a massive auditorium filled with people getting Second Life 101, it is like a 30-minute promotional lecture.
He is a nice guy but I'm not sure I needed to see a video charting a virtual love affair that turned into a life-changing real marriage making the woman involved the happiest person in Second Life.
Hang on, here comes some marketing speak. No, well maybe, apparently Second Life is a lot like Hotel California. Once people log on they never leave. Someone call Coca Cola, that is a captive market. There are 800,000 users apparently.
Enter Andrew McGregor director of EMEA at PR firm Text100. How can Second Life be used for PR?
He tries a quip. Today is his birthday so he is back to London tonight and it is his "avatar's 21st too". Chortle.
But wait, Text100 has opened its "30th office" worldwide, wait for it, in Second Life. Either brilliant foresight to tap an emerging medium, or, equally likely, a PR stunt.
I think he said it cost US$10,000. Crikey.
They even received an application for a job in the "virtual" PR office.
Loyalty online takes same time, effort, honesty and commitment as offline, he argues.
He believes that online community power and loyalty will be critical going forward to building offline reputation and image.
In the future businesses will also be asking us what social networks we are members of, and that will be a key factor in determining the influence of a consumer.
People naturally speak the truth online, in Second Life, so what better place to test products, trends, tastes and views.
Text100 is in discussions about a product "roadshow" to different social communities within Second Life.
Second Life has the power to destroy established brands and he is predicting that an entirely virtually built major brand will emerge from Second Life in the next 18 months.
We do know that fashion brands and businesses have been launched already out of "virtual" designing.
Back to Rosedale. At this point it is still about experimentation, he says, about learning what happens online and what that means offline.
430pm: Simon Guild, president and chief executive of MTV Networks Europe, argues that convergence is "bullshit".
"Convergence is bullshit," he bellows. It is a nice line and gets people perked up. What can he mean, isn't that why we are all attending conferences like this, because convergence is upon us?
His argument, slightly playing the devils advocate, is that there are actually more and more - not fewer - devices in every single home.
This is because, as in all good semi-conspiracy theories, it is because consumer electronic companies want people to buy lots of devices for lots of things.
And what about that fallacy about technology-loving youth?
Only 5% of young people 'care' about technology, he says.
They also never use the words multiplatform, social networking or interactive. And, he has heard, people under 15 apparently don't use the word blog.
What he is driving it is that unlike companies, trying to market to and attract youth, young people never talk about TV, mobile, or computers as technology.
Space rockets are technology.
His question is how then is MTV meant to respond, how do you get attention in a multimedia world?
MTV needed to go back to its roots - music - while not forgetting it offers much more, to re-engage with consumers.
First up mobile, brilliant for "ultra-short form entertainment" made-for-mobile content clips. Don't just cut down regular content.
Second, launch whole new channels - such as Overdrive - that exploit new media opportunities such as video. MTV is video and video is 2.0 so it exploits the brand.
And finally, the crux, the product MTV is pinning its future on. MTV Flux.
The plan is that Flux captures the perfect mix of user generated content-meets-regular TV-meets- MySpace.
"TV is still a sexy place for consumers to show up on," he argues. "We can all upload to YouTube but how many people can get onto mainstream TV? That is still sexy."
He labels the "ambitious" project as possibly the future of the whole business. Of all channels.
Ultimately, whatever terminology companies use or the target market doesn't, MTV's goal is to "re-engage" and that means "creating a business without walls."
5.30pm: Ben Hammersley, the Times' first internet reporter, the first man to coin the word podcasting (it says in his biog) and the Guardian's blogging guru, on how the great digital age also brings with it great responsibility.
It is late in the day and Hammersley tries to rouse the audience with a quick reference to himself as an international sex symbol. An 'A' for effort but the Dutch aren't biting.
His talk starts on the rise and fall of civilization. Every civilization.
"We don't have a monopoly on long life spans and happy times," he intones. After a while things get to a point where they can't be improved upon anymore, then things historically have always gone down hill. Fall of Rome, loss of knowledge and all that.
Take the horse for example (more furrowed brows) as a new technology. Domestication, saddles, Genghis Khan taking over known world. But then you get so far and the horse couldn't be improved upon further: "you can't put a soft top on one can you?"
He now turns to internet and computing (audible sigh of relief from crowd who see known land ahead).
Computing is the only technology that you can use that can actually make a better version of itself. Email begets better email. Social networking sites likewise.
For first time "since we climbed out of a pri-mordial swamp" we have a technology that can improve itself.
First time ever there is a possibility that things might not actually eventually implode.
"Everyone in this room as at the beginning of this revolution and is part of it. It is like being Michaelangelo's flatmate," he says.
In 25 or 50 years time people will ask what we, the people working in new media right now, did at the beginning of the internet age. That means a huge responsibility.
"If we take this technology lightly, in a trivial way... push everything towards advertising, allow governments to censor, restrict, we will be failing the human race."
The short message is that we are creating a new world and we need to keep in mind the serious, meaningful applications the internet could be used for to keep making things better.
We are making it, it is our responsibility.
