Takeaways from the ONA seminar

Last night I attended an Online News Association social gathering and panel discussion at CNet headquarters in San Francisco. Lots of familiar faces there: Paul Grabowicz, Bruce Koon, Jai Singh, John Roberts, Jeff Pelline, Neil Chase, Scott Rosenberg, Barry Parr, Susan Mernit, Mary Hodder, Anastasia Goodstein, many others.

Also got to meet cartoonist Mark Fiore and Bill Gannon, Jeff Birkeland and John Briggs from Yahoo!

A few highlights from the sessions:

Mark Fiore showed off some of his animated cartoons. I asked why he doesn't blog, while other cartoonists like Tom Tomorrow do. He told the audience it's because he likes his work to speak for itself, and because of time constraints. He also said the music he uses is license-free, and he does most of the voices himself, with occasional help from some friends.

Jeffrey Veen from Adaptive Path spoke about technology trends in online media, emphasizing the power of buttom-up, emerging media such as Metafilter and Wikipedia and collaborative tools such as upcoming.org (see who'll be attending events in your city).

Jackson West, editor of the 2-month-old site SFist.com (a San Francisco-based arts & entertainment version of New York's Gothamist.com) and Technorati's Mary Hodder held forth on the power of blogging and independent media, with the CBS forged-documents fiasco a popular recurring theme.

Couldn't stay for all of the last session, which featured Gannon (Yahoo's editorial director), Chase (ME of CBS MarketWatch), Pelline (editor, CNet News.com), Rosenberg (ME of Salon) and Tim Olson, interactive director of KQED.org.

Later: More writeups on the evening from Mary Hodder and Niall Kennedy. And here are Niall's photos of the event.