Scenes From MainEA

Call it MEAMaine, or MainEA, but our Eleventh Annual Media Ecology Association Convention held on June 10-13 was a great success, thanks to our gracious hosts, the University of Maine at Orono, and convention coordinators Paul Grosswiler and Ellen Rose.

Here now are some scenes from the event, and I hope you'll forgive me for mainly picking out the ones that feature me, but you may recall that I I have said on a number of occasions that this blog is mainly an exercise in narcissism.  And the rest of the pictures are available through the MEA website, if you want a more complete picture (and see also the Picassa web album for the event).

First off, here are some photographs from our program session on general semantics, as I was presenting my paper:

That last one wasn't too bad, I think, but you know I show these to you, warts and all.  Anyway, this particular session, which was chaired by Jackie Rudig, and also featured a paper by Geri Forsberg, and was supposed to include Corey Anton as well.  Unfortunately, Corey couldn't make it, but he was able to use Skype to present his paper from home, and that too was captured by our intrepid photographer, Octavio Islas:

See, that's Corey up on the big screen.  And you can also see a bit of the audience, and here's another view of them, taken while I was giving my talk:

And from another angle:

Of course, I was in the audience for other sessions, and here you can see me paying rapt attention:

Okay, busted, I was checked my tweets!  But I am able to multitask, you know?  Seated on my left is Geri Forsberg, by the way.   And no, I wasn't doing that constantly, look:

Anyway, later that day, I introduced Nora Bateson, daughter of Gregory Bateson, who previewed her outstanding, absolutely briliant documentary about her father, An Ecology of Mind.  I didn't find any pictures of that program, but here's a photograph of Nora taken during a break time--she's the one on the left:

And that evening, I introduced her sister, Mary Catherine Bateson (daughter of Gregory and Margaret Mead), who gave a featured presentation.  Here I am singing Mary Catherine's praises, followed by Dr. Bateson delivering her illuminating address:

The next two photos come from Facebook, courtesy of Peter Fallon, from a session that I chaired and he presented on, along with Geri Forsberg again, and Jerry Harp via Skype.  Peter is on the left, and Ed Tywoniak, rendering technical assistance, on my the right:

 

 

And here I am that evening, presenting the 2010 MEA Awards. Among the individuals that we honored were Mary Catherine Bateson, who received the MEA's Neil Postman Award for Outstanding Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity, and Don Ihde, recipient of the MEA's Walter Ong Award for Outstanding Career Achievement in Scholarship.

And here's a shot of our most excellent host and technomeister, Paul Grosswiler, in action:

And finally, speaking of our host, here is some ambiance, atmosphere, environment and ecology of this outstanding event:

 

 

And  after all, there is nothing like an MEA Convention, nothing in this world, at least!