Update: Fuzz.Gaulin.ca liveblogged *my* panel, so its kind of interesting to read a transcript of the thoughts that went down in chronological order.  The thoughts about blogging were the ones generally made by me.  Check it out over here. 

Wow, great day, Mesh. There was lots of talk and interesting discussion around how new media was affecting culture, entertainment, and traditional media — in addition to some fascinating thoughts around philanthropy 2.0 and of course, Mike Arrington.

I met a few interesting folks, including Jim Courtney, who I later discovered is actually the father of Brian Courtney, a fellow resident in the program of Internal Medicine here in Toronto. Wow — what a small world. Jim (or, simple “Mr. Courtney”) had lots of interesting stories to tell as he’s with Skype Journal, who is clearly a seasoned conference pro.

Also ran into Gary King, of b5media, as well as Ben Lucier of HIP communications (sorry man — I couldn’t make it to the evening event!), but also David Peralty of BloggingPro — all cool dudes.

One thing I did discover, though — Live blogging is kind of fun, but totally exhausting. Not physically — my fingers were up to the challenge, but there was something that mentally exhausted me in terms of typing *and* parsing what was said into something comprehensible (slightly) for blogging consumption.

My own panel today was quite interesting, if only that I can now say I was on the same panel as someone from the BBC and someone else who was a former (or active) journalism professor. A stimulating debate that, I think, that didn’t get quite the audience participation we had hoped — I wonder if we had more media professionals it would have been different. Either that, or we just weren’t exciting enough, perhaps. ;)

More to come tomorrow when the themes of the conference head towards business and new media — exciting stuff!

Keep tuned in for more details of the conference!

Other Mesh07 Notes:

• Chris Clarke’s opinion from a “student PR” point of view
• Mark Evans gives a quick opinion at MarkEvansTech
• C. Henderson breaks down how things may have changed since last year over at BankWatch.
• Rex Lee describes one panel that I didn’t take part in: “Digital Blinders: Are we one inch deep and one mile wide?” It seems like I missed one of the better ones!
• Michael Fitzgibbon gives an opinion of Day 1 from a Management Lawyer’s opinion
• Keebler.net breaks down some of the choicest comments throughout the day (hmmm … I noticed that i didn’t make it ;) ), including thoughts on different panels.
• Sean McDonald gives his thoughts on the Mike Arrington Keynote
• Douglas Walker who gives a blow-by-blow of the Mike Arrington Keynote
• Jim Courtney reviews the morning with his reviews and opinions of the Mike Arrington Keynote — and Austin Hill / Tom William’s presentation in addition to the 15 minutes of fame bit.
• Flickr stream of some photos of the day — see if you can pick me up slouched and live-blogging. ;)