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The first edition of the Interdisciplinary New Media Conference has been a great opportunity for national and international academics from fields such as journalism, media, communication, philosophy, sociology, psychology, economics and computer science and professionals from the audio-visual new media to get together and exchange ideas on the research and development of this emerging field. We would like to take this project further and in the future consider creating a group for new media research and education.

The participants found the presentations interesting and the debates stimulating.

The conference opened on May 21^st with the Official Welcome Address delivered by Senior Lecturer Ph.D. Elena Abrudan, Head of the Journalism Department (Babes-Bolyai University) and General Conference Chair, followed by the the Rector’s Address delivered by Professor Ph.D. Andrei Marga.

Four other keynote speeches followed: Web 2.0, Social Networks, and Media Students – Professor Ph.D. Melissa Lee Price (Staffordshire University), Researching the Blogosphere – Senior Lecturer Ph.D. Georgeta Drulă (Bucureşti University), Bare and Share – Culture of File Sharing in Romania - Szakáts István (Altart Foundation), Academic Websites and Web Rankings – Senior Lecturer Ph.D. Alina Andreica (Babes-Bolyai University).

The afternoon session of the conference started with a digital art exhibition featuring digital artworks provided by the Altart Foundation and several Journalism students. The participants were especially captivated by the works of first-year Journalism student Ovidiu Duţă.

Each of the two following panel sessions – Researching New Media Systems and E-business Management – was opened by two extremely interesting keynote presentations, one on Data Mining and Knowledge Representation by Lecturer Ph.D. Cristian Săcărea from Babeş-Bolyai University’s Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science and one on E-business Management delivered by Lecturer Ph.D. Robert Buchmann from Babeş-Bolyai University’s Faculty of Economical Studies and Business Management. Presentations in both panels started up debates on the role of e-marketing, studying virtual communities and their impact on consumer culture. Both panels also featured presentations from business professionals – Paul Lupoian and Cristian Popa from Alphasoft presented methods of digitizing print and using it for research and Sergiu Biriş, the General Director of Romania’s top website the Trilulilu video-sharing portal who presented ways and means of managing a business based on user generated content.

The first day of the Conference ended with a dinner at Piramida Restaurant where the participants had the opportunity to get to know each other better and discuss future projects.

The second day of the conference had a more heterogeneous approach to new media within the Digital Media and E-publishing, Online Society Dynamics panel. The participants proved interested both in presentations covering niche topics such as Studying Sexuality through the Internet (Sebastian Bartoş, M.A. student in Clinical Psychology) or In-Game Advertising (George Prundaru, M.A. student in Interactive Media) and the broad topic of blogs and the way they have shifted traditional socio-cultural paradigms. Assistant Horea Badau held an inciting presentation entitled Bloggers -  A New Community of Leaders. Also, presentations like the one by Lecturer Ph.D Radu Bîlbîie (“Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu) on a Narrowcasting System for Public Institution lead the way towards the final event of the conference, the Interactive Multimedia Student Presentations.

Two teams of Journalism students presented their projects. A team of first-year students (Andrei şi Cezar Candrea, Irina Breniuc şi Iulia Becheş) presented an online portal designed as a meeting place for student passionate about photography, a portal that will soon host photo galleries of Journalism students. The other team comprised of second-year Journalism students (Radu Morea, Andrei Leczfalvi, Claudiu Dănilă) presented a remarkable interactive visual guide of the Journalism Department, allowing navigation through different rooms, browsing equipment and interacting with professors.

This first edition of the conference was all in all a great opportunity for establishing common grounds between specialists from different fields, thus opening the way to a truly interdisciplinary approach to new media in Romanian scientific research with considerable market applications.

General Program Chair

Senior Lecturer Ph.D. Elena Abrudan – Head of Journalism Department

Program Chair

Assistant Radu Meza