Thursday night, an audience gathered on one side of town to purportedly hear about the Future of Media , and an audience gathered on the other side of town to hear about the future of the web. They all should have been at the other event. But this story has been told before. DemoCamp22, held at the theatre within the Rogers Media castle, welcomed guest speaker Yossi Vardi — most famous as the founding investor behind ICQ instant messaging — asked by ringleader David Crow about how Toronto could replicate Israel’s vibrant startup scene. The answer: Jewish mothers! Because, without guilt, there is only panic. “You have to have an ecosystem. It’s not just one component, it’s the education, the government, the media, the community.” Meanwhile, across town at the Drake Hotel, user-generated DigitalJournal.com gathered some usual suspects to chew over the Future of Media. With door prizes! Panelists included recently anointed CBC director of digital media Rachel Nixon, who helped nurture Vancouver-based NowPublic to the point where an American company took it over — leaving someone else to worry about how the hell something like that can ever make money. Based on scattered tweets — hindered by a lack of Wi-Fi coverage in the Drake Underground — the way media has changed was discussed more than where it might be going. Part of being polite is to not have any clear idea! Still, per the tweeted observation above, must every type typing into the internet still be conflated as part of the same thing? Turns out a system to sort out this quandary was presented at DemoCamp, where one of six local ventures given stage time was Thoora, technology designed to find the most interesting news each day: “Aggregating is not that hard,” offered its program manager Ian Chan. “All you gotta do is sit down, think — and do a lot of crazy science.”

Live notes from DemoCamp 22 with Yossi Vardi [ThomasPurves.com]