Get some really innovative people in a room together and ask them to share what they do.

That’s the simple concept behind the Expo at Knight Foundation’s Media Learning Seminar this week at the Intercontinental Hotel in Miami.

At the Expo, I went from booth to booth, hearing about innovative ideas and gathering resources that could inspire my own work in the Knight School of Communication at Queens University of Charlotte.

Among my favorite finds:

The Center for Civic Media at MIT: innovators and creators of the future. In conjunction with the MIT Media Lab, these guys get to try cool stuff to find out what works. Their orientation toward experimentation is noteworthy.

Book Brewer: an e-service that allows users to create, publish, and distribute books as e-books and print-on-demand.

Change By Us: a vehicle for partnerships between a city’s leadership and its communities. Leaders can use the service to offer a digital forum for citizen input, ideas, and community-based connections on a city-wide initiative.

DoSomething.org: a digital gathering site for cause-driven young adults. The site gives teen users the digital infrastructure to make a difference in their communities.

Ricochet Labs: a digital design studio an infrastructure for geographically-located games. Users create quiz-based games for specific communities and ricochet labs provides the digital infrastructure and support.

I can already envision some ways that each of these services can change my interaction with students in the classroom, the ways I invest in inquiry and research, and the means through which my students engage our community.

For my own personal gratification, I am happy to report that no less than 4 people at the expo asked me how I was taking notes directly into the digital conference brochure (yet another successful use of the Note Taker HD app and my stylus). Media learning for all.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s 2012 Media Learning Seminar in Miami Florida brought together leaders of community foundations, media professionals, technology entrepreneurs, researchers, educators, and foundation staff in the foundation’s quest for informed and engaged communities. I attended as a representative of the James L. Knight School of Communication at Queens University of Charlotte, a grantee of Knight Foundation. Read my articles on the conference here.