We recently stopped by VII photo gallery in Brooklyn during one of Swiss-Miss’s Creative mornings. A collectively owned agency founded by photo-journalists, VII focuses on photojournalism and changes and development of society and culture.

You may recognize one of the agency members, James Nachtwey, winner of the 2007 TED prize, who launched the site http://xdrtb.org/ in October to generate awareness of the story about an extremely drug resistant strain of TB known as XDRTB. If you haven’t checked it out yet, do so and spread the word. It’s a great example of the power of photography and media in creating awareness and subsequent political and public action.

Along this concept, Demos, a UK-based “every democracy” think tank is putting together an event in London this week (November 18): How to make news and influence people: Media and journalism in the network age which will discuss “the new politics of images” and “what kinds of news and photo-journalism are emerging to connect people with politics.”

From Frog design:

The event, held at London’s King Cross Hub, will gather a salon of experts to examine the making and implications of James Nachtwey’s XDR-TB’s awareness campaign, a much acclaimed example of visual storytelling and a winner of the TED Prize 2007. Panelists include Charlie Leadbeater, Author of We-Think; Charlie Beckett, Director, POLIS, LSE and author of Supermedia; Amy Novogratz, TED Prize Director, TED Conferences; and Alfie Dennen, Founder of We’re not afraid, Moblog and XDR-TB ‘Find-me.’

For a peak at the back-end research, they should talk to Fame Theory, the creators of Fame Game, a site that tracks and analyzes celebrity fame through a combination of event photography and online media. They’ll be holding an event of their own tomorrow entitled “Fame Theory 101″, exploring How Fame Game and the internet are changing the world of branding, public relations, and social and celebrity culture.

More than just a site about the vain and self-promoting, they’re using the data they’re gathering to develop all algorithms and visualization to track the functioning of popularity, offering insights into how can you leverage the power of the media to create more attention for your brand/project/client/artwork… or even XDRTB?

Next steps.. leveraging that for social good. We know, we know…we’re working on it.