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.

Radio Head’s been cited up the wazoo as the pioneer of “pay what you want” content, but now magazines like Paste and GOOD are getting on board too. “Great!” I say as I renew my subscription. But wait… 100% of subscriptions go to your choice of 12 amazing non-profits ala Choose Good partners. So if I pay less, the only one’s I’d be screwing over is charity!? “You got me,” I say as I wag my finger, “Check and mate sir”. Dare I pay more for my subscription now that the moral obligation’s on me?

Perhaps the thought is that it evens out (more people subscribing to the magazine means more funds raised overall. That is, IF more people subscribe and IF people still give and proportionate average of the subscription cost.  Really, the ones taking the most risk are the nonprofits (chances are better that more people will subscribe (good for GOOD) than will continue to donate enough to break even with their current fundraising rate… but maybe they have an algorith we don’t know about…mmm, algorithms). They are highlighting Good stuff in their magazine anyway, so either way, dissemination of positive information and inspiration is great. But we’ll be eager to see what happens to the pace at which they’re reaching the $1 million fundraising mark!

You can name your price for the next three months which includes a year subscription and access to all GOOD parties.