A couple weeks ago I was reading Wilonsky's blog post about Little Forest Hills and caught a reference to Dean Terry, a documentary filmmaker who is also “professor of emerging media” at UT Dallas.

I promptly emailed Dean, noting that we are "emerging as hell" and we met for breakfast this morning.

If nothing else, it was cool to find someone (actually a pool of someones) thinking about the kinds of things we're doing right here in town -- sometimes it feels like we're the only ones outside the coasts, even though I know that isn't the case.

Dean definitely "gets it," and he comes from an entrepreneurial background, which means that this new program has an excellent chance of succeeding in making Dallas a middle-america hub for social media, new media and all forms of "emergent media." When I hear an academic say that he, too, wants to be "emergent as hell," I know that this won't be about pedantic book learnin'.

Here's their full press release.