Dozens of Media Lab faculty and alums gathered for a daylong symposium Friday, June 20, to celebrate the career of Glorianna Davenport, head of the lab's Media Fabrics group and a longtime innovator in film, video, interactive media and new ways of storytelling.

The event was in honor of Davenport's retirement after more than three decades at MIT, where she initially worked in the Film/Video Section before co-founding the Media Lab in 1985. In 2000, she was a co-founder of Media Lab Europe, based in Dublin. Over the years, dozens of her graduate students have gone on to found innovative companies, and many of them returned to describe their work at the symposium (or "media jam session," as the program described the event).

"I'm a media junkie," Davenport said at the event, held in the Media Lab's Bartos auditorium. "Not so much for the media that's out in the world," she explained, "but for using video to understand what I see."