Filed under: Uncategorized
Mobs, Media and Mobilizing
Action For Change
Description of Hub Spaces And Community
Kiva, Change.org,
Regina O’Connell – Moderator, founding member of the hub.
Join Matt Flannery of Kiva.org
Steve Newcomb of Virgance
Ben Rattray of Change.org
Regina and her introduction to action and activism
Focus on the Family
This is social activism and enterprise 201
We want to drill down about how to make this happen, operationally and day to day.
What do you want to know about these organizations?
Speak about your organizations
-What was the inspiration, the big idea, how did you start out and where are you going.
-Democraticization of publishing online
-Rapid dissemination online
-Build a modern media work around people making actions happen
-They reach almost 1 million people a month
-They have the opportunity to network across the web and to mobilize people everyday around a news item in a news cycle to take collective action.
How many people consider themselves entrepreneurs and how many consider themselves as activists?
It’s incredible important that people consider themselves both as activists and entrepreneurs
What was the 20th century about? It’s about innovation.
The 21-century is about building all the crap we built in the 20th century.
Haven’t we built everything wrong, don’t we have a lot to do?
When we characterize what our lives are about we’re going to call this generation the next greatest generation, the same way as the people from the Great Depression and made humanity turn on a dime.
We need 500 Apollo projects, not just one. He is an entrepreneur turned into an activist.
He’s a serial entrepreneur; he created a little over 3 million dollars in those companies.
The fundamental question isn’t how do we build one power project, how do I build an Apollo project factory. So Vergence is an Apollo project factory.
Each is for-profit.
The interaction that we will see is between for and non-profit.
Kiva – Matt Flannery
They were in this weird space between for and non-profit. They found out a way to stay in business, but not become wildly profitable.
-They started with this blogger on the site in Uganda and some goat herders. They got a lot of press.
-They have 100 partners and sent $80 million dollars back and forth.
-They have Kiva fellows all over the world travelling and fighting a lot of fraud.
Inspiration, Aspiration and Operation
The concept of mobilizing people for good. What is the secret sauce of mobilizing people to different actions?
-Matt: We haven’t found the secret sauce. A few things have worked well, giving people a sense of feedback. People want bite size pieces of feedback, which makes for small bits of money. We’re trying to create an addictive experience for them.
-Steve: Get shit done. There’s not time for dreams and rainbows. Be honest. You have to be passionate. Everyone that joins our company has to work for one month for free.
Everyone knows everyone’s salary and equity position. Every Thursday it’s “Naked Lunch” and they go into the park and invite the public and we invite the employees. Two rules: Anyone can ask any question and the second is that they had to answer it. They had to make a bold point of being 100% transparencies whether in public or private. That’s when you create trust in a for-profit.
What’s the secret sauce: For many people you would go to church on the weekend and then go to work and pollute all week.
When you are building a team, when you say we are building well, building the team is everything. All you have to say is look we’re building well and we’re doing it.
Trust is the secret sauce.
Ben from Change.gov
-If you can’t mobilize 5 million people every month than you will fail by metrics.
-You don’t want the Obama team’s tools, you want that community. The tools are the underlying plumbing.
-The tools enable, but it’s the content that makes is possible.
-You’re competing against a lot of people trying to do the same thing.
-The answer is what is your really compelling message. What’s the most effective thing they used? Email and a sense that each person is connected to something bigger.
-Most people don’t want to start their own community, they want to be part of something powerful, where the message and tools are compelling.
-Obama set a framework for feeling empowered.
-Rainbows and unicorns vs. making people angry as two ways to mobilize or spark people to make change.
Kiva:
-Making people feel powerful is important
-subtle of collecting things, getting feedback, competing with others and being a little better, but always framing it in a larger social message.
The impact they had is not on Rockstar energy drink, we said we’ll ruin their brand if you don’t support Gay Rights.
Brands are remarkably exposed. If you’re a consumer brand you’re an undifferentiated product. If you piss of 10,000 people they will find each other and they are going to amplify that message and other people will hear it.
The carrot in this lawsuit and Rockstar agreeing to do this is:
We will promote you and defend you with you do all these things.
We want to see as a fair broker.
5 goals to be in a power project:
(There’s a role for the stick and a role for the carrot)
1. measure real change
2. involve as many people as possible.
3. use the carrot and never the stick.
4. a common model and technology for all
5. sustainable profit model where you earn your own keep
For example a business to get all members to go solar.
Right now even if we do business with the largest solar installer, we represent 1/3 of their LPNL.
They entered New Orleans 3 weeks ago. They have 300 people signed up in New Orleans right now, that’s change you can measure and that you can do as people all as one.
There’s a role for the watchdog to rapt the company on the wrist when companies do wrong. We have a deadline to the things we need to accomplish in the sustainability company. If any company wants to change their stripes, we are happy to work with them. So we will not protest Chevron.
Example:
One Block Off The Grid
The behavior of the average customers is not us.
They don’t require people to be activists to do things with us. Most people will do things if they’re cheaper, not to save the world. Just make it cheaper.
What’s is like to actually get your organizations to get stuff done and to make it work everyday.
-Giving people a sense of ownership. You need to institutionalize the things that used to make you special.
What’s the ugliest challenge you’re facing?
-They launched the US loans part and a lot of people don’t seem outwardly poor. I’m trying to find the right balance between listening to our users and doing what they say. You have to learn to balance that feedback. People just want to give a sense that they’re hurt.
They have 42 people involved at Vergence
-Being a social entrepreneur you will be faced with different challenges. When you have 40 people in their 20s having identity crisis. You have to find a balance between having a identity crisis and say get over it.
-Success- keeping it small no matter how big you get. The biggest trick of all is choosing the office space, everyone else sits at table scattered about. They took over Twitter’s old office. Choose a spot that has feeling and passion in it. Don’t just put your company in a place that is blah. A good spot is that if you choose an office space you know that during an earthquake you’re going down. Keep it small, keep it real.
Advice about keeping things real and getting shit done.
Ben:
It’s taken them 4 years to get 1 million users.
All I do right now is work. It’s aspiration and shooting for the highest possible. It’s a lifestyle, ti’s what I do.
-He’s found a way to work, that’s focused, but not as intense.
Matt:
-You have to have a health skepticism.
-listening to advice and knowing which pieces to take and which ones to question.
Steve:
Team is everything. When you’re buildng your team only have those types of people that were the killer people. Don’t let incompetence come into your tram.
A level people bring in A level people
B level people bring in C level people
Do the big thinss right and everything else gets easier.
My wise is writing a book called “My Husband is starting a company, have you seen him?”
Piece of advise you would give Ben (each to each):
Take your time, you have something really special, don’t forget to smell the roses along the way. Take it all in as you go.
Don’t do domestic. Brand is all you have. The brand is loans to entrepreneurs in development.
Open Questions Period:
No Pitches
No Solilqueys – how you feel about the state of the world, blog about it, tell your therapist.
(1) Revenue model for Change.org. They work with big brand nonprofits and help them syndicate campaigns. They do cause marketing and syndicate. They have a jobs for change social enterprise social jobs that are paid jobs.
(2) How do you discipline your team when shit is not getting done?
If someone is not working out then you fire them. An interview is an incredible poor way of determining if they’re good at a job. That one month try before you buy period has been absolutely important.
The acquired One Block Off the Grid. He fired the founder of the company. He does not mess around with firing people, we will fire them in a dime. If you make after that month of try before you buy period.
Some of the best people have jobs, so it’s hard to sustain the policy, asks Matt.
Steve: they have lost people but it’s passion that drives.
Try before you buy, but you pay them for the month is an option. Ideally you would pay them as consultants.
How do you build your initial community?
How do you get people to come to your Web site and then get them to come back?
How do I build a sufficient amount of community so they come back.
Cites Flickr as an effective way.
Sustainable distribution strategy and when you get people there how do you get them excited about them.
Blogging and getting press and P2P referrals.
How did you give up the for-profit to change the world?
-Looking at money is a narrow version of compensation.
It shocks me to no end how many people hate their jobs and go through iterations of it so they can buy 600 thread sheets.
100 years ago you had no choice in what you do. With the education and resources we have phenomenal choice. You not doing about what you care about ask yourself why not? The easiest time right now, it only gets harder. Look at yourself right now and what you really want to do.
Enlightened self-interest.
Did you take money from other people and how do you keep stakeholders from taking over your mission?
-Choose your investors wisely. Steve, he raised money from all sorts of places. For Vergence they weren’t write for venture capital, we were like a misfit choice. They went to a group of billionaires who felt there was a space between this for-profit and activism space. They are not raising from traditional Tier 1 VCs.
-Creating a marketplace to seed enterprise is hard. They went to socially minded angels.
-Revenue models are essential from the beginning.
Kiva – 80% is paid by their users.
-It’s never easy whether your for profit or nonprofit.
- When they first got coverage on television, they put a picture on their Web site with their employees saying: “Would you be willing to pay the rent?”
How do you reach the marginal customer?
-Moveon is 5 million people.
-Change.org their goal is not to go for everyone. Rather than trying to get all -300 million people in the country is all you need.
-The notion that old people aren’t online is a myth.
If Facebook were a country it would be the 5th largest country.
The largest growing demographic on Facebook is seniors.
They create a facebook game, they get half-a-billion pageviews a month. One of the things we will see as a constant is the power of social networks and what comes after democracy and what comes after capitalism.
Ben’s advice to Steve:
Idealab was considered a failure because they had too many companies.
“I just read the internet, I don’t listen to it.”
Expanding more and more is hard to do everything well.
Cards from people about what they want to hear next.
Write down the people you want to hear from and you think should be members of the hub.
Social Marketing Conference
They are opening up a second hub in the city.
Bring your work into the hub space.
Tell all your friends.
Filed under: Uncategorized
We”Open Video Conference
NYU Law School
http://openvideoconference.org/
http://openvideoconference.org/about/
identica
Opening statements and introduction
Yochai Benkler
|
Summary:Keynote: Yochai Benkler - (10:15 AM – 10:45 AM) Description:Yochai Benkler is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard, and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He writes about the Internet and the emergence of networked economy and society, as well as the organization of infrastructure, such as wireless communications. His work traverses a wide range of disciplines and sectors, and is taught in a variety of professional schools and academic departments. In real world applications, his work has been widely discussed in both the business sector and civil society. His most recent book, The Wealth of Networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom (2006), is considered a seminal peice on peer production and the power of networked socities. His work can be freely accessed at www.benkler.org. |
What we’re talking about is democracy and innovation.
The possibility of anyone to be effective in their ability to express themselves and to participate.
Industrial Information Economy
-stark bifurcation between porducerse and consumers
• passive large audiences
• professional, commercial producer Market based or government owned
In the Networked Information Economy
• Radically decentralized
• physical capital
o computation, communications, storage
o sensing and capture Human capabilities
o creativity, wisdom, insight, perspective
o presence
o socialization
-people get organized and not around formal structures, but that directly allow us to work with each other as human beings.
-Distribution action provides distributed possiblities for action, solutions, experimentation, adaptation.
⎥ From mountain bikes to free software.
Ownership was a process rather than a reference to an authority
• A new kind of democracy is based on an economy to act and allows a more transparent and diverse culture
• a larger set of people can express themselves
• as people become creators they become better leaders
Political democracy
• The creation of the 5th Estate It’s the fact that people are around everywhere with their devices and able to capture things at they happen.
• Where will news reporting come form? People forget is the role of humanity to capture what it suffers and to make it known around the world.
• Remixing messages: Bomb Iran song from John McCain’s joke
• If we’re talking about being there this s an important component.
It’s not the same to say things in text and not in video. Cultural democracy
• Participatory definition of cultural meaning
o Wikipedia Tompkins Square Parkway
• Participatory cultural practice as artists/fan exchange
o Coulton, “Code Monkey”
• Appropriation and reworking
Distributed innovation
• The smartest, most creative people, with the most pertinente experience, inutiiton or associations wit present problems and solutions never work in the same company.
• Open innovation platforms allow innovation without asking anyone permission
• Commons: No “May I innovate” conflicts to retard or prohibit any given innovation, by anyone
o –a proprietary regime trades control and a more widely accepted incentive structure for diversity of innovations and innovations
o –it’s not an opposition between market and nonmarket but an alliance between market, nonmarket and government.
• Battle over the institutional government
Standards
• standards: well specified, open to all, common codified elements that form the boundaries between differently implemented approaches to solve common problems
o TCP/IP
o etc
o
o locate a capacity to act
Human creativity in loosely coupled systems may lead to a faster innovation environment, but it’s under threat by legal battles, telecomm,s copyright, paracopyright (DRM0, Trusted Systems) broader copyright; internationl harmonization as ratchet.
Push back: legal/political, etc
He shows a study on how much fair use is used.
We’re seeing the development
Fair use tookit for documentary filmmaking
centerforsocialmedia.org/fairuse
Can we create a new social cultural spaces in the overlap of maket and culture?
Distributed innovation in the serve of distributed democracy.
Open video
Summary:Mozilla: The Future of Open Video - (10:45 AM – 11:30 AM)
Description:Description Needed
Everyone everywhere would be empowered to speak with video.
The big but is that we don’t the world of online video to be just television.
Distribution
Technical
• -creative -legal
-distribution
The future of online video could be open, could be closed.
• Right now most of video is closed.
• By 2013 online video will account for 90% of all traffic.
Questions to ask ourselves and that will determine the future of online video
• Is the technology transparent and open?• Can people participate in a meaningful way?
how far does that go? Are there levels of quality that art impactful for participation?
• Is what we’re looking at allow people to innovate and remix without permisson?
Mozilla’s answers to all the below is yes whenever it develops new products.
Mozilla is about to demo Firefox 3.5 which is trying to push the market towards online video.
-What do we do when we evolve and put video in a structure that the web is used to?
Pad.ma
PAD.MA – Public Access Digital Media Archive – is an online archive of densely text-annotated video material, http://pad.ma/ #openvideo
These choices matter in this early stage. We are an open stage where we either choose platforms that require licensing or we pick a path where we have open video and open innovation. This is a decision we need to make as a group. We can’t force this on people and we have to make it explicitly.
Using YouTube as a baseline for quality is interesting.
Shows mpeg4 version.
In real world situations it means that the quality choices is not one we need to worry about anymore, it’s most about getting these tools into people’s hands and how to do you show their content.
Markets, technology and standards.
Technology choices matter.
There’s a video tag now that is part of the HMTL 5 specification. It’s not the player itself, but the video.
Summary:Fair Use Battles: Discussion - (11:30 AM – 12:10 PM)
Description:Falzone will discuss his experience defending Shephard Fairey in the much-discussed Obama Photo case, and McSherry will talk about her groundbreaking work in Lenz v. Universal, a case fighting for the acknowledgment of fair use in issuing DMCA video takedowns.
speaker: Anthony Falzone — Executive Director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford Law School
speaker: Corynne McSherry — Staff Lawyer, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Anthony Falzone
Stanford Law School
Corynee McSherry
Electronic Frontieer
Foundation
Shows video for The Search for COunt Dante a film by Floyd Web
Summary:Lizz Winstead: Featured Talk - (12:10 PM – 12:30 PM)
Description:Online video can be a powerful tool for satire and commentary, enabling independent voices to challenge the way the news is presented. Lizz Winstead, co-creator of The Daily Show and co-founder of Air America Radio, will share her vision for a world where connected citizens keep an eye on those who are supposed to be keeping an eye on elected officials. Winstead is currently involved with Shoot The Messenger Productions, an independent comedy group that performs a weekly satirical news summary in the form of the Off-Broadway show, Wake Up World.
speaker: Lizz Winstead — Co-creator, The Daily Show and Shoot the Messenger
Summary:The Pirate’s Dilemma: Keynote - (1:15 PM – 1:45 PM)
Description: Piracy can be a business model, argues bestselling author Matt Mason. Rather than battling pirates, producers should learn from them. Instead of chasing lost revenues through expensive and contentious litigation, or locking down content with intrusive access controls, producers should leverage this new cultural phenomenon. As a consultant, Mason helps firms understand how pirates light the way: they create markets, signal trends, and develop innovative ways to reach these markets.
speaker: Matt Mason — Author, The Pirate’s Dilemma
Summary:Lightning talks – (1:45 PM – 2:35 PM)
Description:Earth-Touch
Earth-Touch is a new type of wildlife filmmaking company. Earth-Touch’s mission is to celebrate the beauty of nature and to reflect what happens in the natural world truthfully and instantaneously to a global audience. Earth-Touch is different to other mainstream wildlife production companies because it is making high quality wildlife media free, accessible and available to the online video watching community.
Critical Commons
Critical Commons is a non-profit advocacy coalition that supports fair use of media for learning and creativity, providing resources, information and tools for scholars, students and creators. Our aim is to build open, informed communities around media-based teaching, learning and creativity, both inside and outside of formal educational environments. This presentation highlights some key features of Critical Commons including the ability to upload and share media, tagging, annotating and commenting on video clips, and the creation of playlists to share with students, members of your community and the public at large. presented by Steve Anderson — Assistant Professor, USC School of Cinematic Arts
Blender
A brief showcase and demo of Blender, a powerful free and open source 3d modeling, rendering, and video composting software. presented by Bassam Kurdali — Director and Animator, Elephant’s Dream (2006)
Reframe (Tribeca Film Institute)
Brian Newman is the president & CEO of the Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) where he leads the Institute’s innovative programs in support of filmmakers, youth and the public. Brian conceived and launched the Reframe project of TFI, a unique initiative that is digitizing and make available thousands of films for DVD, streaming and video on demand.
Uncensored Interview
Uncensored Interview creates high-quality open licensed interviews with musicians, connecting fans and artists. They are pioneers in the industry, and have recently been transcoding their videos into the Ogg Theora format.
Description:Earth-Touch
Earth-Touch is a new type of wildlife filmmaking company. Earth-Touch’s mission is to celebrate the beauty of nature and to reflect what happens in the natural world truthfully and instantaneously to a global audience. Earth-Touch is different to other mainstream wildlife production companies because it is making high quality wildlife media free, accessible and available to the online video watching community.
Critical Commons
Critical Commons is a non-profit advocacy coalition that supports fair use of media for learning and creativity, providing resources, information and tools for scholars, students and creators. Our aim is to build open, informed communities around media-based teaching, learning and creativity, both inside and outside of formal educational environments. This presentation highlights some key features of Critical Commons including the ability to upload and share media, tagging, annotating and commenting on video clips, and the creation of playlists to share with students, members of your community and the public at large. presented by Steve Anderson — Assistant Professor, USC School of Cinematic Arts
Blender
A brief showcase and demo of Blender, a powerful free and open source 3d modeling, rendering, and video composting software. presented by Bassam Kurdali — Director and Animator, Elephant’s Dream (2006)
Reframe (Tribeca Film Institute)
Brian Newman is the president & CEO of the Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) where he leads the Institute’s innovative programs in support of filmmakers, youth and the public. Brian conceived and launched the Reframe project of TFI, a unique initiative that is digitizing and make available thousands of films for DVD, streaming and video on demand.
Uncensored Interview
Uncensored Interview creates high-quality open licensed interviews with musicians, connecting fans and artists. They are pioneers in the industry, and have recently been transcoding their videos into the Ogg Theora format.
Summary:Open Video in the Developing World: Discussion – (2:45 PM – 3:15 PM)
Description:Two leading figures from Brazil and Nigeria will highlight the role that open video has to play in the vibrant culture of. Igwe, a prominent Nollywood producer, one of the world’s largest film industries, will explain the new models that Nigerian film producers have adopted. Lemos, a professor and renowned free culture leader in Brazil will explain how people in developing countries have innovated and created their own models for video and cultural production.
speaker: Charles Igwe — Principal Consultant, the Big Picture
speaker: Ronaldo Lemos — Director of Center for Technology and Society, Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) Law School, Brazil
The public sphere and how it’s been
Brazilian officials have prohibited the use of digital tools to do political campaigning. Next year is Brazil’s election.
It is important to see how working class Brazilians are going to use these tools for shaping the public political discussion.
Approximately 80% of the Brazilian population has access to cellphones.
The most famous social network in Brazil is Orkut. There are more than 80 million Brazilians that subscribe to Orkut. People from the middle and upper middle class are fleeing Orkut and going to Facebook.
Summary:Institute for the Future’s People of the Screen and the Global Lives Project - (5:15 PM – 5:45 PM)
Description 
avid Evan Harris will present preliminary results of People of the Screen, an Institute for the Future research project on the future of the medium of video and the role it will play in our lives over the next 5 to 10 years. David will also present a progress report on the Global Lives Project, a growing video library of human life experience, which now includes 24-hour video recordings of daily life of individuals from Lebanon, Serbia, India, China, Indonesia, Malawi, Brazil, Japan and the US.
presenter: David Evan Harris — Executive Director, Global Lives Project and Research Affiliate, Institute for the Future
From limited to ubiquitious
Summary:Mediaspace Potentials and Mapping Open Video – (5:45 PM – 6:15 PM)
Description:
In the first part of this session Kari-Hans Kommonen will discuss the broader context of digital media evolution. As all media is becoming digital, the media environment is changing from media specific devices and rigid, corporate controlled channels into a flexible, software designable open space, the Mediaspace, where anyone can produce and distribute, a shift that is also the fundamental force driving Open Video. What new potentials does the emerging Mediaspace present for society, media and for Open Video? The second part, hosted by Sanna Marttila, discusses the concept of openness and its various characteristics, and maps different definitions and dimensions in open video. The aim is to shed light on some of the current understandings and emerging practices of open video through online video clips. The mapping is conducted collaboratively online during the conference where everyone is invited to share their videos and views.
presenter: Kari-Hans Kommonen — Director, Arki research group in the Media Lab of University of Art and Design Helsinki
presenter: Sanna Marttila — Researcher and Project Manager, Arki research group in the Media Lab of University of Art and Design Helsinki
Where is here?
-The cloud
-How to access to the cloud
Examples:
One Laptop Per Child uses mesh networks
fon – share wifi at home from everywhere
Couch surfing
COMES
It’s the verb.
Youtombed
Oink
Please leave me alone code for google bot
robots.txt for www.uchicago.edu
We should provide metadata for video.
We should consider all video live streaming and people can tag things like a robots.txt
We should have the infrastructure so that if people want to be blurred then they can pick what they want blurred.
EVERYBODY
People can be nicer than you think under the right circumstance.
Casey’s experiment with tween box.
It’s a moving carboard box that says I’m trying to get here and people move them. 40 people moved the box.
Innocentive
Liveops
who knows what you’re being harnessed to do.
Captcha sweat shops
-spam companies hire humans to solve captchas all day long.
-Everyone is a potential livestreamer.
Summary:Crowdsourcing an Open Government: Using Distributed Video to Hold the Elected Accountable – (10:45 AM – 11:45 AM)
Description: The Sunlight Foundation is working to allow citizens, bloggers and journalists become their own best watchdogs by improving access to existing information, digitizing new information, and creating new tools and web sites to enable all of us to collaborate in fostering greater transparency. Thus far, as the Transparency Movement has developed, transparency has meant a primary focus on data sources for budgets, votes, earmarks and other such data that is—or should be—available online. As we move forward, though, it will be crucial to incorporate the work of citizen videographers, photographers and others in townhalls and state legislatures around the country, to hold elected officials accountable for their words and actions where mere data does not reach. Join this workshop/brainstorm about how we move forward building a citizen-video infrastructure for the Transparency Movement that touches every community in the United States.
presenter: Jake Brewer — Engagement Director, Sunlight Foundation
presenter: Robert Millis — Capitol Hub
presenter: Abram Stern — UCSC/Metavid
Creating a Mechanical Turk for transparency
How far as a government body should we go? Should we be installing metavid?
8 principles of open government data
Summary:Keynote: Xeni Jardin – (1:30 PM – 2:00 PM)
Description:She’s the co-editor of Boing Boing and host/executive producer of the daily internet video program Boing Boing tv—she’s Xeni Jardin!
In addition to her work at Boing Boing, Xeni also contributes to WIRED, National Public Radio’s “Day to Day,” and hosts NPR’s “Xeni Tech” podcast. She has been published in online and print versions of publications including the Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, WIRED News, Playboy, Popular Science, Gotham, Nerve, Grammy Magazine, Make, and more. Xeni is a very uniqe mix of journalist, unpop-cultural commentator, geek, and video producer.
Xeni will relate her recent experiences in Guatemala, where serious political and social unrest has been spreading through social networks and other citizen driven media.
speaker: Xeni Jardin — Co-editor, BoingBoing.net
Virgin America is giving
BoingBOing their own video.
If you want this project to be
a success you have to play to your center. They have been around for two years. There’s 500-600
episodes and they’ve survived and still producing video.
There’s no more gold in the hills.
Seminar 2 Calendar
Summary:FOSS Editing Showcase – (2:05 PM – 2:45 PM)
Description:In this session representatives from various free and open source non-linear video editing solutions will present their projects.
PiTiVi is an open source video editor, written in Python and based on GStreamer and GTK+.
Lumiera is a Free/Open Source Non-Linear Video Editing (NLE) application project for GNU/Linux developed by the CinelerraCV community.
Cinelerra is the most advanced non-linear video editor and compositor for Linux.
Blender is an open source, cross platform suite of tools for 3D creation.
presenter: Scott Frase — Cinelerra
presenter: Edward Hervey — PiTiVi
presenter: Tom Judge — Lumiera
presenter: Bassam Kurdali — Blender
presenter: Fateh Slavitsky — Blender
presenter: Raffaella Tranitello — Cinelerra and Lumiera
Summary:Public Media, Open Content, and Sustainability – (2:05 PM – 3:05 PM)
Description:How is public media being supported today by foundations, government agencies, and the public? What could be produced or funded differently? What strategic interventions—from producers, funders, technologists, the public—could help public broadcasting now reach more of its potential? In this panel a group of funders and practitioners look to jump-start the conversation and explore the future of public media.
moderator: Peter Kaufman — President and CEO, Intelligent Television
panelist: Jack Brighton — Director of New Media & Innovation, Illinois Public Media
panelist: Alyce Myatt — Executive Director, Grantmakers in Film and Electronic Media
panelist: Joel Pomerleau — Head of Interactive Services, National Film Board of Canada
panelist: Eirik Solheim — Project Manager and Strategic Advisor, NRK (Norway’s Public Broadcaster)
panelist: Vince Stehle — Program Officer, Surdna Foundation
We’re went from a system where media was dominated by political elites where elites are irrelevant.
public library vs. shopping mall model
Embracing participatory media and helping to make it better using our community standing which we do have and using that role to support community standards and open source. Facilitate conversations between communities. Reflecting the full diversity of communities we wish to engage.
Public media needs to find a way to sustain itself in those ways.
Could PBS use a transaction channel.
Avoid creating walled gardens. Where are people and how can you deliver content to those platforms.
People are watching long formats on the Web, states Joel Pomerleau of National Film Board of Canada.
But what about content.
We need to lead the way to creating a rights framework and digitizing information.
Question: how do we get people to equate quality to free creative commons content.
Who has control of the attention data.
Summary:Perspectives from Traditional Media – (3:05 PM – 3:50 PM)
Description: While online video presents new opportunities for new media creators, it has shaken many of the foundations of traditional mass-media. This panel opens a dialogue with traditional media players, asking how the quickly evolving open landscape can be engaged with productively, and exploring the economic and social imperatives that drive decisions.
moderator: Anita Ondine — CEO, Seize the Media
panelist: Peter Flood — VP, Business Development at GCluster America, Inc.
panelist: Tracey Barrett Lee — Vice President, Bridge Media Systems
panelist: Glenn Moss — Adjunct Instructor, School of Management at Binghamton University
panelist: Tania Yuki — Senior Product Manager (Video Metrix), comScore Networks
Summary:Amy Goodman: Keynote – (4:00 PM – 4:30 PM)
Description:Amy Goodman, host and executive producer of the news program Democracy Now!, often asks questions nobody else will ask, bringing her viewers and listeners the sort of information you can only get from independent media. Goodman believes that journalists should serve as a check to the powers that be. Democracy Now! is currently aired on over 700 radio and television stations. The program has proven the power of grassroots analog media, and has also been a pioneer in online publishing. The show streamed live audio over the internet as far back as 1997 and they currently offer the program in full-resolution over bittorrent. While the technology has never been the focus, Goodman is a strong advocate for more open and decentralized forms of publishing; she spoke on related issues at the National Conference for Media Reform in 2008.
Goodman will relate her experience as an independent journalist, and how a more open future can bolster the efforts of people working in similar grassroots capacities all over the world.
speaker: Amy Goodman — Host, Democracy Now!
We need a media that builds bridges between communities and doesn’t advocate the bombing of those bridges.
A freeflow of information is what saves a democratic society.
History of Pacifica
-NPR
-PBS stations
-Communities started demanding that TV and other media put the public back in public media.
They are live streaming, they are doing video formats, they are getting video out on as many sites as possible, use open source tools and technology, providing tools for users to embed and use the whole show and segment.
They are moving into a new LEED certified studio.
All the technical know how is about breaking the sound barrier.
The Exception to the Rulers is what all media should be.
Static is the title of their second book because amid all the media, there is this distortion and misrepesentation. We need to go back to the original meaning of “static” -
criticism, opposition, unwanted interference. we need a media that is the 4th Estate not for the state.
Someone asked me what I would think of the mainstream media, I said it would be a good idea.
In Iraq alone there are more than a million people that have died in Iraq alone. You think about the power of the images, which is why video is so important.
We represent the sword and the shield; the sword is the sword we wield on others and the American people represent the shield.
We have a decision to make, whether to represent the sword or the shield.
The entire country of East Timor had one T line to send media out.
It is absolutely critical for journalists to be protected all over the world because of the power of the lens.
We talk about a free media, but we have to talk about freeing the media.
Our job was breaking from the convention.
It’s great to hear her version of the convention story.
Crimes for committing journalism.
If only there was a peace officer in the house!
We were arrested for committed the crime of journalism.
what protected us was the video of our arrest and it going viral.
what protects us and what will protect people in Iran is the videos and us watching.
it is shedding a spotlight, redirecting that spotlight to really what’s important.
90% of life is just showing up. We shouldn’t have to get a record to get things on the record.
We have to break the sound barrier everywhere.
Maintaining the secrets and saying no to showing the images, there is a force more powerful than the position on the United States.
People working together that is the greatest force and that can change everything.
Amy calls for Obama to whow the pictures, show the images from the Iraq war. “Imagine if we could see the true images of war?”
REMIXING
Summary:Who Owns Popular Culture? Remix and Fair-Use in the Age of Corporate Mass Media: Panel – (5:00 PM – 6:00 PM)
Description:Our shared popular culture is driven by Hollywood movies, television shows, video games and the latest musical hits. Due to its ubiquitous nature, it is entrenched in our everyday lives, becoming part of the language we speak to each other and also shaping how we see the world around us. Since pop culture is largely created, distributed and owned by a few major media corporations, copyright laws restrict its public use. Given the tight control of these powerful institutions, how can remixers, artists, educators, youtubers and filmmakers find ways to speak using our shared pop cultural language? How does fair-use intersect with copyright regarding our artistic rights to create, criticize and build on the past? This panel will attempt to demystify fair use and re-imagine what a truly public popular media culture might look like.
moderator: Jonathan McIntosh — video remix artist and activist, rebelliouspixels.com
panelist: Francesca Coppa — Director of Film Studies and Associate Professor, English at Muhlenberg College
panelist: Elisa Kreisinger — Remixer, writer, and video artist, elisakreisinger.com
panelist: Karl Fogel — questioncopyright.org
panelist: Neil Sieling — New Media Fellow, The Center for Social Media at American University
It’s important to comment what’s on the dancefloor now!
It’s bout taking a storyline and making it relatable.
minority voices may not have enough influence in the marketplace.
The public needs to demand the space it’s going to get.
Who should not have the right to have shared culture.
Question and answer:
So long as people have access to it, means you don’t have to worry about competition. Make things a possible to make it available as widely as possible.
The internet is the digital greenspace.
Unless all this stuff gets concentrated where all this open video can do some good political work, then it’s going to stay this way.
Making art is a political act.
Insyncerator:
How about creating something that streams video and audio streams separately. This will allow remixers to distribute videos that get around synclicenses.
The DailyShow recontextualizes. They bring a different talent to it.
It’s a pyramid, what echelon are you talking about whether it’s about citizen journalism and more legacy media. For people who do have a experience there’s no attribution and accuracy issues in practice.
It’s what news does is adds commentary to a story.
LinkTV does remix the news.
They record satellite feeds and put a commentary on how one issue was covered by various newscasters. It’s very clear in the voice over and has very clear attribution.
They haven’t transferred the complexity of their dialogues to video from text to video.
Peter Pierce from Pirate Bay Party in Sweden
-sentenced to a year in jail and $3.6 million fine
-There are three people who are part of the Pirate Bay including their ISP
-They trying to get their verdict revoked.
-Are you stressed out about going to jail for 1 year and paying a lot of money. “Not really.”
-I don’t think anyone is going to pay anything.
-Did you see yourselves in this light. We didn’t set off to be something like this. We thought it was a good thing to stay up, that is everything for us. It’s weird when people talk about us in the media. But it’s good to inspire people.
-How have things changed for you?
I don’t care about people that don’t care about me, so it’s no problem.
-Are there practical solutions for getting paid when media is largerly free?
Most of those people [media] are stuck with the idea that they have to get paid the way they used. So they don’t look at other possibilities. It’s not my job to come up with the financing deals. I fix things and they need to come up their own business.
It’s the freedom of exchanging cultural ideas and so on. Without distributions no one would see these things.
Where do you see yourself in 5 or 10 years?
-Are you a judge?
Do you see the entertainment industry compromising with you?
Only when they don’t have any choices left.
What form would such a compromise take?
They need a solution that’s free. We’re not going to charge people.
So maybe they should pay the seers.
The impact of the Pirate Party in European parliament.
In a couple of years he sees not needing the party. That’s the point.
It’s going to be so huge that you’re going to be like “fuck.”
In like two days maybe three.
He hopes the Pirate Party and Green Party grows in the US.
We don’t know where our servers are because the govt’ seized them.
That’s the end!
Filed under: Guatemala
Three months from now we’ll be on the road Guatemala bound for the next year. One of our main concerns in making that trip is our safety and making sure we have as many ways as we can to stay connected to the local community as we pass through. Ideally we thought we’ll have the MadMax mobile loaded with a GPS unit, police scanner and just last night after speaking to Victor Miles at the Art Deco convention I got another idea! Miles has been restoring mostly AM radios and preserving them in their original state. He’s got some beauties and knows a lot about AM. We were reminiscing about the days of AM and all the oldies stations and somehow we got to talk about shortwave. He mentioned something called a Reims Adapter that you add to your car stereo and it receives shortwave frequencies. I looked it up and the BMW forums had this great entry:
“Here’s what it is… “Also available was a Becker “Reims” adapter for short-wave reception which was attached to the lower portion of the radio under the speaker cabinet. In Europe, parts of Asia and North Africa the long-wave band (150-280 KHz) is used for broadcasting. Radio sets from this part of the world have the LW (long-wave, LF) and the BC (AM or MW) band and the short-wave band in use. The long-wave band is very interesting because long distance reception during the day and DX (very long distance at night) is possible. In America and Australia the long-wave broadcast band was not in widespread use so the car radios built for export did not include it. All of these radios can be used on 6V or 12V by changing the frequency modulator (also known as: “chopper”, “buzzer”, or “vibrator”) and some jumpers on the old G type transformer and by a switch in the later transistor powered supplies. The “vibrator” converts the low (12V) DC car battery voltage to “pulsating DC” which can then drive the primary of a step-up transformer to provide high AC voltage which is then rectified to provide high voltage DC to supply the B+ for the valves (vacuum tubes) which require higher voltage than the car battery could otherwise provide. Around 1958 as technology advanced, the heavy power supplies were first replaced by smaller solid-state transistorized units. In the early 1960s the electronic parts got small enough that the power supply was being included with the tuner and amplifier as a self-contained unit. By 1962 tubes finally disappeared from automobile radio design altogether.” But then Brad connected the dots and we came back to CB radios, which of course, many people use in Mexico. I had totally forgotten, but this video brought it all back:
Filed under: Thoughts
So true: "Ms. Sotomayor’s nomination is a big deal because never before in the history of the United States has any president nominated a Latina to the highest court. Only two blacks have ever been on the court, and the one selected by a Republican has been like a thumb in the eye to most African-Americans."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/opinion/02herbert.html?_r=1
Filed under: Cabbie Talk
I get visions of Guatemala linked by solar panels driving local radio stations.
–
AN Indonesian experiment in promoting democracy and social justice through community news radio has won the world’s most prestigious development prize.
At least part of the E150,000 ($268,000) purse will be used to install solar panels for powering studios and equipment at the network’s Jakarta station, which is known to its listeners as Green Radio due to its environmental focus.
Veteran Indonesian journalist and KBR68H news agency founding member and executive director Santoso visited Brussels last week to accept the King Baudouin Foundation award.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,25530680-36418,00.html
Filed under: Uncategorized
The important thing is not being a good writer, but having a voice.
He did an experiment to outsource his lovelife. He did a performance contest to see the number of dates the different outsource teams could create for him.
Why don’t I try to batch my dates like I batch my email. I had all my dates set for one day. He decided to do 20- 20 minute dates in one small area and jump from cafe to cafe.
He ended up with a longterm girlfriend from it.
Uses Mediatemple on his longform blog.
Straight from Google: What you need to know
Matt Cutts
mattcuts.com/blog
He is head of web spam or anti-web spam team at Google.
90% of blogs don’t even change their template,
Why do you blog?
Fame, access, attention, money, rankings?
Some people are just doing it for fun. And if you’re doing it for fun, I totally support you using WordPress to post cat pictures.
It’s ok to cat blog.
Most people want something from their blog.
Wordress is a great choice.
WordPress solves a ton of self-promotion; it takes care of 80-90% of SEO
There’s a few things you can do to optimize it
My plugins
-Akismet
-cookies for comments
-Enforce
-Feedburner FeedSmith
-WP Super Cache
How does Google crawl?
-We crawl roughly in decreasing order of Page Rank.
-It’s named for Larry Page.
-What’s page rank? It’s really simplicity itself. The number of people who link to you and how important those links are.
So it’s not number, but how important they are.
Don’t have a Back Link Disorder
-don’t get lost in the number of backlinks, keep a larger perspective.
-How does Google rank pages?
You want to be relevant and reputable.
Relevant is what’s on your page and reputable is what people say about you.
You want both relevant and reputable.
How can you be relevant and reputable?
Ex. Google wave – don’t just put up the press release.
Try to write often
Seo tips: keywords
-think about the keywords tha users will type. Include them naturally in your posts.
-ALT attribute are handy (3-4 relevant words)
-don’t forget image search, videos, etc.
-If you are a blogger think of ways that different people would describe something.
PERMALINK SETTINGS
He likes to do a custom structure on his URL.
If your blog has p=123 then you’re missing out a lot. Put a few words in your URL.
Google uses things in the title and URL.
Tweaking Titel, urls, contents
If you’re doing a post then think about SEO and what people would search for.
Make your Categories cool stuff like Linux, search
Keywords in url paths: example.com/my-keywords. USE DASHES.
-dashes are best
-next best is underscores
-no spaces is worst
-someone should ask me: what if I’ve already done my site, should I change things?
-Spend your time on making better content, it’s just something to be aware of.
Don’t Overdo It
Being relevant: summary
-Find something you’re passionate about
-Write often!
-Pay attention to the mechanics, don’t over do it.
Gaining a reputation: how do you get to be more known
-Be interesting.
-Blog called Fake Bill Gates blog
-blog called Fake Carol Bartes
-Update often
Apply Katamari Philosophy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katamari_Damacy
The philosophy is to start small, in a niche that you do well, but then build up and up.
You’re always reaching trying to reach bigger and bigger things.
Then you can imagine “enbiggening” to quote the Simpsons to bigger things.
Gaining reputation
there are so many other ways you can get links
-Eric Goldman – Law professor blawger about legal issues and search
-Do original research or reporting –
-Danny Sullivan – compared spam on Gmail and Yahoo
Give great information
-Louis Gray – watched his referrers and where people from coming from. Looked at the bots looking at his site.
Find a creative niche
-icanhascheezburger, on sentence
-Penny Archade, xkcd
Write some code
-write a good project people will use it
Lifehacker – high-quality tutorial and guides, you spend more time reading about productive than actually being productive.
Live blogging.
-Videos rank higher.
Google tools can help:
-webmaster console at google.com/webmasters
-google analytics
-Feedburner: my brand for free
-google website organizer
Filed under: Thoughts
This would be incredibly relevant at an international level:
http://www.alternet.org/rights/140108/time_for_a_truth_commission
Filed under: Cabbie Talk
As far as ideas go for creating citizen participation portals this one is clearer than most. I just wonder about how these can be created internationally?
http://opengov.ideascale.com/akira/dtd/2557-4049
Filed under: Notes
Not sure I necessary agree, but "the key ingredient in the attention game is relevancy" and since this was relevant I did read until the end:
http://www.zmogo.com/web/is-the-attention-economy-the-new-currency
Filed under: Guatemala
Indigenous organizations members of Waqib’ Kej and representatives of the peasants’ organizations of CNOC said yesterday that they would not 
support the demonstrations, neither in favour nor against president Colom. They view Colom and his government as part of the problem, and said that this is a dispute of power between different criminal groups within and outside the government.
Here is some recorded footage from the new conference.
The common political statement can be found here.
CACIF has called for a large demonstration on Sunday, and the government and the UNE party is also preparing a large demonstration on the same day.
From
MS-Asociación Danesa Centroamérica – Action Aid Dinamarca Comunicación y Propaganda, Comité de Unidad Campesina -CUC- Guatemala
More on Rosenberg
FROM HHrivas
Interview with Guatemalan AP correspondent, Juan Carlos Llorca.
