Open Video Conference NYC

Open Video Conference, NYU Law School
http://openvideoconference.org/

http://openvideoconference.org/about/
twitter: #openvideo

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.

New 3.5 Firefox components:
Video tag
Exposure to the rest of the web
Codecs:

There’s a video tag now that is part of the HMTL 5 specification. It’s not the player itself, but the video.

There is information that can interact with the video which is now raw material that you can interact with.
The codec is open for innovation.
Mozilla is an organization that is not afraid to do things that take time.
It will take a long time for open video, too.

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

Floyd was sued for infringing copyright because Dante’s heirs have sued.
Fair uses’ protections are expanding.
Lighting tour focusing on court cases
2 Live Crew’s remake of Pretty Woman.
Questions that fair use asks:
-creativity
-new meaning
-new expression
The type of creativity that the court focused on in the 2LiveCrew case is parody which is a type of criticism.
Which is why many people think that as long as you’re criticizing something that you’re covered under fair use. That’s wrong.
Example: Bill Grahams archive case about the Grateful Dead book and its use of Dead posters
-The courts ruled that despite the fact that the book wasn’t criticizing things of themselves, the book was creating an artifact of the Grateful Dead posters to tell the story.
That’s good news for documentarians because it means you can use “artifacts” to tell you story or the raw material for something new and creative.
-Korean War Memorials Stamp
The sculptor sued the postal service because the sculptures were his.
An objection to the expansion of fair use protections:
-you should be able to use someone’s copyrighted work without paying them.
-The fundamental purpose of copyright law is to encourage creativity and new expression, not to reward the authors.
Electronic Frontier Foundation presentation
The bad news is that it’s easy to get your work taken down.
Fair use online: some notes from the frontlines
You need intermediaries to distribute content like video.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act Takedowns
-DMCA safe harbors to avoid liability for copyrighted material that you facilitate
-limit injunctions
-To stay in the safe harbors the ISP MUST:
-Expeditiously take down material if compliant notice
-Restore only after counter-notice and 10-14 days to file suit
Question: how well does taking others terms of service help us?
It’s easy for the system to be abused because the ISP doesn’t have to go to court to take down content.
There isn’t a lot of incentive to keep stuff up, there’s a lot of incentive to take stuff down quickly.
People do fight back:
Example of video taken down
Mom recording her child with song of Prince in the back. Prince’s lawyers sued.
Stephanie Lins got mad and sued Universal for false representation.
Youtube has setup Content ID to filter videos.
She shows examples including the sign language video of “Crazy”.
Warner Music – thousands of video taken down in beginning at 2009
There’s no reason to believe anyone at Warner is even looking these videos.
If your video is taken down:
If filter: consider submitting dispute
If Terms of Service violation: Request a review
If DMCA: Request copy of notices: who’s complaining? What about?
-Try hotline, if available (e.g. Viacom)
-Consider counternotice
-Consider lawsuit under 17 U.S.C. 512 (f)
Eff.org
Trademark disputes
What is protected: words, symbols, colors, etc. used in commerce to designate the source of goods and services.
Infringement: using a mark so as to cause likelihood of confusion as to source.
Common “speech”defenses to trademark complaints
-noncommercial use
-nominative fair use
-first amendment balancing.
Tips for avoiding/mitigating trademark complaints
-be noncommercial
-find a service provide with backbone, see their white paper.
don’t use mark alone in domain name
-disclaimer
-don’t borrow more than necessary
-don’t offer to sell domain name
-don’t use marks in metatags
Fair use doesn’t get protected unless you push back.
Attribution is a great way to avoid these fair use disputes. DUH!

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.

If you want to control your content, be the best provider of it. So people have to come to you to get your content.
The old media are vicious mean, bloodsucking beasts. Trying to come up with business models to keep their business models in control. ouch!
How can we build business models that sustain open video models.
As a filmmaker this giving it away for free has been the best way to give money.
Sunday at 2 pm
Sita Sings the Blues

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.

His entire life has been to oppose this legislation that has been approved by the Brazilian Senate.  Wiretapping is out of control in the country. There is an absolute abuse in the part of the authorities on how they use wiretapping. They are opposing this legislation and this is a very important issue and it needs much more discussion in Brazil. Right now it’s out of control.
Questions:
Security through SMS.
What kinds of changes do you think will happen when there’s more internet access in Brazil?
Summary:Human Rights and Indigenous Media: Dilemmas, Challenges and Opportunities – (3:15 PM – 4:00 PM)
Samir and Sam with Witness
Leah Shafer
-Video is a powerful to promote human rights, but open video is more powerful.
Story for this week is Iran elections. It used to be the big media would bring in other folks, not so now the big media is linking out and fact checking information from citizens.
Ex. NY TImes linking out to Iran election protests
Pittany’s Liveblog was the 11th live blog in the world
This slide to play the Mousavi video pending technical help on how to convert Flash video format to MPG
You can’t do this with the ordinary tools you use, except everyone in the audience suggests streamclip.
Technology allows playback only.
Licensng fees make it pay to play.
Adanced editing tools are hard to use and expensive.
Open video promotes human rights into two ways:
Human rights is everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right included freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart info and idea throuh any media dn regardless of frontiers.
Open content is about democractic culture.
Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life.
Open video enable broader participation, inclusion and equality.
Human right orgs, journalists academic and artists should use open video for content that is openly funded and openly needed.
Sam Gregory speaking on Human Rights and Witness
Witness was created from the Rodney King moment.
What happens when every citizen has a video camera in their hand to capture human rights abuse.
How does open video relate to human rights?
What if we had the values of human rights written into a terms of use?
Dan McKillon
Questions regarding material:
Safety consent and retailiation risks.
Re-victimization.
documentation => consequences
What are the risks with circulating video?
Integrity of an image
Metadata is important so we know the what and who and the privacy concerns around each.
Examples of other projects:
-Student chapters to create videos to lobby and mixed with particular audiences.
-what ethical frameworks we need to share within the open video and the broader online video moment?
“Manufactured Landscapes”
http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/film.php?directoryname=manufacturedlandscapes
There’s a movement for the repatriation of indigenous populations
Archive of repatriated work
http://www.irititja.com/
Isuma Tv

Summary:Institute for the Future’s People of the Screen and the Global Lives Project – (5:15 PM – 5:45 PM)

Description:David 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

Forecasts
Montage for the masses
-remix and participatory video culture will enter the main stream”
The whole world is making
-user-made video will be a transfomative political tool.
Swimming upstream
-real-time video will enable networked lifestream
ex. Onion
The Susan Boyle Effect
-video culture will encourage bottom up creativity.
Re-educating our senses
Video Tsuanami
Model:
Starts with Creation:
-animation
-cameras/capture
-CCd
-CGI
-Creation/production
-editing
-effects
-optics
-rendering
Collection:
-archiving
-indexing
-metadata
-managing of these large collections.
-video search
DISPLAY
-form factor
-small projectors
DISTRIBUTION
-networks
-aggregation
Every mobile device will have the capabilities to edit and to do Full-Hd.
We will not longer come to assume that video is a linear format.
There will be interaction and moving things around.
Obscura Digital in SF demonstrating new video technologies.

From limited to ubiquitious

bendable display technology
Imagine a display on the back of your dog.
Ex .MIT’s wearable 6th sense
WHAT NEW POWERS DOES VIDEO CONFER AND TO WHOM?
Some of their projects:
An artifact from the future.
There’s new levels of literacy and storytelling in the storytellers themselves.
-Witness Hub
-Burma V.J.
Video Voice New Orleans
Channel 19, India (Video Vo
lunteers)
Political engagement
Technology is power
www.peopleofthescreen.org
way to research video with a video platform.
They used the Kaltura platform.
“assymetrical bandwidth”
Our bandwidth is skewed towards the receiving of content.
He is thinking through French Philosopher
Anil Le Fete  and his study of pixels.
Everything under People of the Screen is under a Creative Commons license.
Research conclusions are not public yet, they will become public domain and they will be delivered in a public way.
Any research done on the so much interaction being done through screens.
ex. Stanford professor doing counselor/therapy through virtual life.
24 hour, 10 countries and a group of 10 core people will document life
globallives.org
Why?
It’s about provoking people to rethink their relationship with the world.
Selection Criteria:
59% of the world lives in Asia so …
how many people live in rural and urbran….
They have a subject selection status
Relaunch the Web site so anyone can edit.
.DotSub
Google Maps and Google Earth
Mediaspace Potentials
Kari Hans Kommon

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

Meta-medium, because the computer is a programmable device you can make it function like any device. You can program it to function like any device so you can embed and include the functionality of those devices within the computer.
Key characteristics of the Mediaspace:
-hard boundaries => soft boundaries
-one to many = one to many and many to many
Media is our nervous system. We negotiate our beliefs and designs in the various media that its members share.
Mediaspace potentials:
open
-Everyone has a access to the Mediaspace as user and creator, as editor and distributor.
unbounded
-Due to digital flexibility, media is freed from tis containers and packagin.
Available
-The medispace is a memory system that keeps media available if we can identify it, either with identity or metadata.
Addressable
-Media of interest can be identified witha n address that makes it available and linkable.
Structured
-Media entities have intenernal structures tha tmake it possible to address and refer to their parts.
Changing
Programs can cahgne and evole dynamcially; creators and communities cna design their emdis for managina nd exploting such change.
Reconfigurable
-media can be reconfigured by anyone.
Interconnected
Navigable
Organizable
Individual
Shareable
Designable
As a new form it is not designable in content, form and function to failitate complex practices.
Examples:
Digital television
-none of these potentials, expect when media is captured and moved to the mediaspace
-P2p file sharing
YouTube
-the clip is the limit.
Centralized services:
-What happens to my media, my community, my history, my social network if the service Y:
-goes out of business
-changes their terms of service
Designability as openness
-try to make the media space as designable as possible to make new tools, new standards
Saturday
Opening Remarks
Here Comes Everybody

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

Having an interest-based view of the internet and have an appriopriate mesh
Maybe we have an open id for videos on the Web.
Using the same Mozilla 3.5 pop up metadata for campaign donors.

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

They held
They are launching a new UI for Boing Boing video, access this from BoingBoing.com and links to open video friendly distribution networking including Miro and Plex.
They are launching a co-branded video player with Miro.

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.

How do independent video startups survive.
They are sustainable by partnerships with Federated Media and Youtube.
They used Creative Commons license for all their content.
The content on the show is diverse.
The international documentaries are one of the areas that mean the most to her. She wanted to produce stories that editors didn’t feel were important. Making the global/local and making news about social change and produce something true and not glammed up.
BBTV World:
She shows the Guatemala video.
She teaches young people in Soloa to use Flip cameras and let’s them capture their lives.
Doni Turyano is using cameras to document life in Guatemala
These cameras are not magic wands, but maybe the power of technology is one step towards opportunity.
When we launched this project I had no confidence that people would watch this.
This is a different medium than television.

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.

Is there a natural demand where public media is stronger?
There needs to be a broader definition of what public media is.
When Radiohead released their album using a voluntary payment strategy, they took part in something public media has been doing for decades.

Who has control of the attention data.

Question and answer:
In a democracy you get the government you deserve.

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!

CB'ing it all the way to Guate

Three months from now we’ll be on the road bound for Guatemala. One of our main concerns is our safety and making sure we have as many ways as we can to stay connected to the local communities we pass through. Ideally we thought we’d have the Mad Max mobile loaded with a GPS unit, police scanner and radar detector but last night after speaking to Victor Miles at the Art Deco Weekend By The Bay exhibition, I got another idea!

Miles has been collecting old AM radios and restoring them to their original state for over 20 years. He’s got some beauties over the years and knows a lot about ancient electronics. We were reminiscing about all the oldies AM radio shows and soon started discussing shortwave radio. 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:

“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. 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.”

When I mentioned shortwave to Brad he connected the dots and said, “Why not just get a CB radio? They broadcast on shortwave!” Of course! I had totally forgotten how many CB’ers there are all over Mexico and Latin America. Of course, this video helped bring it all back:

Jakarta station sees democracy drive deliver prize | The Australian

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

WORDCAMP

WORDCAMP
May 30, 2009
Mission Convention Center
I. Tim Ferris, author The 4-Hour Work Week
A. Writing: How I write

The important thing is not being a good writer, but having a voice.

People most often are quite bad at predicting what they would like. 
when in doubt, write about things that make you angry but never attack your readers.
Write about the problem and not the person.
He does his best writing from 1 am to 5 am. 
Find your best writing or synthesis period.
Put on music – Federico Arebelle
He drinks wine and a cup of yerba mate.
Edit by hand
Ignore SEO for the first draft. When you start off with the objective for optimize for search it’ll be awful.
Write your post and then if you want to go to Google keyword tool then you can search by those and make your choice. 
B. Video and Photos
1.Nothing travels faster than text and text gets indexed.
2.Having someone come to my site is more valuable to me than going to YouTube
3. If he offers video then he adds
4. StumbleUpon is the cheapest source of traffic, it works extremely well. It provides a slow trickle of high quality traffic. 
5. He doesn’t chase the news, it’s a tireless, not fun job. If you’re not having fun, your readers will know.
6. Finding good photos go to Flickr, go to event search and find most often
 
C. Comments
1. The livingroom method
2. He sets guidelines at the top of the page.
3.
D. Playgrounds and Labs:
1. Longform: www.fourhourblog.com – Encourages people to once in a while throw something ridiculuous into a content heavy site.
2. Shortform: http://blog.timferris.com
3. Microform: www.twitter.com/tferris
Your blog should not be a source of stress for you. 
Think big, but play often. Take sun seriously!
Questions:
-He doesn’t use an RSS reader because unsubscribe often. He has taken 1-3 weeks often and using other social media he can take long periods off.
-There’s some impressive, incredible critiques of 4-hour work week that I don’t recommend, such as being idle. In the book work is defined as something you do less of.
-The blog doesn’t run his life, there are times when he spends a good deal of time on it and he enjoys it.
-What other plugins do you use?
    -redirection
    -popularity contests
    -share this
    -nothing too fancy
    -he tries to minimize the number of plugins because sometimes they don’t play so well.
-How do you integrate Twitter?
    -He does not use a desktop app
    -some people might enjoy seismic desktop or tweetdeck
    -he minimizes his time on twitter
    -generally speaking he will look at his @ replies everyday and otherwise he doesn’t try to follow everyone.
-The sure path to unhappiness is trying to please everyone. 
    -the complaining doesn’t stop, so just tune it out.
    -if you go into Twitter like it’s an all you can eat buffet then you will get nothing. 
    -Greasemonkey script allows you to view multiple pages at the same time.
    -open each link in a new window.
    -Go into Twitter with a specific purpose in mind. 
    -If you’re wasting time, but having fun, it’s not a waste of time, it doesn’t need to be productive. You need to at least be aware of not being productive. 
-He doesn’t prioritize non-content over content.
How can I add the Tim Ferris to my lovelife? Turn into the kleenex of lovelife animation.
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

More on Rosenberg

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.

Lamentablemente

From an anonymous contributor:

“Lamentable, situación, hay política sucia detrás de todo esto,  hay narcotráfico metido, hay lavado de dinero sucio también,   pero sobre todo hay un  ser humano que parece ser que no le dio la gana ser una estadística mas (un muerto mas) y  se puso los pantalones bien puestos, y  saco valores no se de donde ni porque, pero toma la decisión de morir por hacer ver mucho mas evidente y publico los problemas de todos los días en nuestro País.

Yo creo  en la veracidad del Video,  se que hay gente muy pudiente detrás de esto, aunque  la oposición política de este gobierno también es capaz de todo,  no creo que sea montaje te digo y esta por seguro que Rodrigo no  tenia necesidad de dinero (como para morir por dinero), el era un abogado respetado y de primera línea en Guatemala,  abogado de familias de abolengo y  muy adineradas  como la familia por la cual decidió morir por limpiar su nombre. (Kalil Musa y su hija Marjorie Musa),  que es muy verdadero que era una familia  muy adinerada, pero muy honorable y con gran sentido de proyección social.

Es solo que no quiero pensar que si no se sienta un precedente con todo esto,  el mensaje que se manda al crimen organizado, delincuencia común, mafias, etc etc, etc,  seria:   si nuestras autoridad des son asesinos, delincuentes, estafadores y ladrones?   Porque yo No puedo serlo?,  eso es lo más terrible, si no se sienta un precedente.

Una pregunta?  ¿ Que tan honorable,  confiable,  es  el FBI???? No se quizás en EEUU sea lo último en investigaciones criminalísticas, pero en un asunto externo?  No se prestan a negociaciones con autoridades locales??  Muchas preguntas, pero la verdad es indignante ver el video, y simplemente me resisto a creer que alguien que estaba amenazado de muerte y que después lo matan, haya querido dañar a alguien solo por hacer un show.

Pero bueno, dale, es un tema álgido, indignante, y lamentable para nuestro país,  de verda que  hay un puno de gente basura, que nos sigue poniendo de rodillas y con el cuchillo en el cuello.”

What A Web We Weave When We Deceive in Guatemala

There is a moment in the movie Rashomon when the woodcutter, priest, and commoner are at the temple and all you hear is the sound of a crying baby that has been abandoned in a basket.  The commoner takes what was left for the baby, the woodcutter reproaches him for stealing, but the commoner asks him about the woman’s dagger; the woodcutter does not reply and slowly a truth emerges: that the woodcutter is also thief because he stole the knife used in the murder of the samurai. The commoner than states that all men are selfish, and all men are looking out for themselves in the end.  The priest’s faith in humanity is tested and truth becomes a many layered thing. So it has been with my native Guatemala over the years, my faith always tested against an always changing and malleable truth. More recently my faith has been tested in the last few days as yet again there is a complicated web woven when fools do promise to deceive.

It’s a very disturbing set of stories coming out of Guatemala, the video makes it all the more disturbing, but the Twitter arrest a few days ago makes democratic processes all the more laughable.  But first to  a Guatemalan lawyer who was killed on Sunday who made a video before his death alleging that he might be assassinated and that if he was, it would be the work of President Colom.

“If I’ve learned anything about Guatemalan politics over the years,” said Thomas Offit, a colleague from the Guatemala Scholar Network, “is that there are layers and layers of complexity that are difficult to penetrate from outside.  There are almost always multiple plausible explanations for specific events, ranging from personal issues through a variety of political scenarios.  In this case, conservative anti-Colom forces are already in the street seeking to overthrow the regime, or at least demanding he resign, almost as if they had been preparing for the occasion; perhaps to the Guatemalan right, which is pretty good at this sort of thing historically, Rosenberg became a good foil because of his earlier statements on corruption.  What makes this scenario difficult to accept is the content of the video, which couldn’t have been coerced.”

It is true that just because he taped allegations of corruption doesn’t mean he was killed by the people he claims in the video would have done so. There are other possibilities, so many of them: lower level government people who really are living on corruption, or the “poderes ocultos” of the drug world, could be military and/or drug people concerned about Rosenberg’s allegations, could be someone he owed money to.

From another scholar on the network:

“Efectivamente, la situación es mucho más compleja de lo que creemos. Sólo quiero aclarar que no sólo son los ricos y conservadores los que no están de acuerdo con el gobierno de Colón sino también los que tenemos un pensamiento liberal y pertenecemos a la clase media. En mi caso, voté por él porque no podía imaginar tener a un militar nuevamente en el poder. Sin embargo, durante estos meses veo con mucha preocupación la manera en que han manejado los fondos públicos con millonarias transferencias a los programas que maneja Sandra de Colón en Cohesión Social.  Reparten alimentos, juguetes, maquillaje y juguetes.  Están formando una plataforma política, quizás para colocarla como candidata presidencial en las próximas elecciones (tipo Krishner en Argentina). Existen muchos señalamientos de corrupción pero comprobarlos con el sistema igualmente corrupto que tenemos es muy difícil. Ayer transportaron a los alcaldes en aviones privados contratados y el mensaje es que si no apoyan no podrán contar con los fondos de los proyectos de desarrollo en los que ya están comprometidos.  Cada vez que hay problemas empiezan a polarizar a la población, ricos contra pobres y como ustedes saben esto es muy peligroso.  Si una persona tiene una casa ya es considerado rico y si no apoya al gobierno entonces es enemigo no sólo del gobierno sino también de los pobres.  Toda la publicidad de las obras del gobierno aparece bajo el lema “Gobierno de Álvaro Colón” y no “Gobierno de Guatemala” como debería ser.

I also agree with another member on the Guatemala Scholar’s Network that it’s important to note the situation has gone beyond the scope of what the Guatemala can effectively handle to administer justice in this matter. Colom himself has asked for help as written in the Miami Herald from international bodies (FBI, UN) in investigating the Rosenberg murder.  It also reports that CICIG (internat’l committee against impunity) will investigate.  Colom isn’t silent on the accusations against him.

“I agree with Trudeau about the quagmire of accusations/corruption/politics but I’m suspicious of quickly labeling the protests against Colom (there was one yesterday, for example, in Z.1) as conservative.  There’s a strong sentiment of being fed-up with the violence in Guatemala and this is also a failure one of Colom’s central platforms (remember also that his closest opponent was military man Perez Molina –of that cloying campaign song of “mano dura, cabeza y corazon”–and so Colom’s victory was also painted as a victory for “civil” society).  My impression is that civil society is sick of it–not only of people getting shot in the head but of the multiplicity of “possible explanations” for each murder.

I’m interested to see what CICIG will do.  I am critical of that institution because if I’m remembering right they only took on 6 initial cases to investigate and a glaring omission was that of the Salvadoran diplomats.  I’m pretty sure they also skirted the whole milieu of adoption corruption (which could potentially implicate the U.S. embassy).”

The last thing I know will emerge from this is an administered justice from within Guatemala. At the very least, I hope Guatemala morale as low as it is already, will survive.

This is the cilmate I will be driving into four months from now.

The Hindu : National : Journalism on wheels

Can someone please tell me why the BBC gets "it" and is constantly on the innovative edge with coverage compared to the US media?

"To provide an insight into the exhaustive electoral exercise in the world’s largest democracy, the BBC’s India Election Train was flagged off from Safdarjung Station…Carrying a team of journalists working for its services in English, Hindi, Urdu, Tamil and Bengali besides Burmese, Swahili, Arabic and other foreign languages, the BBC will investigate stories and take a look at personalities behind the Lok Sabha po lls. Its mission is to explore how the Indian economy can resuscitate the global economy during recession." From: http://www.hindu.com/2009/04/26/stories/2009042650591300.htm

I wonder if in part it has to do with the fact that the UK is more of a homogenous society with more agreed upon goals of what the media and journalism should do and how it should be funded? It’s inspiring and I want to learn more about why and how their business model works and how the US’ does not.



Pew Hispanic Center Factsheet: Mexican Immigrants in the United States, 2008

"Mexican immigrants living in the United States. On the eve of President Obama’s visit to Mexico, this profile reveals that a record 12.7 million Mexican immigrants lived in the U.S. in 2008, a 17-fold increase since 1970.
Mexicans now account for 32% of all U.S. immigrants and more than one-in-ten of all persons born in Mexico now reside in the U.S.

http://pewhispanic.org/factsheets/factsheet.php?FactsheetID=47

No other country in the world has as many total immigrants from all countries as the United States has immigrants from Mexico alone.
 
More than half (55%) of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. are unauthorized.
Immigrants from Mexico are younger than other immigrants and less likely to be U.S. citizens. Compared with the U.S. born population, Mexican immigrants are more likely to be male, married, and live in larger households. They are less educated, more likely to be unemployed, have lower incomes and higher poverty rates.
 
The statistical profile is based on data from the March 2008 Current Population Survey.
   The profile, Mexican Immigrants in the United States, 2008."
 
 
 


Slow Sunday

Sometimes sleeping less feels better these days. I missed church/zendo this morning when my eyes opened shutters around noon. I pored over the SF Chron and NY Times while chowing down on oatmeal pancakes and Brad avoided large chunks of food now that his wisdom teeth are gone. Then it was mad dash to clear the inbox and continue the moment on CabbieTalk by responding to some cabbies who had emailed me. Check out the posts, particularly the one of my conversation with Yi Tang who’s been a cabbie for 20 years in Chicago.

Try as I might to go running, there was no chance because my first day of long form improv was upon me and the Parkway in Oakland was closing its doors and I wanted to drive by and shoot a quick video on it. By 6 pm there were two lines that wound around the building and people patiently waited like they would any Friday evening for a the “Rocky Horror Picture Show.” It saddened because the Parkway is home to me as well and these days I, like Oakland, am feeling beaten up by everything happening in this community ravaged by gun violence (the four police officer shot last night just died) and the economy (hundreds are losing their home to foreclosures). If a city can be encapsulated by one word, “hard” would be the one I would use for Oakland. In every sense of the word.

Speech Launching Intro on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

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The New Regime

Erik and mentorsYes, I am still up at almost 1:30 AM after staying up until about 4 AM last night preparing for a presentation for New American Media at Mission Vocational School. It was spur of the moment request and I wanted to help as much as I could to bring multimedia concepts of visualization and interactivity to ethnic media and press. It was a small but engaged group ranging from staff at El Mensajero, El Tecolote, to Alizanza and the members of the Chinese media. I wish Erik and I could have trained them all day because we barely scratched the surface by introducing them to concepts of linear and interactive storytelling and free tools to make their stories engaging. I am really looking forward to the day long training in Sacramento in April, no details yet, but will post soon enough. 

I had hopes that after the training I could hop over to KQED’s training of trainers but there was no chance. So instead we headed over to the Presidio (after a pit stop at the SPCA –only because I’m a sadomasochist knowing full well I can’t own a dog because I rent. Why can’t I just be a foster dog walker parent?) In any case, he headed over to the Presidio for Do Something’s Speed Pitching session.

It’s a great concept and we had an excellent and inspiring time listening to young people pitch their ideas in 2-minute pitch sessions then cow bell, and a two-minute feedback session with the person across from them. Cow bell and NEXT! The next round I definitely think the mentors doing the listening should pitch their own ideas to the young people and see how the adults do. I love swapping up the leader and follower roles because it provides so many learning opportunities. An unexpected surprise is that I met a young person who is doing a documentary on air toxicity in West Oakland and I was able to provide him a great deal of guidance on how to approach his documentary and also turn him on Spot.Us as a possible funding opportunity!

CabbieTalk

The creative energy is rampant these days, reaching a nice crescendo at SXSW and continuing as I apply to mini-grants for projects that are leaking out every pore of me. One of the ones I worked on yesterday for the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center Mobile Challenge Cabbie Talk.

It’s a project that has me really excited and it goes something like this:

Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk
Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk

Around the world news is constantly happening: a picture, a video, a short text message captured by someone. These captured, random experiences in unison are the indicators of events that have impact. It is a conversation happening in communities that anyone can join – anyone with a cellphone – can be one voice heard by many. An essential part of media is to connect the web to the world, to deliver a message that is timely, relevant and has impact. That process must now be accessible and not limited to a few. Often the communities whose stories need to be told are the least connected to the enabling tools.

Our project will implement a citizen news center based on taxi dispatches made by taxi drivers in two cities, Oakland, California and Guatemala City, Guatemala – both increasingly violent cities where taxi drivers are often attacked or serve as the eyes and ears of the community and immediate events that impact the community. Our project will setup a platform much like TaxiNews that will make it easy for drivers to post newsworthy content quickly using cellphones. This will become a backbone for a citizen news hub to influence coverage by a few to many.

Cab drivers are the life lines of a community in that they take passengers to and from their homes and in the process are often witnesses to events that often go unreported. In addition, the penetration of cellphones amongst cab drivers while affording them immediate access to their customers also makes it easy for them to file things using voice reporting. They are perfect members of a news dispatch service, playing a vital role in crime reporting , news alerts and tips and events.

We will provide cab drivers with free cellphones in exchange for each driver registering with our Web site and file reports every day on what they see and experience. To make the service as simple as possible we propose using a voice podcasting model where the cab drivers will be able to call in their reports daily. We can push put their updates via Twitter or an SMS gateway and when people reply we can push back those comments via sms to their cells. The other incentive to this project is that customers can also register with our platform and also use the service to text a taxi for pick-up, thus providing the cab drivers with more business.

When I got a call today Yi Tang, a cabbie in Chicago who’s been in the industry for twenty years, I felt that same surge of energy that used to come from finding a story to report. But these days it’s different, it’s more the surge of connecting the dots between information, reporting and change.

Tang informed me that one of the main problems and risk they face is crime and that no one has a clear picture of the number of crimes and types of crimes that happen involving cab drivers. He really liked the project I was proposing he said because you’re creating a local solution to create crime data that can then be used to influence policy makers to enforce criminal activity against cab drivers and to create regulatory standards.

So, if a taxi drivers can text or call in crimes to a database linked to an interactive map, it can serving a tracking system for agencies to work work and cooperate to deal with those crimes. Jurisdiction issues will be another challenge, but if we could make that happen then we have something that’s meaningful and useful. Community value and impact is what CabbieTalk has going for it and now I am inspired. So Erik Sundelof and I set up at Web site called Cabbie Talk and Twitter .This is just the beginning, my favorite part.

KQED Storytelling classes

I’m glad they’re offering different class levels. Check’em out, they’re free!

“We’ve reviewed and revised our workshop schedule, streamlining our traditional workshop and adding more variety by including place-based digital storytelling using Google applications like Google Earth and Google Maps. All workshops take participants through the 4-step process, from concept to completion, from idea to publishing. Our train-the-trainers workshops are specifically geared towards people who have already attended a workshop or have experience in the digital storytelling process. Our goal will be to move to participants to the next level, both in story theory and with the hardware and software.

Three Varieties of Digital Storytelling Workshops

1. Traditional Digital Storytelling Basics
This 1-day (plus short intro) workshop is a hands-on and project-based; it teaches the skills of traditional digital storytelling.

Thursday, February 5, (5pm-7pm), Short Intro
Saturday, February 7, (9am-5pm)

Thursday, March 5, (5pm-7pm), Short Intro
Saturday, March 7, (9am-5pm)

Thursday, February 26, (5pm-7pm), Short Intro
Saturday, February 28, (9am-5pm)
(This workshop is science-specific, co-facilitated by Jessica Neely)

2. Place-based Digital Storytelling Using New Media Tools
This 1-day (plus short intro) workshop uses Google Maps/Earth to create place-based digital stories.

Thursday, March 12, (5pm-7pm), Short Intro
Saturday, March 14, (9am-5pm)
(This workshop is science-specific, co-facilitated by Jessica Neely)

3. Train-the-Trainers
This 1-day workshop is for those already familiar with the digital storytelling process or with multimedia content creation and wish to learn how to train others,

Saturday, January 17, (9am-5pm)
Saturday, March 21, (9am-5pm)”