Vloggercon Day 2 Session 6

Vloggercon Day 2 Session 6

Vloggercon Day 2 Session 6 - The Undiscovered Country

Jen Simmons (jensimmons.com)
Michael Verdi (michaelverdi.com)

Discussion of what people would like to see happen in the future and what people think might happen --

Easy-to-use tools
Open access and equal distribution
Community aspect of videoblogging
Choice of what we keep private and what we share with others
Freedom of speech - to express what we want and to have access to information
Negotiating core values - commercialization issues
Sociological revolution more than a technological or content issue - focus on community not on the content or the technology
Communication and intelligence amplification
Want to be a documentary filmmaker and have a lot of people involved in a self-sustaining ecosystem - wants to be a creator in an environment where people can remix the content - Kent Bye - echochamber project
Wants to continue the learning - would like to have workshops like Vloggercon every month - so can continue to get mobilized and stay on track
Quality content for small audiences sustainable
Shifted focus from content to process - making sense of our own experiences through vlogging
Video blogging community is like a city - share media
radicalsoftware.org, experimentaltv.org, newsreel.us - can learn from the past
Wants to be able to find the content that she wants

Vloggercon Day 2 Session 5

Vloggercon Day 2 Session 5

Vloggercon Day 2 Session 5 - Mashups & Remixing for Vloggers

David Dudas (eyespot.com)
JD Lasica (newmediamusings.com)
Mary Hodder (dabble.com)
Josh Leo (joshleo.com)
Jan McLaughlin (fauxpress.blogspot.com)
Dave Toole (outhink.com)

An overview of mashup phenomenon.
Josh Leo - videoWe are the media - wearethemedia.movjoshleo.blogspot.com
JD Lasica - Our Media
unveiling learning center today at Vloggercon - http://www.ourmedia.org/learning-center/
Directory of media available to use --
http://www.ourmedia.org/learning-center/open

Mary Hodder - dabble.com - invited beta - add name to bottom of site to get an invitation to participate in the beta - organizational tool - bookmarking tool, signed up for invited beta - save material you might want to use later, also aggregate and allow them to search - allow users to modify the metadata

David Dudas - http://www.eyespot.com/Simple video mixing and sharing
Some assembly required - radio show in Minnesota - about remixing.

Vloggercon Day 2 Session 4

Vloggercon Day 2 Session 4

Brainstorming the Future

Eli Chapman (chapmanlogic.com)
Kenyatt Chesse (kenyattacheese.net)
Josh Kinberg (fireant.tv)
Ryan Shaw (aeshing.org)
Shawn Van Every (walking-productions.com)
Josh Kinberg - moderator of discussion
Founder of FireAnt, a desktop media player and RSS aggregator, and online “TV Guide” for videoblogs

Panelists:
Kenyatta Cheese - Founder of Unmediated.org. Professor of Portable Media and Internet Distribution at USC. Systems Administrator at Eyebeam, non-profit for Art and Technology research in NYC.
Eli Chapman - Founder of Mediatronica. Blogging at ChapmanLogic?.
Shawn Van Every - Research Fellow focusing on Participatory Media at NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program.
Ryan Shaw - Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley’s School of Information and a researcher at Yahoo! Research Berkeley.
A lot has happened in the year+ since the first Vloggercon in New York City. Video sharing sites are exploding accross the web. The first mainstream portable video players have entered the marketplace. And web video is coming to a PVR in your living room soon courtesy of RSS syndication.
And yet we’re still defining participatory media and striving for ubiquitous media distribution.
So this is our chance to brainstorm together — face to face. Let’s throw it all together: technology, culture, politics, economics. Let’s talk about the future. Where do we want to end up next year and in the years to come?
Our brainstorming facilitators will be some of the luminaries behind Unmediated.org, a group weblog that tracks the decentralization of media.
Cell phones are going to be devices to take and share video by summer.
Juan Antonio - chasingmills.blogspot.com
Community capitalism
Identity
Sustainability
SearchLaw and policy
Public mediaLocation based media
Media
Entertainment
Embedding values in Technology
Media literacy, education, curriculum
Professionalization
Democracy

Groups that are discussing standards --
video
vertigo
Open Media Coalition - standards
mpeg4 with mpeg3 audio encoding - works on most handheld portable devices - Josh's suggestion
Embedding values in Technology
Shane Nue - LinkTV - linktv.org - experiment with video blogs for November election - asking people to submit video blogs - People Choose 2006

Vloggercon Day 2 Session 3

Vloggercon Day 2 Session 3

Vloggercon Day 2 Session 3 - Interactive Videoblogs

Andreas Haugstrup Pedersen (solitude.dk)
Markus Sandy (apperceptions.org)
Enric Teller (cirne.com)
Shawn Van Every (walking-productions.com)
Josh Paul

Text changed from the book to the web in order to become more adapted to dialogue. Will video change as well?
The cut-and-paste web works well with text, how will it work with video? A videoblog should be more than video in a blog? How will/can/should video adapt to the blog format? Or will videoblog forever be doomed as clones of the tv-format?
How do we move the textual characteristics of the text blog into video? And should we?
Practical Uses for “interactive video”In random order:
Video comments. Uses: Replacing/complementing text comments (and why don’t we see image comments on Flickr very often?) Linkubator (SMIL-based tool to add “bugs” with links to a video). Uses: Permalinks, tag pages (like videobloggingweek2006), “home” links. vPIP Rhizome templates? eZedia QTI? click.tv? —–

Shawn Van Every (http://www.walking-productions.com/shawn.html) is a Media Researcher and Adjunct Professor at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. His research and teaching are focused on emerging technologies related to media creation, distribution and interaction. His projects generally involve development of tools that help to make low cost media making, distribution and interactivity possible.

Andreas Haugstrup Pedersen (solitude.dk) is a graduate student at the Institute for Communication at Aalborg University. At the moment he is writing his final thesis on videoblogging. He likes to shoot video, but really hates editing, so not much finished video is produced. Andreas has taught videoblogging workshops at Aalborg University, Copenhagen Business School and Södertörns University College in Stockholm.

Markus Sandy (http://apperceptions.org)- software developer, teacher and videoblogger. My primary interests are in community, collaboration and playlists. I am an active member of Node101.org, Ourmedia.org, Outhink.com, SpinFlow.org, Meet The Vloggers, We Are The Media and the Yahoo Videoblogging Group.

After Enric Teller (http://www.cirne.com) graduated with a degree in Film Studies at U.C. Berkeley in 1980, he went into the emerging microcomputer industry. There he worked as a software developer since1984 using the languages of C++, Visual Basic, Java and currently focusing on Flash actionscripting. At the same time Enric has worked on independent films, made short movies and recently focused on Videoblogging.

Markus Sandy - a vlog should be more than a video in a blog - Markus has been looking at that question. What does it mean to be interactive? clicking on parts of a video? more interactive with the viewers and their comments?spincast.net/wiki - interactive videoblogging
http://spincast.net/wiki/index.php?title=Interactive_Videoblogging

Enric - vPIP - videos playing in place - don't separate the video from the entry on the page - cinegage site

Shawn - researcher at NYU - vlogging - loose, 2-way conversation - commenting, videobloggers are relying on RSS feeds, trackback feature, commenting. What do we have to do to make videoblogging more interactive, not just a video on a blog? WordPress plug-in - Video Comments - http://itp.nyu.edu/research/?page_id=34

Josh Paul - people leave video comments - enter URL to your video comment - http://beta.aweli.com/comment/new/0184t.
Comments can branch out. send him an email - v2 is the tool - in closed beta but he'll let people use it.
SMIL - Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language -- http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo/

Vloggercon Day 2 Session 2

Vloggercon Day 2 Session 2

Vloggercon Day 2 Session 2 Character Building

Erik Nelson (bottomunion.com/blog)
Kent Nichols (askaninja.com, hopeisemo.com)
Tim Street (frenchmaidtv.com)
Chris Weagle (human-dog.com)

Creating Shows Using Strong Characters and RSS
Beatbox Giant - successful with Ask A Ninja Podcast.
Presenters talked about creating shows for characters using a strong point of view.
—–
Chris Weagel is Chairman of Hallways and Floors at Human Dog Productions. Human Dog creates comedy, documentary, and meat-based video blogs, podcasts, vidcasts and first generation Game Boys. He knows about the rituals performed at the Bohemian Grove Club. Chris is also a contributor to ThePan.org.

Raised an Alleghenian on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, PA, Erik Nelson’s entire life has been dictated by a composite leather orange ball. It took him to Vermont for 4 years, and made him an ex-pat in the Netherlands for 8, where he currently resides. Along with his wife, Priscilla Nelson, he runs the Bottom Union, and harvests Carp Caviar, which is an ongoing collaborative international audio-visual variety experiment. He’s also a member of the PAN, Public Address Network, which is farming and producing daily video stimulants.

Tim Street - Creator/Executive of the “How To” Video Podcast FRENCH MAID TV and the Digital Yarn(r) fortheloveofjulie.com. Before being forced to work with beautiful voluptuous women Tim produced traditional television for Spike TV, Game Show Network, Warner Bros. and other Cable Networks and Movie Studios.

Chris Weagle (human-dog.com)
HopeisEmo.com - just going live this weekend
AskaNinja?.com
Building characters that are emotionally engaging

Tim Street - frenchmaidtv.com
start with spectacle but to really engage people, need to have characters
character is story and story is character --
Frenchmaidtv.com

Erik Nelson - Carp Caviar - makes new episodes every week based on life experiences

bullemhead.com - woodchuck category --
http://www.bullemhead.com/category/woodchuck/

Answers to audience questions --
Don't have control over the audience so you have to keep everything within one episode - has to stand on its own.
Use email feedback from audience in AskaNinja? to develop next episode and plan to do this with HopeisEmo.com - have a theme song and an opening and a tag line at the end. Think clearly about the 3 points they want to make in this episode. Presume everyone is going to be bored and have ADD and make it fast and engaging.
If you're doing a video blog, focus on what makes you special.
If you're doing your own personal blog, you are your own character.
Be true to who you are and what you want to do.
Adam - woodchuck, squirrel, small animal

Vloggercon Day 2 Session 1

Vloggercon Day 2 Session 1

Vloggercon Day 2 Session 1 - Node 101 and the Digital Divide

Node 101 - Ryanne Hodson (ryanedit.com) - classrooms, mobile classrooms, wiki for community.
Node101 was started to help people learn how to do video blogging. Teach at Mac stores, on the road, in classrooms.
Wiki to share curricula for classes, ideas, tutorials --
http://node101.org/community/index.php/Main_Page

Bridging the Digital Divide with specific projects that are now using video blogs to empower different groups --
Ivettza Sanchez -- NMASS project - National Mobilization against Sweatshops
http://www.themomentends.typepad.com/
http://videonmass.blogspot.com/ - NMASS Video Project

Zadi Diaz - Los Angeles - teaches video blogging at Mac stores
http://smashface.com/vlog
Brittany Shoot - academic research on video blogging
http://shootingfullforce.com
http://bshoot.blogspot.com/
Member of audience said this is all about storytelling - a way to empower people to express themselves. Offer resources for people to pick and choose which way they want to tell their stories.

Vloggercon Day 1 Session 5

Vloggercon Day 1 Session 5

Medium & Messsage: Can They Get Along?

Juan Antonio del Rosario (chasingmills.blogspot.com)
Cristina Cordova (chasingmills.blogspot.com)
Dave Huth (davemedia.blogspot.com)

Relationship between content and medium

First showed clips from --
1. Chasing windmills
2. 90 seconds of Dave

Dave Huth -
Content should be created appropriately for the form or put the other way, choose the medium to deliver that message.
What do you have to say?
What's the best way to say it?
Bad idea - content forced into wrong form.
Golf isn't very television-genic, but football almost seems made for tv.
What is the best kind of content to deliver via videoblog?
Characteristics --
1) decontextualized - leaves its original context once it's released on the Internet
2) small display
3) bandwidth-dependent - keep it small
4) audience control - audience controls use
5) organic and intimate

movie - usually 90 mins, tv program - 30-60 mins., how long will people pay attention to video on the web? question is length of attention span, not technology limits.

Dave tried making a 45-minute movie and cutting it up into short segments - he played a segment, but we couldn't tell what was happening.
Comic books - people are starting to write for the annual anthology and then the individual issues aren't as compelling because they're just a piece of the anthology.
Online video is different in form from other media - variable in terms of screen size - will probably go from cell phone from large screen in your living room.
How you shoot has to change based on the size of the screen it will be displayed on.
"Lawrence of Arabia" - scene of sand blowing - very impressive on big screen, but loses its impact on very small screen.
Want to find the new language of videoblogging - don't replicate cinema or tv.
intimate, closer, in-your-face - if created specifically for the web
majority of your emotion will be carried by the audio - more powerful than the video.
3g cell phone - audio isn't good and that affects the experience
ideal size for chasing windmills 320 x 640 - shown on a big screen in a cafe and it looked really bad
One person suggested embedding a player to try to control the size of the display, but the speakers said they wanted to allow audience flexibility. They say they've improved through trial-and-error.
Focus on the narrative - the display size is not the only the issue.
Audience has control over the order so story isn't necessarily told in linear form. This was a problem for the creator of the game, Mist - people would do things in different order.

Have to discover the aesthetic of videoblogging.
Start creating a language that takes elements from
1) home video
2) comic strips - tiny size, every day has to stand its own, but can hang together when read as a series - Dave is working with a comic strip author to see if can use a similar approach
3) narrative

Is narrative the right content for this container/medium? maybe not, but Dave wants to use videoblogging for narrative, just trying to figure out how to deliver narrative via videoblogging.
Dave is interested in communication rather than just expression. He said he has friends who are artists who are interested in expressing themselves through their art, but he has a conversational model - he is hoping that people will react to what he is putting out.
Chasing Windmills - people hated the characters initially - Juan said he is manipulating the audience. Chasing Windmills released their story in a way that it was open, so audience response could inform how the story would come together. Even had an audience member write a script for an episode at one point.
Dave's story was all shot and done before it was released, so he couldn't respond to what the audience was saying.

Vloggercon Day 1 Session 4

Vloggercon Day 1 Session 4

Educators

Teachers using video on the internet to add new dimensions to their classrooms, find an authetic audience for student work, and empower their students to beome media-makers.

Jonny Goldstein (jonnygoldstein.com)
Jen Simmons (jensimmons.com)
Bre Pettis (imakethings.com)

1. Jonny Goldstein
Multi-high school videoblog. BX21 stands for Bronx 21st century. In the Bronx in the 21st century everyone will be able to make their own media. This project is about youth in the Bronx leading the way in the citizens media revolution by creating video and audio, and putting it out there for the world to enjoy.
http://vemnyvlogs.org/bx21/

2. Jen Simmons
Teaching at Temple University - teaching film students multimedia tools - blogs, video blogs
Showed video made by one of her students who talked about how difficult it was do video blogging because she's afraid someone will mug her (Temple University is in a not very nice neighborhood in Philadelphia) and also lots of people don't want to be videotaped.
Question from audience - how do you get people to write well in blogs and vlogs from SF State prof who is going to teach blogging class who is an English prof - Jen said her film students were learning about storyboarding and she had her students discuss "what is quality?" and critique video.
what is quality video? if it reflects an authentic voice, then it's quality according to Jen.

3. Bre Pettis
http://brepettis.com/
Bre makes a video every week telling about what is going on in his Language Arts and Art classes. His students post to the blog too.
http://room132.com/
can make a connection to parents when they see videoblog

Vloggercon Day 1 Session 3

Vloggercon Day 1 Session 3

Pimping Out a Blogger or Wordpress Blog

Jen Simmons (jensimmons.com)
Josh Paul (joshpaul.com/blog)

1. Jen Simmons

a. Blogger owned by Google - http://www.blogger.com/
once you set up site - www.blogspot.com

b. WordPress - open source download - http://www.wordpress.org

can get a free wordpress blog at wordpress.com but limited functionality

Visual Design --

Masthead
Background
Sidebar
Colors
Fonts
Borders
Templates make it easy!
Blog design has so much potential to reflect who you are and what you do. You can make it as colorful or counter-cultural as you want to. Don't have to copy mainstream ads on the side of a bus.
Tools so your blog doesn't have to look like corporate advertising.
Teaches classes at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA
Ways to change background image and make a custom masthead for blogs.

Jen Simmons' resources on videoblogging --
http://teaching.jensimmons.com/videoblogging/

Go to this template if you'd like and use it --
www.jensimmmons.com/videoblogging/template.html

freeblog - tutorial
make your masthead
link to tutorial on freeblogger
Background image tricks
Use CSS
Guide to CSS on W3 Schools - http://www.w3schools.com/css/
In WordPress, you can modify template for different types of pages, but in Blogger, you can only modify the overall template.
Jen has about 10 blogs up now - she uses Blogger when she wants to do serious visual redesign and it's fast. Takes her longer to do WordPress, but it has a lot more power, especially in tagging and categorization.
Save a back-up and then make changes - if you get it to a place you like, then save that as your back-up and continue experimenting.
http://typetester.maratz.com/
http://colorblender.com/ - code for colors

Publishing a Blog with Blogger

2. Josh Paul

a. Themes (aka templates)
http://wordpress.org/extend/themes (and links from there) - 100's of themes
Themes must be installed in -- /site/wp-content/themes

b. Embedding video
1) Internet Explorer 6 - changed the wayit handles embedded video, not good to use
2) Install Javascriprt - http://developer.apple.com/internet/ieembedprep.html
3) Embedding video --
a) embedthevideo.com
b) freevlog.org/popup
c) vPIP - Use a plug-in like vPIP (video playing in place)

http://utilities.cinegage.com/videos-playing-in-place/

c. Reducing spam
1) require a previously approved comment from author
2) comment moderation - hold comments if more than x links exist, hold comments if they contain certain words (like "shoes")
3) comment blacklist - delete comments without intervention
4) captcha- wordpress.org/Plugins/Spam_Tools

d. Get videoblog into iTunes - wp-icatter - http://garrickvanburen.com/wordpress-plugins/wpipodcatter/
submit it through iTunes but then it allows you to easily get your custom image inside iTunes

e. garrickvanburen.com/wordpress-plug-ins
http://joshpaul.com/tgsg/

Vloggercon Day 1 Session 2

Vloggercon Day 1 Session 2

Rocketboom - How We Got Here

Notes on session --

Panelists -

Andrew Baron
Amanda Congdon
Ruud Elmedorp
Steve Garfield
Chuck Olsen
(rocketboom.com)

Examples of what they do -

Entertainment - dance parties
Remix mainstream material - Chevy Tahoe - make your own video ad - people put in their own text with the ad
Getting involved with video on a global scale - having a bunch of video correspondents - like having a bunch of employees
Just 2 people - Andrew and Amanda but have all these video correspondents which has helped them grow

Correspondents --

Steve Garfield from Boston
Ruud Elmedorp
Chuck Olsen

Vloggercon Day 1 Session 1

Vloggercon Day 1 was very interesting. Here are notes from Session I - Political Vlogging & Social Change

Panelists --

Raymond Kristianson (ditq.org), flew in from Norway - introduced panelists
Kent Bye (echochamberproject.com)
Brett Gaylor (etherworks.ca)
Josh Wolf (joshwolf.net)

Notes taken during session --

1. Kent Bye - Echo Chamber project

Kent recorded news coverage leading up to Iraq war then interviewed people. Wanted to make film to cover complexities leading up to war. Traditional news media covers the first part but the rest of the footage ends up on the cutting room floor. Journalists have a lot of info that's stuck in their heads - their own inefficiencies of knowledge management as well as no place in traditional media. Kent looked at collaborative editing tools - collectively help edit a film - how can you use technology to mediate.

Steps -- usual workflow for post-productio:

Log & parse footage
Filter & categorize
Edit sequences.

What Kent is doing to make it possible to do collaborative editing online --pre-segmenting granular data at a unique URL, tag & rate, playlist, nested playlist.
Get people to rate the sound bites.
Put together in SMIL - Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language - http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo/
Collaborative sense making - echochamber - prototypeTools - drupal content management system
Kent will add video within the next couple of months
Bus. model - Sell DVD at some point - interactive work in development is marketing.

2. Brett Gaylor - Canada - Homeless Nation - homelessnation.org

Using drupal content management system -- http://drupal.org/
Made a documentary of homeless in Montreal, but found that they had to cut so much. Wanted to give people a chance to film themselves. Went to a park and set up a tent with wireless Internet and equipment. First made a documentary and then started moving out to different cities in Canada to give homeless people a voice - and let them express themselves on video. Empowering the homeless - Gadget, a homeless man in Montreal - Brett loaned him a camera and Gadget has been filming but getting into trouble with the police.

3. Josh Wolf - SF

Filming protests in SF - there was an attack on a police officer.
His film of protest in SF was picked on traditional media - KRON TV and other local stations.
A couple of days later, FBI agent showed up at his door demanding the unedited footage, but Josh didn't want to hand it over, so he has been subpoenaed by federal grand jury.
Just graduated from college.
He may have to go to jail if he doesn't turn over the unedited tape.
Considered a federal offense since cop car is partly paid for by federal government.What FBI wants to do is go through tape and figure out who was involved and look at MySpace? and figure out what groups they're involved in and figure out who organized the protest.
RUNtv - project Josh is working on in SF- RUNtv - community college television station called RUNtv. The program is produced in association with the Rise Up Network (a non-profit Josh helped to start), and peralta.TV, the station Joshs works for.

4. Raymond Kristianson - Norwegian video blogger

Political video bloggingHow can we collaborate?Led discussion with audience