Open Video Conference - notes from NYC
Have hardly had the time to reflect back on the fabulous Open Video Conference that i attended on June 19 & 20th in NYC…
The Open Video Conference was a gathering put together by the The Participatroy Culture Foundation, Yale Internet Society, and the Open Video Alliance (amongst others) with major sponsors Mozilla and Red Hat.
This was ‘the gathering of the good guys’, and i was honoured to be, not just present, but presenting… CitizenShift, of course.
The site’s About page describes the conference as follows:
As internet video matures, we face a crossroads: will technology and public policy support a more participatory culture - one that encourages and enables free expression and broader cultural engagement? Or will online video become a glorified TV-on-demand service, a central part of a permissions-based culture? Web video holds tremendous potential, but limits on broadband, playback technology, and fair use threaten to undermine the ability of individuals to engage in dialogues in and around this new media ecosystem.
And indeed, all of these issues were tackled in a wham-blam two days packed with interesting and engaging sessions. Conference organizers estimated that there were over 800 attendees with thousands more online following the discussions around software, politics, journalism, art, education, industry, business, technology, culture, communication, freedom and democracy….
Check out the conversation, still raging on the open video site and on Twitter - openvideo and #openvideo).
This was way more than your typical conference, and from all the reviews i’m reading out there, everyone who attended was, to put it mildly, blown away. I left NY feeling totally invigorated, armed with the mission to pursue more open technical standards, and to keep CitizenShift strong within the ‘open’ community!
My pick of conference highlights include…(only mentioning a few here, as so many of the sessions were of high calibre, was hard to choose faves!)
Yochai Benkler:
Gave the Keynote and set the tone with his philosophical musings on distributed networks and their role in the new political democracy. According to Benkler, “Distributed innovation is in the service of distributed democracy.”
Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation annonced that the upcoming release of Firefox 3.5 will support the html 5 open video standard. See mark’s slide presentation on Mozilla open video standards here:
http://www.slideshare.net/msurman/open-video-is-the-future
Mark summed up his impressions of the conference here:http://commonspace.wordpress.com/2009/06/25/open-video-conf-roundup/
The hilarious Lizz Winstead, co-creator of the Daily Show did a session on the role of satire in political media. Winstead says she sees great opportunities for new media journalists and reporters….(especially as newspapers are folding).
Her online satire news site: http://www.shootthemessengernyc.com/
Jonathan Zittrain about was supposed to be doing his talk as the conference wrap-up, but when Clay Shirky’s plane was delayed, Zittrain came in to the rescue with a funny and enlightening talk on collective consent on the Internet, from a refreshingly legal AND ‘open’ perspective. He gave several compelling examples of how ‘people contribute because they want to be part of something larger than themselves’.
As per my interests in educational technology, i was impressed by the session on Open Video in Education. A wide variety of projects represented ranging from Cambridge University’s Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies, to Participatory Culture Foundation (still my favourite resource for ‘how to make Internet TV’‘ ) highlighting Miro , the VITAL project out of Columbia U that allows annotating, citing and referencing video (about to be used on a PBS documentary on the Vietnam war). To videolectures.net for long form educational content on opencast communities. Everyone agreed that CC licences are the way to go for education! And finally the wise and insightful Alyce Wyatt, a long standing media consultant and Executive director for the Grantmakers for film and electronic media declared the urgent need for a general amnesty for rights on educational works!
Xeni Jardin of Boingboing fame also gave an excellent keynote (what a charming person she is, both on stage, and also in an impromptu conversation i had with her in the hallway… she asked me to send her CitizenShift links - you bet Xeni!!)
Her talk focused on the success of boingboing video - partly because it’s Open! (all creative commons licencing, available for download). BoingBoing sticks to its mandate, and has refused offers from TV networks. Their medium is the Web, and, according to Xeni, that’s how it’s going to stay!
Xeni also interviewed Pirate Bay defender Peter Sunde - interesting to hear Sunde’s point of view on P2P and the ongoing Pirate Bay court case… catch them here:
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/30/pirate-bay.html
Amy Goodman was probably the least ‘Web savvy’ of the speakers, but she brought what many others lacked… conviction and dedication on the front lines of the struggle. What a powerful speaker she is. Much respect to the work Democracy Now is doing, yes even through more ‘traditional’ channels, like radio (ovbiously still crucial!) In the end, Goodman proves that the message is more important than the medium!
Democracy Now!
The Independent Video Platforms session, where i presented CitizenShift…was good, however time was cut a bit short, and the room was way over capacity (i.e. hot and a bit chaotic with people sitting on the floor, window ledges, furniture, etc!)
It was really great to have CitizenShift represented amongst that crowd though. Good to catch up with our friends from Engage Media from Australia, Witness’ The Hub, the Open Media Project and the way cool Pad.ma from India (check them out!). CitizenShift’s presence within the Open Video movement is essential but we have our work cut out for us in terms of using open standards. Yes, we’re still all in flash for video, like most of the sites represented in our session, but we must keep ourselves at the forefront of video innovation, and open standards are clearly the way to go!
The session delved into the various ways in which these platforms engage with human rights, environmental, social justice and free culture, with the underlying question of how to keep these spaces viable next to large scale commercial spaces like YouTube and others. Interesting insights as we explored the landscape of these ‘alternative’ models and how we can keep them alive and vibrant.
Participants in the session:
citizenShift (citizen.nfb.ca)
Engage Media (engagemedia.org)
The Hub (hub.witness.org)
Open Media Project/Denver Open Media (groups.drupal.org/open-media-project / denveropenmedia.org)
Pad.ma (pad.ma)
Show in a Box (showinabox.tv)
visionOntv (visionon.tv)
And of course i simply must mention the session where my esteemed colleague Joel Pomerleau did an excellent job of highlighting the NFB’s on demand video service. Very well received by a demanding crowd. Bravo Joël! It’s really important that the NFB was so well represented at this conference, as this is crowd represents the avant guard of Web video culture.
Last but not least, a nod to Eclectic Method the highly entertaining VJ remixers from the party…
http://www.eclecticmethod.net/
For a good overview of the conference with a brief report on many of the main sessions, see Jane Park’s post here:
http://onopen.net/2009/06/28/blogging-through-the-open-video-conference/
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