Why are we so compelled by these bits of video from others? Why do we keep watching them? On a larger scale, what does this do to our culture, our media, and the way we communicate? Josh talked a bit about culture, and that struck a bell. What culture? Our new, global culture? Sub-culture? Our national cultures? What happens when the TV goes online, and we no longer have just the choices some of our own TV companies offer us? What happens when there are a millions of channels to watch, to subscribe to.
From a comment to Josh's video:
Our attention span is maybe shrinking, but try sitting down a chap from days of yore in front of a screen and making him watch hours of no-context video. not gonna happen. but yeah, bitesize. i hear ya. the internet IS the godfuckin World's Fair of forevermore.
Bitesize media, yes, but also the media needs to be open for recontextualization. At least for me that is important. This is where quicktime movies trump flash-encoded files. Flash files, as they are on for instance youtube, cannot be remixed easily. Cannot be quoted easily. But .mov files can.
There are a lot of people out there who work on building bridges between the different forms of media. They put DVDs online (clearly illegal), they put tv clips on youtube, and they do loads of flash -> avi conversions.
We now have a zillion channels, a lot of 'rooms' as I talked about in my video from 04, but we still need some infrastructure. We still need to be able to find them. Use them. Re-use them. Tag them. I know that Peter is working hard on Mefeedia these days, and I will make a screencast about Mefeedia as it is today some day soon.
Today and tomorrow I will, however, be mostly offline, visiting a friend, being in ze countryside. I won't bring a camera. However, I will write some notes on a piece of paper. Also, I will finally be talking about a few projects I have been involved in. Be better at sharing what is going on here. I cannot lose the questions.
[Image source]
Richard Bluestein, who is a friend of mine who I met at VlogEurope 2005 in Amsterdam and who is also coming at VlogEurope 2006 next month in Milan, has a videoblog called "Insane Films". Today, he published a Channel 4 documentary on the videoblog that talks about the failure of the media of the West when it comes to covering the war in Iraq.
I have earlier written about "Alive in Baghdad" on this blog, and I will return to this site often. In fact, the role of videoblogs is discussed in this documentary as well, and they use some of the footage from the Alive In Baghdad videoblog in the documentary.
I recommend anyone to see this documentary.
In an article on the Norwegian online newspaper "Nettavisen", Yunus is quoted as saying that donor countries like Norway needs to move away from donating funds directly to the (often corrupt) governments in the developing world, and rather work more with organizations or help through microcredit initiatives.
This is the first day where I Really feel fit after my accidents with the dentist this week. Heh, don't ask.
[source]
Bjørn Stærk was one of the most prominent Norwegian "warbloggers" that started blogging after the horrors of 9/11. This latest entry is one of many reasons to check him out.
I am worried about him, but I am not yet in a state of panic.
ok, I am. i haven't heard at all from him. neither has his wife. so yeah, i am panicked. slightly.
it sucks to not know, you know.
Meanwhile, here is something I made last year:
Watch
Damn, I am getting more worried the more I think about it. I better go read more news about the situation in Manila. It might just be the lack of electricity there leading to no connection.
"It's with a pretty heavy heart that I am forced to inform everyone out there
of the death of Alaa Adel, assistant to Isam Rasheed, one of our main
"videobloggers" or "correspondents" based in Baghdad. Alaa seems to have been an
integral, if mostly invisible piece of Alive in Baghdad through his work
supporting Isam in gathering video and information about the situation around
Baghdad.
He was killed on September 15th when he was apparently shot in the head by a
US soldier, on his way to work at Isam's home. I'm not really sure exactly why
I'm emailing all of you about this. When I sent an email around regarding the
kidnapping of another correspondent, I was seeking help, suggestions, and
support.
Today, I just don't know what I am doing on this front. I learned about the
incident yesterday afternoon, and really didn't know what I should do next. I
emailed the Committee to Protect Journalists and cracked open a beer at 1:30 in
the afternoon-don't worry, it was just one."
It is such a tragedy that journalists are being shot, by accident, by people who are supposed to be in the country to protect them. As we know, it is more dangerous to be a journalist now than ever, especially if you are not 'embedded', but it is different to see this fact up close, like this.
On the Alive in Baghdad website, the latest entry is a piece about neighbourhoor watch.
Watch the video | permalink
Life in Baghdad is extremely dangerous, and to be honest, I am not so sure about having neighbourhood guards like this on the streets. But then again, if I was there, living under those circumstances, I would have wanted the same thing. If the U.S. forces accidentally kill an innocent journalist - would you trust those forces to protect your neighbourhood?
My condolences go out to the Alive in Baghdad team. May Alaa Adel rest in peace.
Such knowledge gaps are weird, but hardly uncommon. The interesting thing here is that Jim transmitted that bit of knowledge without even realizing that he did so.
We have so many tools now for sharing that tacit knowledge - sharing the practice, the how. I have used screencasting myself at times, and I really like the ease by which I can show how to do something on-line, as opposed to explaining it in vague terms such as "Then click on the button that says 'log in' on the side". Here is, for instance, a screencast I created last year showing how to set up del.icio.us
Screencasting as well as videoblogging are excellent ways to share the tacit knowledge we have. As more specific channels arise, and some of those channels of information are created outside of walled gardens, we will as a species learn to not have to reinvent the wheel - every time.
The organization wishes to produce and distribute a series of video podcasts for all audiences, but especially young adults (20-35), aimed at increasing understanding of the development and societal issues identified as priority fields by UNESCO, namely:
- Human Rights;
- Peace;
- Tolerance;
- Fight against discrimination, based on race, gender or other issues (e.g. HIV status);
- Millennium Development Goals, particularly poverty-alleviation and gender equality and women empowerment;
- Freedom of Expression;
- Intercultural communication.
This is Really exciting, and it fits with one of my longtime goals: Vlogging organizations like the U.N., Amnesty International, Red Cross &etc.
Speaking of which: I am currently working with Lars-Henrik Michelsen, the president of the Norwegian Liberal Youth Party, to create a videoblog in connection with the U.N. General Assembly that is going on these days in New York. Lars-Henrik is one of Norway's two youth delegates, and it will be interesting to see the GA through his eyes. I will post the url here when things are ready, which will be in a couple of days.
Today I figured out that there is a german videoblog called messevlog.de where they are at the Apple Expo in Paris and interviewing people and giving reports. The Apple Expo lasts only untill the 16th, but videoblogs like this will grow in numbers, and I wonder where the development will be in only two years.
Oh, and I learned about Messevlog.de because Alexx, one of the vlogers behind messevlog.de, will be attending VlogEurope this November
Unfortunately, I will only be using Danish on my new blog, so I guess this message is targetted only to those of you who understand Scandinavian. Hej :)
[source] via Andy Carvin
I was quite surprised by this letter and the following correspondance. Are you breaking the law if you neglect to remove spam comments that might violate someone's intellectual property? Neglect is a key word here, and I do admit to not having removed the spam comments about USAA prior to their e-mail to me.
I find this episode at large a bit funny. There must be a zillion spam comments out there. Do companies like USAA go about dealing with every pesky comment that mentions "USAA"? Is this part of a larger strategy where they feel they need to protect their brand - and sending such individual emails to bloggers is part of their way of doing this?
I don't know where this will go from here, but I created a sub-blog for the issue. I deleted the spam comments, but might I potentially receive similar emails from the brand owners of viagra, phentermine and the such? If so, do I have to deal with every single such email? Perhaps I am legally responsible, according to some US law - and the server for this site is in fact in the USA. Would it be different if my server is in The Netherlands or Denmark?
Lots of questions, but I guess I will figure it out with time.
Aside from that, I am Really getting tired of all the spam comments I receive on my blogs. I might actually disable comments altogether, like several others do, but then again, that wouldn't be too constructive either.
I have not spoken with Duncan for some time, and when we hooked up on AIM this afternoon he mentioned that he has a new videoblog somewhere, but he would not tell me what the URL is.
Here is the transcript of our discussion about it:
duncanfragile: there is a new secret vlog though ;-)
admnory: great that you are coming to Milan! wouldn't be the same without you - and oh, can you tell me the secret vlog url? i wont spread the url unless you Want me to
duncanfragile: but it will be more interesting if you find them yourself ;-)
duncanfragile: you'll probably recognise them as mine when you seen them
duncanfragile: i want to see if a vlog can bubble up without self promotion
duncanfragile: the sea is soooo much deeper and wider than when i started a year and half ago
duncanfragile: i feel that it was easy for fragiledays to be discovered in those days
admnory: ahh, yes, it is, the sea is very deep
admnory: yeah, there is so much video out there now
duncanfragile: i want to see what happens these days
admnory: if your video is on youtube though it will be hard to be noticed :P
duncanfragile: yes :-)
Can you find Duncan's new videoblog?
During a chat session with Duncan and Andreas later this afternoon, we also discussed archives, and Duncan pointed to a post from a few months back on bitlab malmö. In the post, Kristian talks about different ways we can represent our work on the blogs:
In some video blogs, which cover life on a daily basis, the posts are characterised as older or newer, but the posts in "artistic" videoblogs are often located outside chronological and relational time. In these cases the videos become forced into chronological classifications by the blogging application.
I have always considered my videos to be a mixture of a chronological and 'artistic' material. As such, life is lived within the limits of time, but once a moment is passed, we can relate to it in all kinds of ways.
Today I started taking a serious look at the Mefeedia collections, where I now have a collection called "DLTQ Recommends". Let's see how we can use Collections along with del.icio.us to create new maps through the videos out there.
Last night, during Lyngby-natten, I noticed about 7 PM that the Danish TV2 had a news piece about Youtube. I saw it outside an electronics store and I could not hear the audio, but it seemed like a pretty usual story of how regular people can use youtube to promote themselves to a global audience. They interviewed one guy from NYC who wants to be a professional filmmaker. To him, youtube is a perfect playing ground. TV2 also showed footage from Brookers, the Numa dancer, and some other regular youtube-stuff.
What I would like to see from Danish TV2 and other mainstream reports about videoblogging/youtubing is a report about how this also can be used for other things. I have displaced the url in my brain, but there is one american homeless person who uses youtube to broadcast his point of view in life. There are others who use youtube for politics, as has been reported by Washington Post some time back.
I am past the period where I just dismissed youtube as an inferior circle of teenagers who post videos of themselves puking to each other. When I get my computer working properly again, I will explore the worlds of youtube further, and will also try to see how we can connect some of the good discussions going on in that sphere with discussions going on elsewhere. There is really no point in having more walled gardens than necessary.
For instance, a discussion thread on the videoblogging yahoogroups from 4 months back - where is this thread documented? How is it documented? How can I use some of the qualified points of view that were expressed in that thread in other situations? How would you do it? Myself, I read the messages through my g-mail account where I have the messages in this group in its own folder/label. To go from the email in gmail to the url of the post on yahoo.com - how? If I have an url I can link to, it becomes much easier to transcend the discussion from within the yahoogroups and onto other areas.
Also, there is the archive of the blog entries I make, and the archive of the media I have published, both in terms of just uploading a file to a server folder or blip.tv, and actually pointing to it in a blog entry or email. Tagging the files internally in these clusters would work, but there is no structure for tagging a file on my server space as such.
One solution I have tried is to use del.icio.us. On my dltqvlog account I pointed to different files and blog entries. The good thing about this approach is that I can keep my own tags there, like uglyspaces, and I can use a different tagset/category on my blog. I gradually stopped using del. this way, but I am considering it again.
Meiser mentioned co.mments and how he constantly uses it these days. He is a good commenter - when he writes comments, they are sometimes very long and elaborate. Those comments deserve more attention than the life-span of that single post, which on most blogs is very low. Mefeedia also has "collections" coming up, where we as users can create collections of media from all kinds of sources.
There are many approaches to activating the archive - and I am not sure which ones work best. What do you think?
[source]
The first computer mouse, held by Doug Engelbart. This tool is now being used by hundreds of millions of people around the world. [image source]
One of my favourite authors is Idries Shah, a writer who greatly helped spread of knowledge of sufism in the West. One of my favourite books of his is called "Knowing How To Know", and I have often returned to the book the last years - returning to some of the psychological questions that are expressed there. Particularly, I am interested in how he handles questions of learning, and knowing. How do we learn? What does it mean to learn something? What does it mean to know something? How do we handle knowledge, individually and collectively?
A few weeks ago, I joined a blogger meet-up here in Copenhagen and during the dinner, Eugene Eric Kim, our guest of honor, held an informal presentation on what he is interested in and works with, followed by a Q&A session. I had not previously heard of Eugene's work, but I was pleased to realize that he works together with Doug Engelbart on issues related to purple numbers. During his talk, Eugene talked about the importance of 'not taking it for granted'. Not taking these tools for granted, or taking it for granted that we know how to use them, or that others know how to use/appreciate them.
What is it we are taking for granted? What questions do we take for granted - and thus ignore? Do we miss the forest because we keep looking at new trees? How can we improve our collective memory?
During the rest of the dinner questions like that were swirling in my head. After the dinner, the about 15 of us went to Oschlag's apartment for some beers and talks. I had the opportunity to chat some with Eugene, and among other things we talked about the growth of these new tools for collaboration, and how we can be better at sharing our experience. Here is Eugene's take on our discussion - and I really liked how he summed up parts of our talk here:
We talked about the FeaturedContent pattern as a way of trickling up useful content. It's an especially important pattern with blogs, which are great for tracking conversations, but -- like MailingLists and forums -- tend to obscure older, but still relevant content. [source]
I told Eugene that I had previously heard about purple numbers, but I forgot the context in which I had heard about it. After now searching through my old blog entries I found an entry from April of last year where I talked about "Hacking the Attention Hierarchy" and I found that one of the trackbacks of that entry was by Chris Dent who made the link between what I was writing about and purple numbers (that trackback now leads to a dead end, but google cache has it). In fact, I had also read things by Chris Dent earlier, for instance this wiki page on Socialtext Exchange. (Which reminds me: I still owe SocialText some money for the wiki experimentation we did in Bergen Liberal Youth last year! I'll get that sorted out asap!)
Anyway, I had already heard about purple numbers, but I was frustrated with how difficult it seemed to implement it, and Eugene and I discussed how one for instance could quickly assemble a few screencasts to show the workflow. I was very happy that I managed to convince Eugene to spend the time it takes to make a few screencasts, and now it is indeed down on writing :)
I was very pleased to have the opportunity to meet Eugene a few weeks ago - it reconnected me to my main issues/questions, and if it had not been for my broken computer, I would have been able to really get things rolling. [btw: feel like donating towards me buying a new computer? I am trying to get the old one fixed/replaced with a used machine, but what I really need is a laptop]
I had originally named this blog entry "Knowing How to Know" in tribute to Idries Shah, but the issue here is not about knowledge or knowing how to know. My issue is to figure out how we can crack down the attention hierarchy in our lives. Why we tune in to the most recent blog/vlog/podcast entries, and not the older ones. Why we don't even bother listening to certain voices in society. Why we lose the essence of an important presentation because the presentation is in itself presented as a 1-hour piece of data. Why we keep thinking that the past is irrelevant, which basically leads us to re-inventing the wheel all the time. (As I commented after seeing 'the mother of all demos' at Reboot 7: What evil forces have been at play ever since, halting our development?")
One of the threads during my discussion with Eugene was videoblogging, and we talked a bit about the concept of video + wiki. I have earlier discussed issues like this with Michael Meiser and others, and I had planned to do some experimenting with that on VlogWiki, but I never got around to it. Eugene mentioned Rory O'Connor, who is a documentary filmmaker interested in wikis. This now leads me to thinking about the amazing work that Kent Bye does at the Echo Chamber Project, even though I did not mention that during my chat with Eugene.
I will check up Rory's work on Wikimentaries - "cutting documentaries from open footage" as Eugene put it. I will continue talking about "attention hierarchy" and how I hope we can break it.
I have a few questions:
* When is information outdated? When is a blog/vlog entry old? 16 days? 3 months? 2 years?
* How do you think we can connect the dots in better ways? Do we need ever more tagging of data? What is best practice out there currently? How can we most effectively spread this best practice? (My suggestion is excellent screencasts like this or well-edited video content freely available on-line)
* Why is there so much bloody hype, and so little hard work done by us as members of a community?
***
Thank you, Eugene, for helping me remember why I do all this. Why I don't want to lose the questions which, basically, is the same as taking things for granted. (I need to work harder on being clear with my message, here and elsewhere)
Today, I finally managed to watch part 5 of "The Head of Raymond K" [.mov]. How? I downloaded it to this public computer (which cannot view .mov files), uploaded it to Youtube and viewed it there. I could have used blip.tv but my experience has been that their flv version conversion is a bit slower than youtube - or am I wrong?)
Seeing some of my old footage from the vault mixed with footage from the The PAN meet-up in Michigan is bizarre and very inspiring. It reminds me that the media we create does not have to be satellites, lost in cyberspace. Let us connect the dots.
On the blog entry surrounding the piece, Erik wrote:
The Head of Raymond can be put into a larger context if viewed in today's PAN feed,
and if you've been watching the PAN for the last 3 weeks, and have been following the Journey of Raymond K, then you're fully prepared to continue the journey into the head of Raymond K.
...
"The head of Raymond K." - well, I will live a few more years before you guys can Really start dissecting it. However, I will donate my brain to science. Chris, please send the appropriate forms to:
Raymond M. Kristiansen
Mosevej 8, ST. TH
DK-2800 Kgs. Lyngby
Denmark
Thank you,
Raymond K.
Vores hovedpointe er, at det ikke er nok, at "invitere læserne indenfor" på medierne. Medierne må forstå, at det er ligeså vigtigt, at journalisterne bevæger sig udenfor mediet, og opdager, at "deltagelsen" på nettet ikke er centreret om deres medie.
Loosely translated: "Our main point is that it is not enough to "invite the readers inside" the media. The media must understand that it is of equal importance that the journalists are moving outside the media and realize that the "participation" on-line is not centered around their own media. "
Dorte Toft wrote in one of the comments to the above-mentioned blog entry that the policy at Computerworld seems to be "finish your discussion here, or stay away".
Exactly! We need to develop better ways to not only speak ourselves, but listen to others. Develop a radar to the signals out there, in the huge wide blogosphere, and respond to them.
So, how do we do that? And how do we as blogging/videoblogging consultants help our clients to understand these basic new lessons? I don't have any definitive answers, but I think the answer lies somewhere between better tools and better examples.
I have now lived in Copenhagen for over 6 weeks, and during this period I have spent a lot of time trying to tune in to the discussions going on here. When I lived in Norway, I didn't really know what went on in the Danish blogosphere. I read the "usual suspects" like Trine-Maria, Thomas, e-klumme and a few others, but I didn't tune in to the corners; the depth. Blogbot and Overskrift are decent portals to get a glimpse of what happens, but still - the tools are lacking.
Examples. An example could be how a famous blogger checks his trackbacks and then leaves a comment on your blog. He joins YOUR conversation. Showing the thread connecting us in a very egalitarian way. An example could be how a journalist actually listens to what has already been written about a topic out there, fires up the radar, and digs deeper. Connecting the dots.
Networked dialogues, discussions. How do they happen? How do we have discussions over space and time? How can we improve our habits?
We at BlogSoft will soon launch our Danish aggregator, like we have bloggrevyen in Norway and nybloggat in Sweden. The aggregator will probably not be too innovative compared to Blogbot now, but we are working on new features that will kick-start the competition :)
What else do we need? What could we do to improve the network of dialogues? One aspect I have been thinking a lot about is 'the scandinavian blogosphere'. Will have to do some more thoughts on that...
Do you read techmeme / memeorandum? Do you think systems like this is part of what we need?
Oh, and btw, my computer broke down the other night, and I am waiting for it to get fixed/a replacement. I hate losing my data files!
Update: Peter van Dijck from mefeedia pointed me to this just now. It is a few years old, but very relevant.
Quote from an article at promomagazine.com:
"People are already embracing the brand through the craze," said Tom Baer, promotion strategy expert for Launch. "Turning it into a contest will just add to their desire to interact with the brand that much more. In today's market, where 'content is king' has turned into 'consumer-created content is king,' you have to take advantage of these opportunities when they come along."
Hah! I don't think I will be submitting any videos, but it is very interesting how the product makers react to creative work by consumers. Now, I just wish cable companies and others will smarten up too. We have seen, over and over, how simple videos created by a few individuals have had widespread influence regarding a brand - the Kryptonite / Bic pen video and this Mentos experiment being two of them - and I am sure that this development will continue.
The question is: How will the brands react? And how will all this play out in the political field? This article from The Washington Post is in that respect quite interesting.
But the feds are demanding to see everything that wasn't made public. They allege that the unused portion of Wolf's video may show the patrol car being set afire - part of a federal crime, the government asserts. Wolf denies there is an attempted arson on his videotape. The feds say they have jurisdiction over the case because the police car is partly U.S. government property since the S.F.P.D. receives federal anti-terrorism money.
"The courts have sent a clear message to journalists, bloggers, vloggers, and all citizens that the U.S. government will and can with the help of the federal courts make every person in the US an investigative arm of the government," according to Jose Luis Fuentes, Wolf's attorney.
Mainstream civic and media interests like the Society for Professional Journalists, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Lawyer's Guild, the San Francisco Chronicle's editorial board, and San Francisco's Board of Supervisors have all voiced support for Wolf. The blogoshpere, by contrast, hasn't yet elicited a rousing cheer for Wolf with a few exceptions like the Huffington Post and Silicon Valley Watcher. Neither the popular political blog, The Daily Kos, nor ourmedia.org, a site for the participatory media movement, covered Wolf's jailing.
*
There are many issues here, and I am not quite sure how to react to it. But I do know that the way they made the case federal because that local/state police-car was in part funded by federal money, is rather interesting. The state of California has a shield law, there is no such shield law for journalists on a national level in the US, so, bam, they make it a federal case. If a partially federally funded police-car in San Francisco can lead to a federal case, then what cannot? I don't know - I guess I just don't know the U.S. legal system enough.
There are over a hundred comments on the blog post written a few days ago on Wolf's blog. Some of these comments are rather illuminating, and a little bit sad.