DLTQ.org - by Raymond M. Kristiansen

At VloggerCon, which takes place in San Francisco on June 10th-11th, I am participating in a panel discussion about "Political Vlogging & Social Change" together with Kent Bye, Josh Wolf and Brett Gaylor. (Hm, why are we only white guys? I didn't realize that before now...)

This video, by Kent Bye from the Echo Chamber Project, gives a really good introduction to political videoblogging and some of the issues we will be discussing during this session. The Echo Chamber Project is a great example of how people can collaborate on video on-line. Josh Wolf has done some very interesting work with videoblogging from political events - in fact he even got in trouble with the law over some footage he took. Brett Gaylor is one of my (many) heroes in the vlogosphere, and his work with Homeless Nation is inspirational.

What will we be discussing? What will my own perspective be?

From my own experience with political videoblogging in the election campaign here in Norway last year it is clear that there is a lot of potential in this field, but there are also loads of obstacles. It takes time and dedication to build any sustainable videoblog, and you have to do a lot of selling before you can get a mainstream organization to take this up.

This, perhaps, marks a difference in perspective between the others and myself. Whereas Josh and Brett are more active in giving voice to the voiceless, I am interested in how organizations like Amnesty International or Red Cross could use videoblogging, or other NGOs, or political parties themselves. The really interesting stuff would then come once these more formal networks could work together with the single voices, like how online newspaper sites in Norway invite the public to start a blog on their site, and they then use some of that material in their own news reporting.

By the way, Andreas Haugstrup from Denmark is going to hold a videoblogging seminar about organizational videoblogging later this month. I am going to Denmark for Reboot 8 about a week later, so I doubt I can turn up for this, but I hope Andreas can give us some more information about the topics discussed there.

I am still working on a video where I explore some of these questions, and I will publish it here on DLTQ.org this weekend.

Are you coming to Vloggercon?