Jeffrey Taylor and I ambushed Ryanne and Verdi with the dolls that Cheryl and Rupert made for them, as thanks for freevlog.org ~laureng
So Ru Howe and I brainstormed an idea for an Open Source Online Video Award. Something anyone can give to anyone involved in online video. No awards shows. No voting. No approval process. No bullshit. Someone does something with online video that you think is wonderful or weird or amazing or moving? You can give them an award for it. We were thinking the only thing we’d ask is that people giving an award actually take the time to present a physical token of some sort, like a certificate or a little trophy. And that award recipients make time within a few months or a year to give out another award, so that it keeps going.
We thought we’d start it by giving an award for Outstanding Services to the Videoblogging Community and give it to Ryanne and Verdi for making Freevlog. The intention was to send it anonymously, so they wouldn’t know who’d done it, they’d just get the award. We had half-baked plans to mail the award to, say, a relative in a tiny rural town, who could post the final packages in the hopes that Ryanne and Verdi would never figure out where the award really came from. Like a Valentine from a Secret Admirer.
We enlisted Jeffrey Taylor to deliver our “trophies” at the Open Video Conference this weekend. There couldn’t be a more perfect place to give out the first Open Source Online Video Award.
Unfortunately, the anonymous part of the plan was lost in translation, and the award collaborators stand revealed. Best to just own up and take credit for the plan. It wasn’t an extraordinarily well executed plan, it didn’t have any pomp or circumstance. But it was accomplished with the characteristic authenticity - blemishes and all - that I love so much about videobloggers. Congratulations to Ryanne and Verdi on your award, such as it is, and thank you for your immeasurable services to the videoblogging community. You are appreciated. We just wanted you to know.
Of course, this video made all the hours it took to make doll hair well worth it! I’m grateful to Jeffrey for remembering to mention that my mom helped make the dolls. And if Ryanne and Verdi want a graphic to show off their award, here it is:
My friend Linda is retiring from full-time teaching this year. To help celebrate, my friend Rachel and I made a digital story for Linda.
We were asked to create a video about Linda’s impact on the Australia/New Zealand Study Abroad program, which Linda and Rachel created as a result of their work with Digital Storytelling. Rachel and I realized the story could not just be about the international cultural exchange program, that it needed to encompass the power of storytelling as well. To get a look at the big picture, so we could distill it, we tried to map out, on a whiteboard, the entire series of events that culminated with an international exchange focused on indigenous culture. There were too many events, though, so we mapped what felt like the truly essential pieces.
We could easily have made an hour-long documentary film with all the material collected over the last ten years or so. Linda went on a sabbatical where she traveled the world interviewing storytellers. Linda and Rachel have taught Digital Storytelling classes for several years, impacting the lives of hundreds of students. They also teach the process to faculty, sometimes with my help. And the international exchange has been ongoing for the last four summers. We’ve also hosted at least four return visits. The metaphor of ripples helped us distill this material, and the impact of Linda in particular, to its utter essence, and into this 5-minute story.
We both felt it would be inappropriate to narrate, and instead we chose to let the stories do the talking. We excerpted them, but did not edit them, which means we left the voices and visuals intact. We added a bit of text, and some beautiful photos to accompany our words. We connected the dots of “aha” moments and experiences. We chose not to worry if anyone else “gets it.” This video is for Linda, and she gets it. If you feel it as a summation of years, instead of a linear narrative, you’ll get it.
My friend Michael Verdi has been producing talkbot.tv, a talk show hosted by his Second Life avatar, who happens to be a cocky robot with attitude. The show looks kickass on the web site, a beautiful show player, uncluttered, ready to rock your screen.
But subscribe to it in a reader? Then every episode description is:
“This div will be replaced”
Then a bunch of player parameters
Then the link to the episode mp4
and FINALLY the actual episode description
(click the small image above to see the larger version on Flickr)
So this breaks the performance in iTunes, AppleTV environment, Google reader (any reader), and Boxee.
This isn’t meant as a criticism of Verdi, who has done an amazing job of distributing video online for years now, and who has lead the way figuring out how to do it, and teaching everyone else how to do it. Verdi is a freaking rock star.
This is meant as a shout out to content management system producers, and programmers, and scripters, and web developers, and yes, videobloggers. We still need an easier way to get our shows out, and have them look good in the myriad environments where they might be accessed. And I don’t want to hear it from everyone who’s all enthused about the <video> element that “works” only in certain browsers that 95% of Internet users haven’t adopted yet. Because the reality is that we’re a long way from seeing how support for the <video> element is going to shake down to the masses. I want a solution now.
We need a way to hide the flash information from environments that need to play the MP4 so users can just see the episode information already. It would be nice if that could happen with a WordPress plugin. This is one of the complaints I had about the vPIP plugin, and it’s why I never adopted it for this site, and why I won’t use it in the future. Podpress had this more or less covered, but it’s pretty bloated. I’m on the search for a plugin that works, or a combination of plugin plus hacking the plugin that works.
If you have any good advice, I sure could use it. Light it up in the comments.
It’s one in the morning and Mom and I just finished up these signs. I failed at videoblogging week, but I did organize a demonstration for later today. You can read more at A New Way Forward. We’re going to bed now.
I think I’ve averaged 4 hours of sleep per night since Friday night. This won’t end until Saturday night. This is exactly what this week in sleep feels like to me.
