What I originally thought would be the highlight of the Open Video Conference did not come to pass. Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody (The Power of Organizing Without Organizations) canceled last minute due to flight delays, sending conference organizers scrambling in the wee hours to find a suitable replacement. Definitely more than suitable, Jonathan Zittrain came to the rescue by moving up his evening keynote; he threw together some slides over breakfast and opened Saturday morning with a zest and style previously unseen in OVC speakers. The title for his talk? “Here Comes Everybody.”
I’m not sure whether it was this unexpected turn of events that imbibed the conference with an infectious vitality, or if it was just another Saturday, but by the end of the day I had more than enough energy to keep on going until dawn (which, by the way, I did). The unexpected was the running theme in my experience of OVC; from my surprise at the diversity of conference attendees (there were independent film makers to corporate representatives) to the majority of non-techie talks and perspectives, I found my disparate worldviews converging and the bigger picture of OPEN jigsawing them into place. I think that’s ultimately what I came away with: openness and transparency as the jigsaw glue for the multifarious endeavors out there, all of them uniquely inspiring but collectively crucial. Rather than elaborating on humanity’s progress (or shortcomings) on this front, I’m going to get a little more specific.
Beginning with the universal disclaimer (for me), it is so easy to get lost or caught up in the details of what we do for this collective movement termed as “open”. As a hired advocate specifically for open education (a movement concerning the centralization of open educational resources in education), I often find myself struggling to see how it all fits into the bigger scheme of things known as life. In the past, I’ve always contributed this struggle to my penchant for philosophy, or for sweeping schema that aim to somehow make sense of a nonsensical world, and consequently dismissed this struggle because of this, assuming that because there are so many people in the world much smarter than I, it all somehow does fit and I just don’t see it yet. Well, I think I was right and wrong: there are a lot of smart people in the world, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they see any better. The people who see anything are those who recognize that there is more to every story, and the ones who see more are those who realize that openness and transparency is what’s going to drive that home to everybody else.
The Open Video Conference was a hit because it extended its scope from the technical platforms enabling open video to the people who make open video happen. By getting at why they are making it happen in the first place (because video is one powerful medium for openness, because it’s what we’ve got to counter the nonsense that runs nonstop on cable television), the conference was able to impact a wider range of people—people like me who aren’t part of your typical choir.
All of the OVC is open video online and probably going viral as I type. But since most people don’t have the time or patience to view every single session, I’m going to do a brief download on some of my noteworthies here (keeping in mind that I had to miss some great sessions for others). In chronological order:
Yochai Benkler: Keynote
Yochai Benkler, probably best known to the world as the author of The Wealth of Networks, kicked things off on Friday by emphasizing that “ownership is [no longer] authority”, as evidenced by Wikipedia. He aptly observes that no one company has all the smart, capable people in the world, and that the Internet, in having radically decentralized the industrial information economy, has enabled these smart, capable people to work together on their own. This he dubbed as “distributed learning and innovation”: “Distributed learning and innovation means that the right person with the right skills can come up with the right solution.” He ended with this statement: “Distributed innovation is [now] in the service of distributed democracy.”
Fair Use Battles: What’s at Stake?
Anthony Falzone (good cop, Stanford’s Fair Use Project) and Corynne McSherry (bad cop, EFF) really illuminated for me how much you can do with copyrighted works. I, like many (especially teachers), have been afraid of infringing copyright when in reality we can do so much with copyrighted works via fair use. Anthony focused on specific cases where fair use has been upheld in the courts, finding that transformative use, such as social commentary, is largely considered fair use. He states that “the point of copyright is not to reward authors—the point is to reward authors so they create stuff.” It’s an incentive to encourage, not discourage, creativity. “The supreme court has said this again, and again, and again. Fair use = Free speech.”
However, Corynne also showed us the dangers facing fair use, such as DMCA take-downs, which make it incredibly easy for anyone to have your work blitzed out of existence without so much as a warning, even if what you posted was a fair use! She made me feel better, though, by telling me that there were things I could do, such as counter-noticing, or contacting the EFF.
Lizz Winstead: Featured Talk on Satire and Commentary
The co-creator of the Daily Show is a “firm believer in the satiric landscape” and focuses “mainly on the media because [she] feels like if the public gets it—that they can’t trust the mainstream media—then they will start looking elsewhere” instead of on “these dipsh*ts that get it wrong.” It’s the topical commentaries—responses to issues—that people really pay attention to. Bottom line: “Politics is personal.” I couldn’t agree more.
The Mobile Journalism Collective
The Mobile Journalism Collective focuses on citizen journalism, asking who is the citizen 2.0? Their answer: “Citizen 2.0 shares social information for a better life.” Part and parcel of the collective is training youth producers of digital media in the “one-shot” method, short glimpses into life that tell a story in one camera shot. “Impactful storytelling is a human responsibility” and “everyone can be a storyteller given cheap and portable modes of telling.” However, instead of simply promoting new media, they focus on “taking old media spectrums and inserting the citizen’s voice there.” It’s not about CNN versus a woman’s footage of a fire; “it’s about working together to give a bigger picture of what actually happened.”
I found this extremely pertinent to what ccLearn is attempting to do with Student Journalism 2.0, which is working with high school journalism teachers and students to get them up to speed on how journalism in the Internet age is rapidly changing and what they can do to contribute to its future. Incorporating citizens into news reporting is already huge, as evidenced by current events in Iran, and will only become more so.
Jonathan Zittrain: “Here Comes Everybody”
Jokingly impersonating Clay Shirky, Zittrain was funny and enlightening, referencing the Star Wars Kid as an example of collective consent on the Internet. Wikipedia is a labor of love; nobody gets paid to contribute to this vast online collection of reference articles, yet it continues to grow and sustain itself against vandalism. The Star Wars Kid is a phenomena that occurred when a group of kids decided to put up an embarrassing tape of one their peers on YouTube wielding a golf ball retriever as a light saber. Dubbed only as the Star Wars Kid, the Wikipedia entry for him refuses to divulge the kid’s name due to a consensus that occurred on a related conversation page. Yet, those who disagree still attempt to edit his name in, so why doesn’t it appear? Because others are constantly patrolling pages to make sure the community’s decision is enforced. The page is not locked and no one is forcing these people to enforce anything. So why do they do it? Zittrain says “people contribute because they want to be part of something larger than themselves.”
Mediaspace Potentials and Mapping Open Video
Kari-Hans Kommonen and Sanna Marttila (Arki research group at the University of Art and Design Helsinki) presented on their respective projects at Media Lab in Finland. Both were fascinating presentations, and those who missed out due to conference scheduling should definitely check out their site and the session videos online. Kommonen talked about the change in media environment from analog to digital—how the computer is a meta-medium because it is programmable and you can make it function like any other medium. This is a (r)evolution in design because you “can increase the functionality of all analog devices inside the computer; (it’s) a multifunctional computer that can do anything!” The mediaspace refers to the new media environment that resulted from this evolution in design, the “networked information economy.” In the current world, “Media is our nervous system”; “Society negotiates its beliefs and designs in media. Redesign of the media environment leads to redesign of the societal thinking process.”
Marttila, also on the Creative Commons Finland team, showed us Venn diagram-based maps of social tools, resources, and people intersecting—and how all three combine to produce open video. These maps demonstrated the findings of a study involving documenting people and their interactions with media in the everyday (such people included acrobats and winter climbers). She found that people are the main ingredient for openness, a strong “design belief that people themselves are the best designers of their own activities.” Key finding: Video is a process—not an end result. “Individual videos can not be fully understood outside of the process they belong to.”
Open Video in Education
I was pleasantly surprised by this panel on open video in education. Formal education institutions are so rooted in the past that they are usually less forward thinking than your average open culture advocate. But most everyone in the room, including the audience, were in agreement that open video and open technologies are essential to the future of education. The expressed concerns were more about how to convince the higher-ups at these institutions to see the light.
However, the session was not lacking in representation. Someone remarked how the variety of perspectives yielded a kind of “transformer panel.” From Bjoern Hassler (Cambridge University’s Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies) who set the tone in the beginning by assuming that it is (or should be) apparent to everyone that CC BY is the best license for OER, Tiffiny Cheng (Participatory Culture Foundation) who highlighted Miro, the open source free high definition video player, to UC Berkeley’s webcast.berkeley, the panel was diverse but consistent in their view that open video for education is essential, that CC licenses for that video is a given, and that—to quote an audience member’s words—”You have to do more than just tape lectures.”
Xeni Jardin: Keynote
If I had to describe Xeni Jardin in one word, it would be fabulous. With her near-platinum blond hair in striking short swirls and with just as edgy eye make-up, Jardin was the OVC’s eye candy. But we wouldn’t expect any less from Boing Boing Video, from whence she hailed. Do I have anything else to say about her? Just that she has crazy interview skills* and a magnetic personality. Oh, and she attributed Boing Boing’s success to the fact that “all of [it] is Creative Commons licensed content.”
Amy Goodman: Keynote
Amy Goodman, host and founder of Democracy Now! and one of the first independent journalists delivered something powerful to a packed auditorium. I say powerful in spite of the fact that unlike all previous presenters she had no flashy keynote to accompany her speech, only a blank screen, a podium, and a handful of papers. I have never seen her speak before, and it was obvious when she paused for a second near the beginning that she was nowhere near as Web 2.0 savvy as her audience. What gave her credence, however, was the fact that she accepted the change in the media landscape, and not only did she accept it, she supported it—by giving shout-outs to Creative Commons and Twitter. She quoted a time when she was asked what she thought of the mainstream media. Her answer: “I think it would be a good idea.” She drove home the point that open video levels twenty-four hour news networks who are more extreme than mainstream. What I found most striking, though, was her conviction that she and her fellow colleagues were representing the shield, versus the sword. It reminded me of the speech given by world-renowned writer Haruki Murakami on accepting the Jerusalem Prize earlier this year entitled, “Always on the side of the egg.” In light of February events in the Gaza strip, Murakami responded to protests about accepting the Jerusalem prize. He went ahead and accepted, stating that novelists like to do exactly what they are told not to do. But he also gave another reason, that—”Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.” He continued,
“Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?
What is the meaning of this metaphor? In some cases, it is all too simple and clear. Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high, solid wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them. This is one meaning of the metaphor.
This is not all, though. It carries a deeper meaning. Think of it this way. Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: It is The System. The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others – coldly, efficiently, systematically.”
She also quoted Woody Allen, which, coming from her, was a hell of a lot more inspiring—”90% of Life is just showing up.” And, she said, “Rosa Parks was not just a tired old seamstress.” (She was a revolutionary.)
Surprise video conference with Pirate Bay’s Co-founder
*Xeni Jardin returned on stage to wrap up the conference and interview Peter Sunde, co-founder of Pirate Bay who is awaiting appeal. I’m not going to say too much about this one (it was the end of the day and live streamed and I didn’t take notes) except that it was incredibly entertaining and Peter was sipping apple juice (it really was just apple juice). He was also incredibly at ease for someone sentenced to one year in prison. Anyway, the video is definitely worthy of a laugh and a lunch break.
That’s all
I’m not a seasoned veteran of conferences, and I usually don’t have the constitution for wading through gigantic masses of people. I have to say, though, that the Open Video Conference really rocked my socks. All two of them. Thanks so much to the Participatory Culture Foundation, Yale Internet Society Project, Kaltura, iCommons, and the Open Video Alliance who put this on. I look forward to OVC 2010.
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