Beyond Broadcast 2008, Fair Use Guide

As appropriate for a conference by that name, the folks at the Center for Public Media at American University have made available a ton of content from Beyond Broadcast available online.

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Miro, Kaltura, and the Generative Future of Internet Video

Jonathan Zittrain’s The Future of the Internet (and How to Stop It) is quickly rising to the top of my summer reading list (about which more to come in a later blog post). The distinctions he draws (based on his recent talks, see video here, here, and here) between sterile and generative platforms, and the concerns he raises about contingently generative or tethered platforms, seem to me right on target, and consistent with the issues Tim O’Reilly has been raising (along with, of course, many others) about how to translate the freedom behind free software and the openness behind open source into a world in which services and data live in the cloud.

One major place where the conflict between fully generative and contingently generative comes into play is on online video. YouTube’s terms of service should give any independent video maker pause - both in terms of the license rights they claim and in terms of the susceptibility to take down on the basis of broad criteria[1].

Two things make me hopeful, though, for the future of video on the open web: Miro and Kaltura.
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How Lego Caught the Cluetrain

I’m often amazed at how well the Cluetrain Manifesto stands up 10 years later, and constantly recommend it to new Optaros employees or others trying to understand how companies can engage with customers in new ways.

The video below is from the “There’s a New Conversation” event in NY on Feb. 13th this year, which was put on by The Conversatin Group. It’s Jake McKee, formerly Global Community Relations Specialist for Lego, talking about how Lego learned to engage with its adult fan community during his time there.

It’s a great case study of how he overcame internal resistance and convinced Lego to connect with and benefit from fan communities rather than trying to control them or shut them down. If it were up to me this would be mandatory viewing for all marketing teams and legal teams at consumer goods companies. Of course much of it applies outside consumer goods too.

If you use Miro (and you should), use this url to add The Conversation Group’s channel: http://tcg.blip.tv/rss

A Few Good Channels

Now that Miro 1.0 is out, I thought I’d share a few excellent video “channels” I’ve been watching lately - TED Talks, Google Tech Talks and Google engEDU, Pop!Tech, and Ask a Ninja!. Between them all, they may just get you through the writer’s strike.

(To subscribe to any of these in Miro, you can just use the “Add Channel” command in the Channel Menu and put in the RSS url below. Be sure to look at whether you want to download ALL the videos in that feed or just NEW videos added.
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Miro goes 1.0

Miro, the open source video subscription management and player application about which I’ve blogged many many times (really many) , has finally gone 1.0!

Check out the announcement on the Miro blog: Miro 1.0 is here.

There’s also:

• Comprehensive Feature Guide to 1.0
• The official Press Release
• Explanation of co-branding potential
• A comparison of Miro and Joost