Open Video Conference: Easier, Cheaper, More Reliable Ways to Make and Share Video

At the Open Video Conference 2011, developers met artists met academics met lawyers. And everyone wanted to figure out how to build the tools—technical, policy, educational—to foster an open media ecosystem. Our colleague Elisa Kreisinger, remixer extraordinaire (and contributor of the Fair Use Video of the Month), showcased remixes that vigorously employ fair use.

There was so much to choose from (some of it forbiddingly geeky) that you could get overwhelmed, but for people who care about making media that matters, perhaps the sections on using HTML5 were the highlight. And there, Luisa Dantas’ project Land of Opportunity stuck out (here’s a take on it from Working Films, with a clutch of links to the project). It is part of Mozilla Foundation’s Web Made Movies initiative.

Here’s the range of takeaways, provided by the conference organizers: “A lot rich material was created, covering a range of topics. For example, there’s enough to get started on serving your own YouTube style Video CMS, building an open video editing platform, or syncing up video with interactive web elements. You can read up on advanced video forensics, and the struggleto remain anonymous in a world of overwhelming surveillance. Learn about your rights as a mobile device owner and the limits to free expression online. There are now ways to keep your film alive past its release date, keep it preserved past your lifetime, and compensate your work through new experiments in digital currency. If you’re an educator, there are now advanced ways to use video in the classroom. Also, for good measure, a few strategies forcounterbalancing hate speech on the internet. Some of you also came forward with some really cool demos to show why open video matters.” Thanks a million to the organizers! 

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