Piotr - Oct 6, 2007
Check this out: http://www.ebu.ch/metadata/NewsML/P-newsML001_NewsMeetingPresentation.pdf?display=EN and this: http://www.ebu.ch/metadata/NewsML/ This is a professional standard for exchange of metadata.
Last night I went to the Kendra event not knowing what to expect from the event. It started at 6pm and ended by 9pm and i had the opportunity to meet with a few people of which Brendon Kenny of VK media and the Jummp project.
A large amount of metadata is currently being discarded without understanding its value! JuMMp aims to promote interoperability for metadata and signalling information exchange. This will enable contextual navigation within live and recorded content for users of digital devices such as PVRs, games consoles, mobile phones and computers – providing value to end users and to all stakeholders in the content chain.
Having a website is essential in today’s media landscape for one simple reason. You don’t exist until I can hyperlink to a website containing examples of your work and describing what you do. This is particularly true in today’s new media landscape. For the minimalist among you a facebook or myspace page is the bare minimum. For those of you that take your work seriously though a website is more efficient. There are a number of reasons for which having a website is essential. The first of these is visibility. If you’re going to an event and you take hundreds of pictures then no one will notice them unless you share them publicly. You don’t need to be published to get your big break. That’s the point of viral marketing. Produce some content. Make it public and then mention it in a few places. If it’s good then others will advertise that work to friends from now on. You are now visible. That’s in an ideal situation. Yesterday when I went to the protest (which event? Describe it in a few words and link to it) I met two friends, one is a well established photographer whilst the other, is, as yet a relatively anonymous face in the crowd. With the established friend it was easy for me to link to his work because he has a high quality site. It’s something concrete, easy to see and assess. For the second person there is not much I can do to demonstrate their worth except mention their name but is of limited value, without a link. Why? Because there is no action to follow a “plug”. The plug is a term used to describe how one person promotes their work through another person’s content, whether it be in website form, podcast or other. As you are talked about more frequently, your visibility increases and, with it, people’s interest in what you do. John C Dvorak of Dvorak.org/blog is the best example. Anytime he can, he will mention his website and, although for the first ten times you may not react, you will go to the website, eventually. He’s got another reader. Whilst you’re surrounded by new media people everyone has a blog, a website, possibly a podcast and more. Leave this group, though, and most people are “invisible”, except, for young people, facebook. Most of them are shown in their bikini, at drunken parties or in other situations that would not reflect well within more traditional work environments. That’s why facebook should be kept private and personal, confined to a group of friends. When you apply for a job online, you’ are one of a thousand applicants. It must be a nightmare reading all those applications. I am taking as an example the work I did for blogwise, a human moderated database of websites. Each day several hundred people would apply for their blog to get through. As you look at the first ten your mind is clear and you’re interested. After several dozen you’re tired and by the time you reach several hundred you skim through. The same happens when you’re applying for work - boredom sets in. When you think about how much time people spend looking for content and entertainment on the web you begin to understand why and how important it is to have something to show. When I worked on my dissertation I looked online and found an interview of Jacques Yves Cousteau a matter of minutes after he won his Oscar for Le Monde Du silence. I needed, for a documentary, a soundbyte of Rupert Murdoch speaking about Myspace - and after several months of searching we found the key clip. That’s also how a documentary maker found my content for use in a documentary that will be on ARTE television in Spring 2008. The point is simple. In the past when you created content and you wanted people to notice you the best method for visibility was to be mentioned in physical examples, whether magazines, DVD or on the air. Today we’re all part of the same media landscape. What this means is that there is unlimited time for content to be shown. But how do you stand out, to get noticed? If there’s an event taking place and you have the time to cover it, then do it - and find where people are actively talking about it. That’s a great way to promote your work. If people see your latest video and want to find out more about you, they can go to your website, if you have one, to see further examples of your work. They read your blog to see your thoughts, they follow your twitter stream to see whether you’re a party animal, they check your linkedin profile to see who you know that they may know and, as a result, they get a better idea of what kind of person you are. You’ve just increased your chances of being noticed - and hired.
In today’s Twittervox episode we had Nik Butler talking about his idea of the flatlister. The concept is based around the idea that when someone is promoting themselves and building their own persona they are a flat lister. In other words they are in charge of their own persona and their own reputation. This carries on from a topic that was discussed by Jeff Pulver when he asked whether we prefer to use our real name or a nickname. There is one school of thought that believes that you should turn yourself into a brand whilst another school of thought believes that you should create a nickname as your brand can be sold off should it become successful enough. That’s just scraping the surface though and here is a short description of how others and I are attempting to use new media and social networking to promote our skills. A few months ago I got a message from a documentary producer asking whether I had more footage of an event they were interested in. They had seen a short edit either on youtube or my site and thought that this would be of value to their project. I said that I had more footage and so over a period of time I sent over the material which they looked through. They decided to use my footage and as a result their documentary will be broadcast sometime in Springtime of 2008 on Arte. That’s great news for me and I’m really happy. There’s going to be a screening of the documentaries and I’m going to do my best to get there to meet these people in person. Any opportunity should be taken to meet new people. In today’s media and cultural landscape any job that’s advertised is seen by thousands of eyes. What that means is that you’ve got a lot of competition and sending your CV is not enough. One job I recently applied to had over a thousand people apply to it. With such great numbers of people applying there’s little chance of finding work through as passive a method as sending an e-mail and electronic cv to find work. One person in Geneva said that you’ve got to stand out, after all those sorting through applications have a pile of several hundred cv on their desks to sort through. I’ve been using Linkedin recently, adding all those people whom I have had contact with to see whether there are any of their contacts that could help me find people whom have a need for my expertise. Jemima Kiss recently made a comment about Linkedin asking why people don’t put their full CV on the website. As a result of that comment I added a few of the more interesting experiences I have had. When you’re at Podcamp every single person has a website. Everyone is their own brand. If you listen to them introduce themselves they will all say who they are and what their website is. Some will even wear the T-shirts that promote either their site or that of the software they use as work tools. They also have twitter accounts. Twitter is one of those tools that’s great for entrepreneur and freelancers because it makes it so much easier to judge the quality of character of those you are working with. You get an idea of their lifestyle, of their work ethic and more. if you’re awake by 7 or 8am then that shows through. If they’re working on one large project or several smallers ones you see it as well. In brief you know when is the best time to contact them for working on current or new projects. We are now living in an era where everyone has access to the same information around the globe and as a result we have a great deal of competition. It is up to us, as individuals, with the tools we have available to demonstrate that we have the required know how. How do you use the tools currently available to us and do other people in your circle of friends also use them? Has it changed your way of working? I’m looking forward to Nik Bulter’s Flatlister article and your feedback.
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(Facebook as of this morning) Reliability is the single most important thing for a website. If, as they suggest, facebook is down for a few hours then that is demonstrating one of the key reasons why my web presence is spread across so many different sites on the World Wide Web. The Internet (network of networks) was built for redundancy therefore any form of downtime is unacceptable. In other news I’m back in London with the need to do more looking for work. Whilst in Switzerland I listened to a group of people working within the industry give advice to another person and in so doing there are a few recommediations I should make sure to apply them to my own efforts.
Over the past two days I have been to three lectures of sorts. I went to listen to what people had to say about aid workers and journalism, what A crude Awakening was like and finally today to a talk about whether television should be trusted. All of these events were good and will get a proper write up within the next day or two.
I recently dropped by the Frontline club to listen to what Andrew Keen had to say and his talk was really interesting. There are a few ideas that I found were interesting and I’m still planning on getting something written up about the event. Last night I met up with Documentally to record an interview before going to Cynthia Mckinney’s talk about confronting the empire. She talked for twenty minutes or so before giving the floor for a Q&A session at which man questions were asked. She got a standing ovation at the end of her presentation. I will find a few interesting elements and post them to this website and others shortly. Jeff Blankfort was also present at the event highlighting certain moments in his career.
The concept of community is an old one, coming from an evolutionary need for more than one pair of eyes to watch out for predators and other threats. over time the sense of community has evolved and become as great as it is today. There are however pockets of social discord. I believe that forums are the sandboxes of the World Wide Web. In chatrooms, there are always three or four people who chat together in the public space, whilst all around people ask A(ge), S(ex), L(ocation) - or at least they did. Today, everyone has a profile and the question is now redundant. When individuals stir up trouble the room will resolve this problem. Just two nights ago whilst on operator11.com, I saw a little skirmish that was quickly resolved and I realised that even when people are in an audiovisual medium online there can be moments of tension. That’s on a medium that’s fleeting. You write your comment, then someone else does and you have a conversation which will disappear whilst the ideas remain. Forums are another social beast. They take a lot of time to create and require a number of elements. First, they need people who spend a lot of time online. They can belong to communities of artists, fans of Apple products, or part of the scientific community. They are built as a place where conversations and debates can take place. They can help you resolve computer problems or advertise the work you’ve done. They are great because whilst they require participants to spend a lot of time over a period of weeks, they are relatively easy to interact with. If you want to write a long post you can, and if you just want to say that you agree or disagree, you can say so in just one line. Some of these groups have become tight-knit, like villages or year grades within a school. Everyone knows everyone else and so a “gang mentality”, for lack of a better term, arises. They all send each other private messages, they’ve met and they’ve chatted. They’ve been friends for years. They’re isolated hence my use of the word sandbox. As you spend more and more time in a community so it feels like your home and feels like a place where strangers are no longer welcome. I’ve been a member of many forums and I’ve been known to post heavily within these communities, but only when I am accepted. For a long time, I was a member of two communities and I would spend hours in both. I wrote about them so if you do a little research you may find which ones I am talking about. Today for the first time in months I joined a forum (which I will not identify) and decided to introduce myself, after seeing that someone on Facebook had recommended the site. I wrote my post and looked at other websites for some time before returning to the site. I read one comment and it was positive but the second one was offensive. It’s common knowledge on the world wide web that 80% of communication is nonverbal therefore if you write something be aware that it may be misunderstood. If it’s written and it’s within a forum then beware of the gang mentality because they will attack you. I wrote a response to the message I received and asked what that person thought should be the second line of the introduction, rather than the one I had written. That’s when one member and then another, and then a third began attacking me, dissecting and ripping apart any simple mistake, as if they were piranha on a lamb’s leg. They had a field day, really enjoying the destruction of my persona. I was hurt. I thought that this was going to be a professional website where I could have an intelligent conversation and advice on how to get work but instead they showed a complete disregard for social civility on a web forum. You don’t use caps lock and you don’t use bold characters to make your point. You write in one font and make sure that you’ve understood what was intended by the post. They didn’t. I’m reminded of the reason why I am no longer part of any forums (although I still have my logins.) Why be part of something small when you can part of something bigger, on a global scale. The blogosphere and web 2.0 are based on the idea that you’re part of a global interactive community. Anyone can become part of it and you prove himself by the quality of his writing and logic. There are groups of friends, but these are healthy. They look outwards and have no boundaries. It is for this reason that a new generation of social groups has formed on the World Wide Web. These are based around communities in the physical world. That’s where Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter come in. These three social networking websites work on one simple principle. These are friends that you know in real life, people you have shared dinners with, worked with, played with, and grown up with. Everyone knows each other and behaves himself. If I say something out of line five others will make sure I know how to be a better member of the community but they won’t attempt to destroy me. If there is a problem they will help me and show compassion. They will show each other this. When I went to the Twitter meet up I met some great people. I met people who share my interest in technology - the conversation was easy. They all write and express themselves in public. They have blogs, audio podcasts, and video programs and they’re interacting in an open system, where you know their names. It’s welcoming. It’s the mature web. It’s web 2.0. It’s filled with ideas and dynamism. A little later in the day I checked the website URL and found out that this was a free forum that was part of a larger domain. Good forums are all paid for by the community leader. As a result, the conversations and sense of community are far more welcoming and that’s what people look for before joining.
There are four reasons to be happy today. The first of these is that my MBP is finally in Geneva therefore it is a short matter of days before I get it into my hands and start playing with the computer and the new software. The laptop will be used for all video editing and multimedia work I have whilst the iBook will be used for daily tasks such as surfing the web, mobility, and more. I’m going to have two apple laptops capable of video editing at my disposal which is quite a luxury. The second reason I should be happy is that google Adsense, over the past week has doubled in income, meaning that I should get my next check twice as fast as the last one. I added a few more AdSense adverts on sections where advertising had not been and as a result, many more eyes are seeing and clicking on the advert. I’m still a long way from earning enough money to live off my website but any income is good. The third reason is that my website is being migrated to Drupal, a database-driven CMS solution for web mastering rather than the outdated HTML pages that it has been over the past decade. The advantage of the Content Management System (CMS) is that the layout is the same for every page whilst the content is held within a database. As a result, when you want to change something on multiple pages all you need to do is move blocks around. Blocks, when applied to drupal are how modules are manipulated to space them in specific areas on the website. As a result, whenever a website is re-worked it takes a matter of minutes rather than hours to change. As a side note, I’ve also updated both the PHP and MySQL database to version 5 and it’s working smoothly for the time being. The final reason to be happy is that a friend has received the edited DVD that I worked on a few weeks ago and finalised within the past few days. As a result, I’ve managed to finish what I had to do a matter of days rather than hours before it was due.
If that’s true then my MBP is waiting for me in Switzerland but I’m stuck in London for another week before i can go back and get it. Tonight I’ll find out whether a note was left by the delivery company and soon I’ll start up the computer for the first time. I’m looking forward to that. Once it’s home it’s home and the suspense is no longer there.