Beyond-broadcast-panel
Morning panel at Beyond Broadcast: Approaches to participatory media
Here are Bill Densmore's rough notes of the Saturday morning panel at the Beyond Broadcast conference at MIT on Saturday, Feb. 24.
Panel I: Participatory Culture
moderator: Jesse Walker, Managing Editor, Reason Magazine Susan Buice and Arin Crumley, Four Eyed Monsters Kenny Miller, Executive VP and Creative Director, MTV Global Digital Media Team Elizabeth Osder, Senior Director, Product Development, Yahoo! Media Group
MODERATORY: Jesse Walker, managing editor, Reason Magazine
With the web there is a bias in favor of amateur work. In the past there was not.
In 1921, the amateur broadcast stations were outlawed. You had to choose whether you were to be one-to-one or one to many.
Civic -- churches, etc., emerged.
The radio act of 1927, passed 80 years ago yesterday, paved the way "discrminated in favor of middle of the road networks and against non-profit stations with a commercial point of view."
"Someone from the wing of the media reform movement that Henry was criticizing was Robert cccccc. (McChesney?)
"Rather than moving twoard the political debates of the 30s . . . . we've let the tinkerers back in, the amateurs who created radio and broadcasting."
YouTube is the polar opposite of American Idol.
THREE PANELISTS, says Walker, representing different layers of the participatory media equation:
- Ken Miller, exective VP, social media. MTV. Big, traditional network. Established community enterprise figuring out how to harness.
- Elizabeth oster, senior director,product development, Yahoo Media Group.
Adjunct professor at the Annenberg school. The first girl to play Little League baseball legally in the United States. Yahoo straddles the border.
- Aaron Crumley one of the creators of Four-Eyed Monsters film. Entrepreneur from within the grassroots culture.
Ken Miller of MTV
Has a theory of navigational dominance.
ELIZABETH OSDER, of Yahoo
11,000 people at Yahoo in 16 countries. "What we have is connections. We make connections among people." Have 140 million registered users worldwide. Wants to be a many-to-many engine. She lives in the news and inforamtion world. And grew up in the dead tree world, and things she has been transforming the world through journalism.
"it's a place for us to look at how, there are so many things going on at Yahoo in terms of platforms."
Yahoo has some transformational things. But some basic blocking and tackling, not sexy, but important.
"The first thing is a single-identify platform underneath 400 million users." That's important.
"We've opened the channel and gotten reporters out of the way." Yahoo News i the largest news site on the Internet. There are 40 million users. They are a force to share the light on "some of the best citizen journalism that is happening out there."
They are a wire-handling first. "we take the deicison of the Ap and Reuters and foward them to you."
"We I am now trying to figure out how to do is disrupt that, without throwing out the baby with the bathwater."
"There is a lot of great stuff out there, it is figuring out who can deliver on it."
"Digging" is rebranding the idea of rating the news.
"You Witness News" launched that produce. "This is one that I hope can bring the audience of Yahoo to some of the best stuff that is happening out there." photos / video is 100/1. Trying to get users to share their best work.
"I think we are part of an ecosystem both on and off the network."
Sharing rewards with the people who participate?
Oster says there is a key questions: "How do you share rewards with the people who participate?"
Hope that it is a many to many engine. "For us it is about taping people's passions."
Hopes the platform is powerful and transformative. Next generation is a tremendous content-sharing network.
Aaron Crumey of Four-Eyed Monsters
He is particpating from Los Angeles (by screen, not physically in Cambridge), because they are nominated for some Independent Spririt Awards for their film: "Four Eyed Monsters".
"We are a part of it because of our Internet run." they went to film festivals. "In that process, it pretty much lived its live and then died." "But rather than say, OK, taht's it, we're in all this debt from making a film ... we're done. Instead of doing that, we decied there just seems to be more opportunity, there seems to be something more we can do."
They considered what they could create on the Internet. They had been doing some videoblog stuff in around 2005, a film at South by Southwest in Austin. They didn't know there was a whole videoblogging community and the became a part of it. They decided to do something alittle more involved showing the creating of the the film and taking it to the festivals. So it was a film about making a film -- something other creativists could identify with.
Created Oct. 14, 2005. In that time, about 3,000 saw their film. In the first 36 hours of episode one, 3,000 peoplel had seen it. "We realized that 36 hours of a video online vs. nine months of trotting aroudn .... it was just a five minute thing. They promited it on iTunes and MySpace jumped on and put it on their home page for some time. iPod video was itnroduced the same day. Today there are eight episodes with about 63 minutes of content. Just video blogs that equal anotehr 60 minutes of content. So for a film that strated with 70 minutes.
What started out as a four-eyed monsters movie "is now becoming more of a media channel ... and a media brand."
"We are working on ways to monetize our product." They are selling a DVD, which includes a 10-minute piece on network neutrality. That's the No. 1 issue, "bigger than anything else."
Q: How is the way other media has been created around his film affected their film-making process going forward.
Crumley answers: When you go to a film festval, you do panels and get feedback that way. But on YouTube, "The types of comments we were getting were much more personal and more thought out ... things people would not feel comfortable saying in an audience at a festival."
