How web video changes the political conversation
Regular people are increasingly making media that adds to the political
conversation, lugging small (and big) cameras to political events and
telling their own stories. They post their own commentary on issues
using webcams. They use video clips to influence their own communities.
They don't stick to talking points. What's a campaign manager or issue
advocate to do?
Co-Chair: Schlomo Rabinowitz - Creator, EchoPlex Park
Schlomo Rabinowitz: bridge-builder between content creators and technologists, evangelist of new media creation to disenfranchised communities, film producer in "old media" towns like Hollywood, creator of videoblog Echoplex Park, editor for collaborative rich media site Evilvlog, an organizer for Webzine. He is also a Cancer with a Bad Moon rising. He is also a founder of Bay Area :: Node101, a community outreach program designed to facilitate and encourage the creation of a new generation of storytellers.
Co-Chair: Jay Dedman - Contributor, Momentshowing
Over the last 10 years, Jay Dedman has continued to find new ways to help independent media creators connect into larger, collaborative groups.
He began as a writer and producer of local news in Cincinnati and Atlanta. After working at CNN International, he became discouraged with the coverage and worked as a freelance journalist in the Democratic Republic of Congo where he first tried to use the internet to publish video showing how people live in a country at war.
Returning to New York, he landed a job at Manhattan Neighborhood Network, one of the leading public access stations in the US. He continued his experiments with putting video on the web until he found that blogging was the perfect distribution method. In 2004, he cofounded the Videoblogging Group.
He has since helped orchestrate a number of online video projects, including vloggercon.com, pixelodeonfest.com, showinabox.com, havemoneywillvlog.com, spinxpress.com, and node101.org. He also wrote one of the first videoblogging books.
He recently finished politicalvideo.org which offers up 500 hours of President Bush video ready for remix.
He sees distributive production as the next evolution of web video. Instead of each of us making videos in our bedrooms alone, we can now work together to make work that rivals what we currently see on commercial TV.
You can see his work at Momentshowing and RyanisHungry.
Jim Brayton - Owner, Long Trail Media
Jim Brayton is the owner of Long Trail Media, a one man web design and development studio focusing on the intersection of new media and politics. His most recent project is Why Tuesday?, http://whytuesday.org, an interactive video blog to get people talking about election reform issues and increase voter turnout.
Previously, he was the Internet Director for Senator Barack Obama, CTO of the consulting firm EchoDitto and Web Developer/System. Administrator for the Howard Dean Presidential campaign.
Jason Barnett - Executive Director, The UpTake
Jason Barnett
is an entrepreneur and self-employed artist, working for 12 years with
product design and collectible manufacturing companies. In his
volunteer life, he’s a progressive activist and online organizer.
Jason
is the Executive Director of The UpTake, a revolutionary video based
citizen journalism organization. The UpTake has been heavily covering
the 2008 presidential primaries and is building up a team of
citizen correspondents from all over the country to cover political
news and large events like the DNC and RNC later this year. Currently
The UpTake is a growing source for political video stories, and soon
will have a powerful social networking tool built right into it's
operations, helping organize and develop regional news teams and
interactive communities.
Before founding The UpTake, Jason
helped develop and lead DFL Links, an online organizing and outreach
organization for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party of Minnesota, for
which he was named 2006 DFL Volunteer of the Year. Through his work
developing online strategies for progressive candidates and
organizations, among other efforts, Jason
has developed important relationships within Minnesota’s emerging New
Media infrastructure. Through the online organizing and strategy
efforts, he has learned valuable lessons of how effective or not,
social networking tools can be for grassroots organizing.
He
lives in Saint Paul with his wife, daughter and son, and is a
stay-at-home dad, feeling strongly that someone needs to be home to
protect the cats from the two small humans.
