SpinFlow Passion

The Creating Passionate Users weblog has a great article on "Building A Successful Online Community".  Through SpinFlow, we want to apply the lessons that Kathy Sierra outlines.  Of course, first this means generating some passionate discussion around moving media.  How can we kindle yours?

One way that I have been thinking about quite a bit lately is the formation of SpinFlow "street teams" that will give demonstrations at creative professional schools and at universities and colleges.  These teams will help people to gain access to new media technologies and spread the word about collaborative tools.

If you are interested in forming a team for your school, please send an email to [email protected] and let us know about yourselves. What's your plan for helping people to collaborate online effectively and to move media?  How can we help you implement that plan?  Please tell us.

On the other hand, if you have an idea about how street-teams can help your group pr community collaborate more effectively, then please share it with us here in the comments and explore how to create such a team.

It is one think to build communities of passionate users, it is another thing all together to "take it to the streets".

Moving Digital Media to the Web

NYC Videobloggers
Location: New York
Gig: Videoblogging Workshops
Site: archive.org and others (see article sidebar)

Click the picture to watch the video.

Something special in the world of digital media and self-expression is happening in New York and across the globe.  A revolution in communication has started.  People are videoblogging.  That's taking digital video and posting it to your web site or blog.  Art, comedy, rants, personal stories and current events are just a few of the things people are vlogging about.

One group of creative professionals is taking this revolution to the streets through a series of workshops aimed at helping people learn to vlog.

Article Links

• fluxfactory.org
• freevlog.org
• Michael's Weblog
• Jay's Weblog
• Ryanne's Weblog
• OurMedia
• Internet Archive
• Vloggercon 2005

Jay Dedman, Ryanne Hodson and Michael Verdi are sharing their time, vision and knowledge to help people publish their own digital works online.  This last weekend, they held the first of a series of hands-on workshops at the Flux-Factory in Queens covering the essentials of video blogging.

Even better, they have produced a short video about the workshop and we have  permission to showcase it here on SpinFlow.

Workshop topics included publishing videos to the Internet, a topic of real interest to SpinFlow readers, as even moving small videos on the web can be a real challenge.  Choosing the best compression settings and finding a place to publish your videos without incurring extra bandwidth and storage charges are important topics to videobloggers.  That's where resources like the Internet Archive and OurMedia.org come in handy.

Besides the workshop and video (as if that were not enough), Micheal Verdi has led the development of the freevlog.org site where you can find a great tutorial on videoblogging.  Delivered in a blog format, this important tutorial makes innovative use of Flickr to walk readers thru the major steps in setting up your own vlog.  I used the tutorial when setting up the feeds for this site and my own.

What's next for this inspiring team of individuals?  Ryanne says that they would like to make a video version of the freevlog.org site tutorial.  We're so excited about the idea that we are sponsoring part of Ryanne's work (and Michael too real soon) with a SpinFlow project grant.  I can't wait to see what they do next.

So check out the video, the freevlog tutorial and assorted member blogs listed in the sidebar.  Part II of the technology initiative workshop is scheduled for May 1st and I'm told there will be more workshops scheduled in the future (if you are lucky enough to be in the NY area).

Want to learn more about videoblogging?  Check out the Vloggercon2005 site (see sidebar) for more videos about videoblogging.