Report to APC on the progress of the Transmission network
What is the Transmission network?
ReTransmission
is a gathering of citizen journalists, video makers, artists,
programmers and web producers who are developing online video
distribution tools for social justice and media democracy.
The
Free Open Source Software community has provided a wide number of
production and distribution tool on the Net, while the Creative Commons
copyleft licence offers a way to share content without commercial
exploitation. The event has been organised to add to the work of these
and other communities to contribute to the building of real world
usable tools for distributing and sharing video online.
The
gathering is participant run and will made up of discussions,
workshops, screenings, training, presentations and a 24/7 lab. The
meeting runs from 13,14,15 Oct. 2006 in London.
Purpose of the report
The
purpose of this report is to present the activity within and around the
transmission network between the Rome (June 2006) and London (October
2006) conferences. According to the first calls the relationship
between the two subsequent conferences is the following: while members
of the network identified common goals and needs during the first, the
second in London could be an opportunity to implement at least some of
the projects drafted Rome. Another idea is to test the collective
publicity power of the network by staging a ticketed event for the
general public and professionals outside the activist ghetto with
screenings and talks.
The latter
will be an official event at the new BFI South Bank building, the
former a series of projects that shall be described in the main part of
this report.
Progress on the transmission projects between the conferences
Common Metadata Standard
"An
action research project to develop common metadata standards for an
initial syndicate of social, independent media and campaign groups
using web-based video, in order to facilitate automatic RDF content
exchange between diverse content management systems and generate
issue-based, regional and other thematic media RSS feeds for focused
media outlets and portals. In this description we explain that we are
wanting to do the ground work and create a more detailed framework of
the tool set, or a set of recomendations, so that participants at the
October re:transmission event in London can then evaluate and add to
the project." (From the project proposal by Zoe Young.)
£2,600
was channeled to develop a draft on this from alt-media-research
[http://alt-media-res.clearerchannel.org/public/index.php?title=FAQ]
which went to three people: Jamie King, Jan Gerber, Simon Worthington
and Zoe Young. There was a mailing list [metadata@transmission.cc] set
up to facilitate the development process. However, it seems partially
because of the funds involved the process was lacking transparency.
There was a letter posted about the application and another one the
night before the conference begun with the resulting drafts but no
other communication with the network members (as far as I know).
The
draft [http://shiftspace.cc/jamie/re-tx_report_0.1.pdf or
http://shiftspace.cc/jamie/tx_report_0.1.html] argues that Atom feeds
with Yahoo Multimedia Extensions serve the purpose of a common metadata
standard better than RSS feeds, and then proceeds to give a list of
fields to include in the standard. The proposition will be discussed
during the conference.
Do No Harm
I
have been personally involved in this development. Therefore, a
somewhat longer summary follows. The objective of the working group was
to have a workshop on a proposal at the Re:transmission conference and
than report back to the metadata working group.
Open publishing opens up a series of problems regarding the dissemination of information. Although we have no illusion about the ethical standards of professional video makers, but we have to acknowledge that citizen journalism offers challanges of a different kind when it comes to appropriate use of the footage. These people may simply not be aware of the ethical and tactical issues involved in Internet distribution and open publishing. Moreover, people who re-mix and re-use, or simply present and consume publicly available material may not have adequate information on the appropriate (or intended) use of the given footage.
To remedy these shortcomings and further the cause of open publishing we decided to include an "appropriate use" slot in the common metadata standard. If we complete our mission, users would be prompted to input information on the "appropriate use" of their footage on upload, and would be faced with these information whenever they download or play the
segment. We believe that by asking the right questions at the right times and repeating the advice on "appropriate use" as a mantra whenever and however the video is used, we are able to raise awareness on the ethical and tactical issues involved. Moreover, once a number of video sites have adopted the FPID specification, our "campaign" would happen without human intervention, embedded in a greater framework. Undoubtably that would not negate the need for non-automated campaigns but could be fairly efficient in terms of addressing a wider audience. All in all, our message would spread together with the individual video files whereever they go!
In
practical terms, after surveying a wide range of topics, we managed to
synthesise them into a form-snippet that we can present at the
conference and which needs additional simplification at the workshop.
Common Documentation
Mick
Fuzz has been adding substantial material to the Video Wikibook that
has been started as a space to work on the common documentation about
online video making and distribution. No other people has really
contributed between the conferences.
However,
there is another grand plan in the works. There seems to be a consensus
in the network that Adam Hyde has done
sthttp://shiftspace.cc/jamie/tx_report_0.1.htmlate-of-the-art work on
documentation with his soon-to-launch FLOSS manuals page
[http://flossmanuals.org/]. On the other hand, in order to address a
broader audience and enable all people to work on online activist
video, we need manuals and how-tos for proprietary software as well.
There is an idea to set up a site with the same structure as FLOSS
manuals, say "non-FLOSS manuals", for example, and develop the other
half of the documenation there. The site would use the same infromation
structure as the other page. First, the under construction non-FLOSS
manuals site would serve as an aggregation place for all relevant
materials, and in the second stage of the work these would be amalgated
and synthesised to fit into the proposed information structure and to
meet the style standards set by FLOSS manuals. Another feature to
implement on this new site is skinning, so that sites can use these
help pages seamlessly integrated into their own sites if they want.
Online Transcoding Service
There
was no progress at all in this area, although there were previously
several people who expressed their interest in collaborating on it.
Furthermore, during the work on the other projects the idea of an
online transcoding service popped up a lot of times as thing that would
really make our life easier. The automated service would be used by a
number of online activist video sites that do not manage to run a
transcoder on their server for technical or financial reasons.
Furthermore, it would be much easier to point users to a simple online
transcoding service that is available as a Web 2.0 service for all
operating systems on all Internet-faring computers than to write
documentation for all common video editing programs. To summarise, the
potential and the need is still there, but implementation is lacking.
International Screening Database
Metamute
is developing a second version of their "Agent System" through which
they are distributing and selling their publications. It is based on
the Drupal CMS and the CivicCRM module. In a process to incorporate
video into their activities the new distribution management system will
include a screener database, as well as a database of available films.
The project is in the testing phase at the moment.
The
new documentary on Indymedia entitled "I – The Film" is on tour in
Europe at the moment, and it was chosen as a test for the transmission
network to support the tour by organising screenings. Furthermore, the
film crew agreed to ask at each location if the local collective would
like to join the screener database. By that way of mutual help, the
film will spread more efficiently and the screening database will grow
as well.
Aggregated Publicity
During
the Rome meeting in June the point was made that it could be beneficial
to pool the publicity powers of transmission participants for certain
events. For example, online video activism is usually ignored by the
mainstream, so that more energy is required to tap into these channels,
which could be provided by joint effort.
The
British Film Institute has just completed the reconstruction of the
National Film Theatre, and opening it under the new name BFI South
Bank. A whole cluster of events are scheduled around the re-launch, and
Re:transmission managed to organise an afternoon of screening and
speaking as an official BFI programme.
Evaluation of the Networking Process
All
in all, the usual expectation that the dynamics would die down after
loosing live contact proved true. A gathering is ideal for making
plans, but prevents participants from surveying the practical
feasability of their ideas. On the other hand, most lists experiences
an unexpected traffic between the events, and practical work on some of
the most important projects like the screening database and the
metadata standard moved forward.
While
the Rome meeting was evaluated by most participants as an overall
success with an extraordinary amount of good project proposals, it was
also noted that there was no time to discuss the internal decision
making processes, membership management and overall organisational
principless and political platform of the network. That has led to some
confusion around the London activities and probably had some negative
effects on the internal dynamics as well. However, these problems
realised, it became clear that they have to be dealt with next time.
Aside
from these, the single most important fact about the liveliness of the
network is that a BFI talk by some of the participants rapidly evolved
into a local UK transmission members’ meeting which instantly turned
into Re:transmission — and international gathering where participants
came from as far as Korea. The fact that a second gathering was
organised to find more practical solutions to the needs formulated in
Rome just 4 month after the initial event highlights the potential of
the transmission network.
maxigas [at] anargeek.net