A Pitch for NMC’s Online Conference on Web Video

Disclaimer: I work for NMC…

We are running our Spring NMC Online Conference with a theme that originally floated through the 2007 Horizon Report, what at one time we were calling “The Small Video”. Just in the last few months, I’ve been tracking how much more prevalent the use of video has become as a media form in the blogs I read, witness the viralness of the Web 2.0 video that has bounced around.

Some of it may be the technology, the ability to upload, store, share video in accessible format, but on an optimist side, I see more happening on the creative end, so that more individuals are making worthy, compelling short videos, and sharing/tagging them. While there are still scads of really bad stuff, I am also seeing more than the easy to snicker at genre of diet coke and menthos flicks.

And just there in the sidelines, something that’s been around for a number of years, but perhaps has remained a more fringe activity, is the video blog.

So on March 21-22, NMC is running the Online Conference on the Convergence of Web Culture and Video:

Video as we know it, produced by experts and consumed by viewers, is metamorphosing into a different genre altogether, blurring the lines between producers and audiences. New video-based forms of self-expression are emerging, with notable examples like video mashups, jumpcuts, and video blogging. Nonlinear narratives abound in this format, in which stories unfold across a series of 1 to 3-minute clips and web viewers are drawn into mysteries such as the story of Lonelygirl15. Brand-new forms like machinima are emerging that bridge virtual worlds, gaming, and storytelling, all through the medium of the small video.

The singular focus of the Online Conference on the Convergence of Web Culture and Video, part of the NMC’s Series of Online Conferences, is to consider how these developments are impacting our lives, and how they are affecting the ways we work, learn, collaborate, and even socialize.

The conference is designed to spark an examination of this phenomenon that explores both the positive and negative aspects of it on learning, social interaction, self-expression, and more.

The conference format is one that takes place via LearningTimes, with live presentations run through Elluminate… but there will be some asynchronous things to do as well, likely some sort of screening room or place to see examples of online video.

The conference is open for proposals, so I am (hint hint HINT) nudging some people to submit a presentation idea. HINT! We’re looking for things about videoblogging, machinima, video mashups, and how these are used, or have potential for use, in learning or creative expression. The ideas of tying web culture and video, is to relate the openness and wide sharing capability we expect in the web community, to video as a widely used media/communications form (meaning more than by just the geeky blogger types)

And for further interest, our keynote speakers lined up include:

Henry Jenkins, MIT, active blogger, e.g. just recently writing about From YouTube to YouNiversity, and author of Convergence Culture
Angela Thomas, University of Sydney, blogger, editor of SLATENIGHT, and explorer of machnima, avatars/identity.
Cynthia Calongne, Colorado Technical University, except on game play and design, machinima in virtual worlds (Lyr Lobo in Second Life). see her presentation from the 2006 Fall Regional Conference

So either make plans to present or to participate on March 21-22!