openwebworks

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

I’m finding it impossible to conjure up a quick summary that does justice here.  Let’s see: “The Open Video Conference, held at the NYU Law School on June 19th and 20th, has come and gone like a tsunami, reflecting vast currents of change washing over all human media endeavors, sweeping away previous conceptions and technologies, and leaving a trail of broken business models like so much detritus on the beach.”

That doesn’t quite do it, so I’ll throw out some bits that seem most important:

1. The inaugural OVC drew some 840 people from around the world. I hung out with amazing people from Amsterdam, Finland, Australia, Asia, Brazil, and the U.S.: filmmakers, funders, hackers, CEOs of technology firms, metadata geeks, scholars, journalists, activists, you name it.  Video has become central to our political, cultural, and social lives, and now everyone has a stake in open video…like free speech.
2. Creative Commons licensing has remained somewhat niche and cool, but it may be about to go mainstream because it works for open video, and the CC people really have their legal, technical, and marketing act together.
3. The words “open video” may convey different meanings to different minds. A few key things I see: Technically, there are now no real barriers to anyone who wants to access anything.  If video is on the internet, it’s open video. And if it’s not on the internet it will be soon. That’s either a problem or an opportunity according to your point of view, or maybe both.
4. For most but not all people at the OVC, open video means access to a larger view of the world and the people in it, and is a very good thing.  Attempts to control that by DRM or teams of copyright lawyers will fail, and only cause misery along the way.
5. Video companies like YouTube, Blip.tv, and Boxee are embracing open video, with the possible exception of YouTube.
6. Ogg vorbis and theora are ascendant, as they are becoming more mature and are increasingly embraced by the big players (see point 5 above).
7. HTML5 is a Really Big Deal for open video and media in general. It was a total gas witnessing lead developers for Webkit, Mozilla, GStreamer, and VLC brainstorm HTML5 browser support with a room full of media geeks and coders.
8. Documentary filmmakers need support more than ever, as the “traditional” sources of funding are basically gone. We need to figure out new “traditional” sources, and I suspect this has to do with social media and the power law.
9. Many, many smart people are attempting to solve the problem of digital media workflow, cataloging, publishing, archiving, and sharing in social media environments. Most of them have some very similar ideas and approaches. All of us seem to be getting closer to actually making digital media work. Standards, formats, and practices are beginning to make sense, and the ones that work will not be proprietary.  They will be Open.
10. We won’t know where this is going for at least another five years.  That’s my analysis so don’t blame the OVC for this “insight.” It’s in incredibly exciting time to be in the middle of the media future.
    
     

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