Ned Lamont for U.S. Senate Introduction Video
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 05/14/2006 - 19:05Today, the Lamont campaign launches its 'Intro to Ned' video. You can see it here.
They are having a viewing up in Hartford, and on blogs around the country.
Cool things: Listeroids
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 05/14/2006 - 08:36Over at Greater Democracy, Jock has a blog post about Biofuels. On the mailing list, the discussion has drifted over to Listeroids. Listeroids are diesel engines based on designs from the Lister company. They are cool running slow speed engines that can burn waste vegetable oil and be used as efficient inexpensive generators.
As I read more about them, I found Kevin Kelly's website. Kevin is doing all kinds of interesting stuff, and you should read his narrative to find out about projects like The All Species Foundation, the The Long Now Foundation and The Rosetta Project.
His Cool Tools section is, well, cool. Maybe I should make a yurt. Likewise, his True Films section provides a lot of pointers to interesting films worth viewing.
Shooting our own Dream Dozen
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 05/13/2006 - 17:33Back in February, as I contemplated the final episode of The West Wing, I wrote this post about a possible replacement series.
Aaron Sorkin hasn’t given me a call so I guess if this is going to happen, we need to do it ourselves. That doesn’t really bother me. I wasn’t really expecting a call anyway. However, the idea has taken off in different directions.
The Ned Lamont campaign has taken off with videos. The Ned Lamont group on YouTube has really taken off, with lots of great videos of Ned. There are videos of his stump speech, videos of people interviewing voters on the issues, attack ads aimed at his opponent and plenty more.
As I’ve talked with others about this, and a Citizen Filmmaking Workshop and Festival has grown out of the discussions.
So, go back and re-read my ”Dream Dozen” post. Then, grab your video camera and head off and tape some good footage of your favorite candidate. Let’s spread the videos online, create a little buzz about new candidates and roll our own Dream Dozen show.
Friday Five
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 05/05/2006 - 11:54Cinco de Mayo brings a special meaning to Friday Five. I’m not sure if this will really end up being five unrelated topics or not, but it will have a bunch of different tidbits, much of it follow up to various things I’ve written about recently.
I just got an email from the Media Bloggers Association giving me an update on the Maine Web Report case. It is great to see bloggers across the politics spectrum work together to defend free speech.
Peter Turner, whom I met at the New Organizing Institute training in DC back in February sent me an email about The Katrina Project. They are trying to keep the Gulf Coast tragedy fully in the public eye and promote a serious national conversation about poverty and inequality through helping rebuild the New Orleans Public Library. A very cool project. Please, check out their site and contribute a book or two.
The schedule for Personal Democracy Forum 2006 is up. I will be on a panel, The Rising Power of Local Political Blogs. Two of the other people on the panel are Liza Sabater, whom I’ve met at various events around CivicSpace, last year’s Personal Democracy Forum, and probably other events, and Juan Melli, whom I’ve met online several places. It should be a good conference.
I’m also gearing up for the Media Giraffe conference. With that, I’m spending a bit of time looking at various video sharing sites. A few quick comments on this: Apparently blip.tv has cleaned up its interface and is easier to use now. For example, you no longer need to create a separate thumbnail. DailyMotion and ClipShack allow loading videos from cellphones. Kim’s cellphone records videos, so I’ll give that a try. Unfortunately, neither of them have a nice feed into other blogs, although DailyMotion does include RSS feeds and group abilities. Grouper has moved out of the ‘Coming Soon’ category, and I should probably explore that a little.
Also, Kim uploaded this picture of Reilly resting in the sun yesterday. It fits nicely for cat blogging on Friday.
So, that’s a little bit of what’s going on with me.
Media Giraffe Grassroots Filmmaking Workshop and Festival
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 05/03/2006 - 19:23As digital video cameras become more popular, as people start taking videos from their cellphones, and as new sites emerge online to distribute these videos, citizens’ filmmaking is set to take off. Many people will be simply sharing home movies. Others, however, will want to create documentaries, political advertisements, and citizen journalism.
The Media Giraffe Grassroots filmmaking workshop and festival will celebrate noteworthy citizens’ filmmaking and provide workshops for those wishing to learn how to become more involved.
Okay. That’s the idea as it stands right now. Can I pull together this as part of the Media Giraffe Conference I’m helping with? I’m getting interest from various parties. Now, I need to see if I can find some good folks to lead the workshops, a good keynote speaker, people making good grassroots videos, and people interested in attending the festival.
If you have any ideas, please let me know.
UPDATE: Things are taking shape nicely for the conference. Details can be found here:
http://www.mediagiraffe.org/filmmaking/
