Daniell Krawczyk

We were visiting friends with young children and they were importing photos from their digital camera. When they did so, they found a couple short videos made by 5-year old Fox when his babysitting Grandparents were out of the room. Turns out he's a born vlogger even without being on the Yahoo! group or attending Vloggercon (or as far as we can tell, having watched a videoblog online).

My first exposure to Community Media came at the GRCMC when I became a VISTA and helped launch the MOLLIE project. MOLLIE was the most fun I ever had in my life and the main reason I'm as hooked on Community Media as I am today. During my second year at the CMC, Amy McKenzie (the VISTA working on MOLLIE that year) made an excellent documentary on MOLLIE that we gave out on hundreds of DVDs. I decided to put it online as part of my further tests of Google Video and to help spread the word of MOLLIE. Enjoy!

This is an excellent video giving the history and context behind Daniel Ellsberg, a man who has gained much attention lately for calling for whistle blowers to step forward and release the government's plans to invade Iran.

This video was produced by WYOU in Madison, Wisconsin and released as part of a DVD-set including his lecture in Madison.

Special thanks to Charles Uphoff at WYOU in Madison.

I've discovered a new must-check blog that focuses on the changes going on in the world of Community Media, which means I have something other than Unmediated, Media Policy Blog and PEGspace to check twice a day! It's named "Community Media In Transition" and its primarily edited by the excellent Colin Rhinesmith whose previously spearheaded both ACMEBoston and Media Berkman. Colin is now pursuing a Masters at Emerson and plans to study Community Media (aka Public Access), and its rapidly increasing collision with the cybersphere.

Things have been quiet on this blog for a while now... last post was almost five months ago and though I'd love to give the excuse that it's because I felt that the post on American King and havemoneywillvlog.com needed top billing for as long as possible, I'll admit the truth which is that blogging just isn't my thing. I mean, I already spend way too much time every day staring at the computer monitor and interacting with the world through typing, and my to-do list usually includes plenty of things that need to be written (emails, articles, reports) which have a higher priority than a blog entry. Now I'm not dismissing the power the blogged word, nor the effectiveness of communicating with a larger audience through it. I keep up with a number of people's lives through their blogs and I'm sure that time spent blogging provides more information to more people than time spent sending individualized emails. It's just that my communications with the people I need to communicate to are already too depersonalized by the fact that we're using a phone or computer interface between us. To put it another way (and to misappropriate and misuse the name of my favorite blog), my communications are already over-mediated, and if anything I should be working to spend more time in unmediated communication (face to face). God bless the internet and ubiquitous cell phone coverage, but I'd rather have 20% more in-person communications than 100% more typing.

The easiest way to directly support a musician is to buy copies of their album (or other merchandise) when you see them on tour. They get a larger cut then they would if you bought it in other retail outlets, and you get the satisfaction of making their artistic pursuit a bit more sustainable.

There hasn't really been a corresponding option for people who want to support a particular videoblogging project, at least until today when Have Money Will Vlog launched. Now, potential patrons can pledge support for projects that they want to see created. You can pledge using a credit card or PayPal and you're only charged if the target goal is reached.

The first project pitch was so awesome I couldn't resist clicking on the pledge button. Of course the fact that it's for a Human Dog production didn't hurt. In September 2004 I suggested that Human Dog was the first great content producer for videoblogging (when I also though that Adam Curry was the new Ted Nugent), and while I'm willing to concede whatever the point I was trying to make about the Nuge, I'm still confident that Chris Weagle is worth putting a couple bucks toward. COME ON PEOPLE. There will always be a Garrett Lambert, but do you really want there to not be an American King?

Daniel Berninger has written an excellent piece on the broader implications of net neutrality, over at GigaOm today.

It's worth printing and taking your time your time with this relatively dense analysis, but, here's a couple sentences that struck me as especially dead-on.

Does anyone believe government should grant public assets to private entities for private purposes? The loss of net neutrality changes the terms under which the Bells enjoy access to right-of-way. The non-neutral private network deployments associated with the Bell company broadband offers look like the non-common carrier networks of the cable companies.

It's a big long to print on a t-shirt but it's a damn good point.

Daniell Krawczyk's primary passion is

Community Media Technology Integration

But what does mean to you, Joe Page-Viewer?

It helps to think of Community Media as having two forms.

The first form of Community Media (as represented by the Alliance for Community Media) is the result of 30+ years of legislation requiring local franchising of cable television providers. leading to thousands of local television stations providing PEG (Public, Educational, and Government) Access to their local communities over the cable system. These channels often give local citizens their only chance to communicate with their local community, observe local government in action, or find out what's happening in their school system. It's hard to say exactly what the local community sees on these channels or exactly how they can interact with them, because if you examined a random sampling of the stations represented on this map you would find just as many differences as similarities. Local politics determine whether stations are run by the cable company, the municipality, local school system/universities, or dedicated Non-Profit Organizations. In Town A, the Public Access channel might consist entirely of a PowerPoint loop notifying folks of Friday's Fish Fry, while 5 miles away in Town B the same Public Access channel might contain television programs submitted by local members who either produce them themselves (in the studio, in the "field", or in their basement) or who sponsor programming of local interest. All of this is say that its very hard to conduct a national (or even regional) conversation on this form of "Community Media" because while most people have flipped past their local PEG channels while channel-surfing, their local channels may have little in common with the person they are talking with.