Published Date 5/18/13 1:10 PM

A presentation of the idea of the Open Media Network and where it currently is

The OMN is owned by nobody and run by nobody. It is merely a set of “stupidly simple” open standards, open databases and working practices.

We are building some hubs to flesh the network out.

Currently there are over 20 sites in the network. And OMN embeds on such sites such as New Internationalist and Games Monitor.  These embeds are using the OMN customisable video player.

How can you get involved? What is there at the moment? Let’s highlight some of the applications you can currently use:

http://link.openworlds.info is an open database of links to radical projects. These can be added as an embed on websites to create the interlinking that is so important to the open internet’s health. This will be federated.

http://news.openworlds.info is a newsflash service to widen our networks outside facebook. It is building into an open data and open access federated network. You can grab an embed for your site sidebar.

http://visionon.tv Auto updating quality controlled video embeds with playlists (eg http://globalviews.visionon.tv/embed), drawing from a huge database of radical video. This is a working federated network.

http://blog.openworlds.info This is the first stage of an open blogging network.

http://fund.openworlds.info Open funding network – is a place for media activists to get small amounts of cash for their projects and equipment.

All of these applications actively need development work.

Please have a look at these links for more information and background on the network.

Here’s an entertaining piece of polemic on the problem we face.

Here is an outline of possible OMN solutions

Why ethical aggregation and conversation?

It’s all based on an ongoing understanding of the political history of the internet

A bit of humour

Published Date 5/16/13 1:59 PM

Over the last 10 years I have found a lot of intolerant and prejudiced attitude toward the impact new technology will have on our work and society. A recent conversation sparked off this thought. Our society has foundation myths – and they aren’t the bible any more – consumerism and selfishness/paranoid narcissism it seems to me – we are Thatchers children.

Many of the conversations about the impact of the open web and corporate social networking with people are like a conversation at the edge of a cliff. Its high and the cliff edge is crumbling into the maelstrom of the sea far below, am on the edge of the cliff looking out and the person am having the conversation is standing on thin air. Our foundation myths are about not looking dowen which make this issue invisible, and explains the reaction, people don’t what to see, if they look down they fall, not a nice feeling.

How to work through this will-full/wishful ignorance driven by narcissistic fear and denial? Its clearly unhealthy for us as a society in the medium and long term, but it is a useful coping strategy for the individuals and organisations in the short term.

Thought please?

Published Date 5/15/13 11:21 AM

What is ethical aggregation?

Always link back to the original producer hosting site. The exception to this is when the site is a corporate hosting site such as YouTube, then linking to an embed on an OMN site is preferable linking to that site. The content should be consumed where the producer of the content likes it – this should be built into our open CMS’s as far as possible.

Reactive permissioning: the producer of content should be empowered (as far as technically possible) to decide how their content is consumed on sites. Eg, via embedding a simple title link, excerpt, or full content. This is by trusted feed not by genearly ristricting the content of the RSS feed. 

Our databases should be open to exporting of content by simple RSS aggregation or by a XML export option.

Metadata should be synchronised across the networking to enrich all media content.

• link back to the source
• reactive permissioning
• no reposting

It’s OK to add additional hosting options for media files – but the original publishers hosting/views should be respected. In the RSS feed, add content file URLs as fallbacks rather than as default media sources. A good aim is to back up media sources tohttp://archive.org and as a torrent file. If new open hosting options come along then these can added. Then only fall back to the original host if the corporate hosting source errors or is censored (respect for producers hosting desion and for reasons of scaling).

Where is the conversation?

This is an unresolved issue that is looking for a good solution. Some key points:

• Move it off corporate hosting and networking sites as much as you technically can such as FB, twitter and youtube. Use such sites to post links to OMN content and sites.
• Can we move the conversations with the RSS feeds? So that the conversations happen across sites and

appear across sites in activity streams? This is probably technically possible within the RSS02 spec – let’s implement it.

Published Date 5/7/13 3:09 PM

It’s about human co-operation working with machine aggregation tools.

It’s a stupidly simple social project using largly existing basic web technologies.

– RSS in and out via tag (with de-duping and field-matching).

This is it for the technical side of the project.

Then there is the social side: open licences, open data, open source, open process.

* open licences generally means creative commons for content and GPL for software.

* open data means that all the core data of the projects can be exported into other node databases. This can be done via the basic RSS in and out or with an export option to a basic XML file.

* open source: that all the core software of the project is free to be edited and be changed.

* open process means that the organising of the network is done in public wikis and using public tools. Activity streams makes projects transparent to user involvement.

The idea of the OMN is to re-build the vitality of the open web. The problem it hopes to overcome is HUGE.

* Applications like Facebook and Twitter have closed off the majority of people’s online interactions and privatised/controled them for private gain and social control.

* openweb tools have withered from lack of use and resources.

There is currently little possibilty of an alternative to the polished world of google, facebook, twitter, amazon or e-bay etc. Many people are now talking about these issues, but the solutions they come up with are single sources, not networks. How do we make visible the value of cooperation?

The technical side is relatively easy. It’s the social side that is the biggest barrier to revitalising the open web. The problem with all the failed pre-open networks is complexity and their proprietorial nature, This together with a failure of social cohesion (co-operation) has lead to an almost complete meltdown in the radical media space.

Why is the OMN different?

This is in no way a new project. Its innovation is purely in an understanding of the limitations of past projects. Over the last 10 years there have been many projects that have attempted the same thing.

Why will this work now?

It is built with existing standards – nothing is new or untested. It has an understanding of the failure of the social side of such networks. And aims to overcome this: 

* the geek problem of “improving” projects and thus running the risk of breaking the simplicity is overcome by insisting that nodes support all of the open RSS standards to be part of the network. Thus if an improvement is useful it will spread and if it is not it will fade without breaking the underlying fallback tecnologies. The idea is that the network will be resistent to the failure of improvements and open to the sucess of innovation – while being robust if this for some reason fails.

* The social problem – the network is built by trust, thus will scale organically with no overarching control or hierarchy to block innovation or accress. There are no hardcoded APIs that limit and shape user involvement and data flow.

* too big and distributed to fail – opendata and node redundancy will help the network to be robust and resistent to the failure of large nodes. Also, the trust nature of the network will keep nodes honest and reliable without a central controlling athority. One part’s decline is actually an opportunity for another part’s growth.

* the issue of state repression. The network is a part of the open web using only open web standards. This makes it part of a project that is currently too big to fail. As long as the open web is needed by state actors and corporations the technology of the OMN cannot be shut down without shutting down the open web. If one node is shut down its job is simply taken up by another. Data duplication means that little, if anything, is lost.

* Too much concern with security limiting open process is a real danger. The unspoken question is: open process for whom? – currently we use facebook which is open procees for governments and corporations and fundamentally a closed process for the rest of us. Without open process, the trust which the network relies on is very limited. thus the growth of the network will be stunted, and it will likely wither. Open process will not appeal to everybody. But as it is fundamental, people unhappy with it should not get involved.

For the more tech-motivated, here is an old write-tup:

http://springofcode.org/organise/-/wiki/Main/Open+Media+Network

and here http://springofcode.org/organise/-/wiki/Main/Open+Media+Network+proposal

Published Date 4/30/13 5:49 PM

The OMN is owned by nobody and run by nobody. It is merely a set of Stupidly Simple open standards, open databases and working practices. We are building some hubs to flesh the network out.

What is there at the moment.? Let’s highlight some of the projects:

http://fund.openworlds.info Open funding network – is a place for media activists to get small amounts of cash for their projects and equipment.

http://link.openworlds.info is an open database of links to radical projects. These can be added as an embed on websites to create the interlinking that is so important to the open Internet’s health. This project is federated.

 

http://news.openworlds.info is a newsflash service to widen our networks outside facebook. It is an open data and open access federated network. You can grab an embed for your site sidebar.

 

http://visionon.tv Auto updating quality controlled video embeds with playlists (eg http://globalviews.visionon.tv/embed), drawing from a huge database of radical video. This is a federated network.

 

http://blog.openworlds.info This is the first stage of an open blogging network.

Published Date 4/27/13 9:32 PM

Almost all of Activism is organized on one corporate network and its run by this man

“Mark Zuckerberg’s new political group, which bills itself as a bipartisan entity dedicated to passing immigration reform, has spent considerable resources on ads advocating a host of anti-environmental causes — including driling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and constructing the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.”

http://bit.ly/ZrWLm1 

its the magnitude of the failure of the alternatives that is at issue – for many people the web is facebook – this is now true for almost all activist online organising. The man who controls facebook is an elitist tosspot right winger and controls all this activist organising. What other tools do we have?

UPDATE

Couple of points: FB is a trap, that has been sponge to close the open internet – to take us back to the days of mediated media and communication. The reach is not huge (just do a search to find out how your messages are already filtered) its actually very small for any message that does not further facebook’s advertising/money making plans. Yes, it has revolutionised activism and it has enclosed it and pushed aside all alternatives… inclose and privatises then exploit… its an old story. Facebook like all dotcoms is likely to fail, but it has shifted the web towards closer and the next round of corporate social networking will consolidate this shift. With the open web (and digitization project) we have a once in a century opportunity to reshape our society, we are fucking this up big time

Published Date 4/24/13 10:33 PM

This is two draft’s of a project for the end of the summer

FUNDRAISING FOR THE REAL STORY

Stories grow from the soil, they grow from social/geologic conflicts. Thus an interesting place to start a story is from the mud and dust where it stands. With this in mind we are fundraising to offer new perspectives on an urgent reality. We will walk across Israel for 6 weeks, interviewing people in the communities we pass through. The countries’ perspectives will come from the actual grassroots, from the mud and dust. Traditional media is already covering the story from the top down. Who is covering where it matters?

Visionontv has the track record and expertise to make high quality, immediate reportage available globally. We will be shooting and publishing 3 video interviews a day, 5 days a week (using visionontv’s innovating mobile reporting templates and technology) for a total of nearly 100 interviews. We will build a website to permanently embed these videos as well as syndicating them widely to all contemporary media hosting sites and social networks. We will use visionontv’s auto updating media player to embed the videos widely on appropriate sites around the web. We will work towards having hosting/publishing on partner sites such as (****) in NYC and the (****) in the UK.

We have most of the equipment, time and skills to do this – all we lack is a basic budget.

Budget

£3000 to cover 6 weeks of reporting

Video equipment: £300 (external mic, lenses, solar charging set-up)

Second backup camera phone: £500

Air fare £400 x 2 £800

Insurance £50 x 2 £100

Website £300

Subsistence £100 a week (for both) x 6 £600

Backed support (publicity and social media etc) £100 x2

Contingency £200

Total £3000

The plan would be to fund-raise on Kickstarter and ecwip) and leave the UK in *** 1st. 

The modern world is full of seemingly unsolvable problems. The conflict between Palestine and Israel has been ongoing since the 1940’s and has now reached a deadlock. The are some cultural/media crossovers but at visionontv we have a very B&W view of the conflict.   

On visionontv we have been aggregating together all the best non-traditional media news videos into a stream of contemporary media. In the Israel – Palestine conflicts we have had a huge bias towards news from the Palestine perspective (link) which is obviously the opposite of what you would see on traditional media (link). This mismatch is normal for traditional media but problematic if you are interested in building a new, wider/more balanced contemporary media.

Our wider project at visionontv is to template new media techniques  for journalism (link) This is to counteract the normal new media approach, which is to have hundreds of cameras covering the same spot, few of them distributing their images and very few doing the journalism to put it into perspective.

Stories grow from the soil, they grow from social/geologic conflicts. Thus an interesting place to start a story is from the mud and dust where it stands. With this in mind we are fundraising to try a new template – new technology and old paths. We will walk across the countries involved in the conflict for 6 weeks, interviewing normal people in the communities we pass through – the countries’ perspectives will come from the actual grassroots, from the mud. Traditional media is already covering the story topdown. Who is covering where it matters?

We will be shooting and publishing 3 video interviews a day, 5 days a week (using visionontv’s innovating mobile reporting templates and technology) for a total of nearly 100 interviews. We will build a website to permanently host these videos as well as syndicating them widely to all contemporary media hosting sites and social networks. We will use visionontv’s auto updating open media player to embed the videos widely on appropriate sites around the web. We will work towards having hosting/publishing on partner sites such as **** in NYC and the **** in the UK. 

We have most of the equipment, time and skills to do this all we lack is a basic budget.

Budget £2500 to cover 6 weeks of reporting 

Video equipment £200-  external mic-  lenses – solar charging set-up

Second backup camera phone £500

Air fare  £300 x 2   £600

Insurance £50 x 2 £100 

Website £300

Subsistence £100 a week (for both) x 6 £600

Contingency £200

Total  £2500

The plan would be to fund-raise on Kickstarter and acwip and leave the UK in *** 1st.

Published Date 4/17/13 4:56 PM

It consistently amazed me how activists walked into the trap of corporate social networking. I can understand NGO groups narrowness of focus, its were the funding is. I can understand traditional media’s embracing of Facebook, Twitter and the closed ecosystem of app stores as its a perceived as a “safe” place to run from the crumbling business markets they are part of.

Lets look at each in turn:

Corporate social networking is perfect for the less radical charity’s as the company’s running theses networks wont to be seen to be social responsible and charity’s are the perfect place to be seen to care with out the risk of upsetting sponsors, advertisers and investors.

The more progressive parts of the traditional media, such as the FT have realised the trap they leapt into when building inside Facebook, Twitter etal. And are now back to prioritising building on the open web using HTML5. The less progressive side are now negotiating from a weak postion with these new powerful gatekeepers.

10 years ago Activist media was a worldwide phenomenon, inventing and leading many of the technology and techniques that are now mainstream. But two things happened, firstly they got bogged down in “activist process” and on the other the “lifestyle of geek” open-source culture. These together slowed innovation to a stop, the functionality and reach of such new networks as Facebook and Twitter rendered this moribund activist media less relevant to new generations of activists such as the climatecamp media team. Leaving space for the NGO focus embracing of corporate social media on one hand and the manipulation of traditional media on the other as the main ongoing successful strategy.

Were are we now? I was at the party to cover the celebrate of the death of Margaret Thatcher recently in Trafalgar sq. The were hundreds of cameras both video and stills probably as many people filming and documenting as there party goers or police. But almost no radical media made it online, the was a smattering of wonabe mainstream media such as Vice and Demotix. What interested me was running into all the retired activist and the ones that now work for NGO’s it struck me that the is no continuity, no new radical media, it had almost completely ended. Few small exception’s to this are ourselves (visionontv) and ONN who are both small fish.

As I sead at the time, we as activist’s fucked up in two ways: in wholesale embracing of corporate social media and in the narrowing of activist tec into geek lifestyle. Can we learn from this? Its time to reinvent grassroots bottom up media – its not to late.