DIY video clips get KM endorsement

Knowledge networker David Gurteen devotes a lot of his latest newsletter to the importance of audio and video clips in knowledge sharing, with a generous and surprising acknowledgement that his interest was partly awakened by the way in which I did a couple of short interviews with him (here and here) using a fairly simple digital camera. He says he is now using his girlfriend's Casio to do interviews at knowledge management conferences. David's website has a rather clever media player to show these and other content.
As David says, the combination of excellent short video clips available online, together with an "I could do that" feeling, means we are going to see more and more attention paid to mixed media in knowledge sharing. Alexandra Samuel also picks up the theme following my post, this time using the term blending, perhaps with a nod to e-learning where it is used.
What struck me about David's acknowledgement was first, how generous, he didn't need to do that. Second, interesting that it was my interviews that gave an extra nudge, rather than something at one of the major conferences that he attends and organises. I can't really take a lot of credit for my videos, because it's my son Dan who understands the tech side, and helped me get started. Still, it shows that it is worth experimenting.
Having said all that, it still isn't easy. David emailed me yesterday to alert me to two problems. First, videos had disappeared from this blog because they were hosted on another server that was down. I had to shift them across and juggle with code in the blog posts to make the pop-ups work. Second, videos I had put up on Google video weren't working properly either: could I delete and re-post? Well, yes in theory, but since I had changed the email address in my Google account I couldn't get back to them ... even if I changed the address again. And there are lots more pains.
Still, the main point - as Beth Kanter pointed out - is that a lot more nonprofits and other groups are following the path carved out by people who are just enthusiastic to have fun with their cameras and post to Google, YouTube or elsewhere. Nice when the professionals follow. First citizen journalism, now citizen knowledge management, as Jo Twist flagged up earlier in the year.
You can subscribe to David Gurteen's newsletter here, and also find out about his excellent free knowledge cafes here.

Comments

[Leon Cych]

One of the problems with video is that unless you host it yourself, and the bandwidth charges are then enormous, you at the mercy of the provider. And like the Open Source movement there is now stirrings of an Open Data intitiative. If you put it up on sites like Google and especially YouTube they may not be secure or persistent. Where your data is hosted or kept in the Web 2.0 world is an increasingly important issue. The online video explosion in the last 12 months has been similar to the napster phenomenon. Reading Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins makes it clear that media is a cultural phenomenon and that techno solutions and delivery mechanisms are, at best, transient. There are at least 15 YouTube clones out there in web 2.0 wonderland at the moment and a big shakeout is imminent. I am writing the Video resources chapter of the Second Coming of Age book on Education web 2.0. The rise of YouTube in particular is interesting because it definitely qualifies as a community congregating and interacting around what Jenkins calls an "affinity space" where informal knowledge building occurs. Because filming, transcoding and uploading video has become seamlessly easy the more cultural dynamics of grassroots involvement in media have come into play - whereas before, cable channles were fairly parochial now video has gone global. This has, naturally, attracted the mainstream media notably the Lonelygirl15 phenomenon recently. As Jenkins points out :

"The power of grassroots media is that is diversifies; the power of broadcast media is that it amplifies. That's why we should be concerned with the flow between the two: expanding the potentials for participation represents the greatest opportunity for cultural diversity."