See What’s Out There

One of the things all this user-generated-content of blogs and personalized pages has opened up is the development of something called cyberbullying. This is the phenomenon of publishing negative comments about someone that go beyond criticism and into the world of threats. It is the playground bully writ large.

The web allows for a lot of anonymous communications, which is the first factor. When people can hide they often do things they otherwise couldn’t get away with. When you combine anonymity with the ease of publishing you get the cyberbullies coming out of the woodwork.

Today has been designated “Stop Cyberbullying Day” and so this is my excuse to tell you about the problem. The issue has been around for a while — particularly among high school students with MySpace pages — but it has recently come out strong because of outrageous online death threats to a prominent blogger. (The previous link is to the story of how Kathy Sierra has been under threat and it is very disturbing, so be advised.)

If you want to know about this issue and what is being done about it, check out Cyberbully.org

Nonprofits are, and have been, talking a lot about “Web 2.0″ technologies over the last couple years and how to use them for their benefit. Blogging, RSS feeds, social networking sites, user generated content of all kinds, and of course video streamed in embeddable video players. There are few “best practices” for these things, but they are emerging.

We are lucky to have the political campaigns to help move the ball. The politicians, particularly those running for President, are highly motivated to push the envelope, be aggressive and use whatever tools there are to use. The Howard Dean campaign is widely credited with having mainstreamed the idea and execution of tapping online social networks for support, for example.

But as they push the envelope and act aggressively, they also screw up. And thank God we have Jon Stewart to be there to make fun of them. Check out this recent Daily Show clip which is a cautionary tale about being open in open networks like MySpace and YouTube. I also noticed how Dennis Kucinich is made fun of for being low-tech — because of the location of his online video! This is progress.

To all attending the NTC next week, See3 Communications invites you to join us at our Movie Night, Wednesday, April 4 at 8pm.

We will be screening Hacking Democracy - This cautionary documentary exposes the vulnerability of computers - which count approximately 80% of America’s votes in county, state and federal elections - suggesting that if our votes aren’t safe, then our democracy isn’t safe either.

Joining us for a lively Q&A after the screening is Bev Harris - the featured protagonist of the film. Her efforts were pivotal in exposing the vulnerabilities of electronic voting systems.

Look for your special movie ticket inside your bag at registration, or stop by our booth.

Your ticket also includes a raffle for year’s subscription to Netflix.

We look forward to seeing you at the conference and at the screening. Food and beverages will be served, courtesy of NTEN.

I think we do great work all the time here at See3, but I am particularly proud of the piece below. It happens to feature See3 Executive Producer Danny Alpert’s parents who have volunteered in developing areas for the second year in a row.

This video is the first in a series of videos we are producing for the American Jewish World Service. There will be more than a dozen other pieces, all pulled from the same library of footage. They will include an event piece, pieces designed as capacity-building fundraising/outreach videos for specific grantees, and several website and direct response pieces.

This is a direct response piece and will be embedded directly into a Convio donation page. We strongly believe in not making people click more than they have to and with portable media you can have folks watch the video and then, if the spirit moves them, donate without having to make any extra effort to find the donation form. Donordigital is managing the email aspects of the campaign.

The piece will launch later this week and I will post the AJWS page so you can see how it looks when embedded with donation functionality.

The NTEN - See3 NTC Video Contest is in full swing. We are watching the returns come in and, as you might guess, the folks pumping their video online are doing better than those that aren’t. Some bloggers have picked up some of the videos and are driving traffic to the voting. Some of the finalists have the videos on their home pages and are telling their in-house lists to go and vote. This is like anything online, if you want it to work for you, you have to work it.

Vote now in the DoGooderTV - NTEN, See3 NTC Video Contest

Here’s another video finalist for your enjoyment:

The big media companies have had a love-hate relationship with YouTube and Google. On the one hand, they have loved the publicity that online video brings and the viral nature of the medium. On the other hand, they feel that Google is monetizing their content. “What’s in it for us!” they demand of Google.

Google has tried to respond by creating a program that will share revenue with copyright holders. But they have also gone slow with it, because I think they aren’t even sure yet exactly how they will maximize revenue from online video. The media companies don’t want to give this turf to Google in perpetuity and so they have been playing with the idea of cooperating on their own ventures to aggregate their content on a site they own and can fully monetize. They also would love to sell packages to advertisers that include TV and Web properties based on video. They can’t do that with YouTube.

Today is a milestone in the media companies’ effort to build something on their own. News Corp and NBC have announced they will jointly create an online video site. What is interesting here is that the idea of portability is built in. These video will play on MySpace, Yahoo!, MSN and AOL. Each of these sites will get some piece of the advertising action.

You can read more about this in the New York Times or more interesting notes and comments on TechCrunch.

We’ve selected the finalists in the NTC Video Contest – a competition designed to honor videos and animations that mobilize people for social change and promote nonprofit work. This contest is sponsored by See3, hosted by DoGooderTV and part of NTEN’s most excellent effort to advance the nonprofit sector’s technology use.

Cast your vote to pick the winner - and the recipient of an all expenses paid trip to New Orleans for the 2008 Nonprofit Technology Conference.

Watch the finalists’ videos and vote on DoGooderTV right now.

Here’s one of the finalists for your viewing enjoyment:

Wow, it’s been a week since I posted anything. We have been on the road, having fun and exploring southern Israel. It is Friday morning here and we are leaving early Sunday morning. I am tired, especially tired since learning that I will be back on the road on Monday for business, less than 24 hours after coming back.

This installment of the Israel trip video is about our time at the Dead Sea. You will notice that I combined the slide show technique and the video technique. One problem you will also notice was that I was not able to turn off the video sound when I added narration. Honestly, I don’t have the time it would take to create the clean transitions and better sound. I also don’t have the skills. Our professional editors can make cuts and add sound in seconds, which comes from a lot of practice.

There is one final episode that I will have to do when I get back. I think I might enlist some help in the final one… if I can pull someone away from something else for a couple hours.

Here’s some info about the Dead Sea from Wikipedia that will give you a little perspective on our visit and the video:

The Dead Sea (Hebrew: ים המלח‎; Arabic: البحر الميت‎) is the Earth’s lowest point not covered by ice, at 418 m (1371 feet) below sea level and falling[2], and the deepest hypersaline lake in the world, at 330 m (1083 feet) deep. It is the saltiest body of water on Earth, with a salinity of about 30 percent.[3] This is about 8.6 times greater than average ocean salinity. It measures 67 km (42 miles) long, 18 km (11 miles) wide at its widest point, and is located on the border between the West Bank, Israel, and Jordan, and lies in the Jordan Rift Valley. The main tributary is the Jordan River.

The Dead Sea has attracted interest and visitors from around the Mediterranean basin for thousands of years. It was a place of refuge for King David, one of the world’s first health resorts (for Herod the Great), and it has been the supplier of products as diverse as balms for Egyptian mummification to potash for fertilizers.

It is almost Shabbat here in Jerusalem, which is the Jewish Sabbath when most things stop, people go to synagogue, and the setting sun reflects a golden hue on the stone buildings. Here’s our latest attempt at some short video.

You know from my previous post that I am not the video guy. I think I could become the photographer with better equipment and a class in Photoshop. For this installment of the Israel trip I decided to try a slide show. Often, for our clients, we help them create slide shows instead of videos when it makes sense and we encourage them to do more themselves. When video is too complicated or you have great stills and a good story, a slide show can work very well. It is so easy to do one it is amazing that organizations don’t do more of them.

So I wanted to see how easy it would be to do a slide show. I again used Windows Media Maker, because I wanted to keep it simple. I used a really old and slow digital camera. I copied a few photos from Flickr and the web to supplement what I had. And I narrated the slide show directly into my laptop. (One problem with this technique is the ding you hear from me getting an email.) I created a movie file from this and uploaded it to YouTube. If the sound level seems low, it’s because my family has been asleep for 3 hours and I didn’t want to wake them up. So, without further ado, here’s Israel Part II — The Slide Show

Go to Israel Trip Part I - The Video.