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I'm going to the Cambodian Blogger Summit in a few weeks. One of the ideas I've been exploring is the whole notion of video blogging from Cambodia by Cambodians. While I was in Chicago, Ryanne Hodson, who I met at last year's BlogHer, is in Cambodia and Southeast Asia with Jay Dedman to document the work of Project Hope International. (The back story is here)
I'm going to bring over video blogging kits - inexpensive cameras, rechargeable batteries, SD cards, and Ryanne's book. However, in one of the discussion threads on the Summit wiki, there has been mention about using cameraphones or smart phones for this in addition to.
So, while at BlogHer 07 I had a little bit of a personal learning mission: What can I learn about mobile video blogging in a global context? My travel hassles combined with sleep deprivation made it really difficult to write complete sentences. But, the brain fog has started to fade. As always, I got a lot out of BlogHer, so I wanted to capture here in case anyone else is wondering about this topic.
The photographs above were taken on the last day of Blogher, at the Unconference on Sunday morning facilitated by the talented Kaliya Hamlin who blogs about unconferences here. My first exposure to "unconferences" or Open Space Technology was during a week-long arts and education professional development seminar in 1997. I remember being inspired by it. It's been a year since I had an "unconference experience," having participated in the Dialogue and Deliberation Conference last summer and facilitated by Lisa Heft.
The group organizes and selects the topics and the learning is through discussion, peer to peer. One of the rules of Open Space Technology is "prepared to be surprised" and the people who show up are the right people. I put out a call for a session "Mobile Blogging and Video Blogging: I know nothing, educate me." Three other people, Elizabeth Perry, Valerie Brown, and Snigdha Sen came to the table. (Snigdha Sen is a journalist and contributing editor at Blogher)
After introducing ourselves and realizing that we all thought we knew nothing about mobile video blogging, we decided to identify what we didn't know by formulating questions. This is a great method for peer learning. The questions are way more important than the answers. Our questions were:
- What do you need to know about web/blog design so that your blog can be read by people on a mobile phone?
- What is the best blog platform for mobile bloggers?
- How do you make your blog/web site mobile friendly?
- How to best encourage people to engage in an online project/group that is discussing a physical location in the location itself using a mobile phone? (This was Liz's question and it relates to this art project)
- How can a mobile device connect you to the physical environment?
- If you were creating some instructional materials about mobile video blogging in a developing country, like say Cambodia, what are the most important points to cover? (that last question was mine and I had to draw myself a picture)
- What video hosting platforms support cell phones?
Here's where the coffee cup photos enter. Liz answered my question with another question, "Perhaps it would be important to understand how to apply good asethetics to a tiny camera?" This lead us to brainstorm a list:
- Closeups are a must - for picture and sound
- Rule of thirds
- Use of negative space
- Don't use zoom with cameraphone
- Shoot b-roll if you're doing editing and if it is in a noisy environment, include a b-shot of the noise source
Of course, we pulled out the digital camera because we're experiential learners and started to explore the ideas with hands-on practice. The coffee cup photos show that it is important not only to photograph the object, but to consider the space around the object.
We had a few "bumble bees" buzz by our table. One of them told us that there was a special plugin for wordpress that display the blog in style sheet that is readable on cell/mobile phones. Something must have jogged Liz's memory and she said, Jan ChipChase. It's a wonderful blog about mobile design and cell phones and I can't wait to dig in.
It was wonderful to see Georgia Popplewell (send from left) from Global Voices. I realized that it had been two years since we met face to face at the
