Lots of people have tried to answer that question, but here is a video that Kansas State University's Mike Welch posted on YouTube a few days ago.

It's pretty remarkable... and tells the story of collaborative production and shared experience in a way that is pretty compelling. Take a look:



(http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg)

From Broadcasting and Cable 2/23/07

Everyone’s A Meteorologist
Now a site for your videos

With YouTube videos generating water cooler buzz, it only seems logical that the trend would rub off into weather coverage. That’s the idea behind a new user-video Website from the Weather Channel.

Without much publicity, the site (uservideo.weather.com) has seen steady growth in traffic since going into a live beta test late last fall. “We’re seeing great appetite,” says Weather Channel Director of Community Tim Pfau. “Even with just a few links, we’ve seen a significant amount of traffic on that site.”

Videos uploaded so far range from “you are there” weather reports from the inside of intense snowstorms to amateur weather forecasts from serious-seeming young meteorologists. Not to mention lots of home movies of pets enjoying various types of weather, from sun to sleet.

“It is a great reflection of the regional and local weather stories of the day,” says Pfau. “And it kind of proves that weather provides great context for people to create content.... [More]

This week - it's back to back west coast, and east coast - with a red eye in between.

Monday, Presidents Day, Chris Foss and I had lunch at Boccadillos - a really wonderful tapas restaurant. Chris is the designer whose work you seen on the new Magnify.net home page, logo, and a number of the interior pages. Though we've been working together for months, we'd never met face to face. In addition to having a great time, it's worth remembering that the internet - for all its ability to connect us - doesn't' replace breaking bread and hanging out with someone and getting to brainstorm across the table. Chris is very cool, and his next stop will be video home pages and the player toolbar, so expect to seen some refinements there in the upcoming weeks.

Tuesday was a day of driving, meeting with secret unnamed sources, and getting to put the finishing touches on our first San Francisco team member - whose going to be heading up west coast BD. Who -you ask? Ah, soon. But can't let the cat out of the bag just yet. I will say that I'd never been to one infinite loop before, but was pretty glad to be parking in that lot. (ok, we didn't have a meeting a... [More]

Hey - New Features!

So, we've turned on the first of our RSS Feed!

We've got RSS for each channel's Home, Search, and Playlist page. If you go to those pages, most browsers will "auto-discover" it and show the RSS feed indicator at the top of the browser. You can subscribe from there.

We've got plans to expand RSS to more of the areas of the channels, so you'll be able to get feeds in real time as well as subscribe to videos posted by or reviewed by individual members. But here's some new features to play with - and we'll let you know as we expand our feeds in the weeks an months to come.

Have Fun,

Emeri

So, we've got some gigs. Cool gigs, with a great team and creative challenges.

Here are the top line gigs - with more details to follow:

• Full Time - Perl Programmer • Freelance Production Designer • Freelance Graphics Designer • Full Time - Business Development (NY)

How's that? Send your resume to jointheteam (at) magnify.net

Here's some more info:

• Full Time - Perl Programmer / just posted job listing in my prior blog post.

• Freelance Production Designer / We've got pages that are designed by our site designer, and our partners, that need to be built in HTML.

• Freelance Graphics Designer / We have specific tools, pages, and elements that need to be created.

• Full Time - Business Development (NY) / Need a top flight partner wrangler

You will work closely with Magnify's core team to design and implement features, solutions and deploy them to our live service.

This is an outstanding opportunity for the fearless Perl professional to join an industry that is totally happening, flexible working conditions, and the chance to join a team that is building something really unique while having great times doing so. Terms: This is a permanent, full-time position will initially be filled on an independent contractor basis, After a few months of contracting, successful hires will be given an opportunity to move to a salary basis with benefits and options.

Setting: Primarily off-site, periodical participation of on-site development meeting will be require, so the candidate will have to be within a commutable range of New York.

Required skills:

* Significant knowledge of and experience in Perl programming. (Exposure to standard Perl idioms, the ability to create your own class hierarchies, and familiarity with CPAN are required.)

* Prior experience in server-side web application development. (You should have worked with multiple page templating systems, session data storage, relational databases, caching, and inter-process communication.)

* Understa... [More]

Hello,

I’m Emeri and I am the Channel Producer here at Magnify.net. I wanted to introduce myself and tell you a little about me and what I do, especially since I have gotten to know so many of you over the past months.

Because of everyone’s enthusisuim and passions I have a pretty sweet job. Everyday I get too see tons of new channels go up all with different interests. I see and learn about things I never knew about. The thing I enjoy the most is I get to help people and for me there is no better feeling. I am your voice at Magnify. I know what’s it like when you can’t figure something out and the feeling when you need to reach out for help. So I do my best to listen, and get you answers fast, or get your feature requests heard by the tech team.

Just like all of your individual passions I am very passionate about Magnify.net. I get excited when a new feature comes out and I can’t wait to share them with you. So I decided that’s just what I am going to do with my blog posts. And I am also going to share with you what other channels and communities are doing as well. That means if there are tips and techniques that one channel has innovated, I’ll make sure to point them out.

So check back in with me on the blog an... [More]

Since my last visit with the WeMedia team, things are different. In an important way.

It's changed. the WE in WeMEDIA got bigger, the 'MEDIA', got smaller. Or more intimate, more more focused. Not sure which.

Photo: WeMedia founders Dale Peskin and Andrew Nachison. (by JD Lasica)

Maybe the best person I caught up with was JD Lasica, who's been the best early warning radar in the space anyone could have. He was writing about UNfiltered for AJR back in '97, and really build OurMedia long before YouTube took off. Here's a picture from his flickr page of us at lunch:

The closest thing to a 'star' of the conference was Craig Newmark, who said absolutely nothing - but did so with a sly smile and charm. The fact that Craig's list is the 800 pound gorilla doesn't mean that it will become a community news company. In fact, it probably is exactly what it should be right now. But someone - will create a craigs list for local news. And it won't come out of the think tanks or the media company development labs. There's just to... [More]

Lots of great coverage from Jemima Kiss:

What will the media world look like in 2012?

Ian Rowe said that in 2012, MTV will have a very different relationship with its audience. Right now, MTV decides which programmes to show and when to show them, but in 2012 there might not be long-form content. "They want short form content when they want it on their device of choice . We're going to have a lot more input from young people in terms of the creative process." But it's exciting that people have platforms that empower them to speak out.

We're in the afternoon session - Alan Weber is moderating a panel on how the business side is evolving. It's a neat group - Jeff Clavier, SoftTechVC / Jeff Taylor, Monster and Eons, Fernando Esplueas, VOY / Chris Ahearn, Reuters / Brian O’Malley, Battery Ventures

The question was just posed by Reuters - "Will there be a Craig's List of news", and Alan, wisely - threw the question to Craig Newmark who was in the audience. Long silence, and then craig said - "not from us." That was all he's say - turning the conversation to the "ducks on the lawn." Funny.

The conversation shifts to advertising. How does content generate ads.

I think the word Advertising needs to be replaced by something else. The sites that i visit, and the links I click on are telling me things i need to know, offering me links to products i may be looking for. If i need to buy memory for my computer, i don't think of a link to memory4less.com is an anoyance. It's a service.

... more ....

At the WeMedia Conference in Washington in 2005 - i spoke in detail about the vision of what was the basis of Magnify.net.

In preparing to go to Miami, i re-readwhat i said. Here's the synopsis from the WeMedia website:

"Steven Rosenbaum, managing partner of Magnify Media told attendees of The Media Center's Cross-Platform media teams event "the people that are used to making content in an older model are the ones least likely to want to reinvent things on their watch, particularly if they have a mortgage or kids in college." He then demonstrated how easy some new content creation can be and shared lessons he's learned from 20 years in TV news, his work with MTV and how to capitalize on a peer review filter model for content."

Boy - that seems like a long time ago.

I'm sitting in a auditorium at the University of Miami. The debate seems to be over. Change is in the air. The Mainstream Media (msm) voices are humbled, trying to engage, trying to figure it out. The rep from MTV is the closest thing to 'mainstream' media. Instead, the focus is on a phrase i've never heard before - "acts of journalism" - with a clear understanding that audiences are g... [More]

Well - now we know we've arrived. We've got a logo that we all like so much we're willing to wear it. Yup. Groovy tee shirts. Here's Emeri showing off her new shirt.



So, how do you get one of these great shirts? For now, we'll play it by ear. If you think you've built an amazing channel, done neat things with design, css, community, or other cool ideas. Send us a note. We'll pick a winning Channel Maker every week, and send the winner a shirt. Then, we'll publish pics of the winner, along with links to thier site. How's that? So, if you want the swag, it's time to get building.

Long before the buzz was all over blogs and the net, my pals Andrew and Dale have been pushing the envelope in participatory media.

Now they've created a new organization - ifocos, and they're continuing thier tradition of convening a remarkable group of people to talk about the evolution of media. This week's conference at the University of Miami is called WeMedia.

Here's how they describe the conference:

We Media Miami explores and fosters the use of digital media to build and improve real communities in a connected society.

This is the third year for the We Media conference. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore spoke at We Media 05 hosted by The Associated Press in New York; BBC Managing Director Mark Thompson, Reuters CEO Tom Glocer, actor Richard Dreyfuss and Nitin Desai of the United Nations participated in the We Media Global Forum in 2006 hosted by Reuters and the BBC in London.

In Miami, the conference will focus on two connected themes:

Community: How can media and communications in a multitude of forms, produced or ... [More]

So, we've survived.

The booth team is exhausted, the pile of cards is huge. The buzz is great. And we're ready to be back home.

Ok, so for those of you who don' t know how valuable VC's can be - here's the best example yet of what a VC can do... Here's David Baum of Stage 1 Ventures. He's been stalking me throught DEMO asking for a piece of company swag. No, to be fair DEMO has a strict 'no swag' policy - so we didn't bring the new shirts along en mass. We brought along a few - just for the team... and David wanted to 'fly our colors'. So, after a long day with little sleep how can I refuse? [More]

So, it's 'D' day (demo day).

And we're all ready to go. The day started at 7:30am, with an hour of continental breakfast - which was a great way to meet folks, get comfortable with other demo folks, and drink coffee (lots).

Then, at 8:30 the day begins and the general session is off and running. I'll blog some of the companies that i am particularly excite about later, but at this point suffice it to say that video was center stage. By 10:30, we were off the to Pavilion - sharing Magnify with a steady flow of visitors from the media, the venture community, and biz dev partners.

I have to say that i wasn't able to listen to the folks that were on in our group of companies - it was just to nerve wracking. But then, before i could spend any time being concerned - we were in the green room. The guys from Clip Syndicate were on before us - and i have to say that i was a little jelous. They were showing fireman videos, and they'd gone to the local firehouse and gotten a real set of fire-gear (coat, hat, the whole deal). So cool... and we don't have an costumes so i'm wishing we'd thought about that. Oh well. Backstage they work hard to calm you down - they even handed out hot towels before you go... [More]