DLTQ.org

I have learned several things from my political videoblogging work in 2005 in Norway and this autumn here in Denmark, and the most important is:

Organizational videoblogging is hard work!

My conclusion is that you cannot do organizational videoblogging on a whim, but it has to be part of a larger communications platform, and that you need to really work on the infrastructure of it.

The last days I have worked on an article for the member’s magazine of my political party here in Copenhagen, and in that article I put forth three separate areas of use of videoblogging within a political party:

The exhibition

Videos that promote the work of the party for mainly an external audience. If your organization is holding a meeting about NATO or the European Union, and that meeting is public, you could shoot some footage during the meeting along with maybe a few quick statements from the organizers before/after the meeting, and then put it online. There is not much revolutionary about this format -there has for years been online visual accounts from meetings (mostly conferences or meetings with very public speakers), but what I think is new about a videoblogger approach to this is that it is more low-key, and does not require as many man-hours or setting up of equipment.

Internally, The Exhibition approach can also be used to showcase local arrangements in rural areas that are maybe not well-attended, but where the discussion was interesting and deserve a broader audience. This kind of internal exposure of activities can also help heighten the visibility of such local chapters of the organization.

The library

It is well-known that any organization can gain a lot of productivity from having a well-stocked media library that is immediately accessible to all levels of the organization. That way, when the local chapter in Aarhus or Odense wants to use some pictures about climate issues, wind energy or the new Party spokesperson for tax policies, they can simply use this library instead of going around searching in different folders/systems.

Likewise, it would be great if we could build a media library of video that can be used in a score of different situations. Need to make a video about an upcoming event on the EU? Include a few quotes from a statement by the EU spokesperson of the party from a few months back! Of course, today the burden of creating a video just to promote an event is too big to make it seem worthwhile, but as tools become more ubiquitous and easier to use, I am sure that we will see a lot more of this.

Establishing such a library of video is a bit tricky, though. First of all, you should have different versions of the files available. If the video was shot in HD, for instance, there should be a link to an HD/DivX version of the file. Then, there should be a lower-resolution version that you can download and use. Also, there should be the flash-converted version, that is used for quick-scrubbing to see if the content can be used at all before you download larger files.

Then, you need to find a good taxonomy, which is the eternal problem. A tagcloud for video files along with some categories could work, but experience shows that not even this works perfectly.

The Workshop

Ahh, the workshop. As more people in the organization start to use video themselves, some of them can also be involved with more experimental work. How could political messages be effectively communicated - for instance if you want to reach youngsters aged 15-24. It certainly will not work very well with talking heads if you want to draw the attention of people who are used to being entertained on Youtube. On the other hand, because you have the publicly available library that all of this experimental video narrative is built on, you could link to the longer versions of the interviews, or point to the context of this quote of a political opponent that you used in said polemical video.

The workshop aspects of organizational videoblogging is somewhat more esoteric and will by nature only involve a smaller amount of people in the organization. However, the work done by these people can function as a kickstarter to new forms of discussions and dialogue, and can also help to draw the attention of people from outside the party.

This weekend Radical Youth created a group that will focus on videoblogging and video communnication in general. I am one of the members of the group (I feel old), and it will be interesting to see what we will come up with. The first meeting is on thursday.

Could be any November 7th, could be any night at 20:53. 54.

We are approaching the end of the political campaign here in Denmark. National elections is on Tuesday.

I just made this for navlopomo

I have a lot to say about political videoblogging. This will suffice for now:

In Denmark, most parties “are on youtube” this election. But, what does that mean? What does it mean to post talking head videos on youtube, where the politician is just talking to the camera? That has even Less interaction with a critical journalist than main-stream media. Is this what youtube offers politicians? The opportunity to talk to the camera for 5 minutes without critical questions? The faux-openness and “oh, please do send us your comments”?

I will write and say a lot more about this the coming days here on dltq.org

So, day 6 of the election campaign here in Denmark.

Yes, election was announced on Wednesday at 1 PM.
I decided that: I will get involved, no matter what.

I asked my boss at work whether I could get leave without pay. No such options - options are: either I quit permanently or I show up at work every day for the whole day.

Thursday morning I resigned from work at the bookstore, so I can be Fully committed at working in this election campaign. I dont hold any grudges to my boss at the bookstore work - he was simply thinking about their needs in the bookstore - the Christmas season is approaching, and they cannot have someone going around doing videoblogging when they are supposed to be selling books and preparing for the Season. Fair enough.

From today I will every day make a small video in the morning to post here on dltq.org <- Update: Too ambitious. No time!

Here is my video for today, day 6 of the election campaign:

Click To Play

For 35 days, it will all be about political videoblogging. Day 1 is today, Friday October 5th. How do we bring all of this together?

I have been talking about political videoblogging for a long time, many videos, lots of text.

Here is for a new process: 35 days

Day 1 : Video 1

Click To Play

Context:

I realized lately, again, that my involvement in different organizations follows a pattern of intense involvement for a period of time followed by withdrawing from the scene. Almost like the graph of a heart-beat.

After the parliamentary elections in September 2005, where I mostly did videoblogging experiments, I quickly distanced myself from work in my political party, Unge Venstre, in Norway, where i had been active since 2002.

In 2002, I distanced myself from university student politics after my second year as president of MOSAIC after dealing with student politics since 1999 on faculty, university and european level.

In 1999, I suddenly stopped working within student cultural organizations, after volunteering at Det Akademiske Kvarter since spring 1998.

In each case, I got sickened by the inbreeding, the lack of continued knowledge management within the organization (or, rather, collective memory), and the power games. Most of all, I got sickened by my own - - losing the questions. I kept losing sight of why I was doing this, where my passion came from. I kept running around in circles, in deep philosophical thought, without getting things done. My own form of apathy was killing me, and I had to move on, I felt.

I have a confession to make. Well, I have several, and they include feeling terrible with how I parted with BlogSoft, among other things, but the one confession that is relevant for political videoblogging is:

I am sorry for losing the questions. For the two years of inactivity where I couldn’t motivate myself to anything, apart from helping my friend Lars-Henrik with his United Nations vlog last year, and helping organize VlogEurope this year (last year’s event in Milan I simply couldn’t get myself into dealing with at all, apart as a participant).

The returning passion
It started 5 weeks ago, when I met my new girl-friend, Michelle. I began seeing my life with new eyes. Yes, love helps that way, as the poets know all about. Then, VlogEurope this year, in Heidelberg, was important for me. Some of the great discussions that weekend reminded me of the passion of my earliest months of videoblogging. A few weeks ago I wrote a rambling post, trying to guide myself into my new path, and I mentioned a conversation I had with Tajee, who attended VlogEurope coming all the way from Tokyo. She is interested in, among other things, videoblogging in the context of a charity organization. Walking down the streets of the beautiful city of Heidelberg, talking with her about that, I suddenly felt like I had a cramp in my chest. I realized that I need to get back into this. Stop obsessing over how stupid I find ze shows. Gee, how cynical I had become with the development of videoblogging as yet another distribution channel for more of the same old crap! I should stop obsessing over what I don’t like, and instead focus on what I do like. What I believe in.

It was a process. I thought about public service vlogs, and I thought a lot about where political videoblogging is today, also asking for links at the videoblogging yahoogroups.

There were two things my friend Jay wrote that struck me. First was his comment about not making it so complicated, and showing what I love. Then was his comment about political videoblogging and the importance of transparent processes.

when I think innovative stuff….i think of a project where the
process is transparent…where the videos tell the story overtime.
where there is little spin, but instead I get to see people actually
do what they do.

Joining Radikal Ungdom
Last monday, September 17th, I joined Radikal Ungdom (Radical Youth), which is the Danish sister party of Unge Venstre, where I was active 02-05. In Unge Venstre, I was board member of Bergen Unge Venstre, member of the International Committee, member of the Balkan working group, and I launched a new magazine for international issues within the youth party.

Within 24 hours my vision for my work in the party was clear. I had contemplated being active with international work within the party, or joining the Balkan working group, or perhaps volunteering for the members magazine, but I ended up committing myself to videoblogging and blogging. Push the envelope on all ends, getting as many people in the party to videoblog as possible, or at least be more aware of what is happening in that area. Once again, to push. Push, without regard for how stupid I may look with my childlike naivety and enthusiasm.

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And it all comes back to me now, as I write this, at 7 AM on a september tuesday morning in Copenhagen. It all comes back to me, the silent moments in the past, and the moments where I connect two people, concepts, phrases or ideas, and the moments when I felt like my head was about to explode. My head feels like the last minute of this video right now:

Click To Play

(I created this video for the now defunct The PAN website. The PAN was a group videoblog with 8 editors from the U.S. and Europe)

Furthering political videoblogging in Denmark
Yesterday, I arranged the first of many vlog outings in Copenhagen. Unfortunately, only one other wanted to attend, but we went to Jagtvej 69 and took some footage about the situation with the Youth House, and we went to Nørrebroparken and talked about the development of rural spaces for the youth, and other things. Afterwards, we attended “Mediemandag” which is a weekly meeting about media and the use of media in my new party. Here we discussed many things, including the question “What is RSS?” which I was happy to tell them that I know about. We also did a short video for this blog that I made to simply show them the process.

My goal now is to get a team of people in the party together. The “vlog crew” would experiment, document, edit, and publish. It would do talking head videos, and it would do more provocative/humorous shorts that could be used to illustrate our own policy, or ridicule the policy of our “sworn enemies”. Personally, I especially look forward to taking a closer look at Karen Jespersen, who has political views I strongly disagree with.

Then, my goal is to take videoblogging to the next level at the annual general meeting of the Radical Youth on October 26th-28th. I can not reveal many details now, but if we manage to prepare this properly, it will be a landmark, at least for me.

I will organize weekly “vlog outings” on mondays at 5 PM, starting from the central square of Copenhagen. Videos from these expeditions will come online to a specific blog in a steady stream, and some of it will just enter the big data HQ for later use.

I hope to gain organizational/political support for these kinds of web-video projects within the party, and I hope that we can create a culture of videoblogging that can be of lasting effect.

This post is way too long, and way too meta, but it is important for me to write this. To write it out.

I am back in action. Now, let’s kick some butt!

On a post on newteevee written a few days ago, Jackson West refers to styles of political videoblogging, in this case the different styles of Obama, Vilsack, Clinton and Edwards.

As some of you might know, Vilsack proclaimed his leaving the presidential race in a blog post last friday, so there seems to be three main players for the race now: Obama, Clinton and Edwards.

How will their campaigns be led online? How will they use videoblogging in their campaigns, and how will the public communicate with them? And further - what will their style be? Beet.tv lost month had this comment after comparing Clinton’s video with Barack:

It will be very interesting to see how viral video is used in the presidential election. It’s inevitable that candidates will communicate directly with the electorate with video. I think the most successful use of campaign video will be clips that can be shared easily.

I agree, and if you are interested in how the candidates for the U.S. presidency are using the web, techPresident is one really good website.

Via Brittany Shoot’s del.icio.us links I found this very interesting personal account by Amanda Marcotte, a woman who earlier headed John Edwards‘ blogging campaign. If you are interested in one take on political smearing campaigns in the blogosphere, I highly recommend the 3-page Salon article.

On her own site, Pandagon, Amanda wrote this on the day the Salon article was published:

… to discuss the culture clash between the more context-heavy, thoughtful blogging world and the soundbite culture of the mainstream media

Back in 2004 and 05, when I was actively trying to get politicians from my own political party to blog and videoblog, I was very hesitant because I did not want to somehow hurt my party by, for instance, videoblogging something that could be abused by others. In the BBC article about my work, this was actually also slightly mentioned. But even though my colleagues trusted me in the way that they did not think I would jeopardize the party - I was always afraid that some bigot bloggers might attack it. Some of the media I took was for instance recordings of what youths representing other political parties were saying to school children during debates. If I had used this kind of footage in remixes portraying for instance the policies of the Norwegian Labour Party, how would that be received? In fact, just a few months ago the Norwegian online newspaper Nettavisen brought an article talking about how members of my youth party were using youtube to smear political opponents (in this case the labour union and the labour party) In the U.S., this is not news at all, but in the context of the smaller Norwegian community, online video campaigns like that are quite new.

Last time around, in 2005, I chickened out of doing a lot of External videoblogging for my party because I did not want any backlash. I guess now that youtube has come around we will have an online community much more used to video on the net. Recordings from different political meetings and gatherings will flourish, and by 2009 there will be a great number of Norwegian politicians who will see video on the net as a crucial part of their campaign.

What will happen then? Will it be the battle of the editors? How will the ecosystem of communication done mostly by young members of the political parties spill out into the more mainstream media?

So, I return to Amanda Marcottes words:

… to discuss the culture clash between the more context-heavy, thoughtful blogging world and the soundbite culture of the mainstream media

I wonder how the culture clash will play out, also in video. I wonder how different video campaigns on youtube, or blip.tv, or elsewhere, will move forward in relation to each other.

About time to get our tools sharpened, because political videoblogging will develop in very interesting ways towards the U.S. elections in 08 and - here on our own little Scandinavian turf - in Norway in 09.