Digital Storytelling

Sites such as BBC.co.uk, Guardian on-line, The Times.com  are multimedia sites. They have text. They have video clips. They have audio. They have still photographs. They have interactive graphics.  They appear to fit the bill (leaving aside the structural and political aspects of each institution). But the actual stories on these sites are often linear and produced in either text or video or audio to stand alone. The text is often augmented with photos, as it would be in a newspaper or magazine. The video is usually the same version that appears on television. The audio is usually the same version heard on the radio. (See BBC.co.uk any day of the week) Rarely are video, text, still photos, audio and graphics integrated into the same story. Usually, they are stand-alone stories, each produced for a different media about the same subject then formed into multimedia packages. There is a difference between using digital technology to tell stories and digital story telling.

DNA 2008 – Concentra ‘08 award for outstanding video journalism

Winner of the Concentra 2008 Award for outstanding videojournalism is…….

The award for ‘breaking news’ Tony Birtley for Myanmar

The awad for outstanding jounrlism Idar Krogstadt for The Nightwatch

runer up – Travis Fox. Crises in Darfur.

Concentra Awards at DNA 2008

At the conclusion of proceedings on day 1 of DNA is the Concentra Awards for Video Journalism. Michael Rosenbloom presents awards in a range of categories after a brief montage of MTV style ‘wobbly’ cam. Ten jurors from the ‘worldwide media’ including the president of the jurors – Michael Rosenbloom.

DNA – God is a VJ

A more fiesty session with Rosenbloom and Loughrey at seemingly opposite ends of the debate over VJ’s versus trad crews.

It raises the question – how much is the politics of the organisation you’re working for stopping you going forward? No real conclusion from the panel but some consensus that VJ’s might get stories trad crews can’t – hardly revelatory. Rosenbloom wrpas the session with a pretty market lead statement that VJ’s are coming whether you like it or not. Technolgy and economics dictate it.

DNA 2008

Arrived in Brussels last night quite late. much of it was shut but, hey – found a little bar and started to reflect on what the next couple of days could be about.

Michael Rosenbloom opens the session with the zest of an old time evangelist – preaching to the choir judging by the audience reaction.

So far – standard stuff – maybe they’re further down the line at SxSW in Texas!

Your Hands – user generated democracy

 It’d be easy to be cynical about a project like ‘In Your Hands’. An X factor style series of presentations (I counted 26 in all) from a range of community projects competing for a slice of the twenty grand put up by Lancaster City Council. But missing from this event was Simon Cowell (Hoorah!) and his auspicious panel of show biz mates sprinkling magic dust on those they feel they’d make most money out of by signing them to their record labels. No, the judges at ‘Your Hands’ were all drawn from the great British public – or more accurately Poulton in Lancashire. There was no panel of self anointed experts or even publicly elected officials. Just plain old (and young) members of the community who decide among themselves which projects they feel will bring most benefit to people in Poulton. Participatory budgeting is a relatively new phenomenon in the UK. Basically it’s a mechanism of local government, which brings local communities closer to the decision-making process around the public budget. The people meeting Morecambe’s Platform this afternoon were less interested in the roots of participatory budgeting. They were there to find out which ideas their friends and neighbours would vote for to win a slice of £20k. Clearly there would be winners and losers. The interesting thing was – that didn’t really seem to matter. The Morecambe and District Anglers were just as interested to learn about their local sailing club who were equally interested to discover there was a community group called Foyer who provided accommodation for 16 year olds and gave them a shot at independence. All were fascinated by each others bids. £2000 to buy an allotment were teenagers could grow their own veg. A slush fund for the a credit union providing cash form school uniforms. A new PA for the local footlights theatre. Railway track for the model railway club. The list goes on.

At the heart of the system is the voting. Everybody living in Poulton who turns up on the day is eligible to vote. They don’t just vote for their ‘top 3′ ideas. Instead, they sit through everybodys presentations and score them from 1 – 10.    Surely such a crude ballot is open to abuse. Any group with a decent membership could so easily tip the scales by tuning up en-masse and voting. Apparently not.  Jez Hall of Church Action on Poverty’s Participatory Budgeting unit says that never happens. ‘PB events have tended to bring out peoples altruism rather than peoples greed.’  That was evident today. Would a larger sum of money change things. Hall says not. At the spiritual home of PB, Porto Alegre in Brazil, the local government spends millions of  pounds this way.

The question now must be whether local councils in the UK are prepared to take that risk and devolve more of the decision making process to the people who pay their wages and live in the communities they serve.    

U-Gen democracy

Today I’m filming an experiment in democracy – Morecambe, on Lancashire’s west coast.  In Your Hands puts the decision on how to spend £20,000 back in the hands of those who live and work there. 

 During the day long event Local community groups will be presenting their ideas on how best to tackle crime and create safer communities, how to improve the environment, even how to be better neighbours.

Poulton Neighbourhood Management are providing the funding for this scheme called ‘participatory budgeting’ which gives local people the chance to decide how public money is spent. This is the first event of its kind in the area. 

There are 23 applications altogether and with a pot of just £20,000 to award so not everybody’s going to be a winner  - but the losers are promised help looking for funding from elsewhere.

Should make for an interesting day 

Pimp My Feeds deadline today

It’s the  31st Jan which means it’s the closing date for entries for Sky News £10k prize devloper competition. Entries to: newsonline@bskyb.com (put developer competition in the subject header). Results day is 21st February.See http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,70131-1291123,00.html 

Hackday 2008

Hackday 2008The BBC’s Mr FM&T Ashley Highfied has just given the all clear for Matthew Cashmore to run another of his highly successful ‘Hack Days’ as part of the BBC’s Backstage project. It’ll be sometime in June 2008 and you’ll see details here or at  http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/news/ 

Platform 4

C4 has relaunched its platform 4 talent search offering £1500 to what they’re calling ‘passionate hobbyist’ developers programkng code late into the night in their bedrooms.They’re looking for a Film4 Mash-Up or Widget using Channel 4 content from exisiting RSS feeds. £1500’s better than a slap in the face with a wet fish so have a look at http://www.channel4.com/interact/platform4/contest.html