Month: December 2007

Major Update to EngageMedia.org Website

Post author By ilumpruj
Post date December 21, 2007
No Comments on Major Update to EngageMedia.org Website

3 Columns

We’ve added a new column down the right hand side which includes Tags, News, Events, Call Outs and Latest Comments.

Call Outs

We’ve
added a new content type: “Call Outs”. If you are looking for content
for a DVD compilation, screening, film festival or crew for
a production you can let people know about it by adding a call out:

http://www.engagemedia.org/recent_callouts

Flash Player – Full Screen Video

You
can now play videos at full screen with the flash player, just click
the button in the bottom right hand corner of the player.

Tagging

We’ve
upgraded the tagging functionality – you can now browse the site through user-added keywords or “tags”. You’ll now see a tag cloud in the
top right of the site. This tagging system is much faster than before
and gives users an enhanced way to navigate and find content on the
site:

http://www.engagemedia.org/tagcloud/view

Publish Page

We’ve
also added a new publishing page to make it easier to add videos, news,
events and call outs. Just click the publish button in the top left or
hit this link:

http://engagemedia.org/publish

Performance Enhancements

We’ve
added some big improvements to page templates resulting in much faster
load times. We also added more RAM to our server to speed things up.
This should go some way to dealing with the performance issues
some of you may have been experiencing. There are still however a few
key issues we need to address as more and more videos get added to the
site and more people visit. We’ll be working on these over the coming
months. If you have Plone skills please get involved!

Plumi

The EngageMedia.org is now running on the package of video-sharing software we have created called Plumi, rather than using elements of this package in combination. The implications of this are far too geeky to explain, but take it from us this is a big step in terms of improving this website, and the software that enables anyone to run their own video-sharing community.
http://plumi.org

DONATE!

Help
EngageMedia grow and improve even more this year. EngageMedia relies on
funders and site members to stay afloat and run an advertising free
service. If you appreciate the site and want to continue to see it grow
please consider making a donation. Go to the front page and click
the ‘donate’ button in the bottom left to contribute via PayPal or
click this link to direct to PayPal:

http://tinyurl.com/23ko3p

Bugs

There are still a few bugs to iron out after making this big move, so bear with us. Comments are not appearing quite as they should, we know about that one. But if you find any other bugs please let us know via the contact form here:
http://engagemedia.org/contact-info

Thankyous

Finally a big thank you to “Trollfot” for his enormous help in improving the site with programming and design, and the crew from Spring in Alaska who have also been working on design for us. Thanks also go to all our members for their continued support. We’ve seen a huge amount of excellent content added to the site in 2007 and look forward to more in 2008 with your help.

Have a great holiday break!

The EngageMedia team: Andy, Lachlan, Dave, And_, and Anna

Tags featured

News

Vx:mission – Amsterdam 18, 19, 20th Jan 2008

Post author By ilumpruj
Post date December 18, 2007
No Comments on Vx:mission – Amsterdam 18, 19, 20th Jan 2008

Vx:mission – Amsterdam 18, 19, 20th Jan 2008

VX:mission will look at how distribution of Social Justice Video is happening using Open Sources technology. It is a chance to find out about existing distribution projects, get feedback for your own projects or ideas, find collaborators and scheme about how best to distribute your video. This is event is associated with the transmission network. For more info check transmission.cc

This will happen with 3 days of events. A Show with films, info and discussion on Friday 18th Jan, A day of Geek central hacklab work on the 19th, and a day of public workshops on Sunday 20th Jan.

The kinds of things we’ll discuss and work on are

* Open source Video Content Management and transcoding systems
* Translations and Subtitling tools
* Help files and Documentation to help people get involved
* Video Distribution Strategy

This gathering is planned in a association with FlossManuals.net and clearerchannel.org. It has a focus on how we can better document projects and user orientated help.

The Amsterdam meeting dates are 18, 19, 20 January 2008 To coincide with the Video Vortex Conference

Keep informed and find out full information on the Transmission Vmission page

http://transmission.cc/vxmission

How to get involved

The best way to get involved it to sign up for the event discussion email list here http://lists.transmission.cc/listinfo/vxmission-discuss

Introduce yourself and say what part of the programme you are interested in. There are workshops that you can attend if you think you’ve got something to learn or to teach.

We also have a 200 capacity venue for our Film and Presentation night. So bring all your friends to that.

full details here:
http://transmission.cc/vxmission

News

CabTube: Italian Librarians Take to Plumi

Post author By ilumpruj
Post date December 9, 2007
No Comments on CabTube: Italian Librarians Take to Plumi

Plumi is the video sharing platform produced by EngageMedia.

The aim of the CAB conference was bring together
the various initiatives and key players within the Open Access movement
in order to:

have an overview of the developing tools that sustain Open Access in scientific data and cultural heritage dissemination
develop the effective strategies that can
contribute to the construction and implementation of this new paradigm
of the scholarly communication world.

You can see the site here: http://cabtube.cab.unipd.it/

News

EngageMedia Staffer Awarded Dunlop Asia Fellowship

Post author By ilumpruj
Post date December 7, 2007
No Comments on EngageMedia Staffer Awarded Dunlop Asia Fellowship

The Dunlop Asia Fellowship for 2007 was awarded jointly to Lucinda
Hartley who will undertake an internship in sustainable community
housing in Vietnam and Thailand, and to Anna Helme from EngageMedia who
will travel to Indonesia to meet and train video makers in the use of
video-sharing technologies on the web. The fellowships were awarded at
the annual Dunlop Asia Awards hosted by Asialink
in Melbourne on Thursday 6th of December 2007. The awards were
presented by Sidney Myer, Chairman of Asialink and Director of The Myer
Foundation, and Sir Ninian Stephen, former Governor-General of
Australia.

This will be an opportunity to train video makers in Indonesian
communities, who will then be able to pass on these skills to others
and help initiate ongoing projects. For EngageMedia this will be an
opportunity to have deeper experience of the community media networks
of Indonesia, learn first-hand about their particular needs for
community media infrastructure and explore how the Internet can best be
used as a tool for social change in this cultural and political
context. It is a chance to learn from Indonesian video groups about how
to best use the Internet as a distribution tool when access to the web
is generally poor, and to explore with them the creation of sustainable
and effective distribution models in this situation.

The Dunlop
Asia Fellowship is an initiative designed to assist young Australians
in their efforts to make lasting contributions to Australia-Asia
relations through people-to-people exchange and interaction. The value
of such face-to-face meetings is very high when it comes to forming
real collaborative relationships and routes for cultural exchange.
EngageMedia hope to extend this ability to further these conversations
about the issues of our times through social-networking and the sharing
of independently produced video about social and environmental concerns.

EngageMedia would like to acknowledge our partners Ruangrupa
who will be our hosts in Indonesia for the fellowship. Ruangrupa are an
artists collective based in Jakarta, who conduct video-training
workshops all over Indonesia in addition to producing the art criticism
journal Karbon and running the biennial OK.VIDEO festival. EngageMedia
and Ruangrupa have partnered in 2007
to distribute works from OK.VIDEO on the EngageMedia.org website, present works
contributed by members of EngageMedia.org within the festival and train
video makers in Jakarta in online skills. This is a great opportunity
to strengthen this partnership and work together to share new media
skills with many video makers around Indonesia whose exposure to online
technologies has been very limited so far.

We hope to enable the sharing of stories from independent video
makers, citizen journalists, artists and their communities
across our borders. With this fellowship we hope to form collaborative
partnerships with artists and community media practitioners here in
Asia in order to form cross-border relationships that can introduce Australian audiences to regional ideas and experiences and in turn help bring Australian concerns to our neighbours.

One of the most
fundamental ways to encourage both peace and social justice in our
region is to begin conversations with our neighbours – to share our
stories and deepen understanding between us. This can now begin to be
achieved in a grassroots way using online communications technologies,
and through the power of the moving image.