Web activism conference: dotActivist

Turnfront is organising a conference on using the web for activism on 7th August in London.

It will have a mixture of presentations from activists and technologists, along with time for more open conversations between the participants. The talks will cover activist video, open source social media, hi-tech direct action and online democracy (to name a few).

You can register at: http://turnfront.com/dotactivist

The aim is to go beyond the well-rehearsed conversations about how online campaigning ‘must be done’ and explore exciting new possibilities involving emergent technologies and creative ideas. We’ll also hear about experiences from activists who have deployed some of these ideas in the field and learn from what works and what doesn’t.

Along with the presentations, there will be plenty of time for networking and open conversations so that everyone can share their ideas and experience. The event has been designed to inspire and provoke discussion in equal measure.

Bio's

Hamish Campbell - founder of visionOntv, who has worked for the Undercurrents media NGO for 10 years. His footage from the Genoa protest in 2001 was used this year to sentence 69 Italian police to prison for human rights abuses. His "ruffcuts" distribution project was one of the most successful of its kind before the age of web video. He was a founder of European newsreal, a radical news magazine screened around the world. He made the video for the Kingsnorth climate camp appeal last year, testifying to illegal stop and search searches by the police, and screened in the Houses of Parliament.

Richard Hering - founder of visionOntv. Was an international award-winning investigative reporter for British television, revealing, among other things, the effects of Chinese nuclear tests and stopping the illegal mahogany trade from the Brazilian Amazon. He made the first ever UK mass-audience film on environmental direct action. He now aims to build an open video network which will take on the mainstream media corporations.

visionOntv - the news you don't see on the news, an online tv station with content which is very, very different. But much more than this, it is a set of tools to enable people to use video content for social change.

This is my fave Ze Frank song

songs you already know :: scared

Programmers outline to do list

Our project is based on liferay: http://www.liferay.com/products/liferay-portal/tech-specs

* RSS aggregation into the liferay web content.
This is to bring media RSS items into the CMS from external sites and then use the asset publisher ( http://www.liferay.com/community/wiki/-/wiki/Main/Asset+Publisher+Portlet) to display them and create a tag-based RSS feed to the media player embed/portal.

* Customisation of Open source media player (with playlists and embedding) to create a liferay portlet.
this will allow us to display on our site aggregated video content from other websites and as an embedded media player on other sites.

* Configuration of liferay CMS including customisation of portlets
This will bring an overall TV look and feel to the liferay CMS including working with our designer with CSS and themes.

* Badges – participation rewards (automated)
Creating a set of fun, aspirational communities – device of percentage of completeness of profile like Linkedin – to encourage photos and full profiles by members.

Liferay is building a social capital engine so we need to plug into this:
5 levels –
1. Non-member viewers
2. Members
3a. Press Reporter – gained after you make 3 text reports
3b. Video Reporter / – gained after you make 3 video reports
3c. Commenter – gained after you make 3 comments
4a. Columnist – gained after 3 text reports promoted to front page, gives automated publishing to front page
4b. Producer – 3 promoted video reports (published on one of main channels)
5. Core crew

Add badges to posts for your status and on user pages.

Possible fun badges Film maker – references – radical / hippie / conspiracy theorist / ideological anarchist / culture vulture.

* Create a custom install of http://www.mirovideoconverter.com/

* Create a custom version of http://www.getmiro.com/publish/custom/

* LATER Pushing of video content out to torrent files for distributed backup. Making the whole media side of the project work P2P