Janet Haven

Many more of us are able to create videos these days than just a few years ago. You don't even need to haul around the digicam; your phone, your digital camera, your PDA can make a movie. This turns out to be a very useful thing in social justice movements. Visual documentation means that governments or other repressive factions can't dismiss what they might otherwise like to.

One problem with the deluge of video emerging from social justice movements around the world is: where to put it all? How do people distribute it, find it, share it, and use it to make the difference that it could? A number of organizations around the world have been asking this question, and developing video distribution platforms for advocacy communities. Led by Engage Media of Australia, representatives from these projects will be getting together in Rome from June 7-10 for "Transmission" to compare projects, talk collaboration, and investigate the possibility for sharing resources.

This is the kind of event that I'm very happy to see because it means less replication and more shared resources and standards in open source development communities. Cross-pollination between software projects with similar goals is crucial -- there are a lot of niches out there to fill, and open collaboration between a network of like-minded projects seems to me the best way to reach all of them.