Today (Saturday) I attended a seminar on Democracy and Dialogue, hosted by the Darklight Film Festival and the EU commission.
The day set out to be a workshop/how to make viral online videos, as the Darklight Festival are running a Democracy and Dialogue competition.
Introduced and compered by Fionn Kidney, he spoke of the viral effect. Of course H1N1 had to be mentioned. Fionn also spoke of citizen journalism, how images of Burma 2008 hit our screens. Note to self check out Burma VJ.
Derek O’Connor, director of The Darklight Festival and all round funny man (check out DorisMagee on You Tube) spoke of what makes a video go viral. Why some videos and not others.
I found Eoghan Kidney’s talk quite insightful. He has recently made some videos for Fight Like Apes and Valerie Francis. Eoghan also showed us the video he made for Le Bien. I thought this was amazing! I loved the way he was truthful talking about money and the lack of it and has a realistic outlook on the world. He’s the kind of guy who would make you want to get involved which I think is great. I love coming away with a buzz after something like that.
Here’s a link to Eoghan’s Le Bien video.
Colin Hetherington from Zoo Digital spoke about online marketing and commericals and showed us a great Philips advert, a Nike advert and the online version of the TV advert for the Army in the UK which gives you options to choose you’re next move (we always choose and then have a discussion about it when watching at home)
The individual speakers ended with Caroline Campbell, a solicitor who specializes in media law. She explained a little bit more about Creative Commons and how they work and she showed us this little video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3rksT1q4eg
The panel discussion included thoughts from Derek O’Connor, Damien Mulley, Cian O’Flaherty (who seems extremely passionate about the subject, Colin Hertherington, Shauneen Armstrong and Darragh Doyle
It was a great day and I met up also with some people I hadn’t seen in ages! The main thing I got from the day was that everyone does have a voice and you dont have to wait until to have the best equipment to start making content for the internet. Everyone has a voice, it just seems it has taken Ireland a little longer to wake up and not be afraid to make noise with theirs.
At the start of the day, two teams were given the tasks of going out into the big bad and making a viral video each..and trying to get 50 hits each before the end of the day Here’s one of them!
…nessy out!
EDIT: 10/8/09
The days proceedings have been put up on UStream
Part One:
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1948055
Part Two:
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1948204
Part Three:
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1948539
…nessy out (again) !