Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Real Time Media Prosumers

Anyone who reads this blog knows that recently my wife and I welcomed three new additions into our family. I like to keep the blog focused on the intersection of user generated content, technology and media, but occasionally take the liberty to intersperse the personal. As this was a unique event, I thought it worthy of sharing.

When my first child was born, I documented, rather a friend documented the event with a DVCam. Several months later I spliced together various cuts and made a DVD using Pinnacle software for our various family members. This was personal media creation and sharing. At the time I thought this was really impressive as I had spent some time working with Super 8 film and found the editorial process of this medium not really well suited to me.

The revolution in desktop video is being led by Apple and Pinnacle and others as they put professional, or arguably professional quality tools in the hand of consumers. If you take the time to get familiar with the tools, you can get a product that is definitely worth sharing with others.

Fast forward two years. As I waited in the prep room with my wife, I was armed with the same DVCam, a Sony Cybershot camera, and a Sony Ericsson P910. As we waited for the appointed time for the c-section, I periodically snapped pictures with the cell phone and immediately posted them to Flickr. I had told friends and family to look at my blog on the photostream section and they could see the event happen in as real time as I could provide. Periodically I fired up Opera on my cell phone and added some blog posts for commentary.

During the delivery we filmed a good portion of the time immediately after the babies arrived with the DVCam and then resumed stills with the cell phone and the camera. That night as I returned home I uploaded images from the camera to Flickr and then used the cross posting capabilities to post back on blogspot.

During this time period I had as many visits to my blog as I have had when I have had posts covered by Unmediated or Waxy or Dave Winer. Theses were not bloggers, rather they were family and friends sharing in a real time way an event that we wanted to share with others.

During the holidays in between feedings I reflected on how transformative this ability to use network connected personal media devices to create information to share with others. When you consider this type of activity and blogging and podcasting and a host of other activities, I think that we are clearly at the dawn of a period where media turns in on itself and we all become Real Time Media Producers and Consumers or Real Time Media Prosumers.

JD Lasica wrote a great post today that got me to the keyboard to write this. It will be interesting to see how the mainstream market adapts to these concepts and decides what are the right tools/software/services/distribution channels for this type of media.






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