Sharon Terry, Patient Advocate from Open Access Videos on Vimeo.

André Brown, Grad Student from Open Access Videos on Vimeo.

Diane Graves, Librarian from Open Access Videos on Vimeo.

The other three videos (by the illustrious Matt Agnello on the West Coast) are located here.

This weekend, I attended two conferences in the Bay Area. One was the first-ever conference of the Seasteading Institute, held by Nelson’s friend and Mudd alum Patri Friedman. It involved possibly the highest concentration of Libertarians I’ve ever experienced. Also the highest concentration of men–out of 60-70 conferencegoers, Kat and I made up half the ladies. I suppose that’s to be expected with any new frontier, though… A couple more Seasteading Conference pics here.

Then, on Saturday and Sunday I attended the 2008 Students for Free Culture conference. Lots of brand name speakers–Lawrence Lessig, John Lilly, Pamela Samuelson, etc. You can see the identica microblogging stream of the conference here. I also filmed “shout-outs” for Open Access Day, with various conference-goers telling the camera why open access is awesome:

OA Day shoutouts from the Students for Free Culture conference from Open Access Videos on Vimeo.

The second day, the spontaneous participant-organized “unconference”, provoked a lot of good conversations and was surprisingly productive–by the end of it, everyone agreed to what people are calling the Wheeler Declaration (after the building we were in): an agenda for Students for Free Culture to focus on for next year. We’re still arguing about what to call it (since Open University is trademarked, apparently), but the idea is to pressure and grade our campuses based on five criteria: opening access to research, creating/using open courseware, embracing free/open-source software and open document formats, using university-held patents for the public good (think cheap drugs for the developing world), and keeping the university network unfiltered and uncensored. We’ll see how SFC executes this plan, but I think it’s an excellent target for the org to have.

More awesome projects are on the way… just you wait!

I’m not a fan of the apparent trend of literal titles (“Kung Fu Panda”; “Beverly Hills Chihuahua”; “Snakes on a Plane”) but I did enjoy this one. They actually did a really good job of it–Jack Black clearly had creative control over much of the film. The opening sequence is pure gold.

Weirdest thing: a gum company paid this guy’s travel expenses in order to make this video. Yet there’s only a tiny mention of the gum at the very end, plus a link on the Vimeo page. I guess that’s something–I hadn’t heard of the gum, and now I have. But is that worth an all-expenses-paid round-the-world trip to however many countries? Maybe…

Perhaps the folks in the marketing department also got warm charitable fuzzies for funding such a cool video art project.

[Edit: Hat tip to Gavin for linking me to this.]

Shudder-inducing Jackson Five ripoff versus sweet speech-based edit job:

Hmmm, this is a toughie…

On a completely unrelated note, I think I may be following this campaign too much. A week ago I had a dream in which Barack Obama danced around in a zoot suit singing this song:

Which in retrospect does make a kind of sense, given his message… Can Obama sing? Can he do this when he wins the nomination? Please please please?

It was a pretty interesting forum. The two other students weren’t free culture members–one was from Universities Allied for Essential Medicines at Princeton, while the other was a science blogger. Both the Saturday and Sunday sessions had a very good turnout. It was nice to see a lot of librarians were interested in activism, particularly student activism–when I tried to talk to Honnold-Mudd about open access and how much of their budget was spent on journal subscriptions, they thought I wanted an article from a journal they didn’t offer and were like, “Don’t worry, even if we don’t have a subscription we can get that article for you!” It seems some librarians are used to thinking of students as customers instead of fellow members of the academic community. Good to see that at least some are breaking out of that box.

Aspects of the trip were rather stressful–I accidentally packed Nelson’s tux instead of his suit (it was in an opaque suit bag; *neither* of us knew he even owned a tux!), Nelson’s juicer broke, and we didn’t realize until forty minutes beforehand what the hotel’s checkout time was. (Oops.) But other parts of the trip were quite enjoyable–SPARC put me and Nelson up at the Philadelphia Westin, which while having crappy, expensive Internet access was otherwise ridiculously swanky; we, the other student presenters, and Gavin (who’s workingdoing work for SPARC now) got wined and dined and boozed at various delicious places; and it was fun to be in Philadelphia again. I don’t know why I like Philly so much, but I do. Downtown’s nothing like home, but it feels more like Minneapolis than New York.

Also at the conference were a couple of documentarians from Hungry Filmmaker Productions who are making a documentary on new media and free culture, tentatively titled Copycat. The film seems to be at the stage of “film everything–figure out the story later,” but the lead guy Matt Agnello seems very smart and enthusiastic. He interviewed both me and Nelson about Students for Free Culture so that was pretty cool. Yay, my first documentary appearance maybe?

Speaking of free culture documentaries, my family watched Freedom of Expression by Kembrew McLeod two weeks ago or so while Nelson was visiting us in Minnesota for the holidays. It’s probably the best free culture-y documentary out there right now–I think it should be made the default recruitment “thing-to-show.”

Unfortunately, the documentary is not available online, and the publisher has done a really crappy job of otherwise publicizing it. (So how’s he expecting to sell copies…?) The only reason I’ve seen it is because Nelson got a copy for free since he appears in the film. But I have a copy now, so if anyone’s interested in watching it just poke me. Or maybe I/someone should start a torrent…

The Internet gives new meaning to the notion that, by sharing ideas, we build a better understanding of the world around us. If you use YouTube or Wikipedia, exchange gaming tips on the Internet, or have a blog, you probably well understand the value of sharing information, ideas, and knowledge.

Sharing can also be a vital tool in helping to address complex problems that challenge society – like disease, hunger, global warming, and economic disparity. The sharing of ideas gives us ways to discover, collaborate, and create in unprecedented ways.

The SPARC Discovery Awards challenges you to illustrate in a short video presentation what you see as the value of sharing information. Use your imagination to suggest what good comes from bringing down barriers to the free exchange of information.

The videos must be no more than two minutes long, released under a Creative Commons license, and submitted by December 2. The rest of the rules can be found on the contest website. The top prize is $1000 and a sexy “Sparky” statuette. (You know those metal doohickeys with flints in the cap that you used to light bunsen burners in high school chemistry? That’s what the trophy’s design is based on. Heck yes.)

Most important, however: I’m one of the judges! Look, I’m right above Jimbo Wales on the judging panel page! Pretty sweet, eh?

So. Everyone should submit to this contest, especially since as a judge I can’t. The contest already got a mention on the media studies-l, but I don’t think Tracy knew that I was one of the judges since the panel hadn’t been announced yet. Hopefully I/the department/Free Culture 5C can promote the contest further as the school year gets going. I’m hoping to see some awesome videos!

No, I will not accept bribes. I may accept cookies. :p

(via BoingBoing)

Sunday: In the morning we went to the Claremont farmer’s market and bought onions, strawberries, broccoli, and a case of oranges, which we haphazardly brought back to the apartment several blocks away using Glenn’s skateboard. Next time we use the car, methinks.

In the evening, Nelson wanted to go to 300. Kathleen had mentioned that there was a drive-in theatre in Montclair, so we checked out their website and found that they were showing it. So we went, paid less for two movies than you pay for one in a normal theatre (despite drive-ins being so much cooler!), and had an awesome time. I hadn’t anticipated much liking the movie, as Frank Miller is not known for his enlightened portrayal of women and excessive gore can get to me, but as it turned out I loved it. The queen is human, yet bad-ass as heck–they treated her and Leonidas’ relationship really well, much better than the comic book. Sure there’s gore–it’s a hand-to-hand-combat war movie, after all!–but it’s stylized comic-book gore. I barely noticed it at all–for me, the focus of the movie was the plot and tactics. And pretty film. So much pretty film. Definitely worth seeing in theatres.

Nelson and I didn’t actually watch the second feature, we were too busy talking about the movie and tactics and everything. Nelson’d read the original comic book, and knew something about the battle/ancient military strategy (he took Latin in high school), so it was cool hearing his take on it. And then we went home, ate broccoli, and talked about giant rodent wars. ‘Twas a lovely date. :)

Monday: Nelson decided he wanted to go to an open mike. We looked on openmikes.org and the only open mike in the area on Monday was in Orange, CA–24 miles away. I looked at the map. “Wow, that’s almost to the beach.”

“…”

“Day trip to the beach!!”

So after lunch we spontaneously drove to Corona Del Mar, climbed down the technically-handicapped-accessible-but-suicidally-steep path, and hung out at the beach! We ate strawberries and grapes, walked the length of the beach and back, and waded in the waves. This beach, just south of Balboa (where I went with my family frosh year), was much rockier, with a cave and tidepools to explore. Clambering around rocks in the ocean waves nearly naked with no foot protection, both of us got scraped up a good bit. I injured my leg when I slipped on a rock I couldn’t see through the water, then got hit with a wave so I couldn’t regain my balance. But it was so cool! There were rocks with mussels and barnacles all over. There were lots of anemones, which closed if you poked them. I held a cute little hermit crab with tiny red antennae! Squee! Tidepools are so much cooler outside of a museum.

We went to dinner in Orange, at an Italian place called Aldo’s Ristorante, then walked two blocks north to the open mike. Lots of antique/non-chain stores, a roundabout, non-Mediterranean architecture… The neighborhood was eerily similar to Lancaster, PA–it felt much more East Coast than West!

The open mike was okay–the owner wasn’t particularly personable, and few people attended. But the audience members were neat–the guy who played after us, Kurt Hunter, was really talented and humorous–and it was fun rocking out.

Six more days and my conclusion already is: spring break is awesome.

Someone decided to reimagine Mickey Mouse in a truly gorgeous fashion. Watch the video, before the Disney lawyers take it down!

I dunno. It’s not a bad class. But I like my pop TV-style videos, with soundtracks and editing and prettiness! :p

Here are the two videos me and my partner Courtney have made so far.

Video Time:

I guess it’s an interplay between time experienced while sucked into the boob tube versus time in real life. The screen reflection came out nicely. We got lucky with how often time-related stuff came up on the television while we filmed…

Video Light:

It’s supposed to mess with your expectations. This was the first time Courtney and I had even *touched* the light kit. Damn that equipment’s heavy.