Participatory Media Supported

Many years ago I worked for a small multimedia company and one of our clients was Macromedia. We wrote documentation for Director 1.0, built interactive help and held trainings around the Bay Area. In my spare time, I used the software to put together a multimedia story for a family member celebrated an 80th birthday, splicing together music, pictures and narration. Sixty people gathered in a local restaurant and watched, it was very sweet.

Today, most podcasters, videobloggers, journalists turned new media (and vice versa) are keen on organizations that are supporting participatory media even though there seems to be a good deal of negative press scrutinizing the business model, quality and even safety. But that's not stopping people who have to tell stories, news to share, and feelings and creativity to express.

Here are three examples of people putting in the time, helping to make media higher quality and even getting paid.

1) Dan Gillmor, who I wrote about in my last post, and the Center for Citizen Media recently published this piece I narrated about accuracy and fixing mistakes in a new section on their site addressing "Principles of Citizen Journalism".

2) I briefly interviewed three attendees of the mobile technology conference at Stanford University: Reuters-sponsored Digital Vision Fellowship Program at Stanford University; a popular blog called onlinepersonalswatch.com; and Nokia's Convergence Products Business Program group.


Click to play this 5 and 1/2-minute video


Coincidentally, John Kuner is on academic leave from Nokia, and his Digital Vision Program focuses on three initiative areas: finance programs including m-commerce, payment services and microfinance; knowledge, as in education, government services and community building; and health and welfare which encompasses health science, public safety and disaster relief.

3) Finally, here is an example of financial support as the world begins to see real value in user-generated content, whether for entertainment, news or otherwise.

Related items:

Article on funding citizen media
Digital Vision Fellowship Program at Stanford
The N800 from Nokia.com
Online Personals Watch
Social Networking Watch
Citizen Journalism Principles at the Center for Citizen Media

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