European Youth Media Days conference in Brussels is now over for me, and now making my way to Budapest. Regular blogging and podcasting will resume once I’m settled in over at VlogEurope HQ in Hungary. Also you’ll be able to join vlogeurope live via streaming video and ask questions and all that fancy shmacy real-time virtual participation action.? Info on that on the vlogeurope site.
-More Soon.
Aske Dam has watched the world go from huge cumbersome video equipment to the tiny cameras he enjoys using today. And throughout the last decades he has also been a first hand witness to the phenomenon of local community television stations in Japan. At a time where we are so focused on the internet to set us free, Aske remembers groups of people in Japan who had made their own personal and community media, long before the internet. In this internet we discuss all this and more, while sitting outside overlooking the beautiful city of Heidelberg during VlogEurope 2007.
We Discuss:
-How he first got started with television in Japan
– Cable systems in Japan
-The function and structure of community stations
– The unique and wonderful programs and philosophies of the people involved
– Comparing it to community tv projects in Denmark
– The evolution of localized tv production
– Interactivity
– Later on, bought and sold? Or disappeared?
– Digital Education
– Digital Cinemas
Arrived from VlogEurope in desperate need of sleep. So tomorrow will be back to business, today I leave you with 3 photos from Heidelberg.
Yes it is that time again.. here I sit as Gabe and Gabe are speaking in the final talk-session of VlogEurope 2007. This year we’re here in Heidelberg, Germany, an extremely picturesque city south of Frankfurt. The group this year is the smallest its ever been since the first conference back in Amsterdam 2005. At the same time, we still manage to have lots of old friends meeting here to talk about this tool, this art, the vehicle that we believe so strongly in — video blogging.
If you wish to watch the live feed, it is probably too late, but the archived conference can be seen here. If you do watch you’ll see me speaking here and there, including a segment where I introduce and break down Euronews’s NO COMMENT video podcast. (pause as the panel discussion asks me a question)
Beyond the conference, the one thing I notice over and over again in Heidelberg is the presence of the American military. As I strolled through the old section of town, an amazingly beautiful oldfashioned city scape, I heard loud shouting.. at many points.. the familiar sounds of two booming American voices threatening each other. As I turned the corner there before me are two amazingly huge and muscular men, drunkenly yelling at each other while a barefoot girl lay half passed out on the ground. I kept walking due to my fear of muscular drunk people, only to pass the entrances of various flashy bars and night clubs.. again the familiar accents.
My wonderful hostess (thanks hospitality club) whom I’ve never met before but we’ve become fast friends, told me that there are various US military bases in the region.. including an important hospital nearby. For them its a completely normal thing and I found it fascinating as I strolled in the daytime, to see how they are in fact regular fixtures in the backdrop of daily life here. Come to think of it, I’m typing this from the great JoelArt’s house, he too has told me tons about the world of US military employees in Germany.
I bring it up because it is a fascinating world. It is also one that I’m not sure I like. To put it another way, it makes me uncomfortable as an American and as a European that US troops have a permanent prescence anywhere.. that is unless they’re there to actually help people and improve the quality of life.
Anyway, fireworks are starting here at the VLogEurope07 party, yes, it is a special night here in Heidelberg. (explosion… off I go to look out over the river)