VIDEO & THE COMMONS 2017

Wednesday, May 24th 2017 - 721 Broadway 4th Floor, New York City

It’s the most popular medium on the web and the source of much of the world’s information, yet video remains an incredibly complex and daunting challenge for anyone who might seek to produce, share, and use media freely and openly. And it presents a major challenge for those who edit and administer media sharing platforms – Wikipedia, the Internet Archive, various pockets on the web – that together form the online commons, as well as for educators and public media professionals whose mandates call for free licensing, open sharing, and public access. Our technologies, our rights policies, our funding patterns, our production workflows, our old habits – all are in need of some redesign.

The good news is that funders and activists and other producers are working hard to help realize this potential for video in the common. This May, VIDEO & THE COMMONS 2017 brings together producers, funders, scholars, authors, editors and other supporters. Following on the 2016 meeting (notes here), we will feature new work in public media, educational video (new online courses), new Wikipedia projects, new funder guidelines, and new handbooks and reports. We gather so that we may become more conscious about — and influence — the policies of our production companies, networks, home institutions, and more.

What each of does affects the entire ecosystem. Proposals from the new White House Office of Management and Budget to eliminate the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are proposals are designed to squelch the knowledge and the media that gets disseminated with the support of these lifeblood organizations. The struggle for open access — for free licenses — is about who controls our information. And it's now more important than ever.