Well November 30th has come and gone. I need to do some tag work and clean up on International Videoblogging Posting Month aka the VloMo 2011 Video Gallery on Saturday and then it is a done deal.
I've learned a lot about curating an online video exhibition. I am still processing the deeper lessons. You can't help but learn something with 600+ videos submitted and viewed.
This is what I can say for sure:
Informing Participants
I wish I did a better job of informing folks about VloMo outside of
the Yahoo Videoblogging Group.
In hindsight, that worked to my advantage because
my hand would be in a sling from cramping. The right number of people participated. Fortunately word of mouth
help to let other folks know about VloMo.
Some of the participants thought that they had to do 30 seconds a day. It was a
suggestion and it makes sense for time challenged people but folks could
do what they wanted. Most videos cam in at under five minutes and many
were two minutes or less.
It was an English language affair but it almost covered the globe.
Seriously missing were participants from South America, Japan and
Africa. And next year we need more women!
Back to the English thing. I'd like to point out that there is a difference between UK and US English. There were times where I could not understand. Other times I drew on my long history of watching BBC shows on PBS to help me get a grip.
You do the the best you can.
Tagging Videos
I had to make quick subjective judgements about how to tag the videos. Some were easy, if I saw a cat in it that was one of the tags.
Other videos I had to be more careful. I did not want to tag with a spoiler that would alter the experience. It was a balance between informing the viewer about the contents of the video and editorializing, which I did not want to do.
Twitter Search
Twitter isn't that great for searching. Don't get me wrong. I deeply depended on it to keep track of participants and finding videos. It didn't necessarily update new listings when I did a saved search. What I had to do was type the keyword, search and then make sure I selected "All."
That got it most of the time. Except when Twitter search didn't work at all. Some people were using #vlomo11, some #2011 and some #NaNoVloMo. I had
to use all of the terms not only on Twitter but YouTube, Vimeo and
Blip.tv
Tumblr Quirks
Tumblr is great at allowing users to uploading video quickly. If you use an URL/web address from the major web hosts that cuts down on having to use embed codes.
It is not so great for other types of video web hosts that they do not have a working relationship with. Keek, Flickr and other web hosts URL were not acceptable to Tumblr. It did not matter if I used the embed code or the URL it would not display the video.
I could only link to the direct page of the participants. One of the downsides is that customizing is possible but limited. That is one of its strengths but if I wanted to tweak a bit I had to let it go. The service is designed for quick uploads.
Ok, that is what I've learned at the moment. Gotta go.
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