Mary Richert recently celebrated Thanksgiving with her family. Now Thanksgiving is not a celebration we observe in Australia though Martha Stewart has made me aware that consuming Turkey is a major element of this custom. Something that is perhaps less widely observed is getting together as a family to make stop motion movies, though this is exactly what Mary and her family did.

From Mary’s Twitter:

The family created six stop motion videos. You can watch them all on Mary’s YouTube channel.

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I’ve been doing something over the last couple of days that is unusual for me. I was hesistant to even bring it up because it sounds a little nutty. But basically I’m interested in… WORLD DOMINATION. Okay I’ve been watching too many episodes of Pinky And The Brain. I should probably take this back a few steps.

YouTube is the heart of my online video operations. It’s a good place to be. There’s a lot of traffic through that website and a community that has learnt to a greater or lesser extent to rate, comment and subscribe. Though if I’m being completely honest in some respects I’ve sometimes felt like a slave to YouTube, at their will and mercy. I decided earlier in the year that my content was my content (and that hopefully it had a value and merit all of its own, regardless where it ended up). So I decided 2010 would be the year I would start syndicating my video content more widely.

This has been a long time coming and even now is a race of ‘slow and steady’ movement. I started uploading JohnOfJordan videos to both YouTube and LiveVideo. (Though, honestly, LiveVideo does some pretty horrendous things to my video quality.) I then started a JohnOfJordan fan page on Facebook and was surprised to see that some people joined it. Uploading videos to Facebook is a pleasure and their video quality is beautiful. Facebook doesn’t require keyword tags either which is one less thing to think about. [As an aside I had never been a huge Facebook fan but I must say that their pages are amazing. I would probably use one over a NING Community, for example.] Then I uploaded some stuff to Vimeo. There’s a restriction on how much video you can upload to Vimeo in a week. This is sort of an incentive to upgrade to their premium services.

Even as I type I’m uploading a video to Tubemogul to syndicate it to other sites. Tubemogul is a great site where you can upload a video once and have it then be forwarded to a number of different video sites. (I especially recommend using their ‘BIG file uploader’ because it is resumable. If something happens with your connection you can hopefully pick up from where you left off.)

The goal here isn’t to build audiences on other video sharing websites. It’s really just about putting the content out in a lot of places to increase the likelihood of people stumbling upon it. And in some ways it’s about building incoming links to my websites (never forget to include a URL in your video descriptions so viewers can find out more about you).

I’ll be the first person to admit that a lot of the stuff I do has limited appeal. I’m not going out of my way to make people ‘like’ it. I doubt I could even if I wanted to. They’re going to watch it and reach their own conclusions. All I want to do is position my material in enough places that people are given the opportunity to make that evaluation for themselves.

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You may remember that I recently wrote about the things I wanted for Christmas. One of those was the JVC Picsio video camera. Well I have a wonderful story to share with you about that…

I was looking at the camera in a local electronics store. It was beautiful. I knew I wanted it. I also knew that I couldn’t justify the expense. (For the last two years I’ve voluntarily taken leave from the work force to devote time to creative endeavours. This has enriched me spiritually, but left my bank balance in a terrible way.) I took a brochure about the camera away with me. Eventually I went online to find out more about the camera.

I discovered much to my delight that JVC Australia were running the Share A Moment competition. They were giving away one of the cameras every day until Christmas. I went through the archives looking for something worthy of the competition and I discovered some old footage of Koalas at a local animal park…

I had intended to ask everybody I knew to vote for my video. However I misunderstood so much about the contest. I asked a bunch of YouTube friends to vote for the video and they did. I had intended to launch a full blown campaign but before I could do that I discovered quite by sheer dumb luck that I had won their daily prize for the day I uploaded the video. I was completely blown away!

Today the camera arrived in my mailbox.

Winning the camera was truly wonderful and I look forward to using it. But what really touched me was how responsive and supportive people I knew via the Internet – often people I had not met ‘face to face’ – were towards me and my efforts. And I think that is probably what I am most grateful for, to be surrounded by people who are creative and supportive of other people’s creativity. I am grateful that I have access to a technology like the Internet where I can publish my work and share my thoughts and have access to libraries of great materials.

I’ve read many “gift ideas for artists” type articles in the past week and it only really reaffirmed for me the importance of the less tangible gifts. Things like support and encouragement. They don’t cost anything, particularly, not in monetary terms, and yet they are invaluable. Just a line or two can make all the difference. “I believe in you” or “You should keep going” or “I think you have talent.”

But tools like the JVC Piscsio are, of course, quite helpful too…

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Inspired by Laurel Papworth.

She writes:

In a way, they are like traditional media. They provide the original source of content that usually creates our discontent.

You know it’s funny; there is one very successful YouTube video creator who I never understood. But I was reading The Daily Telegraph a week ago, reading the letters and editorials (about nothing of very much interest) and I had such a revelation!

The purpose isn’t to provide information so much as it is to get people excited (or “pissed off” to borrow from the local vernacular). And then people would react and respond, either being asked randomly off the streets of Sydney for their opinion, or adding comments via email or snail mail or SMS services.

And then these people would buy the newspapers again (or read online), react to new articles as well as other people’s reactions to their earlier feedback.

My heart sunk a little.

Isn’t this what the much heralded “conversation” is?

Does this mean that the most “engaging” forums will be not those that offer the greatest insights and quality information, but merely those most talented in arousing emotional frenzy in others?

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Darren Rowse of Problogger recently suggested that ‘text is king.’

He writes:

My Mum Doesn’t Get YouTube.

OK – perhaps Mum could work out YouTube if she put some time aside to learn – but recently I was talking to my family about online video and the blank stares that I got from my parents made me wonder if they’d ever watched a video online before. They’re not online all day every day but the majority of what they do is email and searching for articles on their subjects of interest with Google. They live in ‘text content land’ – right in the middle of it.

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