Wikicamp '07: Organisation through chaos

What happens when 350 passionate people congregate without a plan, under one roof? Expected answers would range from pandemonium, break down or any sort of organisation and possibly stampedes. Yet at the Wikicamp, the crowd quickly organized itself and ‘sculpted’ the day’s proceeding as it went. This simultaneous stirring to organisation was not new to the crowd. They had come to the camp precisely because of it.

Wikis work on this formula of collaboration towards organisation. By definition, Wikis are websites which can be altered by anyone who views it. Thus users change the content of the website as they browse through it. The Wiki carries material that has been contributed and edited by a plethora of users. Overtime the Wiki’s material represents the aggregate of all the views on a particular topic, thus giving the user holistic information on the topic in the wiki.

Wikicamp reflected these values of Wikis. People from across the world came to interact and debate on how the wikis work and what their possible future could be. Like a wiki, the camp had no organised structure; every member could start a talk, question or contribute to the existing topics. This lack of structure, created a mood for the ‘law of two feet’, as explained by blogger Kiruba Shankar “in English, law of two feet means that if you feel bored, feel free to move your two feet. Don’t sulk, move out do what interests you”.

Although there were no ‘speakers’, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, the online user contributed encyclopaedia, became the fire starter, fuelling and igniting the discussion. “Wikipedia is like Rock’n’roll, some people will always tell you not to listen to it. But just because they say so, doesn’t mean that people will stop listening to it” said Wales. He started the camp by discussing his experiences with wikis, research on programs to be used with Wikis and possible revenue generation models.

The camp transformed into a user guided forum, where various wikipedia content generators and other discussed possibilities of using wikis. The presence of G Badani (one of the most prolific Indian Wikipedians) and Sundar( a writer for Tamil Wikipedia) also added flavour to the camp.

Link: Rajan.wordpress
Link: MoMo India Chapter

Attack of the clones- India gets youtubed

The acquisition of video sharing platform, youtube.com, by Google for $1.65 billion, suddenly turned everybody’s attention to the possibility that even in India people could make and share videos. Soon Indian clones of youtube.com like meravideo.com and apnatube.com started mushrooming on the internet. Then, meravideo.com’s creator, Kanwaldeep Kalsi, announced that various parties were willing to finance him $1.5 million for the growth of his site. Video sharing had arrived in India.

But true video sharing is still only a possibility of the future. With the low broadband penetration and slow internet speeds in India, the average downloading speed is around 30kbps and uploading speed is only 15kbps, as a result, an average sized video takes about an hour upload. This may change, as Kiruba Shankar, an eminent blogger, says “2007 has been declared the ‘year of broadband’ by the Communication Ministry, if broadband speeds improve and costs fall, then true video sharing may become possible”.

Even now meravideo.com is awash with copy-written content, the same sort of content that landed the ‘original’ youtube.com in a sea of lawsuits. The USP of meravideo.com-- user generated content-- is clearly not working. But as Shankar says “If copy-written content is removed, the site will have very little content left. It will get a blind eye from the consumers”. Though Kalsi says that the content is filtered, the content can only be filtered when new material is uploaded, so it’s not surprising that the most shared video on meravideo.com is a semi-pornographic clip.

The idea that a serious amateur film maker would put his movie on an India centric site is absurd, as such site would cater to a limited audience whereas a youtube.com would provide a wider audience. “Such a site can only be used when either you want India specific content or content in a regional language” adds Shankar.

Yet venture capitalists are willing to invest in video sharing platforms, because they provide a very efficient method of advertising. For a fraction of a cost, advertisers will be able to insert a short promotional film at the end of the user generated video on meravideo.com. Also like youtube.com, people expect that Indian movie houses will soon start advertising on these sites and may eventually buy content from them. Following the trajectory of earlier video sharing sites, meratube.com could evolve into a site where people can watch non mainstream, niche movies.

As Shanker says, “Video is the way to go, it is more colourful, it does not have the limitations of audio or printed text”. People also view video sharing as a natural evolution of expression on the internet. “first came text blogging, then audio podcasts, video is next” he adds.

The thought of video creation and sharing does open new avenues of interaction and, if possible, alternative revenue generation methods for budding movie makers, but till bandwidths and internet speed in India improve, the attack of the clones will barely raise an alarm.
Link: see the clone
Link: Kiruba Shankar