How can we use YouTube to support our dreams and visions?
Notes from Open Space Gathering on Jan. 12, 2008 to prepare for Eco-April Seattle

Convener: Dan Shaw

Attendees:
Phil Gerson, Mary Rose, Dan Borroff, Tamara Broadhead, Michelle Copeland,
Barabara Little, Christy, Juanita Flessus, Sheri, Karen MacKenzie

Notes:
Dan suggests that each group set up their own individual youtube account,
and also that we set up a common youtube account for ?eco-april?. This
means that for the shared account we will all be sharing the same
password. (Ning.com is a good platform for this kind of shared project,
but it is a relatively new site, less well-known than youtube.)
We can set up ?playlists? for videos shot before, during and after April,
so that people can see video of speakers who will be there, speakers
there, and follow-up videos after.
Our group had a ?scribe? (other than me) but I'm not sure who it was!
(Sheri?) Please let me know, and / or contact them and support them to
also upload their notes. Also, somebody has an email list, please forward
to me at dan@danshaw.com.

Dan suggested that we create a video that compiles many or all the April
event hosts into one 10-minute video.

Michelle has many video skills and resources and her website is
nourishyoursoul.tv. (Dan lives in Ashland, Oregon.) Dan's website is
DanShaw.com.

Dan agreed to write up a few notes on youtube for newbies, see below.
Thank you everyone for your good work, and your enthusiasm! If I can be of
further service, please contact me, tel. 541-951-3394.

--- A few words of introduction to youtube for political activists

New to YouTube? If you have a gmail address, or a Google username and
password, you can use that to log in to youtube. Otherwise, choose a
username and password, and sign up. It's best to choose a username that's
descriptive of your mission; as with any password, choose one that is not
a dictionary word, non-obvious, uses upper and lower case, and includes a
number for best security. Write it down in a safe place, and change it
from time to time. You may choose a name for your channel, again, this
should be as descriptive as possible, not to broad, and not to narrow; you
can NOT change your channel name once you have chosen it.
YouTube videos are generally less than 10 minutes, unless you've paid for
a premium account. If your videos are longer, either break them up into
parts, or upload them instead to Google videos site, or to archive.org.
YouTube video uploading also limits the size of your file. You may upload
your video if it is in a .mov (QuickTime movie) of .wmv (windows media
viewer) format. YouTube then converts it into a ?flash? format. If you do
not have flash installed on your computer, download it from adobe.com.
Before you upload your video, enter a title, description, and keywords.
The title should be brief and catchy; in some views it will be truncated.
The description may be as long as you like. Use keywords that people are
likely to use when searching for videos. Youtube will also ask you to
categorize your video; there are relatively few categories, so if you
don't find just the right category, don't fret, just choose ?film?
category or whatever.
Once you have uploaded your video, you may edit the title, description,
etc. Youtube chooses an image from the video as an ?icon?; if you don't
like the one chosen, you may choose another, you will have two other
choices.

Youtube allows you to set up a user profile, where you can describe
yourself and your projects in greater detail.

Once you've got a number of videos, you can categorize them into playlists.
Youtube will allow you and others to ?embed? your video into a website,
unless you choose not to allow it. When you view a video, that ?embed?
code shows up on screen and you can just copy it and paste it into the
html code.