Pointing The Camera At Yourself.

A friend of mine recently watched one of my vlogs (video blogs), for the very first time.
He told me this via Twitter and whilst he made no comment about the actual content of the video, the one comment he did make was to say that he could never do that himself.

This is a very common reaction when people, especially friends, see one of your vlogs for the first time.
I can understand that.
Pointing a video camera at yourself can seem a little strange, when you think about it.
There is a big difference, in my opinion, between recording yourself on a webcam, in the privacy of your own home and filming yourself out in the open.
We've all grown used to seeing people filming with video cameras in just about every imaginable situation. Maybe even when we haven't thought that the filming was appropriate?

But, how often have you seen somebody pointing that ubiquitous video camera at themselves and talking into it? And if you have, what did you think?

My own reaction and i suspect that of all vloggers, would be to inwardly congratulate that person (after all, i wouldn't want to disturb a fellow vlogger now would i?) and to wonder who they were, what they were recording and for what.
But, i imagine most other peoples reaction would be to look, maybe stare and to think that the person was a little weird. I've seen that reaction myself many times. I've also seen it when somebody has filmed me talking into a camera.

Most of us aren't natural extroverts and those first tentative steps into vlogging can be a little daunting.
I can't pretend to have completely overcome those feelings of self consciousness when i do it now. But, it's amazing how much more confident i am now at pointing the camera at myself, after 4 years of vlogging experience.

In fact, a recent experience proves just that point.
I was in London meeting up with some friends from San Francisco. People who i had met via YouTube and vlogging, as it happens.
At the end of our time together, i decided that i wanted to record a short vlog, talking about the day. Without thinking, i got out my camera and recorded a vlog between myself and one of my friends, in the street. This filming attracted some of the usual strange looks from a nearby construction worker. But, i didn't give it a thought.
Maybe, it's just easier to point that video camera at yourself, when you are not alone?

So, i guess what i'm really trying to say here is that the vlogger is really no different to anyone else. They just tend to use their cameras a bit differently to the rest of the population.
I doubt that many vloggers first pointed their video camera at themselves, outdoors. I suspect that we all first did that in the privacy of our own homes and that makes perfect sense.
I can still recall the first ever vlog that i made at home and how i felt when making it. It was a strange experience. But, once i'd done it, i got the bug and have never looked back.

You may well feel, like my friend did, that you couldn't ever do it yourselves. But, i felt the same myself at one time.

Since getting into vlogging and video making generally, 4 years ago, i have tried to encourage others to follow my path. Most vloggers will tell you that the vlogging experience has changed their life, in some way. I am no exception to that and would encourage everyone to, at least, give it a try. After all, what have you got to lose?

By all means, make those first tentative steps using the webcam on your computer. Many people record all their vlogs this way and why not?

Why not watch some vloggers on YouTube first, to see how others do it?
One thing to be mindful of here though. Don't be put off my the apparent good quality of the vloggers you watch and discover. Many of those vloggers will have been vlogging for years and they will all tell you that they are a lot better now, than when they first started out.
We all have to start somewhere. I still watch my very first vlog and cringe a little. So, you are not alone.

So, are you convinced yet?
If so, get recording and let me know how you get on.
Best of luck.

All of the above doesn't, of course, answer that age old question of why on earth you'd ever want to talk into a video camera in the first place.
What drives the vlogger to vlog?
What do you talk about?

Well, the answer to those questions is material for, potentially, many more blog posts.
Watch this space.

AudioBoo - No Nov Boo Vlog Blog Month.

AudioBoo - No Nov Boo Vlog Blog Month.

November can be a busy month, in the world of social media. Well, if you let it that is.

This was originally posted on my personal blog, Moose Musings. But, i felt that it was relevant here as well.
I hope that you agree.

Social Media - Local Connections.

Recently, i have been involved in helping to organise some local charity events/projects. Some more successfully than others i might add!
But, one thing that has struck me whilst doing this, is the way in which i have been communicating with the other people involved.
Yes, i have been using those, relatively, old fashioned methods of communciation, email and text. I have even been using the antiquated telephone system, albeit mainly the mobile/cell variety.
All of these methods have their uses and that will probably continue to be the case, for much time to come..
But, what has surprised me has been the way that i've found myself using social media sites, such as Facebook, to help with both the communication and organising of these events.
These sites, especially the messaging side of Facebook, have enabled me to quickly contact and keep in touch with all the people involved with these projects and all within one site too.
One of the beauties of doing this on Facebook, is that your interaction can be done both privately and publicly, depending on what you wish others to see. I know that other sites allow direct/privtae messaging. But, i do find Facebook to be especially good for this.

I must admit that i was never much a fan of the idea of Facebook.
I know that this probably sounds very familiar to those of you who may have read other blog posts that i've written here. But, Facebook, like Twitter before it, was a site that i had to be convinced to try out and more, or less dragged onto.
Even then i was not a big fan, at first. But, i have finally come to see it's worth and strangely enough, it is the way that i interact on Facebook with local people, that has helped to change my opinion of the site.

Now, that is somewthing that i never expected.
My experiences with social media had, until fairly recently anyway, been mainly with people from right across the world and not with people living on my doorstep. But, the advent of both Twitter and Facebook has changed that and has opened up my social media world to a brand new community, my local community.

Both Twitter and Facebook are social media sites on which my virtual life and my real life collide. Facebook, especially, does this and that has been a slightly strange experience at times. At first my Facebook experience essentially mirrored my time on YouTube. I interacted with the same people, albeit using our real names.
But, then the local aspect started to become more prevalent and this is what really took me by surprise. I never expected that collison of virtual and real worlds to happen. But, it is something that seems to work. It has also led to a blurring of the lines between those two worlds.

I have met, both virtually and in reality, many new people from my local area because of social media. People i would quite probably never have met and interacted with, without the aid of sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

This is an aspect of social media that does tend to get overlooked when people talk about social networking.
We all tend to think of social media as a global phenomenon. But, sometimes the most interesting people might live right around the corner from your house and you just never knew it.

Just because you live in the same town, or city, doesn't mean that you can't, or shouldn't use social media to interact with the people within them.
Social media has the power to enable you to meet and interact with people from countries throughout the world and i have met many interesting people precisely because of this.
But, don't forget those people who live in the same country, or even the town as you.
Who knows what you might be missing out on?

There is a famous saying, usually used in a totally different context, "Think globally, act locally"
Maybe we can put that saying to use into social media as well?

Not The Only Show In Town.

Talking about how we now migrate between different social media/networking sites.

Those older sites are not, now, the only show in town.

Here's a link to Ken's blog post, that i mentioned in this video:
http://socialmediajourneys.blogspot.com/2010/10/using-your-website-as-content-hub.html

Social Media - Fun For All Ages

On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to talk with a group of about eighteen senior citizens visiting Los Angeles as part of a tour organized by Road Scholar (formerly Elder Hostel), an organization that creates educational tours for older adults of locations around the world. The tours include a great deal of artistic and historical sites, as well as talks from representative locals.

As a "filmmaker," (in quotes because hardly anyone works in film anymore), I was asked to speak with this group for an hour before they left for their tour about my own perspective as a media professional working in what is essentially a company town.

When this opportunity was offered to me, I was intrigued with the challenge of talking about the media industry, what I do for a living (create non-fiction/documentary work), and all of the changes that are taking place in my industry - in particular, social media.

I like to describe visual social media (i.e. YouTube) as a "third platform" beyond that of television and motion pictures.  For those new to the concept, it helps to place this new form of communication in a historical context as the natural evolution of a form of visual expression.  I also expressed my belief that this form of communication might eventually provide huge new opportunities for an entirely new breed of entrepreneur.

I told them about the community aspect of social media - the idea of followers/subscribers, and the like, and the various forms of expression from blogging to podcasting to YouTube-style vlogging.  I spoke of the emerging media literacy being as important as literacy itself proved for the development of civilization.  I spoke of the growing army of citizen journalists, and told them how Social Media Journey's own Andy Gunton became, in effect, a media outlet of his own after the recent Hastings pier fire.

I introduced them to the great simplicity of Flip (and Flip-like) cameras, and the fact that this is a form of expression that is practiced by people of all ages (of course, I mentioned YouTube's Geriatric1927).  

The group was fascinated, and very much engaged.  We probably could have gone on for another two hours.   They were intrigued with the possibilities, particularly in regard to cameras like the Flip, and excitedly shared ideas with me after the discussion about how they could use this technology.

Talks like these leave me wildly optimistic about the future of social media.  We're still at the very dawn of this era...

Blogging For Action.

On Friday October 15th, myself and 5,693 other bloggers, took part in this years Blog Action Day 2010.
This has now become an annual event, since Blog Action Day was founded in 2007.

I took part for the first time last year, when the theme was the environment and straight away i realised what a great idea this was.
This year, the theme was water and once again i decided to write my own blog post, to help with the global discussion, on this increasingly important topic.
As did Ken, one of the other contributors to this blog.

So, why am i talking about all of this here?
Well, i just feel that this illustrates how far we've come over the past decade, or so. Especially, in the ways in which social media is used, or can be used.

In the past, the ordinary citizen, didn't have many ways in which to convey their thoughts about important topics. Well, certainly not in ways that might actually be heard, read, or listened to.
We could have written to a newspaper and hope that our letter might be published. Or, maybe, we could have rang a talk radio show, if we had the courage to do so.
But, now, we can all express ourselves far more freely and to a potential worldwide audience as well.

According to the Blog Action Day website. The blogs posted this year, have been read by over 41 million readers. That's a very impressive figure.
Now, i'm sure, that my own blog was not read by that amount of people. But, at least it was available to be read and by a potentially far bigger audience than any newspaper, or talk radio show. If you were allowed to air those views in the first place that is.

We all have opinions and now we have the means and the technology to share them with the rest of the world. Most of us bloggers now have an audience for those views, that just wasn't possible a decade ago.

But, there are other aspects to this that i also think are important.

Blog Action Day and many other campaigns like them, are global campaigns. They have the potential to bring people together, from across the world.
The rise of the Interent and social media has, in effect, encouraged users to integrate and collaborate, on a global scale. That, may well end up being it's greatest legacy.

Campaigns, such as this, also expose us to new ideas and global concerns. They make us think about topics that we might not otherwise have concerned ourselves with. Or, maybe even knew anything about.

Whilst writing my own blog post about water, i had to do a little bit of research. I doubt that i was the only one to do so either. That little bit of research taught me things that i was unaware of and even corrected some misconceptions.

So, apart from expressing my views, i was actually learning from the experience too. And, of course, that learning was only enhanced by reading the blog posts of my fellow bloggers.

Bloggers do get some bad press and i'm sure in some cases, deservedly so. But, something like Blog Action Day, shows that blogging can be a force for good.
It gets people involved. It opens our minds to new topics and global issues. And it teaches us along the way too.

So, i guess the lesson to be learnt from all of this, is - Get Blogging.
You'll, quite possibly, be a better person because of it.

Using Your Website as a Content Hub

Not too many year ago, but ages ago in internet time, everybody was building personal websites. No knowledge of html or css or xml needed; services like GeoCities or Homestead (etc.) made it easy to use ready-made templates, upload your photos, type out your life story, and have a website.

Those services are now long gone, as people started considering their "home" as their profile page on a community site such as MySpace or Facebook. Another development was the replacement of the static content web page, with the dynamic content blog. Blogger (where this site is hosted) was one of the pioneers and still a major player, but WordPress and others have also risen to dominance here. Now add twitter to the mix, and podcasts, and photostreams, and videos..., and pretty soon you've got content spread across a half-dozen sites or more.

Personally, I regularly post content to three or four blogs, two Twitter accounts, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr (photos), Soundcloud (music), and Audioboo (podcast). Okay, maybe I'm a bit on the extreme end. But this is a social media blog you're reading, so I'm going to guess you just might appreciate my situation.

For some time I've struggled with how to effectively combine all these different content streams into a single, well-designed, website that presents all of my online output. I must not have been the only one wrestling with this issue, as two new services have recently popped up offering a solution: About.me and Flavors.me.

Flavors.me was the first to launch, and I quickly signed up (see my page here). I was given a choice of several basic layouts, simple instructions on choosing a background image (I uploaded my own), and a list of services to import my feeds from, including blogger, linkedin, facebook, flickr, twitter, etc. Within a few minutes my page was up and running and looking great.

The feed from each service (blog, twitter, etc.) is displayed as part of the page. Without leaving my flavors.me page you can seamlessly click through my content from a variety of sources. This was it - exactly what I'd been looking for forever. I finally had that one, single destination website that I could point people to and have all my content readily visible.

The free version of flavors.me did limit the number of feeds I could import, but I was happy enough to pay for the full version. I've also assigned one of my personal domains, kengoldstein.ca, to the page.

Then About.me launched. Even though I was happy with my Flavors.me site, I still wanted to try it out (see my page here). On first glance, it appears to be almost a clone of Flavors.me; choose a template, upload your background image, select your feeds to import, bang, you're in business.

But immediately frustrations surfaced. I still cannot get my background image to scale correctly. It either tiles or expands way beyond the window. And it will only allow me to include one blogger account or twitter account at a time. The other other blogs can be added as extra links, but will not display inline. For my purposes, these problems add up to a huge FAIL.

On the positive side, I gotta admit that About.me has the much better domain name. Flavors.me is, well, kinda silly. I don't care, as I use my own domain name, but still.

If you have multiple content streams and would like to combine them in a single, personal hub, you really should test them each out. Leave a comment below with which one you prefer, or if you use a different (and better?) solution.

Flavors.me - FTW! Silly name, and fee required for full features, but works like a dream. Exactly what I wanted.
About.me - When you launch second, you're supposed to improve on the original idea, not mess it up. FAIL!