A few days ago, the NY Times editorialized in favor of relaxing the rules regarding cameras on the floor of the US Congress. This comes on the heels of an open letter (PDF File) by C-SPAN president Brian Lamb calling for independent media cameras (particularly C-SPAN’s) on the floor of the House. In addition to editorials on his behalf, Lamb appeared on numerous media outlets including this interview on NPR’s Talk of The Nation to lobby for these changes.

Much of the discourse around these proposed changes is a critique of the cinematography of C-SPAN, particularly on the head-on closeups that the House Rules require. Furthermore, Lamb suggests that relaxing the rules would be more consistent with House Speaker Pelosi’s “most open, honest and ethical congress ever,” with an implication that the government may be covering something up through these tight controls.

On Friday, Pelosi rejected these proposed changes and will leave the House in charge of the cameras. There are a few issues at work here, I’ll address them briefly and what they mean for this project. More after the fold. (more…)

Metavid will be participating in a mini-conference put on by Sunlight and the Berkman center on how information technologies can be applied to local political information. From the blog post:

On January 15th, the Sunlight Foundation and the Berkman Institute will be sponsoring a day long working session titled “Local Political Information in an Internet Era.” The meeting will be hosted by the Berkman Institute in Cambridge, MA on the Harvard Law School Campus.

We are interested in how the Internet — through blogs and other tools — can bring citizens more or better information about their elected officials.

As mentioned in the post if you know anyone involved in local politics & information technologies be sure to pass on the link

On January the 11th-12th the FOMS (foundations of open media software) conference will take place in Sydney Australia with linux.conf.au taking place the next week. Open media hackers will get together and discuss the future of open media. from the site:

The aim of the FOMS meeting is get the right people together to take the next steps in open media software. Meet and discuss your plans for the next 12 months with other developers and forge relationships to unwind the kinks, making open media kick ever more ass.

This should be an interesting gathering and an opportunity to plan & strategize how to maximize the adoption of open media, software, platforms and codecs throughout the internet. Or to borrow a phrase, its time for open media to kick ass and chew bubble gum & we all out of bubble gum.

The Digital Arts and New Media program at UCSC has issued its call for applicants for the 07-08 term. I thought I would point out some of the participatory culture project groups. People interested in a MFA graduate program and participatory culture should take a look Over the next two years two project groups will take place under the Participatory Culture focus area in the DANM program. One focusing on tools for media activists and the other focusing on technologies for civil society & democracy.

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