Susan Fleischmann
Executive Director
Cambridge Community Television
I think that the on-line social/political/cultural community on CCTV's new web site is really exciting!
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Some Notes from My Talk with Kari Peterson
January 20, 2008 - 4:17pm — susan
I just had a nice long conversation with Kari Peterson, who had had three cups of coffee – she is doing a presentation on 2.0 in Grand Rapids this week to the access center folks and at a non-profit conference....she wanted to ask some stuff about our web site, but in the process, I got to hear some feedback on the site from a set of fresh eyes..maybe we can incorporate some of these thoughts in the re-design discussions:
1. She LOVES our web site...to death.
2. She had some trouble viewing videos until she realized that she needed to update her QT. Do we have to be on the bleeding edge of the QT spectrum, or can we back off a bit?
3. She found the title “Video Channel Guide” confusing. Really, it is the “Web Channel,” which is the overall organizer, with the Youth Channel, NeighborMedia, the Media Map (and, when you think about it – also the Gallery and Bandwidth TV and maybe there are others?) as the more specific organizers. I can’t think of a better word, but it’s sorta like the Web Channel is our Network, with all of the other sub categories as “channels”.
4. I think we should look even more at our analytics.
5. We should be aggregating from Flkr, too. I think I mentioned this a while back – is there a reason we’re not?
6. There should be something very prominent that says “Tag your media ‘cctvcambridge’ when posting to blip, YouTube and Flkr!” so that people know it will be pulled to our site.
7. Kari did not feel that the front page is too cluttered. I am worried that when we try to clean up the front page, people won’t even know what it is that they might be looking for – menus and the quick links are suggestions for people to check out.
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Great feedback from Kari!
There's lots to discuss and think about with points 1-7. For now, I'll just mention that I agree that we should be aggregating from Flickr. Clodagh, Eli and I are going to meet this week to begin to think about "social network strategy" with the purpose of organizing how we approach and use our external social web presence.
Some questions I have include:
* How & why are we using these sites?
* How should we be using these sites?
* Where & how can we incorporate external site content (via Flickr, blip.tv, YouTube, Facebook, etc.) into our website and for what purposes?
Kari is thinking alot about us (CMCs) using our sites to archive content, which I think is good, but simply taking our content from other sites and having it "pass through" our site is valuable, too. I mean, can we hold onto everything, or should we be content to create another forum for something, in passing. I checked, and our longest "hold" of YouTube and blip content seems to be just from Oct 07, and that is 29 pages of content! yeah, lots more to think about...
I think there's two (probably more) questions here:
1. How can we use the web to participate and engage with others?
2. How can we use the web to archive that activity?
The two are obviously not separate and both are essential. If we think about which tool (i.e., social network technology) best serves which purpose - while creating an archive of that activity - I think we could do both in some interesting ways on the new website.
Now, we should hold off and talk about this during WORK TIME!, but Kari had an interesting story: she went to see Bill Clinton speak, and while she and thousands of others were waiting (it was on a college campus in CA), everyone was texting and talking on their cell phones and shooting video and stills - what if THAT experience had been somehow captured? WOW.
I agree with all this, except Kari's #7, especially if we're trying to engage people in the community who have nooo idea what CCTV is. The subject of our website and user accessibility in general came up during the Internet for Social Change class tonight. Eric Weltman said he also feels that the CCTV site is way too cluttered. It could really scare off a first-time user, not just in terms of content overload, but also because it's not automatically clear to even the most web-savvy people how to set up an account or what can be done with one. Sorry, enough ranting for now...
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