Machinima at the 24/7: A DIY Video Summit

Hear ye, here ye, there ya. (c:

Just about a year ago, I met with a great group of prolific academic and video practitioners at USC. We convened to discuss a project - an event celebrating DIY video, exploring the blurred lines between "amateur" and "professional" - or as some have said, "personal" and "commercial" creative expression. That first weekend in December of 2006 was extremely rewarding - not only because I was just resurfacing from the 2006 Machinima Fest for the first time, but because of the people putting this together had come from all walks of life--some very related, some a bit more obscure. However, what made this meeting successful was not only its inclusion of high-profile theorists and critics, but that the event organizers recognized the need to include selected individuals from each video community. From my POV, this alone set the tone for an extremely fruitful event - outsiders and insiders coming together to showcase worlds that none could have tapped into on their own.

This coming February 8-10th, USC's School of Cinematic Arts will host the culmination of this organizational and curatorial work: 24/7: A DIY Video Summit - a weekend snapshot of avant-garde video. The people involved in the organization are some incredibly prolific folks and it was an honor to have just sat across the table from them:

Conference Organizers

• Steve Anderson - Conference Chair
  
• Mimi Ito - Conference Chair
• Wally Baer
• Anne Bray
• Howard Rheingold
• Adrienne Russell
• Aram Sinnreich
• Jennifer Urban

Speakers

• Yochai Benkler
• John Seely Brown
• David Buckingham
• Francesca Coppa
• Marc Davis
• Juan Devis
• Eric Garland
• Mike Hudak
• Angela Wilson Gyetvan
• Joichi Ito
• Henry Jenkins
• Alexandra Juhasz
• Lawrence Lessig
• Fred von Lohmann
• Nicholas Reville
• Michael Wesch

Curators

• Mindy Faber - youth media
• Ryanne Hodson - vlogging
• Paul Marino - Machinima
  
• Jonathan McIntosh - political remix
• Tim Park - anime music videos
• Eric Saks - arts/independent video
• Laura Shapiro - vidding
• Jon Stout - documentary

As per the bullet point above, I was invited to represent Machinima, which is quite the honor. I'm still pulling together the program, and hope I can do the medium some justice in the 80 minutes I have (feel free to suggest any pieces in the comments).

So why is this news only surfacing now? Well, there's been lots of planning happening over the past 12 months and the event program has finally been nailed down - but most importantly, registration is open. Registration closes on January 9th, and spaces are limited so get crackin' if you'd like to attend.

Ok, that's enough text for one day. I'll be poking at the blog over the weekend - mainly with my thoughts to Rodica's CSI posting yesterday, but possibly with a few other thoughts as well.