[Commons-l] Wikipedia Invites Users to Take Part in Open, Collaborative Video Experiment

[Jay A. Walsh]

Simultaneous send to wikitech-l, foundation-l, and commons-l

Hi folks,

Yesterday the Wikimedia Foundation, Kaltura, and WikiEducator made a 
combined announcement about our beta collaborative video project.  You 
can see the announcement here:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Invites_Users_to_Take_Part_in_Open%2C_Collaborative_Video_Experiment 


The Foundation has set up a landing page here:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Collaborative_Video

with more background and information.  We'll keep it updated regularly.

WikiEducator has done the same here:

http://wikieducator.org/Help:Collaborative_video

with specific instructions on how to participate in the beta.

Through this project the parties will be able to explore the potential 
for developing open-source, collaborative video or slideshows for the 
Foundation's projects.  Collaborative video is simply a collection of 
images, video, and sound edited and combined by one or more collaborators.

The technology, which many of you may already be familiar with, will be 
demonstrated on WikiEducator - which is not a WMF project. Those of us 
involved in the Wikimedia Foundation projects will have a chance to 
examine the software, test its limits, and ultimately improve our 
ability to bring multi-media, free knowledge content to our users.  We 
recognize that Kaltura's software and interface are still not 100% 
open-source, and as such the technology will not appear on any 
Foundation projects until we've worked through some of the technical 
challenges - which is where you come in.

Kaltura has released their code to the open-source community to help 
this project along. It's available on SourceForge,

http://sourceforge.net/projects/kaltura . 

We're excited that an innovative,  private business has taken strong 
initiative in embracing open-source development. 

You're invited to examine the code, test the technology as it exists on 
WikiEducator, and help us bring this functionality to the Wikimedia 
Foundation projects over the coming months.  You'll find a feedback 
process on the WikiEducator landing page, and of course we fully welcome 
discussion about the technology on the lists.

Thanks,

-- 
Jay Walsh
Head of Communications
WikimediaFoundation.org
1 (415) 287-0680