An Open Source Challenge?

[david at anon.nu]

Posted to Rev list with zero response so far - clock ticking away. A 
friendly face suggested I try the professionals :)

*Summary*
In case, the open source jargon is lost on some - a quick summary. It's 
a conference I'm programming, around 800,000 people are destined to fall 
on London this weekend for the "European Social Forum" - not all our 
event. Our little event includes two of the top names in the open source 
names - no names till bullet proof. To make the event participatory and 
fun I'm suggesting we(that is the list) build a useful app in 24 hours 
with the code released LGPL. The features would be specified during 
workshops at the event. The tool is for NGO's - perhaps to edit and ftp 
video to their site.

The conference features a debate around the forthcoming Creative Archive 
of the BBC - which will allow people to download and remix, much of the 
BBC's archive of material - documentaries etc.

In short it is a show case for how fast it is to prototype multimedia 
apps in MC / Rev, and it's for a good cause. The challenge is:

    So what can be built with MC / Rev inside 24 hours?



Below, I copy the sadly neglected, but lovingly written missive :(

*The context*
Following the Creative Commons launch of the UK licenses here in London, 
there will be a series of workshops on software tools, and demo's 
working towards a multimedia presentation and DVD release of documentary 
made on the day. This is all taking place at London School of Economics 
on Saturday 16th and 17th of October. A group of documentary makers from 
Goldsmiths will be documenting the day. We hope to have some material 
and speakers from the Creative Archive project from the BBC and there 
will be a live link-up with a parallel arts based conference in Vienna. 
The event is being held in the midst of the "chaos" of the European 
Social Forum (ESF) in London that weekend - forgot how many people are 
due to turn up - 800,000? A lot anyway.

Going to release a bunch of code and tools, hosted on SourceForge, so 
anyone else want to release their code LGPL get in touch. It would be 
good to kick start some group work on small code libraries - to help out 
those lonely developers working away on their own stuff :)


        The idea?

Nothing new - Dar's report on the contest he entered made me think it 
might be a nice idea. The context will be different though.I'm thinking 
of some multimedia tool creation going on based on live feedback from 
the workshops. That is not really a contest between different tools - 
just a show case for how much can be done with Rev and this community 
here in 24 hours.

One thing I'd like to build on in particular is Trevor DeVore's enhanced 
QuickTime external. There is a need for a number of non-profit groups to 
have simple cross-platform clients that can edit video and upload these 
to streaming servers and archives. Surely we can code a little ditty 
like this in a day? More to the point is the ability to respond to 
specification request during the workshops themselves on the first day 
and then incorporate them prior to the next days seminars? Pretty good 
show case for RunRev no?

Maybe the BBC will take this up and distribute it with the launch of the 
Creative Archive project? The code will be released open source under an 
LGPL license.  The documentary shot on the day, and at other ESF 
locations, will be distributed under a Creative Commons license. Other 
ideas could be to make an interactive title out of the material? The 
main focus will be on responsiveness to feature requests from users and 
people at the workshops - how far we take it will depend on the level of 
interest from the list. let me know if you love or hate the idea?


david
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