Background summary of my experience with video yanking by Viacom

Good news

Here is the communication I just received from YouTube:

Dear Mr. Moore,

Viacom International has retracted its copyright claim with respect to the
video:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=QUzOP42dg1I

This content has been restored and your account will not be penalized.

Sincerely,

The YouTube Team

Bad News

Other innocent folks are still having their videos yanked, and/or are just realizing they’ve been yanked (check yours if you haven’t yet!).

Here is a sample of the mail coming into YouTubeViacom@gmail.com. It does make you wonder what Viacom was thinking:

From: ZZalgern0n
Date: Feb 6, 2007 12:29 AM
Subject: my video was yanked
To: YouTube.Viacom@gmail.com

“my video, too, was taken down. i’m assuming because of COLBERT REPORT.
the video in question is called - “Lil’ Hobo - Astrology Report, Aries”

i even wrote the music to this one. i’m sure viacom has no claims
whatsoever to it. it’s a very short faux astrology report by a demented
puppet, who ultimately tries to convince people to commit suicide. can be
seen here:

http://www.ZZalgern0n.com/HoboAstrology.mov

bunch of BS this whole thing is”

-ZZalgern0n, filmmaker

http://www.ZZalgern0n.com
http://www.pixellate.com

Relevant links

Situation summary at TopTenSources: Organize with others if the Viacom Sweep caught up your personal video

Google Blog Search for “Viacom YouTube”

My first post about being “caught up in the sweep.”

Who owns this video???

John Dvorak Uncensored on “Viacom Idiots”

Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing on “Viacom terrorizes YouTube with bullshit DMCA notices”

For most of this day I have departed from my usual posting of chapters of my book, OPML, to comment on the dispute between Viacom and YouTube over 100,000 videos that Viacom has asked YouTube to take down. My own personal video was caught up in the sweep “by mistake” as I presume were the videos of thousands of other folks.

This dispute is highly relevant to the OPML vision. The OPML vision is that users–ordinary folks–can collect, comment on, assemble and share elements of digital culture.

YouTube and its owner Google have come down firmly on the side of this vision. OPML and similar “meta languages” are ways to create folios, indexes, directories, lists and mashups of the content that is strewn across the web. Google has made the first stage of the OPML vision possible by indexing this content. Google has enabled astonishingly easy and comprehensive access to the riches of the digital landscape.

Google has found a way to fund their service from advertising, and in the process has developed a business model for working with others in the web ecosystem, others who provide the richness that is the new media landscape. And Google has increasingly found ways to enable small content producers, whether bloggers or video makers, to monetize their content. Many may question the revenue split between Google and others, but few would want Google to go away. Google has been a remarkable promoter of open public digital creativity.

Viacom and other traditional media companies have a different model. Their model is to find exceptional talent, develop that talent to the highest level, and then make the expressions of talent available for a hefty fee. Their model is to create scarcity. They invest millions in self-promotion for their stars, in order to create a taste for what only their stars can do. Then they lock down the creative production of these stars, and charge dearly for access.

The new model will not, in my view, favor Viacom and scarcity. It will create abundance beyond Google.

» YouTube: Is Viacom hurting innocent YouTubers? | Digital Markets | ZDNet.com
Donna Bogatin has expanded the discussion by suggesting that YouTube and Google are the real villains, not Viacom. Her argument is that Viacom is only protecting its rights against what she sees as a parasitic Google business model. She seems to believe that if I am to be upset at anyone for taking down my personal video on YouTube, it should be YouTube for complying with the DMCA and the Viacom DMCA request.

Let me clarify my position: Viacom is the source of the request to take down my video. Viacom had an obligation to make sure that it was correct in its belief that my video violated its copyrights. My video is wildly innocent. Really. Visit it. Spend twenty seconds making your own judgement.

If Viacom made this sort of mistake thousands of times, presumably because it used spiders to decide which videos to request be removed, then its actions resulted in a massive disruption of the comfort of thousands of innnocent uers of the service.

Finally, let me say that I did not seek this fight. I have lately become fascinated by video, and am a reasonably big personal user of YouTube. My big interest is videos of performers of “roots” music. For example, here is my brother Dave Moore’s music site, which depends on YouTube. I was genuinely stunned when I opened my Yahoo mailbox this afternoon, and say a DMCA Complaint notice. I was upset when I realised that my personal video had been presumptively judged guilty, and taken down.

In her column, Donna goes after me and the Berkman Center, and others in the free culture movement, arguing that we are being bought off by Google, and thus are softpeddling YouTube in this dispute. Wooo, Donna. Hang on there. This thing just started this afternoon. And it was not started by YouTube, and it certainly was not started by me. There are any number of other things I would have liked to do with my time today.
Donna has argued in other posts that there is a kind of economic conspiracy between those advocating “free culture” and Google.

Google forges ahead in its misssion to codify its “right” to perpetuate a $150 billion market cap business model based on selling ads against content it has not compensated IP owners for and that it has no explicit legal right to exploit commercially.

She implies that I am going soft on YouTube and hard on Viacom, and I am perhaps part of a movement funded by Google. She points out that I have been associated with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, and that Berkman and the Stanford Center for Internet & Society founded “Chilling Effects” as a clearinghouse for combating cease-and-desist notices. She calls out fellow Berkmanite and friend Wendy Selzer by name. Wendy, many of you know, is one of the most dedicated and devoted of defenders of information freedom working today. Donna implies that because Google has given money to those in the free culture movement, that the movement is tainted. She subtly implies that I might be doing the bidding of Google in expressing my anger at Viacom. Crazy!! All I can say is that Berkman and Stanford and many others–including me–come to our various positions on free culture, and on Google–without presuppositions. We are hardly available to be bought by Google! In any cases, funding for centers like those at Harvard and Stanford come from many many individuals and companies. The funders do not set the agenda. Hardly. If anything they go along for the ride and hope for the best!

But in the interest of dialogue, go read Donna’s article, link above. Here is an excerpt, fair use:

Moore may feel he is an innocent YouTuber, but he is not an uninterested YouTube bystander. The “local talent” he is enlisting is undoubtedly colleagues advocating on behalf of “Chilling Effects,” an “online clearinghouse for analysis and response to cease-and-desist notices sent to Internet users.”

According to the “Berkman Center for Internet & Society”:

Founded at the Berkman Center by Fellow Wendy Seltzer, Chilling Effects is a joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and law school clinics at Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, the University of San Francisco, and the University of Maine. Do you know your online rights? Have you received a cease and desist letter asking you to remove information from a Web site or to stop engaging in an activity? Are you concerned about liability for information that someone else posted to your online forum? If so, Chilling Effects is for you. Chilling Effects aims to help you understand the protections that the First Amendment and intellectual property laws give to your online activities.

Chilling Effect collaborator Stanford Center for Internet and Society receives funding from YouTube corporate parent Google, as I report and analyze in “Google’s $2 million Stanford ‘fair use’ underwriting”:

Google has funded, to the tune of $2 million, Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society to “change the way content owners approach fair use issues.

I put forth Google’s strategy to subsidize academic institutions in championing legal doctrine favorable to Google’s business model..

Donna Bogatin, ZDNet.com

I heartily support Donna’s continuing analysis of the relationships among business models and public policy and law, as well as funding for “reform.” I myself have written a good deal about the curruption of “patent reform” by the world’s largest patent filers.

In this case, however, I can assure Donna that I am calling things as I see them. I do wish that YouTube had stepped up to do more on my behalf and that of others. I would have appreciated help in filing a challenge. I would appreciate being able to gain access to my own disputed video, in part to demonstrate how innocent it is. It took great effort this afternoon to locate another copy of the video, given that it was not exactly archival material.

On the other hand, the DMCA ties YouTube’s hands. Penalties are sharp. So Viacom was able to force YouTube to act, and to act in a presumptive and sudden manner that not only disrupted the YouTube service, but made for a bad day for many thousands of YouTube users. That, in my view, was not a good thing for Viacom to do. I don’t doubt the reasonableness of their making money from Jon Stewart. But I do think that they should have set their net with a finer filter. Part of their argument against YouTube and Google is that they have been slow to build a content filter. Well, Viacom has now demonstrated what happens when you build a filter too quickly. Inadvertantly it has helped make the argument that filtering is difficult.

Added Sunday 2/4/07: List of Relevant links

Situation summary at TopTenSources: Organize with others if the Viacom Sweep caught up your personal video

Google Blog Search for “Viacom YouTube”

My first post about being “caught up in the sweep.”

Who owns this video???

John Dvorak Uncensored on “Viacom Idiots”

Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing on “Viacom terrorizes YouTube with bullshit DMCA notices”

YouTube and Viacom: TopTenSources has organized a way to send in your DMCA notices and see how many folks were victimized by the Viacom “mistake.”

As everybody knows now, Viacom forced YouTube to take down 100,000 videos today, and to send out tens of thousands of DMCA Complaint notices. I received one for a genuine personal video that is certainly not infringing on Viacom. Here is the video, now hosted at Google Video. Let me know what you think!
John Palfrey of the Berkman Center blogged about my situation, and he received a very nice email from a man named Michael Fricklas of Viacom. Mr. Fricklas apologized for the mistake, and said that it had already been corrected. Hmmm. When I last checked, which was just a minute ago, the video was blocked. You can try it yourself by clicking here. If they’ve restored it, you will view my simple minded tube–if they’ve not, you will see

This video has been removed at the request of copyright owner Viacom International Inc. because its content was used without permission

From: “Fricklas, Michael”

Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2007 18:21:02

To:

Subject:

Saw your blog post about your video coming down (at least I think it was your post)

There’s a simple procedure for protesting a takedown - but when we saw your blog we corrected the error. We actually do view (supposedly) every video being taken down, but sometimes stuff gets through.

Sorry for any problem

Now I must ask: Do you realy really think they viewed every video? David Weinberger speculates that Viacom used spiders to search for “Leon Redbone” and found my video about “Sunday nite dinner at Redbones in Somerville, Mass.” Yup. LOL, as they say.

PS, David wondered what would happen if blogosphere folks uploaded geniune personal videos with the names of various Viacom stars–just to see what happens.

Sunday nite dinner at Redbones in Somerville, Mass, a very short video by Jim Moore - Google Video

Play the video. I think it speaks for itself.

Viacom will of course say that this is a “mistake.” The question is, out of the 100,000 videos taken down today on YouTube at Viacom’s request, how many “mistakes” were there? 1? 10? 10,000? If you believe you were a victim of a “mistake” by Viacom, please forward your DMCA Complaint email to youtube.viacom@gmail.com, which is a group sponsored by TopTenSources and some folks associated with Harvard Law School.

For current news and action, check periodically at http://www.toptensources.com/topten/YouTube-and-Viacom

Fight back for free culture!

Added Sunday 2/4/07: Here is a site to visit if your personal videos were removed and you want to mobilize.

I just received a notice that a video of mine has been removed from YouTube because of a complaint by Viacom. The video, for the record, is a short home clip, about 30 seconds, of me and several friends having dinner in a ribs place in Somerville. That this is the case should not be confusing to Viacom, given that the video is titled:
Sunday nite dinner at Redbones in Somerville, Mass: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUzOP42dg1I

Here is the email I just got from YouTube. I support YouTube in sending this on to me and taking down the video. What else are they to do? Of course, now they have set up a situation where I perhaps have legal standing to go after Viacom. Of course I can’t afford to do this alone–but perhaps now I am part of a “class”–as in “class action law suit?” Anyone else interested. This blog, by the way, is hosted at Harvard Law School Berkman Center for Internet & Society, so we should be able to get some local talent to help out.

Here is the YouTube notice I just received:

It looks like what Viacom has done to YouTube is simply search everyViacom trademarked and copyrighted term against every Tube name, and then asked YouTube to pull down the videos, under the terms of the onerous and notorious DMCA. YouTube has now pulled the videos. Unfortunately, I suspect that tens of thousands of these videos are completely legitimate.

[See the more complete post for perspective]
YouTube - My Videos

Sunday nite dinner at Redbones in Somerville, Mass
00:21
James Corbett, author of the Open Irish Directory (and visiting from Ireland), A James Corbett, author of the Open Irish Directory (and visiting from Ireland), Adam Green and Mike Kowalchik from Grazr, Juliette from TA Associates (in civilian role, with Mike), Jim Moore from OPMLWorkstation. Baby back ribs courtesy of Redbones Bar, Somerville, Massachusets, USA (more) (less)
Tags: James Corbett Open Irish Directory Ireland Adam Green Mike Kowalchik Grazr Julliette Jim Moore OPMLworkstation Redbones
Added: September 24, 2006, 04:43 PM
Views: 92
Recorded: 2006-09-24
Rating: This video has not yet been rated. Comments: 0 | Playlists: 0
File: MVI_0783.AVI
Broadcast: Public Video | Status: Rejected (copyright infringement)

Add Video to QuickList

We each have an interest in the knowledge in the professions. Medicine, in particular, touches each of us and every family member. Knowlege management in medicine is a matter of life and death.

The outline is central to providing access to knowledge. The annotated bibliography, the reading list, the journal citations, the directory of research literature, the citation indexes, and so on are core structures for the organization, sharing, teaching and learning, and use of knowledge in professions.

I believe that organizational learning has been vastly enriched by access to online sources.

On the other hand, the abundance of materials available to us today cry out for organization and structure–something more constructive–or better said, more constructed–than lists of search engine results.

One answer is found in the creation of digital directories–the online, digital versions of indexes and annotated bibliographies.

The special opportunity with OPML is that it is a computer language created for outlines. Thus as the OPML tool set is expanded, we are making a world where outlines can be more and more easily used. And the hope, at a higher level, is that this in turn makes knowledge more easily used.

So here is a profoundly interesting and useful OPML-based reference application created by Philippe Campeau and posted tonight on The Online Metabolic and Molecular Bases of Disease Blog.

The OMMBID Blog » Blog Archive » Journal articles
Created using Internet Explorer 7, Google reader, Intelligentteams.com and Grazr. Use the buttons on top of the reader to change the view or open in a new window. Have updates of these feeds emailed to you using RMail.

Philippe Campeau

Wrap your mind around this: The collective expertise organized in this application is immense. Yet today’s tools, using OPML, make it a relatively simple matter to make an active, continuously-current, and automatically-updated widget that provides near instant access to this collection of materials. This widget, in clone, can be easily placed on any blog, start-page, web-page (say, Google Pages) or web site. And wherever it lives, it will stay in touch and current with its OPML source.

And all this can be done by the professional him or herself.

Thanks Philippe!

Today, a chapter on Video!

Intelligent Teams/OPML Workstation is an OPML site that is optimized for embedding short video and other widget-based media.

The future of the web is clearly in short video. Video is the new web design medium.

The future of OPML = the carrier for video. OPML is the open, public format for video websites and for videocasting.

For example, here is a simple but effective combination of OPML and video in a small video website.

Consider the following:

I. Why is video the future?

1. Video is catchy, viral, and conveys emotion more effectively than all but the most well-crafted text. Small videos are viewable on cell phones, iPods and other media players, and PDAs–as well, of course, as on PCs.

2. Video is accessible. Users can view videos more easily than they can read. Nuff said.

3. Video is easy to make. I make mine on an old Cannon Elph still camera, using its “movie” feature. New still cameras make mpg4 videos, of up to two hours in length, on one 2gig flash card. Panasonic and Sharp both do HDTV-like aspect ratios, look-and-feel.

4. Video hosting and serving/bandwidth is free at YouTube and a bunch of other sites.

5. The “video layer” of the web is developing fast. Most of the buzz is now about videos. Not audio, and certainly not about text.

II. Why do we need an XML-based carrier for video?

Discrete videos strewn across the web are more like raw material than like actual destinations or programmed experiences. The same was true of mp3 audio files prior to the invention of podcasting. Podcasting provided context–lists, directories, subscriptions. Podcasting provide the ability of individuals to make their own customer context–playlists, personal directories, and subscription lists. Podcasting provided ways for users to share these lists.

III. What happened to open audio, open music, and open podcasts?

Audio does not have an established open XML-based carrier standard.

Community innnovation has been thwarted in the audio and thus the podcasting world by Apple. Apple adopted a non-standard, closed format for the XML meta-data layer that organizes its library of songs and podcasts and feeds its menu systems. Apple could have used OPML or some other open standard, but did not.

Apple’s underlying music files are in a proprietary format, they are covered by a highly restrictive DRM (read today’s NYT essay on this issue), and the files themselves can only be accessed by way of a downloaded special software client. The files cannot be accessed by a browser on the open web.

It is thus very difficult to create independent web sites that incorporate Apple-controlled content. If Apple made music and podcasts available openly on the web, things would be different.

The good news, as we will explore in more detail later, is that user-generated video is already evolving in a different, more open manner. As a community we should jump on this opportunity. Part of this is due to open design choices made by the video hosting sites. YouTube, Google Video and other popular video sites make their files available for direct, unmediated web access, with no DRM.

By contrast, a closed trend is solidifying as downloaded music, podcasting and mobile phones converge. Phone companies seem intent on adopting closed systems for cataloguing, conveying/distributing, and selecting songs.

IV. Why did the blogroll, RSS subscription list, reading list ecosystem evolve in a more open manner?

Community innovation in the parallel world of text-oriented RSS “reading lists” has been much better supported, because vendors have more or less standardized on OPML as a way to share sources and lists among

1. Blog aggregators like Bloglines, Newsgator, and Attensa;

2. Feed proxy services like Feedburner;

3. OPML authoring and hosting services including web-based Intelligent Teams, and client-based authoring by Dave Winer’s OPML Editor and Pito Sala’s Blogbridge;

4. Search services like OPML Search;

5. Source-popularity and sharing services like Bloglines’ Most Popular Feeds and Bloglines Share, and Share Your OPML;

6. List-based dynamic-content analysis services like Megite and TopTenSources;

7. Social bookmark services like Stylefeeder that create OPML lists (TopTenSources provides the most powerful bookmarking and sampling technology I have seen, including one-click aquisition of YouTube videos, in a free tool you can get by signing up to create a TopTenSources topic or page.);

8. Community production, editorial, directoy and membership sites such as Intelligent Teams, TopTenSources and Lisa William’s Placeblogger, as well as more focused yet massive directories created at such sites, such as the by-now-famous James Corbett Open Irish Directory and the cryptic but fascinating “pro” sites of Biotic;

9. Feedlist display sites such as the AJAX-rich Grazr, Intelligent Teams‘ “browse” services and widget maker.

10. Outline-based blogs, either using OPML backends or adopting OPML-like outline conventions. See an example of an “almost outline blog” here, where a reading list, by the addition of commentary and other forms of references, is fast evolving into a powerful, directory-enhanced, visually-appealing site. A thoughtful discussion of this issue, at this point in time, is available here by John T. of Library Clips.
11. Outline-based web sites and public directories.

12. OPML power-users and pioneers, such as Harvard’s John Palfrey and Library Clips’ John Tropea (also mentioned in the next section, because John is the author of this well-regarded commentary.).

13. OPML industry commentary services such as Library Clips,

and enterprise 2.0 commenters like Charlie Wood who get OPML.

The good news is that in the case of user-created text, OPML–an open, stable, XML-based standard–is succeeding at enabling an ecosystem of creative people, products and companies to work more or less together, to interoperate, to exchange, and to co-evolve.

The bad news is that the world of text and reading lists is pretty small. To say it perhaps too bluntly, only a small percentage of web users prefer to read. Probably no more than a few tens of thousands of participants are engaged in reading RSS sources to the extent that they value a reading list. Compare this to the millions of participants in the iPod/iTunes universe who value and regularly use audio playlists.

V. How does video provide a new field of action?

Video provides a new opportunity to combine openness with richness, reach, beauty and immediate emotional impact

Videocasting already is huge, supported by channels and subscription services on YouTube.

Open, XML and OPML-guided videocasting can also be huge. Its advantages are that the creator of a videocast can be in control of the context in which his or her videos are seen. YouTube is well-engineered, but almost any web designer can make a better surround for a particular set of videos and a particular audience. Videocasting, using OPML, can provide a way for designers to create rich surrounds and contexts. They can do so quickly, as prototypes or as permanent installations.
At this historical moment, the world of video is quite open to the development of a community-based third-party, independent directories.

The content on YouTube and other video sites is diverse. The videos available range from investment analysis and business presentations to the classic, cat-on-a-toilet offerings. Budding acting troops have serialized shows. Rap and rock videos abound. YouTube is about as open as the web. Contrast this to iTunes, where formal catagories and commercial offerings dominate.

VI. A simple call-to-arms

Take advantage of the simple-yet-power OPML tools available today. Create contexts for videos.

Video viewing lists. Start by making lists and blogrolls of favorite videos on YouTube or similar site. This method is fast, simple, and provides some degree of context.

Multi-media-based OPML web sites. But once you are going, you can do so much more! Use OPML frames to combine forms of media–images, audio and video–on sites you can create in an evening.

For fun check out http://www.davemoore.info. I made a video site for my brother Dave while recovering in Iowa from back surgery (”no heavy lifting, all indoor work”). The original site is at http://intelligentteams.com/browse/aboutdavemoore. Then at Dave’s suggestion we bought the domain name for “davemoore.info” for $1.99. Best deal of the year.

So visit Dave! (Family summary: Dave and I and our third brother Charles grew up in Iowa. Dave went south, and then further south, and eventually planted his deep roots in Iowa City, from which he continues to range widely. Charles ranged widely as a quarter-horse trainer and outdoorsman, settling in Wyoming, by way of most of the states of the American southwest. Our mom passed away in ‘94. Our dad is lively and creative and living in Iowa.)

VII. How can we seize the moment?

1. Put anything you like up on one of the video hosting sites such as YouTube. Put up political video, home and family, professional, music and entertainment, comedy, technology, space travel–you name it. The new video platforms exist for you!

2. Create distinct, personal web micro sites that reference those videos and other offerings.

Here is a brief “how-to” to help you create rich web pages in OPML:

a. Open an OPML outline in one of the many OPML writer/host suites, such as Intelligent Teams.

b. This outline, when displayed in the “browse” function on your OPML host site such as Intelligent Teams, or when displayed in an independent AJAX OPML viewer like Grazr, becomes an outline-oriented web site. Each node in the OPML file is now a page on your new site.

c. Each of these OPML nodes can now be treated as a distinct page that can function as a mini-site. Each page can be developed using plaintext, HTML, and scripts–if your OPML writer allows them (see item f, below).

d. How do you do this? You simply write your desired web page code into the “text” field in any of the OPML nodes. This works because when OPML files are read by OPML software, the “text” field is not parsed as XML, but rather is preserved whole and passed through to the user’s Firefox, Explorer or other webbrowser to be interpreted and displayed at the time it is loaded.

Thus material written into the “text” field does not need to conform to XML rules. Anything that the final, end-user browser can interpret can be included effectively. This means that each node’s “text” field can be used as a defacto iframe-like capability, into which one can encode rich web page material.

e. To include YouTube or Google video in your pages, simply copy the “embed code” provided by the hosting site into the “text” field of a node. The result is that a video player–typically Flash-Shockwave, for example–and an associated video are coded into the outline page and displayed when that page is subsequently viewed by an audience member/visitor to the page.

f. Use script-friendly OPML tools. In order for this use of OPML to be effective, your OPML file must viewed in an OPML displayer that allows scripts to be executed by the end-user browser.

Some OPML displayers and many blogging software services remove scripts. For example, the WordPress version on which this post is being constructed blocks scripts, which is why there is no video in this post. Intelligent Teams is an example of an environment that allows scripts in its writer as well as in its viewer. Thus it can handle not only video, but most widgets, as well.

3. Add display customization and personalization including text and skins that display those videos in a context of your design. Now you are free! Your materials are no longer enslaved to the look and feel of YouTube, flicker, or any other site. Now your materials enhance your minisite and your brand and image, not simply that of the file hosting platform.

4. Because you have used OPML you now have a portable web site design, viewable in Grazr, OPML Workstation, or any one of a host of other viewers.

When you use OPML you gain portability and transformability. Indeed, you will be able to view your design simultaneously, without altering its core code, in widgets, gadgets, mini-sites, aggregators and so on. No need to choose just one. See John Palfrey on OPML for Teachers, in a widget-maker, for example.

VIII. What is the key transformation we are making in web site architecture?

We are making web sites that take as a given, and as raw material, a rich understory of graphics, text, music and audio, and especially video. Web sites reference this material, organize it, shape its presentation, and guide the experience of each audience member.

From a technical standpoint, the new web is characterised by write once in a display and directory language like OPML, reference many (videos, audios, data sources), and display broadly and prolifically, everywhere.

Write once, reference many, display everywhere!

About Dave Moore (songwriter, roots music)
I am back to writing a new OPML chapter a day, after a two week pause. I have a good excuse. I had two (yes, two) emergency back surgeries.

The first surgery was on Friday, December 22, at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

On Saturday just before Christmas my dad drove up to Rochester. He kindly brought me back to eastern Iowa, where I grew up and he still lives.

We arrived on Christmas eve. For Christmas eve dinner we were guests of his generous next door neighbors, Tim and Sara Kelley, and their son Sean, daughter-in-law Rachel, and two grandchildren Brian and Reilly. A very creative family.

Rachel Williams is a professor of Art Education at the University of Iowa, and she and I got to discussing online portfolios. OPML is perfect for online portfolios–so I was excited by her ideas. I have long been a fan of portfolios as an approach to summarizing the accomplishments in education. Portfolios are much better than grades. With portfolios, students are encouraged to make real, transferable objects, true and lasting contributions, and present those to prospective collaborators, customers, and employers.

The next day I seized an opportunity to experiment with an OPML portfolio. My brother Dave is a roots singer-songwriter.*

Dave has a variety of music that is available online, including samples of songs on Amazon.com, downloadable songs on iTunes, and videos on YouTube and Google video. The issue is how to put references together for these materials, and how to make a site that is friendly to the user that provides attractive and easy access.

Christmas day my Dad and I journeyed to Iowa City, for brunch with my brother Dave, sister-in-law Lysa, and daughter Josie. We enjoy a grand spread, good fun, and a long walk in the woods along the Iowa river, following Dave’s two dogs who romped ahead.

Somewhere in the walk I suggested Dave and I do an interview and perhaps make a portfolio of his work. Since I was laid up anyway, we waited a couple of days and then met down at my dad’s house. The interview, done with an old Cannon Elph, SD110, 3.2 megapixels, turned out great.

I combined this with some other material, in a portfolio created on intelligentteams.com.

Click http://intelligentteams.com/browse/aboutdavemoore. Enjoy! This is a work-in-progress, and I expect to add more material as I have opportunity. That, of course, is the nature of a portfolio.

*We three brothers are close personally but very different professionally. Our other brother Charlie became a professional horse trainer and now is a businessman and blogger in Casper, Wyoming.