Volunteer Opportunities

Yeast Radio's Madge Weinstein just interviewed me about the Echo Chamber Project, and it was a very good encapsulation of where I'm at and where I'm going.

This will hopefully help drive some volunteers to the site, and so this post should serve as a launching pad for what you can do to get more involved.

The most immediate thing to do is to subscribe to one of my RSS feeds. I am trying to build out my support network, and this is one of the simplest ways to help build some momentum for the project. This will show that I have people listening, and I'll be able to have more influence and get more things done as the community grows.

So for anyone already subscribed to my old blog feed, then please switch to my new "All Media" feedburner feed -- which now includes my daily del.icio.us links as well as all video and audio enclosures.

I've also created separate video and audio feeds. My vlog feed is still the same, but I've added two new audio feeds with interview audio and audio from technical conversations about building up the collaborative technology.

As my "Interview Audio" audience grows, then I will start releasing more and more audio from these 76 interviews.

Another really easy thing to do is to sign up as a user on this site. That way I can get your e-mail, and you'll be set to get more involved as the project progresses.

If you can code PHP, and want to help create the open source Drupal modules for collaborative media production, then please send me a direct e-mail at kent@kentbye.com. This is vital because these PHP coders will be able facilitate even more people getting involved down the road, so please help spread the word to your technologist friends and bloggers.

I'm also on the lookout for any business-minded people who want to help produce the film and put together a business plan for open media production.

Also -- if you would like to help transcribe small chunks of interviews, then this page has more information: Help Transcribe These Interviews. I'm hoping to recruit a swarm of volunteers who can help transcribe 3-minute chunks of audio. The bulk of the transcription has been completed, but I have a lot of short interviews that I'm starting to release -- So these are very small-scale and doable transcriptions.

I'd like to eventually be able to quickly produce a transcript for an hour interview by having 20 people transcribe 3-minute chunks simultaneously. And I'll probably need a team of around 40-50 available volunteer transcribers in order to achieve this.

This type of distributed transcription will be key for collaborative investigative journalism -- at least until automatic transcription comes along.

Thanks!