Ourmedia

Ourmedia uses information and communication technology (ICT) as a platform for participatory media creation and sharing. Open to amateurs, hobbyists, professionals, and anyone using digital media, Ourmedia aims to be a global community and learning centre where individuals can gain visibility for works of personal media. It seeks to do this by offering free, permanent hosting to video blogs, photo albums, home movies, podcasting, digital art, documentary journalism, home-brew political ads, music videos, audio interviews, digital storytelling, children's tales, Flash animations, student films, and all kinds of digital works. A learning toolkit is designed to help members create rich and compelling works, which are preserved "forever" in an online archive.

The process is also interactive; Ourmedia aims to encourage sharing and discussion around digital creativity by offering a community space to share and discuss personal media. Online forums also aim to encourage discussion and sharing. A clearinghouse allows anyone to search for licensed video, audio or music, download it, and remix it (with proper attribution legally). This feature of the initiative reflects the organisers' deepest commitments: "We're about open media. Open standards. Open source. An open registry. No DRM [digital rights management]. We want to serve as glue to help bring together far-flung open media sites and repositories. We're building open source tools that can be shared across other sites. (Ourmedia releases all its code back to the Drupal community.) Want to host your videos elsewhere and discuss them here? Cool. Ourmedia is a connector and not just another walled-garden destination site."

In the summer of 2008, Ourmedia was relaunched as a social media platform and tools provider for cause organisations. The site was upgraded to enable the creation of "cause pages" with specific calls to action and customisable widgets - all part of an effort organisers call "cloud campaigning". This upgrade coheres with Ourmedia's mission to go beyond a "site where people just post frothy, dumb videos. We're after something deeper: telling meaningful stories. We want to encourage and nurture high-value grassroots media..." For example, visitors to the site may learn about Causecast, an effort to empower people who want to make change. It's a platform and social network where media, philanthropy, social networking, entertainment, and education converge to serve a greater purpose.

Technology.

The Ourmedia project was started by members of the creative and technology communities in the summer of 2004. The vision was that "grassroots works - now scattered across the web or hidden away on laptops and closed networks - deserve a wider audience."