ginger’s thoughts

I’ve spent a lot of time recently analysing video on the Web.

YouTube and Google Video introduced what seems to be the standard now: videos get published on what I like to call a “host page”. This is one webpage completely dedicated to this video.

Why are there still so many videos out there that get published through a hyperlink behind two words of text instead of giving them proper recognition?

Think about it: the creation of a video usually costs a lot of effort and when it’s done, it needs a proper presentation. Hiding it behind a hyperlink is like putting your blog up on an ftp server in pdf format.

So, what information has to be on a video host page?

Best practice is to have an embeddable video player on the host page that displays a keyframe.

Other information that typically resides on a host page is a short textual description of the video, its duration, who published it, who created it, license rights (check out Creative Commons for this), tags & category attributions, comments from viewers, number of page views, and a description of how to use this thing in other environments, such as how to embed it in blogs or how to download it to the iPod or PSP.

We don’t need Google or YouTube to do this for us. We can publish video in that way ourselves. Well, maybe apart from the bit about transcoding to the iPod or PSP. Incidentally, is there any open source SW around to do that?

We can transcode our videos to Ogg Theora using ffmpeg2theora and then publish it with the embedded java theora player Cortado. Then we just need to create our own host page in html.

All we need now are a few more plugins for common Web content management systems like WordPress or drupal to simplify this process even more. Here’s your Friday afternoon challenge.

If you’ve ever worked with a version control system like cvs or svn, you will understand what branches are: They are the places - away from the trunk - where a new idea is tested and developed to maturity until it can either merge with the trunk or even replace the trunk.

It occured to me today that all of the world’s progress happens in exactly this way. We have a new idea, but it is not really ripe yet to be introduced into the trunk of thinking (main stream), or the trunk of technology (status quo), or the trunk of a company (core business).

It is our choice

We can now take one of two routes: we can either try and grow it from within the trunk. Or we can branch.

Depending on how flexible the trunk is and how open and embracing the people that are part of it, building from within may well be the best means.

However, if our idea is a little more revolutionary and replaces some of the traditional thinking, we will have a hard time. We might as well be brave and start a new branch to develop and demonstrate our ideas. And if enough people adopt the branch over the trunk, the branch will eventually be merged back into it or replace it completely.

This is a healthy process and helps make the best possible progress.

Don’t be afraid of branching

I have many experiences from standards bodies, companies, research groups, and social groups, where this idea of healthy branching has not been applied and thus the groups have failed.

One way to fail is to succumb to social pressure and just forget about our idea, i.e. not daring to start a branch.

In a sports team, such behaviour has led to the loss of games, because it is destructive to our own psyche not to follow our conviction - and thus it is destructive to the team.

In R&D teams it has led to the loss of IP because the novel idea was then had and demonstrated somewhere else.

In contrast, one persistent ski jumper has managed to bring a revolution to the technique of ski jumping and eventually caused a change of rules (changed the trunk).

Trunks are vital

Another way to fail is to completely ignore the necessity of a trunk and start developing in branches only, with the hope that at some point the branches will grow together and magically create a trunk.

I’ve seen this happen over and over in research teams and in large standards bodies. It is amazing how much high intelligence can be wasted in this way!

Heroes

It takes a lot of courage to start a branch, because such activities often lack the support of the trunk people.

Trunk people should learn to value branch activities more highly, and not belittle or demonise them. After all, they were often branch people earlier and should know about the value such activities present to progress.

Branch people should learn to value the healthiness of a strong trunk and not wave it aside as a small issue that will solve itself eventually as all branches grow together. Because - branches don’t usually grow together - and if they do, the resulting tree is usually a cripple.