We’re bringing Open Video to SXSW 2010 in Austin next March, and we need your help!

South by Southwest (SXSW) is a set of interactive, film, and music festivals and conferences that take place every spring in Austin, Texas. It’s an annual ritual for creatives and digital tastemakers, and it’s a great place to spread the gospel of Open Video.

Our proposals are currently working their way through the SXSW panel picker. In true Web 2.0 fashion, the SXSW organizers put panel proposals up to a community vote. That means we need your help to secure our spot on the agenda.

If you want to see Open Video make a splash in Texas next year, please visit the links below and vote them up! You can also leave comments on the proposal pages, so if you have words of support please share them with the world.

Quick links (tweet these with #openvideo!)
http://bit.ly/openvideo
http://bit.ly/html5video
http://bit.ly/wikivideo

In order to vote, you’ll have to create an account (takes 60 seconds):
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/users/register

Proposal #1: What’s Open Video, and Why Does it Matter?

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/4382

Video cameras and desktop editing software are now cheap and ubiquitous, making it easy for casual computer users to speak to a mass audience. But online video is still mostly a glorified on-demand system–more like Internet TV than a truly participatory medium. The legal and technological battles surrounding online video are, at their core, battles for the future of the Internet, innovation, and free expression.

Proposal #2: Wow, That’s Cool… Fun With HTML5 Video

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/3833

Using the video tag in HTML5, developers can do all sorts of things that are hard or impossible with plugins. In this presentation, Mozilla will show the best and most interesting hacks entered into OVA’s Open Video Contest—because when the webmonkeys unleash their creativity, things get interesting.

Proposal #3: Wikipedia Gets an Upgrade: Collaborative Video

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/3886

Wikipedia is the most successful collaborative experiment in human history. Now it’s getting a big upgrade: video. OGG Theora video paired with open source tech by Kaltura is evolving the wiki and prompting some big questions. Can wiki video work as well as wiki text? What does video mean to the Wikipedia community? How long until Grandma can hop in and improve the video entry on her favorite old crooner?