Category: Uncategorized

Vancouver ChangeCamp – there is such thing as a free lunch (with ticket!)

Flag of British Columbia
Image via Wikipedia

Hi Campers!

We’re less than 2 weeks away from Vancouver ChangeCamp.
Don’t have tix yet? Your problem’s solved at http://vanchangecamp.eventbrite.com/

Here’s what you should know:

  1. The province of BC just joined us as a sponsor. That means LUNCH IS NOW INCLUDED with your ticket.
  2. ChangeCamp is a no-barrier event. Can’t afford to go? Don’t want to participate in the capitalist system? Email eli@vandergiessen.ca and I’ll provide a free ticket.
  3. Check out the session proposals at http://vanchangecamp.wikispaces.com/ And feel free to add your own.
  4. People are the heart of ChangeCamp. More people = a better event.

Please take a moment and think of just 2 people who just HAVE to be at Vancouver ChangeCamp. Then forward them our URL and a personal message.

Thanks!

Vancouver ChangeCamp: how can government become more open and responsive?

Coat of arms of City of Vancouver
Image via Wikipedia

Nonprofits have a strained relationship with government. It seems like we’re always yelling at them to open up their data. “Release the fisheries report!” “Publish the grizzly mortality counts!”

Wouldn’t it be great if nonprofits, community activists, policy wonks and government all got into a room and discussed our differences? What if government data defaulted to open, rather than closed?

Sounds kumbayah? Well, it isn’t. In fact, it happened last year. Community activists and nonprofits sat down with representatives from the provincial and municipal government (including Vancouver’s Mayor and BC’s Director of Citizen Engagement). And amazing things came from it, like:

Join me for Vancouver ChangeCamp 2010
When: Saturday, June 12. 8:30 – 5:00pm.
Where: W2 Storyeum, 151 Cordova W., Vancouver BC

Ticket are $20. RSVP at http://vanchangecamp.eventbrite.com/

What is Vancouver ChangeCamp?
Vancouver ChangeCamp is a participatory web-enabled face-to-face event that brings together citizens, technologists, designers, academics, social entrepreneurs, policy wonks, political players, change-makers and government employees to answer these questions:

  • How can we help government become more open and responsive?
  • How do we as citizens organize to get better outcomes ourselves?

ChangeCamp addresses the demand for a renewed relationship among citizens and government. We seek to create connections, knowledge, tools and policies that drive transparency, civic engagement and democratic empowerment.

The conference will be participant-driven, with the agenda created collaboratively at the start of the event, allowing participants to share their experiences and expertise.

When: Saturday, June 12. 8:30 – 5:00pm.
Where: W2 Storyeum, 151 Cordova W., Vancouver BC

Ticket are $20. RSVP at http://vanchangecamp.eventbrite.com/

CONFIRMED: Vancouver Change Camp to be held Saturday June 12 at the W2 Storyeum

It’s good to have a hobby. Even if your hobby is something weird, like organizing conferences.
So I’m proud to present the second of this summer’s keep-Eli-out-of-trouble projects:

Vancouver Change Camp 2010

Date: Saturday, June 12
Location: W2 Storyeum
Early-bird tickets are available now for just $15 (until May 15)!
How you can get involved:

WHAT IS VANCHANGECAMP: A participatory, web-enabled event to imagine and build new ways to collaborate for social change in the digital age. ?

WHY: Change Camp is a collaborative, participatory and web-enabled event that is meant to explore the following questions:
  1. How can we help our governments be more open and responsive?
  2. How do we as citizens organize to get better outcomes ourselves?

How to add captions to your Youtube videos in English and French

My parents have a hell of a time explaining to their friends just what it is I do at work. And who can blame them, since it’s a bit jack-of-all-trades-y.

And so, for their edification, I present a summary of a recent project.

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Subtitling videos used to be VERY time consuming. It would take a volunteer all day to transcribe the video, time the in and out points for each line of dialog, and then enter it all into Final Cut Pro. Ick!

Naturally, we avoided translating most of the video clips we produce. Which makes the David Suzuki Foundation’s Quebec office very sad. <le boo hoo. le sigh>

But now, through the magic of Google’s translation service and Youtube’s automatic transcription and timing features, we can subtitle a video with 30 minutes of effort.  That means we can easily make all our videos bilingual.

Check it out!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2Ew7v7lZeY]
(to turn on the captioning click the triangle button in the bottom right of the Youtube player and then hover over your language)

Here’s step-by-step instructions on how to add French subtitles to a Youtube video:

  1. Upload your video to Youtube.com
  2. Get Youtube to transcribe your video by going to the “Captions and Subtitles” tab Youtube Captions and Subtitle tab
  3. Instruct Youtube to transcribe your video, then wait about an hour.
  4. Download the “English:Machine Transcription” file
  5. Clean up the Transcription file in a text editor, because Youtube’s translation is wonky! (“police team is wasted energy”??)
  6. Upload your corrected text file (but keep the “.sbv” extension” to Youtube

Congratulations! You now have a clean caption file in Youtube that can be automatically translated into dozens of languages.
Translation magic from Youtube

But what if “good-enough” isn’t good enough for you? What if you need a perfect translation?

  1. Cut and paste your timed caption text into Google Translate and let it work its magic
  2. Get a native-speaker to review and correct the translation
  3. Upload the corrected text to Youtube (remember to change your text file’s extension to “.sbv ” and if you’re dealing with a language with accents save the file in UTF-8 format.)

And you’re done!

Helpful links: