Continually Impressed

Jeff Jarvis talks to Brian Conley at Video on the Net.

One of the benefits of attending PodCamp Boston and Video on the Net was the chance to meet people who are doing completely different things in the realm of web video. It's exciting to be in the same room with people who are using the technology I'm familair with to do wildly divergent things I never would have thought of.

One such guy is Brian Conley, whose Alive in Baghdad vlog received a LOT of attention at VON. In a nutshell, Brian was dissatisfied with traditional coverage of the US war in iraq, so he flew to Baghdad and, with his own money, handed a few cameras to Iraqi citizens and asked them to document the story from THEIR point of view. The videos they produce are uploaded to Brian's vlog, and they're pretty amazing.

Incidentally, this isn't the case of a guy oozing money. Brian's 26 and pays his correspondents out of his own pocket. He's down to his last few dollars and is actively seeking funding -- as are we all -- but instead of courting advertisers, he's been going after news agencies to see if they'd like to subsidize his content. Unsurprisingly, CNN was uninterested when he approached them at VON, which underscores one of the basic ironies of Brian's situation: his primary audience is probably outside the US, where he has zero contacts. If anyone wants to help a brother out, look him up.

(Full disclosure: while chatting in IM yesterday, Brain informed me that one of his correspondent's assistants had been killed by US gunfire.

"So now I get to post updates about the birth of [my correspondent's] child and the death of his assistant within four days of each other," says Brian.

"Wow," I said. "If that doesn't sum up the way of life for these people, what does?"

"boom boom die die boom")

Seeing the things people like Brian are accomplishing, it kind of puts web-based entertainment in perspective. It's in no way invalidated by more noble work like Brian's, but its purpose as escapism and cultural currency stands in stark contrast to the realities we can capture with these same cameras.

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