Announcing the Open Media Coalition

Today we’re launching a new initiative called the Open Media Coalition.

The idea is a simple one: Too often, open media efforts get mired in vertical silos. Project teams and developers don’t talk or collaborate across different initiatives. So a group of us decided it was time to create a working group of developers and open media advocates who will work together to share and write code on a variety of open media projects as well as to discuss how to help extend the concept of “open media.”

We don’t have a set agenda, so we’ll discuss setting priorities. Among the projects being considered at the outset: cross-site publishing; tags; playlists; microformats; torrents; remix tools; payment systems; access to CC and public domain content; etc.

Understand, this ain’t another pie-in-the-sky forum to toss around Big Ideas. It’s a working group to get things done.

The idea here is not new. Last fall, New York University’s ITP (Interactive Telecommunications Program) in collaboration with Unmediated.org and the Project for Open Source Media (POSM.tv) hosted a successful open media developers summit, and we see these two efforts likely merging.

From the new wiki:

The Open Media Coalition is a developer-led working group whose aim is to share and write code on a variety of projects related to the concept of “open media.” Members will work to open up and share APIs and schemas; to enhance interoperability; to develop new standards that help promote independent media; and to evangelize a set of principles that underlie this movement.

Interested in joining this effort as a doer, not just an observer? Just go to openmediacoalition.org and sign up, or email me.

JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.