Like-minded folks

Afew weeks back, Gareth Benest of One World TV visited our digs here in Brooklyn. We spent sometime discussing our plans which to any sane person would sound like we were pretty much developing the exact same project and talking to all the same people. It really didn’t come as a complete surprise to either one of us. “My Space and a activist style You-Tube mash-up” is apparently not a unique idea. Of course the details like subject matter, review guidelines and policies, and community differ, but the essential functionality is the same.
I can name six other organizations off the top of my head who are also doing something similar between now and EOY 07 all within different phases of planning, prototyping, and in beta. It seems that non profits like ourselves (who can least afford to throw money down the river) should be able to pool our resources to build one comprehensive backend that can be skinned and customized using modules that can be developed, shared and added as needed. (All open source of course) Is this a pipe dream?
We left the meeting with promises to start by at least sharing knowledge. Then perhaps we’ll compare specs and see if we can indeed do something together.
On that note, a report by Maxigas of Transmission.cc that took place in Rome (Forte Prenestino), June 7-10 came out today. One of the main initiatives was to try to cut out duplication of efforts by organizations using different Video CMS’s and develop some way of enabling these CMS’s to interface with each other.