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The presidential election of 2004 delivered the first recognition of bloggers into the credentialed coverage of the Democratic and Republican Nation Conventions.  That year the DNC hosted 40 bloggers and the RNC let in a mere 12 bloggers.  Roll the clock forward to 2008 and the RNC has credentialed nearly 200 bloggers and will not make a distinction between them and all other journalists and media organizations.

New media and social media have come of age in the political arena.  Mainstream and corporate media organizations are committing to the use and integration of social media into their coverage.  For example, CSPAN has just announced their Convention Hub production for both the DNC and the RNC.  The Convention Hub will include the following features:

— Real-time tracking of credentialed state and national political bloggers, aggregated on the websites, to enable users to follow the latest online convention news and analysis;

— Video clips from the network’s convention coverage, embeddable, to facilitate use by political bloggers and other convention watchers;

— Linkable access to the complete C-SPAN Video Library, allowing interested users to fully search all C-SPAN video content;

— Live coverage of C-SPAN television and radio networks;

— Blogger Tips and Online Convention Video Finder tools;

— Real-time feeds from Twitter users using the hash-tags #RNC08 and #DNC08

Major developments in the ease and low cost of production have generated an explosion of indie media in 2008.  Blogging has transformed into microblogging with services like Twitter and it’s open source alternative Identi.ca.  Online video has transformed from YouTube to Qik and even more powerful platforms like Mogulus have provided the tools to integrate all forms of indie media into full featured interactive TV.

Many of these tools are still in beta state, but their existence along with the build out of faster mobile networks have freed the production of media from multi-million dollar broadcast studios to the mobile phones in everyone’s hand.  “We the media” has arrived.

Not only are corporate media organizations coordinating and cooperating with indie media producers and bloggers, but many protagonists are by passing CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS and other news organizations to engage in conversations directly with the public and their constituents.   The role model for early adoption is Representative John Culberson (R – TX).  Culberson not only established a presence on Twitter, but he regularly engages in dialogue with anyone in the network who attempts to communicate with him. Further, Culberson regularly posts video from outside the House chamber on Qik.  All of this Rep. Culberson does using his Nokia N95 for video and his Blackberry for Twitter. A number of Republicans have followed John’s example are now engaging with the public using mobile social media and publishing tools.

I considered my own coverage of the Republican National Convention pondering what I might add to the obsessive commentary and observations by cable news, network news and blogger pundits, wonks and journalists.  The short answer is: nothing. But what I could add of value is to train and equip actors and protagonists of the RNC, itself.  I can enable the creation of a view of the convention from the people who are behind-the-scenes presented and duplicated by all other media outlets. Thus was born GOP Unconventional.

Mobile Technology plays a major role in the production of GOP Unconventional.  With the help of sponsors including: Cradlepoint Technology, Qik and Mogulus and using powerful mobile devices like the Nokia N95 and other smartphones GOP Unconventional will deliver workshops on the use of the technology for creating a unique and “unconventional” perspective on the event.

We are still looking for additional sponsors to support the creation of media and also to provide giveaways which will go to lucky audience members during the week of Sept. 1 – 4.  Stay tuned to the site for more information on show times and how you can win some of the mobile technology we use to create GOP Uncoventional.   You can follow us on Twitter too at GOPUnconvention.  Twitter didn’t allow the enough letters in the id to get “al”on the end.

Following my experience at CTIA Wireless 2008 with streaming video from a Nokia N95, I’ve sought a solution to adding an external microphone. The N95 has an input that is designed for making phone calls and adding a headset for this same purpose. It includes noise-cancelling automatic gain adjustment to make phone calls using the phone’s built-in microphone appropriately loud or soft depending upon the speaker’s voice level. The noise-canceling properties of automatic gain adjustment built into the N95’s microphone improves audio quality for phone calls by separating the speaker from the background noise which is problematic when that background noise is, in fact – not noise – but an interview subject.

Mark Squires of Nokia’s Social Media group tried to arrange a discussion for me with someone from the company’s accessories group, but I was scheduled too heavily with interviews to meet him inside the convention center. I shared with Ray Haddow who manages Blogger Outreach with the Social Media Communications group the solution developed for Reuters and their MoJo reporter’s kit, and asked if other adapters might be available.

Both Mark and Ray transformed the discussions and information from our emails into internal discussions about how Nokia might provide a solution. Afterall, the N95 as a “multimedia computer” is enjoying a symbiotic demand relationship with mobile video streaming services. All social media is creating a strata of use cases: from those who create V.I.T.A.L (video, images, text, audio & links) media for a few freinds, to those eager to add video to their toolbox for personal brand and even those who are using the N95 to report for MSM publications and networks like Shelby Highsmith for MTV Choose or Lose.

MTV’s Choose or Lose production is one example of how the combination of the N95’s 5MB video camera, and mobile streaming video services like Qik are being used to report in near-real-time on the events of the 2008 Presidential Election. Michael Scogin talked about the production and MTV’s citizen journalists during my interview with him at CTIA.

After CTIA, I connected with Michael Fortson of Qik via Twitter. We talked by phone and Twitter about the problem and need for a solution as so many of these high value on-the-spot videos were devalued by the unacceptable lack of audible audio. You can degrade the quality of the image and still have a compelling video, if the audio is excellent. The reverse is not true.

Michael pointed me to Jim Long, self-described new media guy trapped in an old media body. Jim uses an N95 to record images and videos from his vantage point of literally behind the camera. He is an NBC cameraman assigned to Washington, DC. Jim found this experiment by Steve Garfield using the N95 bundled external microphone.

And next he sent along a link to this experiment by Bloggerman. I received a pointer to this video from a few people.

And then others who have a stake in finding a solution to improving the quality of real time video through better audio also joined the conversation taking place openly on Twitter. Kartin Verclas from MobileActive and Shelby Highsmith one MTV’s citizen journalists. We all discussed the service offerings for live mobile video, the shortfall of the N95’s audio and potential solutions.

Shelby Highsmith recommended using a BT headset as a microphone, and made a video to demonstrate how the BT headset would function in a high noise environment like technology conferences, bars or restaurants. Meanwhile, I made a trip to Radio Shack and purchased two adapters for the experiment suggested by Bloggerman using the TV cable. Bloggerman stated the red cable plug must be used as it delivered the audio from among the three RCA plug set color coded red, white and yellow. But that didn’t work.

The results from my attempt to connect the N95 TV cable set to a female-to-female RCA to RCA adapter, the second adapter a male-t0-female RCA to mini 8″ connector and finally plugging in the mini 8″ microphone cable allows the use of an external mic with the N95 proved successful after, in his own experiment Shelby Highsmith chronicled in images and video the right combo. He discovered that the yellow cable connector was the correct connector, rather than the red one recommended by Bloggerman.

Important Note about the microphone you choose: it must either be a battery-powered condenser microphone or a dynamic microphone. Dynamic mics don’t require a power source, whereas condensers do and the Nokia input port does not supply power to the microphone. If a condenser is used it must be battery-powered.

I’ve tested this solution with a battery-powered Edirol C15 condenser mic and the results are promising. The real test is in the field with an interview subject. My field tests will begin next week featuring some live streaming from the polls in North Carolina’s Democratic Primary Election. Tune in to http://www.qik.com/mojo or watch my Twitter stream at http://www.twitter.com/mojosd for notification of when I’m live.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this discussion and the many experiments to narrow down the possibilities. I hope everyone who is creating mobile video streams using the N95 will find this solution helpful and we all can continue to move the production quality forward.

Supervising Producer for MTV, Michael Scogin discusses the network’s Choose or Lose social media project, the live video streams from Super Tuesday. We also hear what MTV sees as the future of its citizen journalism efforts.

A version of the interview with Mark Squires, Head of Social Media Communications at Nokia. This video was also captured using an N95 8GB, but minus live streaming. It was recorded directly to the device and as is probably obvious wasn’t on a tripod. Tripods are hugely helpful in these type of recording environments. Everyone’s hand does shake at least a little.The audio codecs used by streaming services come into question when viewing the local recording as the sound is much improved. So is the solution is likely an external mic AND a better audio codec on the streaming service.If you listen closely you’ll notice that we have a scoop on Nokia’s internal blogging effort going live. Tough to prove it as it’s not public, but 800+ internal blogs is quite the undertaking. Now, I wonder about Nokia Twitter which would likely deliver the internal news service in a more efficient manner for everyone at the company.

