SuperHappy Start to Video Blogging Week

In a meta-moment, Justin of Justin.tv had a chat with MTV’s Real World veteran Irene McGee at this weekend’s SuperHappyVlogHouse in San Francisco. The event, along with others put on across the country, was part creative salon, part policy summit, part evangelical revival and pure geekout to kick off Video Blogging Week 2007. There was an anarchic, dadaist feel to the evening of what I’m calling “Surreality TV.”

The San Francisco event was largely put together by FreeVlog creators and well known vlog community boosters Ryanne Hodson, Michael Verdi and Jay Dedman. After a discussion of copyright law and Creative Commons licensing in the park kick started the conversation, dozens of people filled the Hat Factory to shoot footage, edit and otherwise clog the intertubes with creative output, while dozens more were happy to chatter over drinks and snacks.

Tips were exchanged, newbies were introduced to the tools, organizers checked in with other meetups in real time and a generally infectious energy pervaded. It was hard not to be inspired to do something — rock star web developer Tantek Celik posted his first video, No There There’s George Kelly helped a pair of filmmakers new to the vlogosphere set up their own sites, Geek Entertainment TV’s Eddie Codel egged colleague Irina Slutsky to call Justin in the wee hours as we watched him getting turned away by the bouncers at the Endup, and even I got in the spirit by completing a Creative Commons license bumper for anyone to use.

The idea behind the event and Video Blogging Week is to promote the form and encourage more people to join the “conversational media” party, in the hopes that the talented people Barry Diller says don’t exist will continue to emerge from their closets. As Justin proves, you can create something compelling with minimal effort or expertise in crafting video content. Marcel Duchamp would be proud.

Photo by Luca Venturini.