FORA.tv Office Tour

Join Nick Ryan as he goes behind-the-scenes at FORA.tv's San Francisco headquarters, meets FORA.tv staff, and takes a brief tour of the city skyline as seen from the office roof. FORA.tv is located at 1550 Bryant Street, in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood.

For a tour of the FORA.tv website, visit: http://fora.tv/2008/04/08/FORAtv_tour

For more about FORA.tv: http://fora.tv/aboutfora

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[teemuruskeepaa]

I'm convinced that the problem with ForaTV and all of it's products is the fact that 'they' confer exclusive among themselves and never with the audience. That is a fundamental contradiction with all open forums, and it results in the assumption that just by showing other people debating, you can empower people. Its a totally uncreative conception and simply maintains the status quo of the hierarchic society.

[ForaTv]

Hi Teemu, we've talked about this over e-mails before, but let me say again that we here at FORA have always done whatever we can to encourage user participation on our site, both through our comments sections and our "MyFORA" feature (the main purpose of which is to allow users to facilitate online video discussions on our clips). The same goes for the comments and video responses on our YouTube channel.

[ForaTv]

It's true that we're not currently set up to offer one-on-one discussions with the speakers in our clips. But we continue to feel that making this type of material available in one place, for a worldwide audience to access on demand, is in itself a valuable service, and one that works towards the "empowerment" you refer to...although perhaps not to the degree you would like. Again, I'm sorry if you disagree.

Nick Ryan

FORAtv

[teemuruskeepaa]

I did suggest that ForaTV organizes video conferences on Youtube, where their guests answer the video responses of users. And I'm negative about this. I experienced bad things with Finnish civil organizations and parties. I fight against the authoritarianism and bureaucracy of the forums that are supposed be the best outlets for the citizens. It is not equal when ForaTV throws videos at us about people who won't be around to answer about their ideas. And how ForaTV is capable of that, sickens me

[thpt]

*waves at neighbor* Hi! I'm in the FiDi.

Hey, Teemu! You're coming across as all negative. Good points, but you give absolutely no workable solutions. Seems like the best solution to the problems you point out is to have viewers go and find the speakers and engage them in conversation. Rather impossible. Unless you want to do it and post the results?

So here's Fora's vids of movers n shakers talking...where people can respond with their own vids. That actually works.

[teemuruskeepaa]

The idea of showing other people's conferences is not how open forums work and it doesn't work. It's a double error. A non-dialogue conference in a non-dialogue channel on Youtube. It's just one-way communication, from the top of the hierarchy to the bottom. I don't believe ForaTV has any other choice but to stop showing conferences of people we can't contact and become a forum on Youtube. Let the experts come here to talk if they want us as their audience. This is how I see it.

[teemuruskeepaa]

The only way to fix what ForaTV is doing is for them to break out of the conference tradition and stop shooting monologues, unless you balance them with your own or a third party answer. Yet you won't get an answer from the original speaker, which makes listening to him pointless. Maybe you should settle for referring the speech and show us your own speech. Yet again, the whole idea of showing us the agendas of other people doesn't work. You can't define what we find important without us

[teemuruskeepaa]

Pinpointing the problem with ForaTV. The videos show conferences where experts talk monologues. I don't like to go to such conferences because monologue's are not as useful as personal effort or interpersonal dialogue. Political parties are wrong in the same way. The whole conference culture is idiotic, safe and familiar yet totally unintellectual. What if a Youtube channel decided to broadcast conferences!? This is basis of my critique for ForaTV.

[teemuruskeepaa]

Hello Nick. Yes, we talked about 8 months ago. I intend no disturbance. But on Youtube, I've taken as a habit to write what is particularly wrong in each video or in general with the broadcaster. I then repeat that opinion to counter the weight of repeatedly broadcast bad videos. Take Al Jazeera's culture of fear. This is not directed to anybody at your office but I hope it works as a debate. For closure, I'd like to change the way ForaTV works to have you bring out objecting point of views.

[WiseMonki]

What a nice place to work...