GORDON  MCDOWELL

Calgary City Council Video Archive

2011-05-09 Calgary City Council video on YouTube (land use)
2011-04-18 Calgary City Council video on YouTube (airport authority)
2011-04-11 Calgary City Council video on YouTube (secondary suites)
2011-03-21 Calgary City Council video on YouTube
2011-03-07 Calgary City Council video on YouTube (secondary suites)
2011-02-14 Calgary City Council video on YouTube (video archive approved!)
2011-02-08 Calgary City Council video on YouTube (fluoride)
2011-02-07 Calgary City Council video on YouTube (airport underpass)
2011-01-26 Calgary City Council video on YouTube (fluoride)
2011-01-24 Calgary City Council video on YouTube (no transcript)
2011-01-10 Calgary City Council video on YouTube (transcript only to 4h29m)
2010-12-13 Calgary City Council video on YouTube (start accurate transcripts!)
2010-12-06 Calgary City Council video on YouTube (inaccurate transcript)
2010-12-02 Calgary City Council video on YouTube (inaccurate transcript)
2010-12-01 Calgary City Council video on YouTube (inaccurate transcript)
2010-11-30 Calgary City Council video on YouTube (inaccurate transcript)
2010-11-29 Calgary City Council video on YouTube (inaccurate transcript)
2010-11-08 Calgary City Council video on YouTube (inaccurate transcript)

Transcript data can be copy/pasted right out of YouTube (for appropriate videos), but if you’d like to access a transcript outside of YouTube’s “Interactive Transcript” feature, check to see if I have a copy of the City Council transcript here.

Calgary City Council Live Audio

See current status below.

Current Status

As Mayor Nenshi blogged on 2011-05-11, City Council’s video archive is now live! Thus, this independent video archive operation is terminated.

This includes termination of live audio stream for smartphones. Not because City of Calgary is offering that, but because it would require similar effort as the entire independent video archive operation, but with far less value for the effort.

Thanks for everyone on Twitter who voiced their support for our independent archive, and Chris Harper for making the videos easier to navigate via Council Connect! Chris also helped bring the archive to the attention of media, which was crazy fun.

The city did already have a road-map for video archives, but it looks like the independent operation accelerated the process. So if your city lacks video archives, it does appear offering an independent video archive is a good way to focus attention on the problem.

Official City Council video archives can be found here.

Suggestions for Calgary (and anywhere else)

I still think offering streaming MP3 audio is a practical service, in that it helps citizens near City Hall monitor moment-to-moment progress, should they be waiting for a particular bill or subject to be brought to the floor.

And it really is cheap and easy. I mean uploading to YouTube was free, but it did take a bit of effort to add the closed captioning data. But streaming audio? We’re talking $10/month in IceCast server/bandwidth fees. The computer relaying the audio to the IceCast server doesn’t even need to be located in City Hall. I used a laptop sitting in my living room.

And whether you’re a random citizen looking to post civic videos online, an employee of some city looking to archive video inexpensively, or City of Calgary (cough)… it is well worth applying to have your YouTube account upgraded to a Partner account.

As I’ve experienced with other YouTube accounts, simply stating you need increased upload length (and giving a good reason) might not get you full partner account features, but YouTube may decide to enable longer uploads for your account. Once you have longer uploads enabled, you’ve got access to the most versatile video hosting service money can’t buy.