What follows is a brief assessment of the last six months in the Hyperledger SIG for Media and Entertainment (ME-SIG). Indeed, that same period covers the entire existence of the SIG, being very young indeed. The main challenge faced by the group at this point is a lack of infrastructure––available to community members who need to collaboratively work on a project. The community offers ways to host source code, but there are no options to deploy that source code, such that SIG members can then use it. For a group that is currently/primarily made of interested individuals and people associated with colleges or universities, these budgetary issues are a huge hurdle to both innovation and implementation. My understanding is that at least one other SIG has run into this issue. Our ask to the Governing Board is to consider whether hosting services to deploy POCs from SIGs would be possible, especially since such services would benefit both this community and other SIGs.
Self-Definition and Public Talks
Over the last six months, the brand-new Special Interest Group in Media and Entertainment has been busy. We have met twice a month on Tuesdays, alternating between 9AM and 7PM slots. This has meant added convenience not only for East- and West Coast audiences, but also for European and Asian members.
The modus operandi of the SIG is expressed thus:
A Special Interest Group focused on bringing together technical, academic, and industry-related expertise in order to solve long-standing problems in the creation, fair distribution, and legally appropriate attribution of media assets (film, television, e-books, audiobooks, hi-res gallery or museum images, photojournalism, games, e-sports, and so forth).
Some of our more recent (indeed, upcoming) talks include:
• An Introduction to Minifabric
• Cardstack: Building Blocks for the New Creator Economy
• Introducing Palm NFT Studio
• Panini NFTs on Hyperledger Sawtooth
• Verizon Full Transparency Initiative
• Xooa: Building NFT Marketplaces and Blockchain Apps Fast
As even this select list shows, there has been considerable interest among group members in NFTs, given the boom market that transpired not long after we founded. We would like to learn more about the work of other SIGs and thus foster greater collaboration.
A few members spoke at the HL Global Forum, including the keynote panel I was asked to host, which focused on NFTs in music (Imogen Heap / Mycelia), sports collectibles (Panini America / Sawtooth), and soon-to-launch stores (Palm NFT Studio).
Debut Project
The working notes for the SIG's debut project can be found here: https://wiki.hyperledger.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=41591166
The project's primary data set is my own collection of audio––close to two million audio files from Russia and Eastern Europe, spanning the history of recorded sound in those nations (a total of––at least––eleven timezones). The collection can be divided into two simple and chronologically specific groups: dead artists (for want of a more delicate phrase) and those still alive. The former group is more suited to a museum or gallery setting, whereas the latter involves additional challenges such as copyright, micro-payments, etc––and NFTs. We are attacking both targets simultaneously.
The collection was recently donated to the Wende Museum in Los Angeles, so work with them is ongoing, hopefully leading to tools that other museums and galleries can use: https://www.instagram.com/wendemuseum/?hl=en
We are currently seeking the best solution for that dual challenge. We would have liked to see direct support from IBM itself, but the opportunities may be greater with other Governing Board members, third-party SIG members / SIG speakers, often offering blockchain as a service, rather than a DIY coding or CLI solution. And––as noted at the outset––there's an issue of project cost to consider in such cases. A subset of the SIG has begun (also) to meet in order to hammer out these possible options. Help from the Board would be much appreciated.
School at UCLA resumes in September, making possible greater collaboration with students and younger coders / enthusiasts. I have already hosted one large and inter-generational hackathon on campus.