"I think one of the most important things that we are hoping to do, and we hope that people will help us with, is just talking about the message of open video, talking to people about why it's so important that the way videos are distributed online be open, and where the future of media is headed. Do we want it to be something that has a lot of gatekeepers? Do we want more proprietary systems, more closed off systems? Or do we want to make something that's truly open, truly accessible?"

Nicholas Reville is the Co-founder and Executive Director of the Participatory Culture Foundation, the creators of the Miro Internet TV Platform. Miro was a Featured Project at the NetSquared Conference in May 2007, and the Second Place Winner of the NetSquared Innovator Award.

You can hear an audio interview with Nicholas on the NetSquared Podcast, and a transcript of the interview is posted below.

You can also listen to Miro's 5-minute pitch at the Conference.

Nicholas Reville: My name is Nicholas Reville. I'm one of the founders and the Executive Director of the Participatory Culture Foundation, and we make Miro, which is a desktop application for watching Internet TV, and playing and organizing videos. We're set up as a nonprofit because we think that open video online is crucially important to the future of our media.

Television has been, historically, a very non-democratic medium, something that's been controlled by a small number of people. It's really a one-way broadcast. As that moves online, we have a chance to change that, and make it something that's open to anybody. There are a lot of companies right now that are trying to put video online in a very closed, proprietary way. We're trying to build something open, something that works like the Internet itself, specifically for video, and that's what Miro is all about.

Britt Bravo: Where did the idea of Miro come from?

NR: Myself and the other founders had been working on some activism projects related to the sweatshop movement, globalization, healthcare and the music industry. As we started to look at the changes that were happening in technology, we realized that a lot of the issues that we faced, in terms of corporate control of the media, had a chance to change dramatically with the Internet.

I never thought that I would be running a software company, if you had asked me a few years ago. But it seemed like the best tool at the time that we had was to build something that made television work the way we all wish it could. It's just such a powerful medium, and we felt that there is not going to be another moment like this when such a huge transition is happening. We had a chance, and almost a responsibility, to make sure that it comes out right the first time, because otherwise we could be locked into just another replication of the same kind of controlled, one-way television system that we've seen off-line.

BB: Can you give an example or share a story of how Miro has created positive change?

NR: There's an organization called Link TV, which has a satellite television show that reaches anybody with Direct TV, or the other satellite dish companies in the U.S. It gets to probably 40 or 50 million homes, but that also means that it doesn't get to another 250 million Americans that don't have a satellite dish. What we're able to do with Miro is to give Link TV a way that they can broadcast their programming for essentially no cost online, and reach people with a high definition experience, something that really feels like watching a television show. It's on demand. It gets delivered to people everyday. It's a little bit like a TiVo for the Internet.

We're able to take a non-commercial broadcaster that has a limited distribution outlet currently, and help extend their reach and position themselves to grow even further as the Internet becomes more and more of a delivery mechanism for video. I think that is a really good expression of the kinds of opportunities we're trying to make available that don't necessarily require a big capital investment, a lot of money to buy access. It just means being about to put what you're doing already online, and get it out to more and more people.

BB: What's the next step for Miro?

NR: We're getting very close to launching Miro Version 1.0. We've been getting tons of new channels added to the channel guide. Anybody can submit a channel if they have a video RSS feed. We have over 2600 channels now, and that's just growing faster and faster. We're getting lots of downloads. We've had, just in the last month, over 200,000 downloads; it's been growing with every release. And when we hit 1.0, we expect that we're really going to reach a new level of users.

We're really at the moment where we're saying, this is something we think people can use this is something that can be a real complement, or in some cases, a substitute for traditional off-line television, in a way that you can connect to more voices, and hear more types of content, and a more diverse set of things. And really, I think it's a better viewing experience even than you have with traditional broadcast television, that requires you to watch when they want you to watch.

We're hitting our stride, ready to take the project from an incubation stage to a mainstream stage where our goal is to impact mass media, to reach hundreds of thousands and millions of people, and really push the video space in a much more open direction-- get more video companies creating RSS feeds, working with the open system, the open way of doing things, and really bring everybody along with us.

BB: What was the positive impact for Miro going to the NetSquared Conference?

NR: NetSquared was wonderful for us. It made huge impact. Two really great connections were had - our business mentor has joined our Board, and has just jumped into our organization on an ongoing basis, way beyond the Conference itself, and has helped to create a lot of connections for us. They actually were part of hiring somebody else that we met at NetSquared, who is now our Business Director, who is working on one of the other [Featured] Projects there.

It's made a dramatic impact on our organization, just in terms of who we are and the people that are involved, and it also gave us a lot of good publicity and attention. I think our success at the Conference really was, in some way, a stamp of legitimacy, and a way of saying that we're coming out of our beta period, and are ready to be seen more broadly, and ready to talk to more projects and connect with more people that are creating video.

BB: How can listeners help to move your work forward?

NR: There are a lot of different ways you can get involved. We're an open source project. We're an open community, and we want to have as many people participating in as many ways as possible. If you have an interest or a skill, chances are we have something you can help us with.

Our software is translated into almost 50 languages. We always need help finishing the translations, adding new languages, improving the translations. Our software always needs to be tested as we develop new versions. We always need programming help to make it better, we need people to work with our staff improving the software, fixing bugs and adding features.

We also need people, that are users, to help us by providing support for each other in the forums. If somebody has a problem, helping them fix it or file a bug report. There are hundreds of users that are having discussions everyday about Miro and working on each other's problems, and it's a huge help for us and for the community.

Also, I think one of the most important things that we are hoping to do, and we hope that people will help us with, is just talking about the message of open video, talking to people about why it's so important that the way videos are distributed online be open, and where the future of media is headed. Do we want it to be something that has a lot of gatekeepers? Do we want more proprietary systems, more closed off systems? Or do we want to make something that's truly open, truly accessible?

The best thing you can do for us is to talk to people about why it matters, and get people thinking about something that they might just accept, however it is. Really, we have a chance to change it, and I hope that people will work with us. We're more of a community than we are a company, and we need more people to join us and help us expand this fight for open television.