Robert Scoble is one among over 60 (and growing) individuals who has responded to the TheWeblogProject invitation to explain, clarify, story-tell what a blog really is.

Watch the clip
Photo credit: Robin Good

If you have not heard or read about TheweblogProject, the aim of this non-commercial initiative is to shoot and collect video clips and footage that will make up the final skeleton of the first open-source movie about blogs.

Nonetheless many of the readers of these lines are very familiar with blogs and with what blogs can do, there are still a huge number of people out there who do not have the slightest idea about what blogs and bloggers really are and what is the communication potential and business and social opportunities they can provide.

With the goal of wanting to showcase on one hand the independent movie revolution taking placing through the Internet and on the other the thousands of voices and ideas behind the emerging grassroots publishing age of which blogs are a great example, I have embarked in this challenging open-source movie project back in March.

TheWeblogProject offers an opportunity for anyone to participate in the making of this open movie by sending their video clips in Windows Media or Quicktime video file formats. Any sent in clip will become part of open footage out of which, both I, but also anyone else who will want to, will challenge himself to the editing of a final movie master.

That is: when I will call the final shots, likely around spring of next year, all of TheWeblogProject footage collected until then, will be used to edit as many final versions of this movie as the candidate directors and producers will be.

In principle, anyone who will want to, will be able in fact to download and re-use any of the original clips and to build a new version of the movie. In another language, with a different focus, and while possibly using different clips than the ones I will decide to utilize myself.

So, this is a call both to pay attention to the blogging phenomenon, to which many people who we work and are contact with still know too little about, as well as to walking the talk in showcasing how many more opportunities exist today for independent movie makers to create meaningful work, and how to get exposure, visibility and distribution in some very untraditional ways.

One key wish that I have is that educators and technology evangelists will use some of these clips to remix and mashup their own What Is Blogging 101 for their university courses or that smart professors will assign their students to create compilations or mini-movies out of the video work TheWeblogProject is generating.

And if other bloggers want to link, embed, re-use and republish their favourite clips on their sites in any way they like, that would be my greatest pleasure as well.

All'n all TheWeblogProject is a big learning initiative, both for me and the small team that has been supporting it (Alessandro Luccardi, Nico Canali De Rossi) as well as for those that will use parts of it to let other people discover and learn more about blogging.

TheWeblogProject has a full podcasting feed and can be followed directly in iTunes, either by searching for TheWeblogProject in the music store, or by placing this feed URL within the Tools -> Subscribe to Podcast menu of your iTunes.

Check out Robert Scoble first and second clip, as well as Chris Pirillo (clip one and two), Nancy White (clip one and two), Howard Rheingold, Marc Canter, Marc Orchant, and many other interesting people which I have yet to publish (Jay Cross, Andrius Kulikauskas, Loic Le Meur, and more).

Also, some of the best and most interesting clips have come from relatively unknown people, who are certainly not celebrated A-list bloggers. Here twhree great examples:

• Jon Rappoport


• Steve Bosserman


• Sepp Hasslberger

Watch it, participate, re-use, share.

...and let me know what you think of it.