City.vi is a network of Internet video portal sites for presenting videos on the cities of the world.

The Concept
The City.vi network is made up of 68,000 sites which have been available on-line since 10.10.2010 and which is currently the largest network of active sites on the Internet.

Each site can be accessed with a simple address model: “city name” followed by “.vi”.

Examples: paris.vi, chicago.vi, barcelona.vi, sydney.vi etc

In the same manner for 68000 main cities of the world are connected by the simple URL.

Ease of Access
Until now we have been using search engine to find even the local information for places around the world. Then we have to scan through the results visually to choose the link. Then we use hit and try method to look for the right information. Even then we don’t have the specific information quickly.

With the network city.vi all the local information can be accessed at one place with the intuitive URL as {city name}.vi. In future, simply use your address window since all local information is to be found on the City.vi network video portals.

Like all the tools offered by the CITY MEDIA foundation, the City.vi network sites can be administered by the local authorities, particularly the mayors, representatives and various officials of these cities and regions. If not, the sites will be managed by relevant local bloggers. The City.vi network sites complement the cities’ official sites perfectly, providing a complete video forum. Moreover, the sites are open on all web’s content by allowing video embedding.

Site Operation

1. Citizens put forward videos to do with the town, city or region covered by the site.

2. The site administrators responsible for that video category (culture, news, events) are informed by email when new videos are put forward.

3. They decide if the videos can appear on the site.

These three steps simplify and optimize municipal and regional on-line communication by bringing in the widest possible participation. The first cities to be promoted to users of the 68,000 sites will be the ones that have the most videos of quality, therefore benefiting from high international coverage.

The major added value of these sites is their collaborative nature.

Citizens and users can put forward videos on local culture, future events or current affairs. This facility also embodies a newly observed trend called “Citizens’ Information Pooling” which via the City.vi network is being used for municipal communication, from now on making it possible to express the full range of their diversity.

Very simply, all sorts of information can be presented on the sites due to the increasing ease with which videos can be recorded as digital video recorders and new mobile phones become used more and more widely.

We all know how much youngsters like these new technologies and how easy they find them to use. More inclined to communicate than previous generations, the youth of today are a real potential resource which towns and cities need to communicate with creativity and energy. They find more and more that producing videos is a fundamental way to express themselves.

Cultural and Social contribution:
It is possible to present any type of information and highlight some of it such as Culture, which creates the municipal or regional image by affirming its identity. Furthermore and closely tied to economic activity, culture fully contributes to the attraction of a region while also providing a source of revenue. The information on the video sites can also serve to stimulate new partnerships between cultural institutions, artists and business people.

This new way of pooling and sharing information promotes meeting of people and in the same way, social cohesion, which is an essential factor for development.

The view of reality offered by video enables the feeling of identifying with and belonging to the same living place to be developed, encouraging respect for and strengthening cultural diversity. The sites in the City.vi network create more openness towards the different cultures in a town, city or region and therefore create stronger social connectivity.

For visitors to these towns, cities and regions, in addition to travel or local culture videos the news and events videos provide the easiest way to discover local life and its main characters, promoting meetings and exchanges. Thus each City.vi site is open and dedicated to local information and has a unique and innovative graphical design. It is a recognizable, pleasant and informative space which will be of use to everybody.

The actions facilitated by a City.vi site include:

1. Promoting the cultural and tourism heritage, encouraging its development and conservation.
2. Presenting useful information to visitors and advising them about the most significant sites of interest.
3. Presenting cultural activities and their schedules, e.g. theatrical and musical productions and so on.
4. Raising local citizen awareness about particular causes or projects and garnering support.
5. Facilitating dissemination of important information due to its ease of access.
etc.

Another important feature for people using the City.vi network sites is the facility for businesses that are based in each town, city to register on these sites. Businesses can be found by the services they offer and they can also give people much better information on all their activities with videos.

As a flagship tool of the new era of the “Citizen’s Internet” the City.vi sites represent new local public forums whose content is created by “local actors” and the inhabitants so they can live more harmoniously together. For the citizens, these video portals are a new on-line resource so they can better take advantage of the numerous resources which surround them, as well as the experiences their town and the world have to offer, with beyond these discoveries the possibility of an improved contribution to social development.

Due to their ease of access, use and management, the City.vi network sites are an ideal communications tool for regional administrations and authorities which want to fully take advantage of this new era of information by everybody for everybody.

Author Bio: CITY MEDIA is an independent foundation based in Lausanne (Switzerland) created in 2007 following the Rome 2006 “World Congress on Communication for Development”. Its aim is to facilitate access to information on the towns, cities and regions of the world. http://citymediafoundation.org

Category: Internet
Keywords: city media foundation, city.vi, video , news , tourism , events