July 2, 2004

Historic parade goes wireless

By Steve Zimmerman
Ashland Daily Tidings

The hoopla of the Ashland Fourth of July Parade will be captured in the modern world of the Internet.

Jim Teece and Alan Oppenheimer have come up with a plan to broadcast the parade on the Internet. It has been an idea that has been in the making for some time.

"Alan, who is with Open Door Network, and myself started the Ashland Unwired project a couple of years ago. The idea was to show residents what they could do with Ashland Fiber Network," he said. "We wanted to show the community you could do wireless technology, and it has been very successful."

Ashland Unwired has businesses working with them that provide free Internet access to their customers in partnership with AFN. This year Oppenheimer and Teece decided to take their project one step further.

"The idea came to me during the war, when there were those phenomenal images of embedded reporters with the troops showing us what was happening," he said. "The idea was to create residents doing that. It is like blogging only using video. The idea was to do embedded reporting during the parade."

The project will have residents with their computers located up and down the parade route with a digital video camera. They will be recording the event to be broadcast live to the Internet. Apple is helping sponsor the broadcast.

"We have people in the Bay Area, people in Seattle and friends and family, who will not be able to see the parade, watching," he said. "We love our parade here. It is a great example of a community coming together to celebrate independence and all the great things about our country. Now other communities can see the parade."

The company will also have a booth in Lithia Park after the parade so people can come by and see what was sent out over the Internet. And people will be able to access sites on the company Web site to watch the parade at a later date.

"If you go to www.opendoor.com/july4, every camera used in the recording of the parade will be visible," Teece said. "So you can choose the view you want to see. This is community-based reality TV. It is either going to be extremely fun, entertaining and unique, or it is going to be a technology nightmare."

The two men wanted to do the parade last year but the technology was not available. Teece said it would not be possible without Oppenheimer and his company.

There will be between six and nine Web reporters on the parade route. Testing has gone well and those taking part have been impressed with the fluidity of the images on the Internet.

The parade begins at 10:15 a.m.