You guys probably know that I am writing my paper on Web 2.0 for seniors. While I was doing my research, I came across this 80 year old man who has made 96 YouTube videos in the last year! Probably I am the last to hear about this because he is the most subscribed to person on YouTube.
I just think it is amazing, though, that someone that old has grabbed onto a trend that is geared mostly toward young people. Oakley’s videos started out telling about his life story and he has expanded to create videos where he interviews young people about the relationship with an older generation, issues he reads about in the paper, and even a video about how to introduce other seniors who may fear technology to use computers.
Oakley thanks his readers all the comments (he gets thousands per video) and calls his “fellow YouTubers his friends. He said it has changed his life:“This YouTube experience has been one of the major changes and breakthroughs in my life and given me a whole new world to experience”.
This Englishman also got so much press that he stopped making videos for awhile because he had never meant to bring publicity to himself, only to connect with others through his videos. So great! I think if this man can learn on his own to make videos at 80 and is lovin’ it, imagine what we can do at the library for other seniors who want to tell their story.
Check him out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ6B2qOFp7Y
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That’s fantastic. I’d never heard of him, so thanks! For my own paper, I wrote about libraries creating content–and stressed the possibilities of cross-generational collaboration. Oakley sounds like he’s way ahead of the game.
Comment by Chris December 11, 2007 @ 7:16 amThanks for posting this Annie. I hadn’t heard about Oakley’s YouTube postings. I think he’s a great person to inspire other seniors to share their stories. My mother-in-law shared hers in writing and it’s on my husband’s family history site, http://mefischer1.home.comcast.net/~mefischer1/. Now I wish we had gotten it on tape. It never occurred to us.
Comment by Judi December 12, 2007 @ 3:48 pmHi Annie. Greetings from Sydney, Australia.
Olive Riley,aged 108, who lives in an aged care hostel at Woy Woy,50 miles north of Sydney, Australia, is probably the oldest of the world’s 108 million bloggers and its oldest YouTuber.
She celebrated her 108th birthday on October 20.
She was born in Broken Hill in 1899, when Sydney was the capital of the British colony of New South Wales, ruled from London by an aged Queen Victoria.
Physically frail but mentally alert, Olive raised her three children on her own, survived two world wars , the Great Depression of the 1930s, and worked as a barmaid, an egg sorter, and a station (ranch) cook.
Olive’s blog, The Life of Riley, http://www.allaboutolive.com.au has a huge Internet following. Prepared by her helper, international film maker Mike Rubbo, and based on his interviews with Olive, it attracts hundreds of enthusiastic comments from many countries, and from bloggers of all ages.
The London (UK) newspaper The Sun has just published a story about Olive: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/real_life/article548314.ece
Best wishes, Eric.
Comment by eric December 17, 2007 @ 11:28 pm