Dean Jansen

Co-Founder, Universal Subtitles

Leveraging Online Collaboration
21 minutes, 9.8mb, recorded 2011-11-11
Dean Jansen

What happens when you leverage the power of internet volunteerism in much the same way as Wikipedia, but with the intention of translating and subtitling videos? This was the question that Dean Jansen wanted to answer when he co-founded Universal Subtitles, a collaborative platform that allows for accessible and user-friendly subtitling of videos. Universal Subtitles replaces previously laborious tasks such as time-syncing with much easier tools, drawing inspiration from popular game interfaces. With over 40,000 videos already subtitled and key partnerships with PBS, Al Jazeera, and Khan Academy in place, there is no doubt that the model has a growing user base. In this audio interview, Sheela Sethuraman asks Dean Jansen about about the organization's first 18 months, winning The Tech Awards 2011 Katherine M. Swanson Equality Award, and the challenges of scalability and quality assurance moving forward.


Dean Jansen is the Outreach & Business Development Director at the Participatory Culture Foundation, and Co-Founder of Universal Subtitles. Dean is based in New York. He's focused on growth and sustainability for PCF. His interests include digital culture, 20th century branding, and motorcycles.

Resources

This free podcast is from our Tech Awards series.

For The Conversations Network:

  • Post-production audio engineer: Sheela Sethuraman
  • Website editor: Zach Jenson
  • Series producer: Zach Jenson

Photo: Dean Jansen Twitter