YouTube, like TV itself,  is a lot of things — we can watch first-hand footage from Iraq or campaign mashups or the first steps of our friend’s child. But probably its most popular function is simply entertainment. When my two-year-old son sees me on the computer, he says, “Hey-hey:” That’s his way of asking for Numa Numa, one of the early viral mega-hits on YouTube and just one of many ways I am ruining my children with early exposure to addictive multi-media. (What can I say, it’s a fun song.)

Just as public television brings quality content to TV, so WBPT Channel Two, the PBS channel in South Florida,  is harnessing user-generated video to improve cultural and community life. uVu (pronounced “you-view”) is an online video portal where citizens in South Florida can upload video of events or performances or opinions. The most popular content is edited and broadcast on uVu’s companion digital channel. So you can find a Huong, a Florida artist, describing her greatest mentor — her mother — while displaying her work. Or watch a call to save the tree cover in a Key West state park. Or listen to the Broward County Honors Jazz Concert.

Jacqueline Gutierrez, a content specialist at uVu who will join us at We Media Miami, says uVu is part of an attempt to give digital content “a more educational and cultural slant, to bring more depth to the information circulating online.” In other words, video-sharing sites can be about more than the mindless entertainment of Numa Numa, et al.

What does Jacqueline hope to gain from We Media Miami? “I hope to get a feel for where digital media is going in the future.”  Funny, I was hoping she could tell us.