Archive for September, 2006
Nick Senzee Gets It
Nick Senzee sent me a beautiful handwritten thank-you card for a lunch appointment we had the other day. The thing is: Nick took ME out to lunch. I should’ve been the one to send that card, but instead, this guy just goes over the top to make a nice lunch memorable to me again with that card.
RECIPE THING
Nick has built a really cool product called Recipe Thing. It lets you enter your recipes into a nice little online app. I love it for a lot of reasons, but especially the community sharing feature. Because truth be told, there are more recipes in there than are in my collection. So, I play “shuffle the cards” with Nick’s app a lot when I’m thinking about food.
Nick Senzee: thanks. You’re a truly great guy, and I hope someone huge like About.com or a publisher or someone buys your app and marries it to their cooking site.
Hey wait– Any Grasshoppers or soon-to-be Grasshoppers want to make a cooking video show? Get in touch. Maybe Nick will let us brand a copy of his app up for that. (Note to Nick: make a way to “skin” that bad boy) .
Go to Grasshopper Factory
I just wrote a big post at Grasshopper Factory about Content Packages and Network Plays, which deals with my perspective on what has to happen from the point of view of new media producers (audio and video), and some sample ideas on how it might look. I think it’s worth checking out. You tell me if you disagree.
Whitney Hoffman Rules!
Whitney Hoffman of the LD Podcast knit me this hat, mostly because she’s an amazing woman, and partly because I asked her to be a Grasshopper and join my Community Stories channel, and build her a new blog site (to be released once we figure out how to import her posts from her site’s proprietary blogging software).
You’ve just gotta see this thing, though. It’s downright amazing. Click through those links to get the full impact. Look at the larger size.
You realize that’s the PodCamp logo, right?
Amazing.
Which is More Scary?
Megin just wrote a post based on something she witnessed today that involved a group accidentally “losing” a 3 year old child at a playground. What’s worse, when she went to call and discuss the issue with the organization responsible, the person on the other end gave the worst public relations experience ever.
This one’s scary to consider as a parent, and downright miserable to consider as someone who deals with humans on a daily basis. No kids were (physically) harmed in the making of this post.
Check it out, and then hug your kid.
The Importance Of Social Media
Chris Heuer’s piece, The Importance of Social Media, started me thinking of my own spins on what he covers in the piece.
3. …traditional media will adapt before dying completely and all companies will become media companies thereby shrinking the advertising pie…
Wikipedia tells me that “media” roughly means multiple mediums for communication. And so it comes back to the conversation being king. Content isn’t. Distribution isn’t. Instead, it’s trusted conversation that will drive the multiple mediums of conversation towards a receptive participant or participants. I agree that the advertising pie will fragment and dissipate. But I think this money will find its way into the hands of people who learn how to successfully drive conversation towards explaining the value of a product or a service, regardless of whether or not they’re professionals.
# 2. More individuals will band together in networks small and large, changing the very notion of freelancing and employment.
This echoes my continued assertion that content networks are what matter, and that we have to start focusing on banding together our projects and products until we’ve got a bag fat network to offer up to the new technology companies that need it to plop onto the digital media set top boxes they’re trying to place in every living room.
Today anyone with talent and creativity can build a media property out of sheer personal interest or for personal profit.
The rest of the article is loaded with interesting points to consider, and I strongly encourage you to check it out futher. More so, I’d love to hear your take on it. What do you think of the importance of social media?
Explaining Vloggers’ Arm
This is from Chris Pirillo’s Blaugh. It’s such a cool project.
Thanks Boss , Uncle Seth, PodCampers, and More
Jeff posted a nice brief write-up on his blog, just to prove I’m not lying. What I like about the snap is that it’s got me in my Uncle Seth shirt. Man, that band’s tunes are just earworms waiting to happen. I have about half of To Be an Angel looping in my head right now. (*quick disclaimer: I can’t remember lyrics for shite, so I’m mostly mumbling Tara’s parts).
PodCampers!
Quick note: please comment to this post with your blog address, if you attended PodCamp Boston. Jeff’s asked me to put together a collection of blogs from those amazing disruptors who made PodCamp real, and who are changing the face of new media. Um, that’s YOU, in case you weren’t clear.
While I’m in here, I had a great conversation with John C. Havens about PodCamp New York City today. He and Laura and Eric and the rest of the team are really putting a lot of work into it, and I’m excited to see what they make of it. Thanks, John, for letting me have breakfast with your kids over the phone, and good luck with making that thing a success.
Letter of Resignation
I tendered my official letter of resignation to my day job today. It’s a great company, but I’m not in the right place. I look forward to my new world.
The New Gig
(Have you ever written an entire post and then it deletes by accident? I have.)
Everyone’s been so very kind with well-wishing regarding my new role at pulvermedia. Thank you for that. I’ve also received several emails asking me what it is I’ll be doing, or what the company does, etc. Here’s the company line:
pulvermedia is the leading integrated media company that specializes in building communities and providing marketplace access through its unparalleled blend of trade shows, publications, web channels, and progressive cutting-edge media. As the foremost integrated media services company, pulvermedia is ideally poised to deliver a vast range of messages to a wide variety of different audiences, including technology buyers and sellers, government regulators, industry analysts, luminaries, pundits and bloggers.
Here’s mine:
I’m tasked with making Video On the Net and the surrounding community ecosystem a successful collection of relationships.
My Duties
If the core function of pulvermedia is to build communities, it’s great that my title is Community Developer. My role is to build energy, community, buzz, conversations, and relationships around internet tv and movies. I’m tasked with working directly with Jeff Pulver on further developing the Video On the Net community, including the trade show, the magazine, the Pulver.tv and Pulver Radio brands.
Built into this role is attending conferences as a representative of pulvermedia, reaching out the disruptors and fringe players of the internet video community. I’ll be hosting some of my own meetups, to extend the conversation to others in the video community.
This includes the fact that part of my job duties includes continuing to work on PodCamp with Christopher S. Penn. Makes sense to you, right?
As part of this gig, I also can work on PulverTV and PulverRadio and some of the other brands that Jeff has built up to do his own internet radio and TV work. Yes, this includes being able to podcast on the job.
Grasshopper New Media
Lots of folks asked me what this means to Grasshopper New Media, my pre-launch audio and video content network startup. I’ve talked with the Executive Producers, and we’re still going full steam ahead. In fact, related to my post, Big Wave to Surf for Podcasters, we’re all thinking of ways to expand, to extend the brand, to walk the talk of building full, rich content experiences for our audiences.
Grasshopper will continue. Don’t worry about that. I’ll have more news on that shortly, regarding how I’ll keep that ball in the air, but rest assured that I haven’t abandoned my interest in creating new media, nor can I imagine Jeff saying, “Well, you shouldn’t be podcasting.” Wouldn’t that be counter to developing the community? Instead, I’ll just find a way to keep that a passion role for the time being, and focus my energies on developing the internet tv and movie world and pulvermedia’s relationship to it.
Conferences
A huge part of my job entails participating in conferences, meeting new players in this realm, and representing pulvermedia where I can help the conversation move forward, as well. If you’re aware of cool conferences or meetups or groups of video enthusiasts, etc, that you think I should know about, please share that with me. I’m looking.
I’ll also be traveling a bit (few times a month, I’m thinking) and that means more chances to meet some of my friends I’ve made through this site. Please, by all means, get in touch if you want to meet up when I’m out and about on the conference tour scene. I’d love very much to check in with you and say howdy. I’ll be publishing my calendar, once I have a clue what it’ll entail.
Video On the Net Spring 2007
The next Video On the Net show will be March 20-22 in San Jose, CA. It’ll be my first stab at helping develop the conversation, build the brand, and raise the roof. I’d love your help and participation. Are you paying attention to any particularly interesting developments? Watching any cool internet tv series or commentaries or movies? Know some independent film makers that you think I should know? Talk to me.
Thanks again for everything. You’re a big part of all the great things that’ve happened to me in 2006.
Go to Grasshopper Factory for the Article
I decided the article about what Paris Hilton and I have in common works better as something over at Grasshopper Factory. Come visit!
Community Journalism- Jon Swanson
I talk about wanting Citizen Embedded Journalism, that I want Community Media. Jon Swanson has been working on the idea ever since. Here’s his first swing at it: covering a church project to go clean up a housing complex.
Jon’s website is Levite Chronicles or Love In Deed. Great work.
