So I found Adam Savage’s (from MythBusters) Dec 12, 2008 presentation on FORA.tv that he gave at the Entertainment Gathering (Richard Saul Wurman’s new conference), on his own obsession with things, in this case, the Dodo and the Maltese Falcon. Along the way he discusses some of his background as a model maker, the history of these objects, and a pretty amazing community of movie prop afficianados/fanatics that he spends a lot of time with. The video includes:

• the Dodo (and how the last complete Dodo skeleton was “destroyed” in a fire) and his attempts to have his own
• the Maltese Falcon and his attempts to have his own
• the connection of the Maltese Falcon to the Black Dahlia, James Ellroy the author
• How Savage has a hand-held laser scanner that fits in a cereal box

My favorite part is the closing:

… and then maybe, then, I’ll achieve the end of this exercise. But really, if we are all gonna be honest with ourselves, I’ll have to admit that achieving the end of the exercise was never the point of the exercise to begin with was it?

Play it below or click through here:

How did they get the tie red while most of the rest was in Black and White? (see the comments, there will be a special, “the making of The Spirit’s Day Off!).

You can check out Bill’s own blog and videos here, and his twitterfeed here.

As a company, CorePerformance has an amazing amount of intellectual property in the health and fitness space (as part of Athletes’ Performance, the CP gets to leverage the knowledge and day-to-day experience of working with elite athletes in almost every sport). Like most great companies, the real secret of the operation was the amazing team behind the company.

One of our goals for the video program was to inform and educate our users by sharing the stories from the amazing people inside the company. CoBrandit worked with us to capture, edit and produce these stories in a way that was accessible and (in the future) share-able and give us some learnings on producing short form videos in an always-on environment (amazing people are insanely busy and we can rarely get them all in one place – so we need to go to them to shoot these stories).

Here is an example of their work:

Owen and Jesse (the founders of CoBrandit) are an amazing team to work with. They have a deep understanding of the social side of video, can shoot and edit, have a great reel, and THEY KNOW HOW TO LIGHT (which is a big deal). They also do a lot of work with linking and syndication of content and helping companies get their video in front of users.

I am a big fan of these guys and will work with them again.

To check out more CorePerformance videos (specific movement videos AND more educational pieces), go to CorePerformance.com and check out the Mindset, Nutrition, Movement, Recovery sections.

I found this amazing interview with Dave Stewart (musician, former member of the Eurythmics, Social Engineer!) on http://www.digitalnomads.com/2008/08/27/david-allen-stewart-cultural-engineer-on-music-and-technology

He is cooler than me (I couldnt pull off those shades), has more grammys (I dont have any), and has a much better title

All kidding aside, he is an artist, and by broad definition a cultural engineer.

If you get the chance, check out the interviews on http://www.digitalnomads.com – they seem to be doing some interesting things.

Most people who know Bill are unsure about how he gets it all done:
Insomnia?
An army of personal assistants who Twitter, Pownce, Videoblog, party, photograph, record and edit hundreds of hours of film for him?
A clone?

Interview with the man himself and how he started getting involved with videoblogging, and his approach/philosophy:

The exact same skills, sensibilities and sensitivities go into creating a video for the internet as go into video for television.

http://www.getdemocracy.com/articles/future_of_video.php Nicholas Reville

Putting viewers at the center means giving everyone who wants to watch video a homebase where they can access videos from any hosting service or website. For miscellaneous videos, like the ones that have made YouTube so popular, this means a search engine that gives results from any service and let’s you watch what you find without jumping around from site to site.

For more serious videos– stuff that’s produced by known creators on a regular basis (like a daily or weekly show)– the best homebase is an RSS aggregator. The can be a desktop application (like the one we make) or a web-based aggregator. The important thing is that viewers can pull together video from anywhere on the web.

A. I am a huge fan of the Democracy player and the team behind it. It is almost exactly what I am looking for from a media aggregator (includes bittorrent-y goodness!) – channels, rss feeds, bittorrent integration.

B.  RSS has been a game-changer in the social media space for a while now (driving content syndication, blogging, podcasting and videoblogging), and it is still in the early part of the adoption curve (but podcasting and video blogging are the kinds of things that have been increasing adoption recently). If we accept the idea of giving the users what they want on their terms (their chosen device, their favorite medium, timeshifting, placeshifting, etc) then RSS is the magic bullet. It not only meets the needs but it exceeds the needs. It requires users to do little more than discover and attach the feed to their aggregator – a not-to-insurmountable learning curve. For publishers it means being more open with their content (in this case video) and letting the work out there.
C. Broadband is more accessible now than every before. It is getting cheaper. We have more choices.

The best part of this article (and I can’t believe it took a month for me to find it:

Promoting your RSS feeds is counter-intuitive: why would you encourage users to leave your website? You should, because small services can’t and won’t beat YouTube and Google and MySpace at the web game. Those companies are too big, too well funded, and have hired too many talented people that will continue to improve their service. You are better off getting your viewers to subscribe to your content while you have them. In this way, video RSS lets hosting services innovate to attract publishers.

Now this was written before the YouTube purchase, but it is even more relevant now. Asa follow up, Mike Hudack at Blip.tv wrote a response to Nick’s post where, with a few execeptions, he is almost completely on the same page.

It’s incumbent upon the Internet community to prevent any one corporate interest or collection of like-minded corporate interests from controlling independent Internet video. Independent Internet video should be outside the control of the FCC and the giant media conglomerates of the world. The artists and the viewers should be making the decisions. That means that artists and viewers should embrace open standards, distributed technology and open platforms. We’ve done our best to make blip.tv the best choice for those who want Internet video to be open and free. Hopefully Nicholas agrees, and I’m really looking forward to working together with Nicholas, the Participatory Culture Foundation and the Web at large to make sure that we stay at the cutting edge of open media.

And then Mark chimes in (far more eloquently than I – especially ’cause I left out the media copy-pasting that is needed to take this to the next level – arrggghhhh) . It’s funny because this is just the sort of thing Ze Frank does with his intros, Jaffe does with his Across the Sound podcast (which is frakkin awesome) – the idea of consumers becoming producers… not just listening to podcast, but sending in an audio file as viewer mail, or sending a little snippet of home made video for the introduction

The newsreader has LA Times feeds pre-loaded, includes Video from a local partner and it is open so the user can add other feeds.  Its the kind of thing that a big pub can do to spread RSS adoption, give users a managed experience (not training wheels) with syndication and subscription (on their terms) without having to go through GYMA.

I love the fact that they are using RSS as the foundation for the newsreader. Now I havent downloaded it yet (I will tonight), but I will post my thoughts after I get it running.

I do wonder about the LA Times mobile strategy (dont read the paper, not a resident) will be going forward.  Dave Winer has been working on the ‘River of News’ features lately, and local content is a no-brainer for the mobile market. We want to access our content on our terms/time/device. I wonder with the newer phones coming on the market, could there be a river of news for video? (kicking myself for not trying out fireant earlier).

The Discussion Leaders did a great job starting things off and keeping them going. Dave Winer organized the conference (with help from Sylvia Paul, CNet and a ton of others), Doc Searls saved us all from carpal tunnel as the technographer (recording the discussions in OPML), the CNET/Jake Luddington team kicked butt on the stream/ MP3 version of the event and Kevin Marks provided video for the different sessions he attended.

I am putting together a compilation of links (mp3, video, transcript) below. It would be cool if you could have a timestamp associated with the opml technography file (I do not think this is built into OPML – not required but more like a nice to have). This would enable you to synch up the audio/IRC/technograph of the event (if you even wanted to).

Unconferences are more free form and open. Fewer rules, but also more participation (and direction from the assembled – see when Dave asked us to vote on whether or not).

Day 1 Notes:

National Anthem (Dave’s kickoff)

We started with the groundrules of Bloggercon and what was expected (Its a conference FOR users BY users – no product pitches, no shilling, everyone is a participant, no audience, discussions shouldnt be too technical, everything is _on the record_)
A tradition at Bloggercon is a song at the beginning. This year we opened the conference with the Hokey Pokey.
MP3

Notes

Tools with Phil Torrone
I actually missed most of this session due to a client conference call – here are the highlights from the notes (thanks again Doc!):

Phil is a Senior Editor at MAKE Magazine and writes How-To’s (I also think he used to work with the guys at Engadget). He did a great job last year at Gnomedex (during the conference and at the Friday night party) giving presentations and demos between the panels. During his session he and the crowd discuss screencasts and their value to users. The discussion went from hardware to training to software. Buzz Bruggeman discussed how he spoke with a law firm about Wikis and how the law firm didnt get it – the firm didnt really want the lawyers sharing data amongst themselves. We then were discussing the kinds of tools folks are using for recording and editing podcasts (hardware and software).
MP3

Notes

Citizen Journalism with Jay Rosen
Jay Rosen is an author and professor of journalism at NYU. His personal blog is Pressthink.org. His bullet points for the presentation are here:

http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2006/06/23/lv_blgrc.html

The main thrust of Jay’s presentation was: How do we actually do “Users know more than we do” journalism and break news with it, proving that social networks can provide kickass reporting?

Discussion covers collaborating with the readers, how the MSM is traditionally top-down. Ken Sands from a newspaper in Portland discusses how his paper has brought bloggers onto the team, podcasts from the editorial meeting, gets more horizontal and less vertical. Discussions about how the Wikipedia model, while not perfect is ‘helpful’. Also the issue of credit came up, and recognition of the role/support/contribution bloggers are making to the news process. Doc asks that the newspaper industry as a whole open their archives – its like a wikipedia over time, not another revenue stream. Discussions over how a story today is different, how it lives beyond its published date. How it is bigger than just the person writing the stories because _all_ of the perspectives have a stake.
MP3

Notes

Users In Charge with Chris Pirillo
Chris is the founder of Lockegnome, used to be a host of the Screensavers (damn you G4-surrender-monkeys) and runs my favorite conference Gnomedex. His discussion was about the user (you, me, my mom). His stance: “you have as much right to contribute to the product or service as the development team. Are you taking advantage of that right, that position?”

We talk about how sometimes we dont express our frustrations to developers to our ownwordpress or firefox). detriment (or because we dont want to criticize). We need to both call them out when we have a problem and we also need to evangelize when we find something we like (like

We then got into a discussion about user data, and what Lisa Williams calls “Roach Motels”. Users want their data, even if they might not be able to do anything with it – its giving them the choice/trusting them/having a relationship with users. We need to have a greater connection between users and developers (Dave Winer’s old saying – Users and Developers Partying Together).

We get into some discussions over blogging tools and software problems. Discuss the needs for users to be more vocal, more demanding. We get into a discussion of platform lock-in (iTunes and the iPod), Jay Rosen points out how MS dropped the ball with IE and tabs in the browser.

Bloggercon is run like a clock and this session ends on time.

MP3

Notes

Video

Standards For Users with Nial Kennedy
Nial Kennedy, ex-technorati, now-Microsoft employee lead the discussion on Standards for Users. This is meant as a discussion of what standards are, things we hate about standards, the things that we love about standards and what kinds of things that need to be standardized.
MP3

Notes

Video

Emotional Life with Lisa Williams
Lisa Williams has been blogging since 2000 and her discussion is about why people blog, whats the most personal thing members of the conference have ever blogged and the best personal experience the other attendees have had.

Some folks talk about Blogging as something that goes with their career. Terry Heaton, who consults for local TV stations on how to collaborate with their communiteis in social media efforts, talks about finding his wife dead, and how he blogged about it and how it affected him, and the response he got from the folks who know him in the blogosphere. He points out that blogging is a social phenomenon more than a technological one.

Chris Pirillo talks about he has led a pretty public and bloggish life (even before blogging was popular), and how when his marriage broke up, he took heat for it thorugh his blog (from his readers).

Others talk about how Blogging, while part of their life, is compartmentalized — they do it for work, or as their passion and dont let other aspects of their life get involved. Some dont talk about their families, or _only_ talk about their families. Doc discusses how when he ‘came out’ as a pacifist, he took a ton of personal attacks (up to maybe including stalking). He has since stopped discussing politics/pacificism for his own piece of mind. Nial discusses how he has stopped talking about members of his family on his blog.
Lisa discusses the rules she follows: “Dont blog what you dont own” – living up to the trust you have in your family and vice versa.

Some discussion of the darker side of blogging. Getting people in trouble. “Pre-firing” yourself for positions taken on your blog. “Permanent Record” and the google cache are mentioned as well as potential lawsuits which might result from what you have written.

Jay Rosen talks about how he doesnt blog about personal issues, but there is still a huge emotional aspect of blogging. He calls it his “little first amendment machine”.

Dave Winer calls it the “unedited voice of a person”.

MP3

Notes

Video

Day 1 Post Game Show with Doc Searls
Doc Searls (Cluetrain Manifesto, http://doc.weblogs.com/) does a wrap-up of the discussions for the day (Dave Winer does the technography).

Doc compares blogging to a snowball – once it starts rolling downhill it continues to grow – and once you let it go it is no longer yours.
Doc wants to know how we are going to change the world.
Chris Pirillo talks about empowering users – how he has an idea for Freedbacking.com – Free Feedback for everyone.

Kevin Marks discusses microformats. How they can free our data, and make it easier to protect and share.

Terry Heaton talks about how there is a sense that the institutions of our cultures have failed. We should be looking to building new things – not rebuilding these old institutions.

WIll Pate thinks these objects that we are talking about – RSS, blogging, video blogging need to get 500% less geeky. We are raising barriers with the geekspeak.

MP3

Notes

Video

Day 2

Haftime Show with Dave Winer
Dave discusses how developing software is hard. And how sometimes we put the people who develop the software on pedestals. Dave asks the developers in the room what they are looking for from users – what kind of feedback, what kind of loops.

We get into a discussion of jargon and language. How sometimes we use jargon as a kind of code to keep those out of the know. The ‘priesthood’ of development doesnt want to be transparent – like medicine, advertising or religion. We wrap what we do and say is words that are indecipherable to the layman. Sometimes on purpose. Sometimes by accident (or happy accident).

What happens when the people in the street figure it out – part of what we need to do is foster, encourage more transparency.

MP3

Notes

How to Make Money with John Palfrey
John Palfrey is a professor at Harvard Law and the Director of the Berkman Center – focusing on internet law, intellectual property and the power of technology to strengthen democracies. John’s entire presentation is about making money with blogging, whether it is direct revenue (advertising or sponsorship) or indirectly (improving a consulting career, connecting with new clients, getting a book deal, etc.).

We discuss making money on a hyper-local basis (big part of the conversation – both local blogs, local advertising and connecting with local businesses). Making money for non-profits. Making money on affiliate marketing deals, etc.

MP3

Notes

Building Bridges with Elisa Camahort
Elisa is a blogger and founder of BlogHer. Her discussion was about building bridges – specifically in the blogging community and conference system. There are tons of great women bloggers and speakers out there, and how do we get more of them into the system.
Discuss how blogging and conferences like Gnomedex, Bloggercon, BlogHer didnt exist a couple of years ago. We talk about how Mary Hodder, after a conference last year, set up a Wiki for women speakers (to communicate to the conference community – there are women out here and they are great for panels, etc.). Part of the discussion was about how women speakers need to get out there and let people know they exist.

Blog her is a big step towards all of that.

MP3

Notes

2008 Election with Lance Knobel
Lance discusses politics (non partisan, although there were a lot of examples used from the Dem election in 2004) and how blogging/social media can help/harm/enhance.
MP3

Notes

Video Blogging with Ryanne

Ryanne did a tremendous job discussing Video Blogging (vlogging) both from a high level and from a nitty gritty, tools perspective.

MP3

Notes

Core Values with Mike Arrington
Mike Arrington of TechCrunch discusses civility and standards of behavior in the Blogosphere. Both how we act and conflicts of interest.
MP3

Notes

Fat Man Sings with Dave Winer

Dave Winer closes BloggerconIV with a discussion of the success of this year vs. past years. Dave discusses the fact that he will quit blogging this year – maybe do something new, maybe write a book. There is some discussion of what Bloggercon V would look like. We discuss how in the beginning there were blogs (text), moblogs (mobile blogs via wireless handsets w/ cams, etc.), podcasts (audio) and now vlogs (video).

MP3

Notes

Net-Net

This event rocked. The room was energized, the discussions were great. The crowd was totally welcoming, and I got to hang out with a bunch of people who I see every day in my aggregator.

Flickr Feed for BloggerconIV

Flickr Feed for Bloggercon

Bloggercon official site.

Frappr Map for the attendees.

same growing pains as podcasting and blogging

what is bloggin doing to push the medium forward?

not just podcasting

what do you want to do?

really have the world open to you

what do you want to see happen

what does video add – whats exciting, whats the potential?
video adds experience

descriptions/pictures

do people need to have media wranglers

all issues – writing x 10

wants to start out doing things and then branching out

lots of ways to participate

some more comfortable to write or others done

tools to make videoblogging more prevalent

taking assets – dropping it in

adobe premier not easy for mortals

jmpcut, ispy, dabble, motionbox
itags? centralized way to coordinate tags between systems

Just DIGGed it… TikiBarTV is my favorite video podcast (not just because LaLa is really really hot). It is short, fun, PERFECT for the iPod screen and the production values are amateur and great. In this case Amateur is a good word. They work hard. They are funny. They shoot the dang thing in someone’s apartment. They have a drinkbot (we had one in college, but its name was Sween-dog). Their encodes are rockin for Flash8.

And they just redesigned their site from a blog with a user forum to something a little more designed and a heckuva lot slicker. I have been hammering on some clients in the last six months that users want to share. Its fun. Its social. There is a ‘im first’ competition among friends for finding that hysterical chunk of video (hello starwars kid), or gossip or easter egg or exclusive fact from their favorite show (hello LOST) or that podcast they need to be listening to. On of the reasons YouTube has grown so fast is the fact that I can put a video on my site or blog or myspace page courtesy of YouTube (remember when MySpace banned YouTube and the neighborhood went nuts?).

The Tiki Gods have obviously been listening to some of my prayers (they ignored the request for LaLas phone number). They have added a share page and inconography to the site:

All over the site you will see the “gift” icon. Click it to :
1) Email a friend about a Tiki Bar Episode
2) Add an episode to your MYSPACE profile, or to your friends comments. (works for all sites like MYSPACE, or even your OWN website! yaah!)
It’s easy, and there are instructions so you won’t screw it up (unless of course you’re French)

This kicks ass – the tribe at tikibartv.com is pretty engaged (rabid, aggressive, constantly checkin back). Being even more share-friendly will only increase their popularity (I use them as an example at EVERY pitch and tech presentation I give clients).

Now if we could just get Dr Tiki, JohnnyJohnny and LaLa to go to Gnomedex!

At Gnomdex this year a great deal of the conversation was about BitTorrent, and how the best way to legitimize it is to use it legitimately – use it for podcasts, video blog casts, spreading your own content, open source software, sharing legal and Creative Commons work – change the conversation from what it could do (piracy) to what it does do (sharing, transmitting, communicating – you know, like the internet).

Om Malik is reporting that the BitTorrent guys have just lined up financing of $8.75 million dollars. Now while that isnt dotcom money (aaaarrrggghhh!!!) it is still a nice chunka change for developing and rolling out bittorrent to the world. And while the big studios and record companies wouldn’t use the technology, with the right safeguards (like software keys, etc.) media companies could change how they distribute and share content with their users.

More and more we are seeing things like NerdTV, Systm, Rocketboom , Digg, and OurMedia- professional quality ‘programming’ (video or audio, sometimes user generated) distributed through the web. BitTorrent is a natural for this – taking advantage of bandwidth, the distributed aspects of the swarm, blah blah blah.

Can’t wait to see what comes next.

Please please please watch the video until the end where he discusses his friend Jace. Its worth it.

Considering whats going on with the Katrina Refugees, I think he has the worst timing in the world. Then again, he has gotten almost $1500 bucks.

I would considering giving him $10 bucks , but would rather see him give the G4 to MOUSE or another non-profit that could use it (he plans on blowing it up).

Click here to check out the site

Awesome post from Boing-Boing about “This Spartan Life” an in-game talk show for X Box Live HALO. The best part?

Of course, there are lots of Halo players who aren’t in on the gag, crashing through the “set” and opening fire on the apparently slow-moving and non-lethal guest, host and crew, which only adds to the general awesomeness of this thing (excellent commentary on this here).

Check out the BoingBoing article here:
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/19/ingame_machinima_tal.html

The home page for This Spartan Life is here:
http://www.thisspartanlife.com/

The Thinking Machinima blog is here:
http://www.machinima.org/paul_blog/

Create Digital Music’s article here:
http://www.createdigitalmusic.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=806&Itemid=44

Gnomedex rocked (see my posts in June)
Reboot – missed it, but I am definitely going next year
AlwaysOn – missed it thanks to crushing amounts of new business (I know, a lot of companies wish for problems like that).

Check this out from AlwaysOn – http://www.alwayson-network.com/ao2005/

They have an archived webcast of the event. Now I would prefer it if they offered the whole event as a bittorrent download (once again, reinforcing the use of bt for something other than downloading pirated TV), but the fact that they put it out there is great.

In a similar vein, Doug Kaye from IT Conversations has recently talked about creating a non-profit archive of conference audio… check out the post here.

My new project is to capture (record) all of these presentations, post-produce them, and make them available worldwide for free.
-Doug Kaye

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this idea. Not a little, but a whole lot. A community of people who are attending conferences podcasting them. Making a digial archive. Conferences participating in documenting the action and making their conferences more popular. Oh yeah, there is some Darwinism here. If you stink the whole world (and not just the poor schnooks who paid to see you speak) will know it.

This is a great example of citizen media and I have thrown my hat into the ring to help.

Systm is a production from two TechTV Screensavers alumni, Kevin and Dan who are doing more in-depth segments on technology. The first two posts of their vlog (video blog) can be found at the link above.

This is a great example of niche-casting.

They are writing their own content (very specific target audience)
They are shooting it themselves (with pro quality sound and video)
They are editing it themselves (with some nice motion graphics)
They are distributing it via bittorrent! (saving on bandwidth, distributing the weight)

Kevin also does a group podcast with Leo Laporte, Patrick and a few other members of the Screensavers alumni club at this week in tech.