What I’ve been learning lately from Seth Godin and Steve Jobs
It’s hard to ignore the advice of two of the most influential people in the digital space. I receive daily email posts from Seth Godin and recently watched the TED Talk featuring Steve Jobs.
Steve offered advice to recent graduates about how to live before you die. He closed the speech with a quote that appeared on the final edition of the Whole Earth Catalog, “Stay hungry, stay foolish”. A recent twitter post also quoted him as saying to “stop living someone else’s dream”. Steve is a great role model for having blind determination to make his vision a reality. His life has also been a demonstration of just how hard that can be.
In Seth Godin’s latest book Linchpin, he advocates you become a leader and a visionary in the very thing you love the most. In his past book, The Dip, he recommends that if you are not the linchpin in your world, then you need to make the boundaries of your world smaller.
We all can find a circle of influence and we can all find a passion to share with others. It’s the courage to be true to making that your life’s work that is really hard.
Steve and Seth are to be admired and studied as people who continue to achieve on both counts.
Australia: Lost and floating toward Antarctica
Dear Minister,
RE: Banning of Second Life as part of mandatory internet filtering
In March 2010 I am presenting a panel at the South by South West (SXSW) Interactive festival titled “Time Travelers: Why Australians are Virtual World Innovators.”
Myself and VastPark founder, Bruce Joy, will be talking about how we have been able to establish and maintain world class services in the virtual world space while being located in Australia.
The panel arrangements have been assisted by Austrade and AIMIA.
Very few in the tech savvy audience at SXSW will be unaware of your plans for mandatory filtering. They are wise enough to know that your efforts will be wasted and Bruce and I will be battling the negative prejudice that this short-sighted approach will have. Frankly, it makes Australia look like amateur hour in the digital media industry.
Vast Park and Treet.TV are exporters. We earn money in the USA and Europe (primarily) and spend it (primarily) in Australia.
The mandatory filtering will almost certainly make it impossible for our company to continue operating in Australia.
Not only do we lack the kind of entrepreneurial support and culture of investment that the USA enjoys, but now we can’t even rely on an internet connection to allow us to do business.
Why not stand behind all those times you’ve used “innovation” and really look closely at what you are going to be giving up from the mandatory internet filtering?
I recommend you read and re-read the open letter from Eric Pinkerton published in ZDNet. I commend his clear thinking and considered evaluation of the situation. Please also read the open letter from one of our production partners, Paisley Beebe, a visionary media creator based in Sydney.
Surely, these kind of views are hard to ignore. Please, don’t let us float off to Antarctica and make us a backwater instead of a world leader in the virtual world landscape.
Yours Sincerely,
Keren Flavell
Co-founder Treet.TV
Could Rupert be wrong?
I am actually starting to feel really sorry for the old media types. I mean that genuinely. I can’t imagine it’s easy for them to accept that whatever they know and understand about audiences and distribution now, will soon be completely irrelevant.
Boing Boing recently pointed out Rupert Murdoch’s goof up on this subject:-
“The people who simply pick up everything to run with, and steal our stories…they just take them..without payment. That’s Google, Microsoft, Ask.com..a whole lot of people.”
He clearly isn’t agreeing with Jeff Jaffe’s argument for embeddable newspapers:-
Rather than counting page views from users on a destination, we need to count relationships with people wherever they are..
Well Rupert, from recent initiatives at Treet.TV I’m starting to think you aren’t the smartest guy in the business. We enabled the sharing and using of our content through an easy to spread embeddable player. Our business goals involve attracting more audience, not less. The more, the better, because that solves one enormous problem with online content - obscurity.
Take for example our recent mixed reality show we broadcast from San Francisco as part of the SL Enterprise launch.
Not only was it on the Metanomics website…
But also re-posted by our wonderful colleagues like Malburns Writer….
Then oddly enough, it appeared on a Polish website, that yielded more than 8000 hits within a few days of being posted…
In addition to a German blog…
And the list goes on. We are able to monitor distribution locations continually via what we call “Sightings”. This enables us to acknowledge the websites embedding our content and potentially reward them for the exposure.
The audience for our shows has expanded by many multiples as a result of our new embeddable player. The opportunities for special interest advertising targeting specific shows and locations where it is now appearing is almost unlimited.
Get with the program Rupert, walled gardens closed down a long, long time ago.
Peeling off the onion skin of multi-layered realities
In a few days Treet.TV will be broadcasting another mixed reality event using two planes of reality and creating another two.
The first layer is real world video captured live from the Engage Conference in San Jose and streamed to a screen on stage in Second Life to be viewed by a live audience of approximately 60 avatars. The video will show panelist Tom Hale, together with moderator Professor Robert Bloomfield.
The second layer is Second Life where the avatars of the three inworld participants (including Philip Rosedale) will be positioned on stage next the avatar of Professor Bloomfield, who will be acting as the bridge between the two worlds. The scene from his computer will be projected up on the screen at the San Jose event so panel attendees can view the scene in Second Life.
The third layer is created when Treet blends the real life video and the scene in Second Life to produce the popular Metanomics TV show and broadcast it live to multiple locations inside of Second Life as well as out onto the web (the fourth layer!).
Bloomfield is adept at this type of event, having hosted a mixed reality event from Emory University in February 2008 and in September 2007 when IBM’s Sandra Kearney was streaming a live video feed, as well as being in Active Worlds while Bloomfield was in Second Life.
The potential for things to go wrong is considerable. We have minimized the risk by working with a professional AV company in San Jose who will send the live video feed to us. Once we receive the feed we will capture the stream and rebroadcast it on our streaming servers so all the avatars attending in Second Life can view the live video on stage on Metanomics Island.
Sound is one of the biggest challenges in this kind of set-up. A lot of people make the mistake of having the voices of the inworld participants fed to the conference PA via the computer output. Meanwhile, the microphone on the computer is also the input device for the inworld participants to hear the real world panelists.
To overcome the high probability of feedback a phone conference bridge and Gentner phone interface will be used to connect the inworld participants via phone to the PA system where Rosedale, Hale and Bloomfield are all heard via microphones.
The inworld participants will need to have their inworld voice active so we have lip sync on their avatars, however, the phone bridge will be the audio source used to synchronize with the Treet broadcast.
Dusan Writer will be on location at the San Jose Convention Center, ensuring all runs smoothly from the venue. Thanks go to Linden Lab and Remedy Communications for sponsoring the conference center technical set-up and video stream.
Post Script
Here is the result….
Governments should manage tennis clubs (?)
It’s funny seeing corporations and old media types busy trying to figure out this new thing called ‘communities’, much like they struggled 15 years ago to fathom the internet.
Even though the system of the ‘network’ existed previously - such as telephone networks, postal networks and even townships, where roads and paths connect one house to another - the concept of interacting with nameless and faceless people was treated with fear and apprehension.
Efforts to contain the network of the internet, like AOL did in the early days and more recently the walled gardens on mobile carriers, results in the crowds diverting around the road blocks. The same thing will occur if communities are forced into neat, well behaved rows.
Communities existed long before online social networks. Look around, communities are everywhere. At their heart are people with shared interests who derive benefit from participating. Most communities are self-organizing and respond organically to the needs of members.
I was pleased to read the comments made by Prokofy Neva to the article by Roland LeGrand, The Five Habits of Highly Successful Community Managers, in Media Shift. She likens the idea of managing communities akin to a fascist dictatorship:
just because private companies run the technology doesn’t mean they get to behave in such a high-handed way like company-town stewards, driving workers into sub-standard housing and keeping them in debt to the company store
She predicts the rise of socialware that makes it possible for the consumers to be “equal citizens with the citizen platform providers”.
Handing over power to the members of a community is about relinquishing control and that is a radical shift from traditional hierarchical power structures.
Communities on the web are now a dime a dozen. Thanks to Ning, creating a social network is as simple as making a blog site using Wordpress.
Rather than impose a Community Manager, why not offer a Community Facilitator to service the people who are actively participating in your community of interest? Why not work out how to hand over space and place so they can take ownership and benefit from it’s growth and evolution? If you don’t, they might just go off and form their own community, where they do get the rights and rewards that motivate them to commit the huge amount of time it takes to be an active part of a thriving community.
Our goal at Treet is to enable a community of people to make virtual television. To do that, we support the efforts of members to participate and create. Our Wiki is evolving into a thorough guide on how to produce shows at Treet, our islands are starting to be places of activity for our members and our new website will provide a whole gamut of social features such as comments, discussions, feature suggestions and content creation.
So take note top-down company people, you need to think of how your local tennis club works and ask how you can help them do whatever they want to do, rather than send in the men in black to oversee committee meetings and report back to government.
Passionately paying audiences?
Last week the Financial Times editor, Lionel Barber, predicted that “almost all” news organisations will be charging for online content within a year.
This week sees the announcement that Microsoft will close down their online video-sharing service, MSN Soapbox.
At the end of last month, Joost announced it will change from a consumer strategy to one of technology licensing to 3rd parties.
Although Google executives said last week they expect YouTube to soon be profitable, you really wonder just how much those overlay advertisements yield. I, for one, have never clicked on one of them, except to minimize it from view.
So the owners of online video services seem to be checking their balance sheets much like newspaper publishers are, and it’s a lot more expensive to be serving up video files.
What the revenue model is going to keep them alive? Most agree the money could come from three sources - the producer/creator, advertiser or the user/viewer.
When Livestream recently introduced producer fees they received a backlash from people saying it is too expensive to be worthwhile. I can imagine most people accepting a monthly fee for uploading clips to You Tube, but will those fees be enough to cover streaming costs? Would users be willing to pay for the amount of times their content is viewed? Highly unlikely given the spontaneous popularity of some obscure clips… what would Fred do!?
As far as advertising goes, it seems there is a crisis in the media as advertisers are losing confidence in the power of television to spread their message. Especially given the web is proving people will largely ignore and sometimes actively avoid advertising messages.
So that leaves the user/viewer. Can online video have revenue models from subscription or pay per view?
It’s early days in this evolution and there have been very few examples of success. What we do know is that if user payments are going to work then two things need to be really clear.
Firstly, the content has to be highly valued. That means the general click and view stuff will be unlikely to earn money. The Financial Times is an example of a provider of content that is highly valued and with the right offering, something people would be willing to pay for.
Secondly, the payment must be drop-dead simple. If the user has to pull out the credit card, or go through lengthy sign-ins and shopping carts each time they want to buy, then forget about it. The holy grail is to have them buy into a subscription model that takes out a monthly automated payment.
There is no doubt we are standing at the edge of a new frontier, where only the bold fear to tread. Any brave steps taken will be keenly observed by the content industry who are eager to see sustainable strategies emerge.
The wiki model spreading q’wiki’ly
I followed a link from Mark Pesce today (@mpesce) to an article about a collaborative animation project where material elements for the film were contributed from all corners of the globe, in addition to the wisdom of crowds prevailing through the voting on elements to go into the final creation.
Now most film directors would be clutching their hearts in horror at the thought of the majority ruling on the decisions that they alone should make as the auteur. However, in these times of user generated content and the social enterprise of Wikipedia and other major online initiatives, why not take a punt and see what happens?
We decided to take that punt with the development of our islands in Second Life when winners of the inaugural Linden Prize, Studio Wikitecture, showed interest in taking us on as their next project.
For us, the wikitecture model represented an ideal way to have the thoughts and ideas of our many show producers and audience members threaded directly into the evolution of the Treet TV islands.
Their Wiki Tree system, grows the design process through the form of a virtual tree. Branches have leaves, and each leaf represents new ideas as they evolve. A voting system decides what design elements are favoured above others.
Tomorrow we host the first meeting that will bring our community of virtual television producers together with the Studio Wikitecture team.
Although there are sure to be challenges along the way, ignoring the opportunities this kind of organic, iterative and inclusive form of creation presents just seems old-fashioned.
The world of wikis
You know how I mentioned we’ve got lots of cool things brewing at Treet TV, well the latest and greatest is our wiki. It’s been going for a few weeks now but I am only just starting to get the hang of it and it’s fantastic!
Why have all those documents sitting on shared drives, latent, dead, inaccessible, when you can have a living resource being created, shared and published for all to see and enjoy?
In the past I’ve only edited a couple of pages on Wikipedia so never really got into the way it works.
Now I am neck deep into the formatting of pages, the referencing, the private/public options and the ways to track changes and build up content assets dynamically.
So I guess I am a convert. We’re using MediaWiki and so far I’m really pleased with the results. Although it is only just starting, feel free to go and have a browse around:-
Twitter as a publishing tool
We’ve been hard at work transitioning our entire network across to HD and relaunching as a new service called Treet TV. Along the way we are constantly implementing automation systems that improve our service for users.
One of the recent changes includes the introduction of a live Twitter feed that informs people the moment that a new video is available for viewing.
The feed is here: http://www.twitter.com/treetbot
This means that our show producers, who are keen to get their show and start promoting it to their audiences, can be informed via their twitter feed rather than by emailing us, or checking on the website.
It is the first time I have seen an industrial application of this kind (although I have heard Jeffrey Paffendorf has a Twitter feed from his fish tank to notify him the PH levels).
It is an exciting new feature of our service and just a hint of more great things to come from Treet TV.
Why not watch live shows from virtual worlds on TV?
I got the good news today that one of our shows has been short-listed in the Online Machinima Film Festival. Congratulations to the very talented Pooky Amsterdam and her team for The 2nd Question, a quiz show for science nerds.
It’s great to see the rise in profile of content created in games and 3D social virtual worlds.
Although traditional TV broadcasters have definitely made the crossover to the internet and mobile phone spaces - with SMS voting and distribution of shows to iTunes - they are yet to fully understand how the game space can translate into TV content.
Why don’t we see video-game competitions broadcast as sporting events? Does it take less skill to play “Guitar Hero” than to bowl? Or throw darts? Or drive?
Good point Kevin. We certainly have seen the potential with the sports shows we have been filming in Second Life. Our ice hockey, dirt field races, simboarding and sailing regatta have demonstrated how sports in game spaces can be just as compelling as those hosted in the analog world.
Sure the graphics and production values can do with some improvements, but that is happening all the time so don’t be swayed by that passing stage. Just think back to how lacklustre the world wide web looked in 1997.
We are in the process of launching a multi-world, high definition service called Treet. TV (you can see our temporary site at http://www.treet.tv). This content starts to look far more compelling with widescreen as well as the high resolution versions (for downloading) that look quite stunning on a digital TV set in the living room.
Kevin, broadcasting live events from games to your living room TV might be sooner than you think. All acquisition enquiries from interested broadcasters should be directed to me, Starr Sonic! I am ready to take your call.