I’m happy to announce that Emerging Media Dynamics (my company) will be hosting a live event, The New Video Summit: Silicon Valley Meets Hollywood on the Internet in San Jose, CA on March 19, 2007 in conjunction with and on the eve of Jeff Pulver’s Video-on-the-Net conference.
We’ve just sent out a “save the date” email and I thought I’d get the word out here. We’re at the beginning stages of inviting speakers and rounding out the agenda, but I’d truly appreciate hearing any and all suggestions for speakers and topics.
The general theme of the event is that both Hollywood (short-hand for the creative community) and Internet technology companies are increasingly dependent on each other as the Internet turns into a major video distribution medium. We hope to recruit some of the top decision-makers in both communities to speak at the summit, and I’m aiming to make this an event that actually moves the ball forward in terms of understanding how this brand new business operates, instead of just having speakers get up there and pitch their companies.
Drop me a line or give me a call with suggestions, comments or feedback. Hope to see you all in San Jose.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 3:18 PM | Print | Comments (0)The New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin has this piece today about the elite FourSquare Summit, which has become the cold weather analog to Herb Allen’s ultra-elite Sun Valley gathering of media moguls. Sorkin leads with the fact that Facebook’s 22 year-old CEO Mark Zuckerberg wore flip flops without socks at the Pierre Hotel in one of the most formal and fashionable cities, New York.
Dozens of the world’s biggest media moguls and investment bankers, dressed in perfectly pressed suits, mingled in the lobby of the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan yesterday at the annual FourSquare conference.
And then there was Mark Zuckerberg, the 22-year-old chief executive of the social networking site Facebook, wearing Adidas flip-flops — sans socks — with a blazer and jeans.
Um, that’s what you call, at the minimum, confidence, an attitude of entitlement that was seemingly not misplaced. While YouTube’s Chad Hurley was the star of Sun Valley, Zuckerberg apparently was man of the hour at FourSquare as media companies look at his social networking site as the next big thing. So, he can apparently wear whatever he wants, because the chieftains of the media world stood in line to talk to him.
YouTube’s sale may be only a month old, but Wall Street had already appeared to move on to the next big deal with all eyes on Mr. Zuckerberg, who has been in on-and-off negotiations with Yahoo. At the conference yesterday, Mr. Zuckerberg could be seen standing amid a throng of high-powered would-be suitors. Analysts have estimated that Facebook could have a value of as much as $1 billion.
All that aside, the moguls all apparently talked amongst themselves at a private dinner the night before about whether Internet valuations are overly inflated. And a weird note: Jerry Seinfeld (huh?) was apparently one of the key panelists at the event, riffing on the low quality of user-generated comedy.
One intriguing note: Cambridge, MA-based Brightcove, which has quietly become the engine behind dozens of top video sites, is a much lusted-after acquisition target.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:21 AM | Print | Comments (0)
One of the more interesting parts of this landmark mid-term election season is the role of “netroots” bloggers, the progressive and aggressive bloggers who tried to push the Democratic party farther to the left and bucked the party’s establishment positions. Outspoken critics of mainstream Democrats, netroots blogs such as MyDD, FireDogLake, ActBlue (a fundraising site) and DailyKos, among others, laid claim to Connecticut’s Ned Lamont’s upset victory in the Democratic primary, which forced Joe Lieberman to run as an independent.
The netroots bloggers also organized themselves around a group of progressive Democratic candidates to wield their influence in getting these mostly non-mainstream campaigners elected.
Lamont lost to Lieberman on Tuesday but Netroots darling Jim Webb bested Republican star George Allen in Virginia to hand control of the Senate to the Democrats. Before Webb’s win became clear, the pundits were already weighing in with their views about whether these blogs were as powerful as many Democratic party officials had feared.
The National Journal’s Danny Glover compiled a tally and determined that the Netroots have earned bragging rights, particularly when compared to the rival “rightroots” bloggers that attempted to sway the elections in favor of right-leaning Republican candidates.
The Nation’s Ari Melber arrived at the opposite conclusion. Given that the netroots bloggers stood in opposition to the established Democratic party apparatus, the party succeeded and the bloggers failed.
Yet regardless of the remaining results and recounts, the fact is the netroots’ favorite candidates did not perform as well as the Democrats targeted by party leaders. And they were never supposed to. Many of the bloggers’ picks were aggressive Democrats in long-shot districts who were neglected by the Beltway establishment. There is no doubt that bloggers leveraged money and political buzz to make races more competitive and put Republicans on the defensive, but it was simply not the decisive factor in the elections.
The netroots bloggers themselves don’t seem to be taking much of a position on whether they succeeded or lost in influencing the elections. Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos had this to say yesterday regarding the scattershot sniping at the netroots lack of influence:
Dear know-nothings,
I know most of you are stupid, and proud to remain that way.
But the Netroots backed more than just Ned Lamont.
For example, Jim Webb and Jon Tester in the Senate, and dozens more in the House.
Jim Webb, for example, said this about the netroots:
The netroots have been a tremendous help to my campaign and a huge inspiration to me personally.
I am where I am in large part because of their support.
So Lieberman won. Lots of our candidates lost. Lots of them won. It’s called elections.
Hugs and kisses.
kos
The real question is whether the netroots are relevant now that the mainstream Democratic party is in control of Congress and what kind of influence they can have going forward. There’s no doubt that some of these bloggers need to tone it down if they are going to have influence. But then they wouldn’t be the netroots anymore - they’d just be run-of-the-mill political bloggers targeting as wide an audience as possible.
As Lieberman campaign advisor Lanny Davis told The Nation:
“If the blogosphere is to have an impact on changing the country as opposed to talking to each other, the Lamont campaign is a lesson in exactly what not to do. They came out of a primary and they continued to wage a primary,” he said, “but they weren’t talking to unaffiliated voters and moderate Republicans.”Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:43 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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