I prepare to head off for the RSA conference (I’ll be sleeping on the plane…yet again.) and this time I must remember to pack my video gear…motivated by this post from Steve Rosenbaum on his Indiewire blog…I could not resist adding my own comments to what he is saying seasoned heavily with rolling metaphor.

Video is simply frozen knowledge.

Powerful. Portable. Compelling.

The tools to create, upload, and store this ‘knowledge’ are now in place. DV cameras,
YouTube and the other storage solutions, there’s even a nascent system taking
place to create revenue for ‘knowledge’ creators and sites that retail knowledge.
(by which i’m talking about Google AdSense, Revver, and Brightcove).

I grew up in the Ice Age my kids call “Only Three Channels?”. Now the cave people have discovered fire! Actually we knew about it…longed for it, but it was only by chance that we could interact with it on the rare occasion a bolt came out of a storm and ignited something.

And these companies tend to talk about ‘their audiences’ with a swagger and a sense of ownership that seems farily draconian given the trends that are clearly driving the change in media.

They don’t even see it coming, or perhaps they do. If they don’t they will soon enough. Like a giant locomotive that has jumped the tracks bringing hellfire to the masses. Blogs, videos, widgets, AJAX driven feedback tools, tags, clouds, pings, mass storage, broadband and new platforms (among many other things) will collide, stars of old will burn out and a new universe will be ushered into existence. We have been feeling the dull rumbling for some time, this inevitable Big Bang (or perhaps this is a collapse?), but it has risen to a roar now.

I’ll go so far as to say, i’ve yet to see an authentic and genuine acceptance of the changing role of the people formerly known as ‘consumers’ by any media company. There are contests, and various places for carefully vetted and managed user-generated material - but the excitement and innovation that’s taking place in what David Sifrey calls ‘The Participant Economy’ is being viewed more as a threat than an celebration by the current owners of printing presses and television stations and cable channels.

Bolded emphasis added by me.

Because Ice Age people aren’t supposed to figure out what to do with that burning brand left by the stroke of lightning- but it is too late- they have caged it, stoked it, fanned the flames and preserved it. Soon they will learn to cook their meat over it, recount the hunt, watch the flames and chase back the shadows no longer constrained by the limitations of the dark. (some will develop insomnia I am sure.)

And as a critical part of web 2.0, these bits will find their way into the communities, sites, and collections that embrace them. We see Magnify as map that help you discovery video on the web. And there’s a big map waiting to be drawn.

Steve is referring to the power of niche I believe. I believe this to be true when I see a niche video site run over YouTube by a magnitude of 10:1 with a video…When i see mean “stick times” per user at 10 minutes coming off of a highly contextual search in the organic SERPS. When I see community formation over a lump of similiar media- no other catalyst- no monetary rewards, people join and begin to organize it- fans of this similiar media being the only connector.

Video is tiny bits of frozen knowledge.

I think it is a great metaphor- and the big thaw is about to start…to quote a favorite film of mine “The Mosquito Coast“….Harrison Ford’s character says something to the effect of- “Ice is civilization…”

I know Sam Harrelson is may be listening as I was to him…I am going to cast a video runestone widget in his honor and I enjoyed the DNA parrallel he makes on his blog…the irony may not be lost on Steve either.

The Secret Life of Widgets

If you think about it- it is interesting to see the wild path this particular piece of machinima now makes as it goes from conception to broadcast to a widget format…All in the name of promoting IM and voice while having fun it is sourced from a video game by a production studio, from studio to MTV, from MTV to the Web, On The Web it rests at Google Video (soon to be just YouTube I hear), sucked into the Magnify system, outputted on a niche domain focused on metaverses, then tagged, reviewed, ranked. The end result is processed again, iframed and placed in the mark-up of this blog, where it is read and rendered through the lense of someone’s browser. Will it travel further? Who knows, who can predict the secret life of the widget? It may end here, it may travel further- it may prompt the selection of another of its kindred from the pack and that kindred will follow a completely different path.

In this piece- Dementia Myndflame was given the task of creating a commercial for Xfire (Ubisoft’s communication platform for gamers) using WoW Machinima. For those new WoW is World of Warcraft- machinima is “machine cinema” or “machine animation”, which can be a collection of associated production techniques and a film genre defined by those techniques- basically making a video inside of a game or a metaverse!). In response to the task DM created Hunter Squirrelbane, a backwoods hunter who taunts squirrels to come get his nuts…

ADDENDUM:

For more probing discussions on video, new technology and unleashing your content see these recent posts.

Adam Viener at Revenews.com

Wayne Porter at Revenews.com

Sam Harrelson at CostPerNews.com

PcWorld on BubblePly

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