Video on the Net: Day One

Jeff Pulver at Video on the Net. (Photo from Steve Garfield)

This conference is decidedly different from PodCamp -- 10,000 people (including VON attendees) compared to 300 -- but the same basic rules apply: the information and discussion is there for the participating. One thing I've quickly learned: there's a definite hierarchy among the attendees at Video on the Net 2006 in Boston. I don't necessarily mean a power structure, though those are in place too (whether the power is financial, influence or sociologically-based). I mean there's a food chain of understanding the new medium.

At the top are the true movers and shakers, the people who mix both passion and power. Jeff Pulver is there, not just because he created the event but for all the reasons why he created the event: just like he previously saw the future of voice communications (which led to Vonage), he now sees the potential of web video. He aggregates everyone else who may have influence over its direction. He's not alone at the top, but he's the most obvious example.

Then we have the people who "get" at least one side of the equation.

We have the people who run the companies (hardware, software, service, destination) that provide the "business" which the market will be created from. We have the people who are already using these services and tools to create new content or change the ways we communicate. And we have the people who don't necessarily "do" either, so much as they see how everything interconnects and, even better, they can see where the future could go because they understand where we've been. These are the Steve Garfield / Jeff Jarvis / Chris Brogan / Dmitri Shapiro / Amit Shafrir types, who possess at least one portion of the key to the kingdom -- resources, wisdom and / or influence -- but don't have the complete package (yet).

Then we have the creators of consumer (and prosumer) content. These are the people who aren't necessarily using the aforementioned tools to incite widespread change so much as they're using them for their own ends -- to communicate, to entertain others or to entertain themselves. This is where I am, where Brian Conley's Alive in Baghdad is, and where your average YouTube user is. Some of us may be more or less enlightened about the possibilities, and we almost definitely grasp the basic concepts, but none of us is directly influencing anyone else on a profound level (yet).

And then we have the dinosaurs: old media and big money. By and large, old media is trying to view the emerging portable on-demand media through the prism of existing precepts, many of which are already obsolete and more of which will become invalid by the time I publish this post. Likewise, big money sees the limitless potential of this new media and thinks, "How do we monetize it?" And the answer invariably involves the skeleton of an already-defunct advertising or distribution structure.

Frustratingly, the bulk of the speeches I wanted to see today (Jeremy Allaire from Brightcove, Shapiro, Jarvis) were aimed, in part or in whole, at this last bastion of the audience. It makes sense, because without their support, those of us who've already begun connecting the dots will quickly run out of pencils, paper or dots. But it still makes me feel like I'm sitting through a remedial math class when what I'm craving to discuss is tucked away inside the Quantum Physics book I can see on the instructor's shelf.

That's the beauty of these events, though: you're not limited to the knowledge being presented onstage.

The hallways of the Boston Convention Center were abuzz with discussion after every presentation -- not just between speaker and audience but among audience members themselves, bouncing around ideas and flirting with deals. This is a place where someone can loudly proclaim Jeremy Allaire "a genius" for giving the web video producers EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT [Side note: not to in any way detract from the magic of Brightcove, but why is common sense so often mistaken for genius?], where Jeff Persch of Podsea can debate the structure of audio advertising with the founder of Winamp thanks to a mutual friend who speaks Hebrew, and where Conley's Baghdad podcast can attract the attention of a venture capitalist who didn't even know that's what he was looking for.

There's a lot of information available, and there are a lot of heads to fill. The key is to ensure that those heads aren't being filled to an arbitrary volume. Instead, each of us should be able to drink in exactly what we need.