I wanted to drop you this first note to give you a heads-up on what’s been brewing between a few of us. The concept has taken a life of its own. We’re in the midst of building a community of the best and the brightest in digital media.
Our community includes executives and experts from around the world who are exploring, challenging, investigating, and creating opportunities in the new digital media world.
Challenged Broadcast Empires
As you know so well, broadcast firms, publishers and the motion picture industry were living in a tightly controlled competitive space. They built their empires, became dominant and others couldn’t find a place. The expense needed to secure the technology infrastructure and content was out of reach. Political hurdles were way too high.
Media Industry Digital Boom Today?
Today, I can’t keep track of the number of industries jumping into the new “broadcast” space. Some will find the space 'sexy", talk a big game, spend millions of dollars and be gone. A few others are here to stay and are creating chaos for many of us. A growing number of established businesses are effectively learning how to manage change. Others will be sold, merged, or forgotten. In the meantime, what do we do to compete or work in this new media environment?
Common Interests
Our colleagues in our new community have a common desire to discuss the challenges they're finding in this disruptive digital media space and to explore and investigate new developments and businesses.
They realized that talking to the same people over and over again in their own unique sectors was only the starting point.
This executive community includes those challenging the status quo, shaking up the "old school" and the creative ones figuring out how to make this work today in their established businesses.
The one central connecting point between all of us is that we're all involved in the new business of broadcasting, multimedia, audio and video distribution, content and media.
Who’s Involved?
This new community includes those working in the new “interactive broadcast” space. Broadcast. This includes executives from all of these industries: consumer electronics , broadcasting, publishing, cable, telecom, motion pictures, powerline, Internet, satellite, media syndication (traditional and RSS/MRSS, podcasts/videoblogs), P2P, Video Search, IPG/EPG, DRM, retailers, advertisers, educators, corporations and entrepreneurs, content producers, and creatives and others sitting at the same table. Isn’t that too expansive? Unfortunately – we can’t compete without knowing what is really happening in all these spaces. In fact - this community won't work unless we have the diversity.
We’re selecting experts to include on our advisory panel from the entire media ecosystem. Maybe you’re the next new disrupter, innovator or creator that will receive a nomination to the advisory board. Today’s media changes are not built on a time-line or controlled, and the best new advisor to our community might be a teen-ager, reformed “hacker”, a politician or a Doctor. Who knows? Nominations for advisory positions come from the other advisors who have accepted the challenge to look for innovation and enterprise. Media isn’t just News and Entertainment any more, it’s corporate communications, medical broadcast networks, and the individual. We have a bigger media universe to explain than 10 years ago.
We’re filling out the advisory positions making sure we have people from around the world, in different areas of our interest.
How do we handle the disruption in digital media today?
“What” or “Who” do we need to know as we transition into the “media anywhere” universe?
How do we manage the media chaos? Is there a process?
What will I be doing in my job 5 years from now? How do I manage my “new” career responsibilities?
This new community gives all of us a head start in figuring out what companies have a chance of succeeding and who’s dead in the water. It’s about figuring out the fact from the fiction in all the media and technological hype. It’s impossible to figure that out by yourself. There are way too many moving parts to figure out who’s working with whom, and what’s behind the curtain.
We are about the old and the new coming together (people and ideas) to challenge our ideas and explore ways to help us plod through this transitional media stage.
We’re connecting virtually, with conference calls, roundtable discussions, and at events.
What’s our Acceptance Rate for our Advisors?
So far we’re batting 100% on nomination acceptance and participation. We knew we had to have the highly influential businesses on board as well as the innovators. We started with the experts working on large efforts. The advisors are all experts in their own right, and many you will know instantly work at large companies. We have executives on board as advisors who work for Microsoft, Apple, the BBC, AOL, a partner in the global law firm, Pillsbury, Winthrop, Shaw Pittman, WorldSpace (global satellite radio), and others from around the world. This is only the start.
How’d this start?
Jeff Pulver and I have been talking about this for years. He’s been a great supporter to the webcasting/broadcasting community. He owns a slew of successful companies under pulver.com and appropriate to this forum, owns pulvermedia.com. He's called the Father of VoiP often because he created an Internet community among the individuals and companies who started VOIP. At about the same time, 1996 - I started a webcasting community a year after I started working with broadcasters, the Net and streaming. Both communities grew. And nearly a decade later, both communities remain active.
Jeff has agreed to support this new community idea. He’s allowing us to gather together an incredible community of thinkers and doers in digital media who are working through this disruptive state in media. We’re figuring out the virtual communications of the community, and feel it’s important to get together for coffee, dinners, roundtables, and forums here and around the world. Thank you Jeff
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