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by Now I've had some unusual birthdays before this one. In fact, my 6th birthday was the subject of a photobook called, ready - "A Different Kind of Birthday."
But, I digress. This year I'm having a Digital Birthday. Maybe you've had one already?
A digital birthday is an excuse to reach out to your wide community of friends on Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, and other forms of social media, and use the celebratory moment to focus your social network on the causes and things that matter to you.
So - here are a few things that I'd like to use my special birthday social currency to share with you.
The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation:
As many of you know, I've been deeply involved in the 9/11 story since I made my film "7 Days In September." I have watched a remarkable group of individuals work to create a powerful remembrance and thoughtful museum around the events of September 11th, and believe that the museum and memorial they are constructing will be an important and powerful institution when it's completed. This is a place where any small donation can have a real important impact.
You can donate here:
https://www.jdrf.org/index.cfm?page_id=100903&sitereferer=1
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Another area that I think a lot about is education and the impact that funding cuts have on both classrooms and students. My friend Robert Tolmach is leading an important organization at Class Wish to put donors in touch with classrooms and teachers. If you want to see your gifts got to work and help students, Class Wish is a class act.
Donate Here: www.ClassWish.org
And finally - for those of you looking to make a gift to help cure Diabetes, I'm honored that my Friend and fellow TEDster Red Maxwell has asked me to work with him on digital initiatives and innovation at the National Juvenile Diabetes Reasearch Foundation (JDRF). This is an organization that puts more than 85% of every dollar donated into the hands of researches. In particular, they're breaking new ground in social media - creating a social network for members in the Diabetes community here:
http://juvenation.org
Donate Here;
https://www.jdrf.org/index.cfm?page_id=100903&sitereferer=1
Prereq: be on v 3.0 of the os.
1. On your iPhone, in Safari, go to http://help.benm.at/
2. Scroll down to , and touch
3. Scroll down to US, and then select your carrier.
4. Hit Install.
5. Go to Settings, General, Reset, and touch (phone will reboot - but if it doesn't, reboot it)
6. Go to Settings, Genera, Network, you will now see a setting for Internet Tethering. Touch it and turn it on.
7. Connect iPhone to your laptop (where iTunes is installed), and you should now have a network connection (you may need to configure it) to browse the internet. You can use USB or Bluetooth.
There's a storm brewing. A huge, noisy, thunder and lightning storm of content, community and chaos. But there's good news too - there's a silver lining in the Cloud.
And now - with the announcement that the Apple iPhone will in fact become a video recording device, we surely can see that the content creation chaos is only going to increase in the months ahead.
This is good news. Great news if you're a publisher, blogger, or advertiser.
Okay, I know it doesn't feel that way now - but let me take you on a journey into the future. Not the far future, the future just around the bend - to a time when news finds you. To a time when publishing is effortless. When content contribution is expected and enjoyable. To a time when the Cloud is full of Content, and Curating The Cloud is managed by a band of paid professionals and well-compensated media wranglers.
Here's the analogy:
There was a time before you could dial 911. Back then, if you saw a car accident, or a robbery, you would have to find a pay phone and call the police. Folks did that, of course. Then came standardized 911. And cell phones. Emergency reporting is way up. Why? Because technology was deployed that made it at first possible, and then a societal obligation. When you see someone who needs help, you call 911.
My point is, technology fuels behavioral changes and shifts norms.
Now - remember that last family vacation you took were the promised hotel wasn't all the advertising suggested? Crappy hotel rooms? A crazy long walk/cab ride to the attractions that were supposed to be right around the corner? Well, what did you do about it? Probably nothing. But that's about to change. Because portable video cameras that are wi-fi and cell enabled (that is what the new iPhone is after all) are going to create a sea-change of behavior that will quickly explode the cloud with new content. Some of it will be quite useful, lots of it will be inconsequential. And the curation function is going to be sorely needed - soon.
This is good news for journalists looking for what the future needs from their skill set. The good news for them is that demand for people able to separate fact from fiction, and sort content into contextual and accessible collections, is on the rise.
So, what does it mean to Curate The Cloud? And how does this behavior make both social and business sense?
First off all, the Cloud is a wide-open space that has no barrier to entry. Anyone can contribute, anyone can play. This is incredibly exciting - and the former barriers to entry are falling faster than anyone could have imagined. Even the expensive technologies that seemed like they would keep UGC (user-generated video) from Pro Video are falling fast. High Def, for example, is now standard issue on the $199 pocket FlipCam.
But as the crowd grows larger, the signal to noise ratio becomes unwieldy. And old mechanisms like tagging and crowdsourcing aren't able to keep up with the volume. Here's where the Curators come in.
Being a Curator requires a point of view. Not just a vast gathering of material on a subject, but a narrower, more focused subset of content around that subject area.
Take, for example, Foosball. Yes, you read that right. Foosball turns out to be a place were content on the web is prolific and yet often undifferentiated. What is Pro-Foosball video vs. simply video shot in a bar with a pitcher of beer? Here's a place where a Curator comes in, adding a point of view, human review, and categorization of content: http://foosball.tv/
My point is that Curating The Cloud isn't a mechanical job. It's not going to be solved with artificial intelligence or shipping containers full of processors. It is deeply editorial, and in a world of unlimited choice, curators are fast going to be the most important filters in your life. They will be the windows through which we see the world, and the point of view that makes content valuable rather than overwhelming.
Simply put, curators know who we are.
And the Content Cloud - already vast and hard to navigate - is now poised to quickly surpass even the most generous projections of size and scope. Video will be both the web's 'killer app' and, for those of us who really try to drink from the firehose without benefit of some filters and focus, overwhelming and unmanageable.
This may explain why young people seem to understand what many mid-career journalists do not. After all, how else can you explain that applications at the Columbia Journalism School are up an astounding 40% for the upcoming academic year? Content creation and content curation aren't mutually exclusive.
Curation is the future, and curators are going to be in high demand.
You've heard all about the ways that television viewing is going to change in next few years, but meanwhile the act of making television is going through some pretty remarkable changes as well.
So, poking around the upper reaches of the cable dial the other night, I was interested to see just what the creative folks at Current were thinking when they titled a show "The Rotten Tomatoes" show.
Now, for those of you who don't know, Rotten Tomatoes is a web site that aggregates movie criticism and creates a score based on a wide array of well respected critics. The Tomato Meter has long been a reliable way to gauge the overall take on a film's popularity. And because it links back to the reviews, you can get more detail. It is a very good site, and a very popular tool for film buffs.
How would that translate to TV? The whole website-to-TV show genre is pretty sparsely populated, and not often successful. So, how did Current do it?
Well, to begin with, they didn't put the folks behind the website on TV. Good move. TV Talent is a special breed. Current found hosts Brett Erlich and Ellen Fox. They are surprisingly sardonic, witty and TV-ish. That's a good thing. Oh, but what about the web-karma that comes from the Rotten Tomatoes folks? Well, they grab that too - by using webcams (I think) and a whole ensemble of guest commentators who are pretty darn funny, and mean too.
Then there's the pace. It's zippy, jumps around, nails a few movie reviews, refers back to the Rotten Tomato meter to back up their overall raves or pans, and brings in a wide variety of voices (including viewer supplied and uploaded reviews).
This is spot on.
Use the breadth of the Internet's talent to staff the Greek chorus. Use the data that only the web can gather to crowd-source the reviews via the Tomato Meter, and put real TV talent in front of the camera (and a green screen) so that it feels like a TV show rather than a bunch of web clips strung together. Oh, and don't forget the writing. They've got a solid writing team - it seems - because the show's tone and vibe is edgy and consistent, which is hard to do.
Through ensemble reviews of "Watchmen," "Shuttle" and "12," they unveil the top five movies with numbers in the titles, and they'll try to learn history through film.
So, how do you see it? The show airs Thursday nights at 10:30 on Current. And you can see it on YouTube as well, though there's some sort of embargo period that keeps the fresh and topical stuff showing up in YouTube search with a "you can only watch this on Current" link. Hmm....
So clearly the folks at Current are still using the net as a content source (Rotten Tomatoes stats) and a video source (web cam reviews), but when it comes to distribution, they're still about TV and their website first, and the wider web second. Given the current state of advertising on the web, that makes sense.
Overall, if you're wondering how TV is going to look once all the new technology, handheld mini-cameras, and such are deployed, you should take a look at Rotten Tomatoes on Current, it's worth checking out.
