Internet Tech Boston

Last week, I attended the VideoNuze Leadership Breakfast Panel, moderated by Will Richmond. The breakfast panel was part of the larger CTAM conference and was held in the Hynes Auditorium on Monday morning. Generally speaking, I’m not a big fan of this type of venue. The room was setup like a wedding reception – large round tables with fully set place settings and waitstaff floating around picking up dirty dishes. There was little space in the room for networking. I guess it wasn’t really a networking event. The purpose of this panel was to educate the audience on How to Profit from Broadband Video’s Disruptive Impact.

The panel itself was comprised of bigwigs in the online video market, who mostly played it safe when answering questions by Will Richmond or the audience. With high level executives present from competitors Google/YouTube and Amazon video, I was anticipating at least a little point-counterpoint. A couple of times, Will prompted his panel very directly to take the gloves off and engage in a more “spirited discussion.”

Overall, the key theme discussed was “convenience.”  Aside from Next New Networks stating that “competition” will breed new “features” in online video, there was absolutely no talk about what the exact features are, or how specifically, online video might disrupt the traditional TV-based subscription model.

This is the second event I’ve been to that’s been sponsored by VideoNuze and moderated by Will Richmond. The previous event was MITX’s “In’s and Out’s of Making Money on Online Video.” I found the discussion at that event to be pretty surfacey as well. Maybe that’s because Will seems to be such a nice guy – I met him at the VideoNuze VideoSchooze (a social mixer, not a panel discussion). There’s a fine line between being accommodating vs. being a push over, and I won’t pretend to know how to continuously be on the right side of that line. But still, my 2 cents is that Will needs to develop a system to challenge his panelists and tap into what they are passionate about. Passion on the panel would inevitable spread to passion within the audience for the topics.

What do you think? If you’ve hosted, moderated, or be on a Q&A panel, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how to stimulate spirited discussion without coming off too pushy. What works and what doesn’t?

Last night I and a few folks from PermissionTV attended the VideoNuze VideoSchmooze in Boston, hosted by Will Richmond. It was an informal affair / mixer at a swanky bar, with no speakers or topics on agenda.

Grainy iPhone pic of Will Richmond addressing the crowd at the VideoSchmooze

Here are some highlights:

• I met Will Richmond and thanked him for organizing the event. Will is a great guy, very engaging and intelligent.
• Catherin Frederico is starting an online video destination site around Nutrition and Nutrition consulting. I thought of Gary V, Episode #1. Gotta start someplace.
• Stephen Shenefield is working on a consumer electronics device that consolidates all sources of media (tv, phone, internet) and “transforms the home technology experience.” Sounds cool.
• Interesting conversation with David Carver about his former life working on engineering high speed video delivery network servers.
• Met Emily Gannett whose founder of Klickable.TV a 3 person startup that is somewhat competitive with PermissionTV. We had a drink and shared some war stories. Online video can be tough!
• Dan and Rich from Collegiate Images were up from Florida and decided to swing by. Collegiate Images is “the centralized licensing and rights clearance agency of video and still images for colleges, universities, conferences, bowl games and broadcast rights.” Great niche, well executed, and great content to work with all day long!

Overall, it was a nice little mixer that focused on the local Video 2.0 space. Check out a few more (poor quality) pictures that I took with my iPhone. It was nice to meet everyone there. For those that I wasn’t able to give business cards to (after I ran out), feel free to drop me a line in the comments below and we’ll connect.