You may recall my last experience with CaseCamp was a little more exciting than I hoped. So I'm very much looking forward to sitting in the audience this time.
This session of CaseCamp will take place on Wednesday September 16th at Circa (126 John St Toronto). There are two parts to the program: CaseCamp Conference in the afternoon and CaseCamp Classic in the evening.
The lineup for the conference looks amazing. Jason Scott will talk about building a cult brand on Twitter. Ben Huh of the Cheezburger Network is going to talk about monetizing communities. The cast of Know Your Meme will be talking memes. Plus a whole lot more.
This is a special edition of CaseCamp; a fund raiser for Sick Kids. The afternoon session costs $99.
Funds raised at CaseCamp Benefit will go towards transforming the Critical Care Unit Waiting Room at SickKids Hospital in Toronto.
The Critical Care Unit at Toronto’s SickKids Hospital delivers round-the-clock care for children in urgent medical situations. The waiting room, located outside the unit, is a space designated for the families and friends who are visiting patients. Visitors use this room in a variety of ways: some are only dropping by en route to being admitted to the CCU while others will set up camp there for an extended period of time. The space must cater to a diverse population with multiple needs and preferences. Currently the space is in dire need of a renovation.
The evening session which also looks amazing (Seth Reich of College Humour on viral video!) is free.
I took a look at ZuiTube yesterday. It’s a new video sharing site just for kids and in my book it’s a big #fail #fail #fail.
ZuiTube sort of looks like the love child of YouTube and Dora the Explorer. Basically it’s YouTube with all the good features turned off. No community, no commenting, no rating. You can share – but only be email or posting to another site. There’s no embed feature. What’s more there’s not even a volume control on the video, you can mute or have sound. Why, I can’t imagine since every child over three has mastered volume control.
There is search and a big ginormous blurb on the parents page parents on why sharing is important and what all the important features of their search are and how they’ll help your kid.
The videos are all pre-selected by parents and educators – no word on the deets of that process, but it’s supposed to put your mind at easing knowing that someone who has qualified as a parent have screened everything in advance. Your child is now safe… assuming you don’t see quality and commercialism as a potential danger to your kid.
The social media features have also been exorcized in the name of web safety. Let’s keep our kids in hermetically sealed environments so we have to worry about what they’re doing while they’re on the web. Unless of course they open another tab and sign up for Facebook.
You can get a few more of the social media features like rating and anemic versions of sharing, friending and status updating by downloading KidZui – “an Internet browser just for kids”. Even the tags are pre-selected for your safety.
The free version of the browser is ultra-ultra-limited and we can imagine that the subscription version is only ultra-limited. You still can’t communicate with anyone else in your own words, only by selecting from amongst pre-digested status updates or by sharing the parent-approved content.
KidZui doesn’t produce its own content so what you get are Miley Cyrus and Jonas Brother channels, WB channels, Disney channels, Mattel channels etc etc.
I’m all for safe kids, but not by locking them up digitally. And I’m in favour of curated content, but screen it for quality, not just for violence, nudity and language.
Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure ZuiTube and KidZui are destined to make a lot of money.
Tubefilter has an interesting piece about iTunes getting into original content production (ironically the same day Ink publishes an interview with me in which I lament not being able to get Hailey Hacks onto iTunes).
We’ve learned that the first ever original project is a short film about the fictional cult rock band Spinal Tap, dubbed Fade From Black.
This is a significant development for Apple, which is finally flexing the iTunes distribution muscle it so carefully built up in the past eight years—a massive pipeline for Hollywood’s music, TV and film businesses accounting for billions of dollars in annual revenue for the industry. The company has traditionally steered cleared of placing bets on entertainment content, but now it’s putting its own risky production dollars into play.
...Apple CEO Steve Jobs is no stranger to the life of a hollywood mogul, having founded and sold animation studio Pixar to Disney while on his resignation-hiatus from the company (he is now the single largest shareholder in Disney).
We hear that Suzanne Varney at Apple is overseeing the original content for iTunes, and her LinkedIn profile lists her as “Mgr, iTunes Original Content at Apple.” Not much else we know about her or her team, other than she has some entertainment background, coming from a stint at William Morris.
Check out Rich Baldwin's interview with little old moi over at Ink Canada. Here's a taste to whet your appetite; my comments on why I built a micro-payment system into Hailey Hacks:
We have two business models for TV. There’s conventional network TV where the advertiser pays and the viewer gets the programming for free (-ish) and we have the HBO model where the user pays for the programming. They generate distinctly different types of programming. Your business model [for digital production] is going to reflect the kind of programming you’re creating.
In the long run, the user-pays model is probably better for the audience and for the creator because they are the only two players in the equation. The storyteller tells the story that the consumer wants to hear in the way they want to hear it.
Networks, distributors and advertisers are third parties to this transaction. But in network TV, storytellers and their audience are the ones who are tangential to the real business. Network TV is all about delivering eyeballs to advertisers’ messages. That’s where the money is and that’s the truth that underlies the creative decisions.
When it comes to the web, I think it’s incredibly important that we explore and develop the user-pays model despite the fact that Chris Anderson of Wired and others believe the web should be free. That’s why we set up Hailey Hacks to have a micro-payment system. I wanted to explore this as a possibility. Really I wanted to sell Hailey Hacks on iTunes – every tween girl in the world has an iTunes gift card and is in control of what she buys. But iTunes isn’t ready yet to work with independent web producers (who aren’t named Joss Whedon) so I had to look for an alternate way to put this idea into effect. I built an e-commerce site with a link to PayPal. It means my audience of tween girls can’t buy the product themselves, so they have to turn to a parent who might be reluctant to put a credit card number into the computer. Plus, the project hasn’t been marketed to parents. There are still hurdles to making the micro-payments work for this project.
I’m developing a new site for Hailey Hacks using a web solution out of Vancouver called XL Suite that will hopefully overcome some of those hurdles.
Despite everything I’ve said that is pro-user-pays, I believe web creators have to pursue every method of financing and revenue generation available. So I am also talking to brands about sponsorship and product integration. I’m looking into mobile distribution. I may also look at conventional advertising as well (e.g. Google ads).
You can read the entire interview on Facebook on Ink Canada.
I’ve been wanting to write a series of how-to tips based on our experience of making, B.J. Fletcher: Private Eye, so we started reminiscing about what we wish we’d known before we’d started making our website. Having had the pleasure of connecting with many other web series producers online, I was curious, and asked them the same question, “What do you wish you’d known before you started making your web series?”
Below are the answers, along with a sampling of the work of the quoted web-creators, but don't forget to read the full article which offers some great info.
1. “Sometimes, angry people are just hungry.”
Rosemary Rowe and Renee Olbert, Co-Creators of Seeking Simone
2. “Don’t be afraid to ask for advice, send emails, support other’s projects; you’d be surprised how many others out there are in the same boat as you and appreciate any advice or support you can give in return.”
Regan Latimer, Creator of B.J. Fletcher: Private Eye
3. “I would have prepared by taking vitamins, going to the gym, getting an MBA and learning how to talk in PR.”
Susan Miller, Executive Producer and Writer of Anyone But Me
4. “I now know… to line-up back-ups for my back-ups.”
David Nett, Creator and Executive Producer of GOLD
5. “I wish I would’ve known how to PROMOTE the show before we started making it.”
Robb Padgett, Creator of Life From The Inside
6. “[I] thought I’d have a finished product ready in two months. Oh, was this the underestimate of a lifetime.”
Justin Marchert, Creator of Big Bother
Tubefilter has an interesting 
