Talking with Al Gore in My PJ

I was sick last week, and that's why I didn't post anything lately. Now I am back to work, and this blog will be updated as usual.

Digitas produced a great event called Digital Content Newfront couple of weeks ago, as a part of NYC Internet Week.

And I was an active participant, even though I was thousands of miles away.

The event covered brand marketing strategies, and was keynoted by Al Gore, who discussed Viewers Generated Ads, a strategy that let viewers create ads for brands. Mr. Gore talked extensively about the need for authenticity in brand marketing, a tricky topic for cigarettes and oil companies.
I was interested to hear Al Gore's take on that - so with a simple twit, I've sent a question to the conference, from my living room in Israel. My friend Jon Burg who was moderating incoming twitter questions, asked the question at the event - and Gore responded simply by saying that they don't work with such companies. I was a part of the whole thing as I watched the live video feed from NYC.
The amazing part of the story is not that I was able to see a video stream of a remote event and ask a question. This was done before with ustream and blog.tv. The important point here is that these technologies are now mature enough:

• The video feed was crisp and almost without any buffering. From urls of the event I believe it is the work of Bitgravity, an affordable HD CDN.
• The room was covered with multiple cameras using Tricaster , a low cost video mixer.
• And Twitter was pretty stable.

So I was in my PJ, at home, talked with one of the brightest minds, Al Gore, all thanks to usable, affordable technologies.

The Physical walls are falling. The only barrier for communication is willingness.

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