I had the honor to participate in TLV 140 Conference, organized by Jeff Pulver. I was a part of a panel about Social TV with Dror Gil and Itay Samir

Here is the video archive of the panel (a bit choppy, but audio is great). Thanks Jeff for inviting us to speak and listen.

Like last year, I am a judge at TWS 2009, Israel's web start ups competition. Among the judges are Brian Solis, Meir Brand (CEO of Google Israel), Deb Schultz, Ayelet Noff , Jeff Pulver, and others.
Submit your startup by the 24th of June (yes! in two days!).

The event is taking place on the 13th of July.

See you all there!

140 Character Conference, Jeff Pulver's latest event is taking place in Mid June. The speaker list is very impressive, and encompasses some of the biggest names in Twitterverse and most forward thinking marketers around us.

If you are in NYC or tristate area - I recommend checking out this event.

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• Announcing: The "I am a Character" Contest (pulverblog.pulver.com)
• 140: The Twitter Conference - Who's in? (twittermaven.blogspot.com)

Last year I had the pleasure to help out Current.TV  in a piece about Israeli Hi-Tech. The show covered Garagegeeks, Jeff Pulver, Wix, Save an Alien, Nuconomy and other prominent Israeli figures. Enjoy!

Women in Media Project profiles influential, decision making and visionary women in the new media business. Our first profile is Kathryn Velvel Jones, from For Your Imagination. Why is she on the list? Read to find out.

Who Are You and What do you do? My name is Kathryn Velvel Jones and I am currently the Vice President of Branded and Sponsored Entertainment at For Your Imagination, a leading online media studio which develops, markets and distributes high-quality original Internet TV and web video series.

Tell us a bit about your background and history: At the core I am an actor. The most misunderstood thing about being an actor in NYC is that the hard part is getting the job- the hardest part is getting the audition. Despite reviews like "spectacular" and "excellent", despite a strong resume and a relatively prestigious education, there were some years I sent out over 1000 pictures and resumes only to get one audition and after ten years of struggling just to get auditions. Therefore I decided it was time to take charge of my own career and create my own opportunities. This new found sense of inspiration and purpose quickly led me to web video, a medium in which for a small amount of money and a great deal of focus and passion, I could greenlight my own projects. In 2006 I began producing and co-hosting a video podcast and quickly became immersed in the world of online video and social media, including serving as a co-organizer for Podcamp NYC. But it was in April of 2007 that I had my real aha! moment. One morning as I perused my twitter stream I saw a tweet by Chris Brogan announcing a live streamed talk show that afternoon with Chris and Jeff Pulver. Chris and Jeff's show was a revelation. The immediacy of the technology was simply amazing to me, and the sense of community that live streaming created was palpable. As I watched Chris and Jeff respond to viewers calls and chat messages in real time my heart began to pound,and I knew that there was something about this specific technology that spoke to me. 5 months later my company, Synchronis.tv premiered the first scripted web drama to stream live on the internet. Utilizing three cameras mixed in real time and streamed live to uStream my cast and crew of 20 produced ten, 10 minute episodes of the original drama "35". Although we streamed all all ten episodes on the absolutely tiniest of budgets, "35" was covered by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Mashable, Truemors, numerous blogs, and was a featured podcast in iTunes. It's hard to say who has inspired me most in the online world of self-starting entrepreneurs, but it was undoubtedly Jeff and Chris' first live broadcast that changed my life.
Most recently, along with my producing partner Charlie Oliver, I produced an unprecedented Live Webathon, Real Women Respond to Palin. This 8 hour online live event attracted over 17,000 unique viewers to the live stream and was covered in The Huffington Post among many other blogs.

What is your current position? What is your day to day work? As VP of Branded and Sponsored Entertainment at For Your Imagination I spend my days communicating with media buyers, brands and artists in pursuit of both sponsorships for our series as well as creating product integration and branded series opportunities for advertisers. What I love most about my job is the incredible team of people I get to work with.

Why did you chose new media as your field? Above and beyond my job at FYI, one of my greatest passions is to help build a much stronger and more accurate voice for women online, especially in online video. To that end I am currently working on a new series, Value Proposition, about an all female, all redheaded tech startup. This funny, moving, smart series chronicles a driven group or female entrepreneurs as they wade through diminishing budgets, unexpected law suits, unscrupulous VC's and ever changing expectations in pursuit of their dreams of IPO success. The series is comprised of both edited and live episodes, is aimed at the extremely lucrative and currently underserved female market as well as at the first adopter/technology crowd, and is currently seeking sponsorships.

Where will you be in 5 years? In five years I hope I have succeeded in more fully harnessing the accessibility and creative possibilities that social media and the web have to offer. I hope that my work will have inspired other women to enter careers in technology and online video, and that I will have participated in making online video more daring, more creative, more community based and more interactive.

How can our readers contact you? If you wish to get in touch with me please contact me at Kathryn at foryourimagination.com .

Why is she a part of the list? Kathryn brings with her passion, innovative storytelling, and extraordinary execution capabilities. As part of For Your Imagination, she also have the ability to execute bigger projects than before. We are looking forward to see what's next on her project list.

Social Media Jungle took place at Jeff Pulver's office on the 13th of November.

Here is Chris Brogan's presentation from the event:

Additional videos could be found here.

A gathering of international speakers from US and European media industry, startups, technology companies, interactive agencies, investors, TV stars and executives is taking place in Rosh Pina, Israel, on 5th-8th of November.

In the last 8 years, Rosh Pina Festival was all about the TV industry, positioning itself as the place to be for executives, creators and business people.

This year, Ami Giniger, head of Taya Media Group, the main organizer of the event, decided to extend the festival to digital media - and cover the effects of technology on the international media market. As a part of this change, Yossi Vardi became co-chair of the event.

Therefore, I was thrilled when asked by Taya to be the principal organizer of the digital track. For me, it is like being a kid in a candy store - creating an international conference in the topic I am so passionate about. Though require a lot of heavy lifting (and if you follow my twitter you know that), it is an exciting role, and I am happy to say that we are going to have an amazing event, with speakers from the local, US and European media and digital industry, research companies, and a lot of innovation and startups. And, yes, a lot of TV starts and celebs (let's face it, geeks are cool, celebs are.... at least as cool...)

Some of the speakers are well known in the Internet TV circles - we managed to get Mike Hudak from blip.tv out of his lavish NYC offices to the stages of Rosh Pina, as well as Robert Millis. Jeff Pulver will talk about disruption in the media industry. But that's not all. IDC Research will present NBC's Internet strategy, ESPN will present its multi-platform activities, H3G will present mobile TV case studies,Newtek's CEO, Jim Plant, will discuss live broadcasting,  and we are expecting some exciting presentations from Microsoft.

We decided to add a lot of innovation to the event. Therefore, after every panel, we will present a startup that is changing the media landscape. This angle makes the event the place to be for startups, investors and VCs.

Please email me for more information (kfir@pravdam.com). If you are interested in blogging about it, let me know, and please tag all relevant content with the following tag: Roshpinafestival08

Feel free to join our Facebook group as well. 

Stay tuned for more info about panels, speakers and cooperation opportunities.

Image by John Federico via Flickr

Though here on vacation, I am taking the opportunity to meet new and interesting people in NYC video and social media industry. Lucky for me, there are good people who are making it much easier:

- Jeff Pulver is hosting another legendary breakfast this morning

- Yaron Samid is hosting a NY Video 2.0 event tonight (thanks Bill!)

- Though I don't participate, I hear that PdF is a great event as well.

The local community is so vibrant, that you just can't miss a thing. Also met some very interesting and smart people one on one - details soon.

If you are coming to one of these events - come and say hi!

As soon as I return to Israel, I'll return to regular updates of this blog...

Om Malik anounced a new venture today called NewTeeVee Station, an editorial driven guide to online videos:

...NewTeeVee Station is your guide to online video, pointing you to hot new memes, following the emerging stars of the web, and just generally indexing this new entertainment medium. Whereas in the past we covered online video shows like Ask a Ninja, Obama Girl andWallstrip from a business perspective, now we’re also reviewing content for content’s sake...

....NTV Station features editorial reviews of online videos written by a team led by Liz Shannon Miller, who comes to us from Variety and the Daily Reel. We eliminate the static and bring to you videos that are actually good — but also the stuff that’s so bad it has everyone talking... When you visit the front page of NTV Station, you’ll see in one glance what’s hot at that very moment. Our editors monitor the online video universe and refresh the site with new videos throughout the day. A special widget developed using the VodPod API allows you to scroll through all of our past video picks....

I am a big fan of sites trying to make some sense of all the videos out there. In a past, I wrote a hotly debated post where I asked when would someone create an online HBO equivalent, and gang all the best video shows to one site. This is a form of content discovery in my opinion - a way to bring the best videos to my computer screen. Would Om answer my prayers?

Challenges ahead

Value

There were several initiative in this area, one of them was Jeff Pulver's Network2.tv. While N2 was aiming at being a definitive guide to all episodic video on the web, it seems that Om's effort is a mix of being IMDB and an editorial driven site, that does some filtering for the audience. What I am missing here is a clear value proposition, or, in other words, what exactly should I expect - the best videos? The hottest videos? All the "good" videos?

Definition of Quality

One of the trickiest issues in the world of online video is the definition of quality. How can the editor in NTV know what's good for me? Though philosophical in nature, it is a major challenge, that I'd love to hear Om's opinion about.

User Interface

Last but not least, user interface is one of the biggest challenges in online video today. Looking at the current interface of most video recommendation sites, one would see the same scroll down page with x amount of videos. This interface works for YouTube, but in my opinion should be improved. NewTeeVee is built as a blog, and as such it is well designed. As a video interface - not so good IMHO:

1. Almost one-third of the screen is dedicated to promotion, ad space, and other money making machines.

2. Viewers need to scroll down in order to see recommended shows.

3. Video player is covering a small amount of the screen - while it is supposed to be the dominant experience

4. Users need to click at least twice to start playing a video

My belief is that online video interfaces should be, well, video interfaces. I'd like to see a site with a dominant video player, where users could navigate and find the best videos for them. This way, the video experience is the dominant one, and not the textual interface.

I hope that Om will be successful in this project - the web certainly needs one!

 

Image via Wikipedia

- Jeff Pulver gives advice to college graduates

-Cult of Mac has new details about the new iPhone - or not...

- blip.tv hosts some of Revision3's shows

- MacVideo has an amazing interview with Walter Murch, The Godfather editor, about Final Cut and Avid

Have a great day!

If you see an interesting story that I should refer to, please email me