Broadband Jungle Blog

Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation at AFI DigiFest 2009, a Gerber Rigler project

AFI DigiFest, Los Angeles, November 04, 2009:

Clips of out team presenting a proposed online strategy for engaging youth in a series of relevant environmental action challenges for the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.

Digital Hollywood Content Summit May 5 - Discount Registration

Just announced: Full Agenda. Click Here.
Special Discount Registration Fees for the Content Summit.
All-Event - Digital Hollywood Ticket - Per Person
Covers all-events all days - seatiing is first-come-first served
$95 - Under-Employed, Layed-Off, Part-time
$135 - Self-Employed Production, Technology or Start-Up (Non-VC Funded)
$75 - Students (in groups of 5 or More - See instructions below)
$300 - Technology or Entertainment Startup- (VC - Corporate Funded)
To Register Online - Click Here

Digital Hollywod Content Summit

Our Gerber Rigler Executive Consulting brainchild has hatched in collaboration with Digital Hollywood and is ready to fly:

The inaugural Digital Hollywood Content Summit takes place on Tuesday, May 5 at the Loews Hotel in Santa Monica during the Spring '09 conference of Digital Hollywood.

Click HERE for full agenda.

Tim Kring, creator of NBC's hit series "Heroes" will participate in a keynote conversation and various film, television and new media organizations are presenting panels.

Among them the AFI Digital Content Lab, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, ASIFA Hollywood, the IDA, the WGA and others about to come on board.

During a series of panels on Tuesday, May 5 we're planning to take content creators in our industry through the creative process: Development, Funding, Production, Distribution, Animation, Cause-driven social marketing, and the re-invention of the studio model for the new media age.

Summit Produced by: Gerber Rigler Producing and Executive Consulting for Digital Hollywood

Summit Pricing:
$135 regular, $95 for Affiliate members (Tuesday, May 5th Only)
Digital Hollywood Pass - Full - 4 Day Pass - Includes the Summit - $685 - Regular - $585 for Affiliate Members

To Register - Click Here.

Here's a quick tease for what's in store.

The Amazing Line-Up:
David Gale, SVP New Media, MTV Networks; Danila Koverman, Director, HBOlab at HBO; Alexis Rapo, Vice President, ABC Digital Media; John Gilles, Vice President Media & Entertainment, Method; Suzanne Stefanac, Director, AFI Digital Content Lab; David Norton, VP Brand Integration, Ladder Up Media; Mark Vega, Partner/IP Steward, Omelet; Josh Bycel, Co-Executive Producer, Psych (USA Network); Adam Armus, Co-Executive Producer, Heroes (NBC); Jacob Rosenberg, CTO Bandito Brothers; Laura Nix, Director/Producer, Felt Films; John Hamburg, Writer/Director, I Love You Man & Along Came Polly; Adam Drucker, Casting Producer, A&E’s Intervention, Amazing Race; Scott B, Director / Cinematographer, Vortex, LA Coroner; Eva Orner, Academy Award winning producer, Taxi to the Dark Side; Jeffrey Tuchman, Emmy & Peabody Award winning filmmaker, Jamison Tilsner,! Co-founder, The Streamy Awards; Adam Chapnick, President, DocWorkers; Scott Hamilton Kennedy, Writer/Director, The Garden; Rick Allen, CEO, SnagFilms; Peter Yared, CEO, iWidgets; Steve Savage, Co-principal, New Video; Eddie Schmidt, President of the board, IDA; Dave Vamos, Founder, Six Point Harness Studios; Aaron Simpson, Founder, Cold Hard Flash, Lineboil.com; Jorge Gutierrez, Creator “El Tigre,” Nickelodeon; John Andrews, SVP, Klasky Csupo, ka-chew!; Antranig Manoogian, President, ASIFA Hollywood; Glasgow Phillips, Writer, South Park, Kung Fu Panda; Micki Krimmel, Founder Sugar Packet, Inc, Mickipedia.com; Robert Bahar, Filmmaker, Made in LA; Melissa Fitzgerald, Actor & Filmaker, The West Wing, Voices of Uganda; Marc Morgenstern, Executive Director, Declare Yourself; Juan Devis, Director of Production, KCET New Media; Charles Annenberg Weingarten, Founder, Explore.org; Brian Sirgutz, President, Causecast

Presidential Redesign: Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov

YouTube embeds from the White House homepage? Obama's cracking new media team didn't lose a second and relaunched what appears to be a cleaned up and user-friendly WhiteHouse.org while the nation was watching the inauguration this morning.

Mark Hefflinger reports for Digital Media Wire:

"The official website of the president, Whitehouse.gov, experienced a dramatic makeover at 12 P.M. ET today, just as Barack Obama was being sworn in and giving his inauguration speech.

The redesign features some of the same interactive elements that were present on Obama's campaign website, including a place where people can sign up for email updates from the President and his administration, an "Agenda" section that lists the administration's positions on major issues, and a new White House blog."

Macon Phillips, Director of new Media (!!) for the the White House expands on the newly established  White House Blog: 

'A short time ago, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States and his new administration officially came to life. One of the first changes is the White House's new website, which will serve as a place for the President and his administration to connect with the rest of the nation and the world.

Millions of Americans have powered President Obama's journey to the White House, many taking advantage of the internet to play a role in shaping our country's future. WhiteHouse.gov is just the beginning of the new administration's efforts to expand and deepen this online engagement.

Just like your new government, WhiteHouse.gov and the rest of the Administration's online programs will put citizens first.'

According to Phillips, the White House's new media efforts will revolve around the following:
Communication, Transparency, Participation.

Sounds like any other successful social networking community out there trying to connect...
Fantastic to have not only Our Guy in office, but also to finally have our guys in the office.

Aaron Sorkin comeback kid

The Onion recently announced a new passion project by my most favorite screenwriter since  Paddy Chayefsky: West Wing, Studio 60 and Sports Night creator Aaron Sorkin was to enter production for a return of the 'The West Wing - The Santos Administration' as an animated series, finally without any of the restrictions he had to endure on Network television.

"The costs of live-action production restricted me to a set only slightly larger than the actual White House and an ensemble cast of under 15 actors. But animation technology will enable us to provide fans with extended 40-minute walk-and-talks, digitally compressed dialogue for faster delivery, and a cast of over 70 main characters. My vision will finally be presented in its truest, most uncompromised form."

A few days later, Aaron Sorkin actually did start a new project, this time in the form of a Facebook group. The group doesn't appear to be just another fan page, but almost the exact opposite: In preparation for a movie Sorkin is to pen about Facebook's founders for Sony Pictures and producer Scott Rudin, the author decided to learn about Facebook users in their natural habitat and parachuted straight into the community.

Within hours, the floodgates opened and die-hard West Wing fans started to crawl Sorkin's wall in an attempt to seize the opportunity to finally ask all the questions we had about Toby, Josh and President Bartlet. No idea how long poor Sorkin's going to keep up answering fan mail online, but so far he's been incredibly courteous, taking the time to provide lengthy answers to even lengthier questions and adulations. And even handle snide comments from former West Wing staffer Joshua Molina.

No coincidence probably for both announcements to fall during the week the Democratic  National Convention rumbled through the country: While wiping surprise tears  from my cheeks during Al Gore's speech I recalled how big a part in the healing, possibly mental survival of liberal-minded viewers The West Wing played during the early years of the outgoing administration:

Giving us episode after episode of Super-President Bartlet in the White House, surrounded by his wise-cracking, un-intimidated  gang of invincible advisers kicking Republican butt was nothing short of creating an alternate reality for the traumatized majority of liberal voters in this country. We even got Martin Sheen re-elected in one of the most memorable campaigns ever, and that in-spite of MS and Stockard Channing dangerously looming over him...

Taping every single episode of these first three pre-tivo seasons to vhs, The West Wing for a while stood in for my only interaction with everyday politics. In my house, The West Wing and Aaron Sorkin were king. (And oh, how much did we want Studio 60 to succeed, especially since it took place in my own industry...).

Can't wait for his treatment of the Facebook generation, even though it should probably be a series of interactive low-budget webisodes instead of a flush studio picture, but hey, we'll take what we get from the master.

The West Wing's premiere on NBC and the start of The Sopranos on HBO, both in the fall of 1999, could be viewed as the beginning of what Robert McKee calls the Golden Age of Television. That's simply how good television drama had become all of a sudden. And the bar still stands.

Here the credit sequence of act 1 of The West Wing's pilot episode:
It's a nice morning Mr McGarry. - We'll take care of that in a hurry, won't we Mike?

The Twitter Interview

Very thoughtful interview on Bambi Francisco's Vator TV with  Twitter founder and CEO Jack Dorsey. Jack very comprehensively describes the evolution of the 140 character utility from IM-supplement to social news wire that's being successfully embraced by big brands.

It all makes sense when you learn that Twitter's CEO and co-founder ... spent 15 years writing dispatch software for couriers, taxis and 911.

IDA DocU panel at Kodak: The Broadband Generation

Moderated a new media panel for the IDA in June...watch Daniel Tibbets of GoTV Networks, R.Blank from Almer/Blank, Hayden Black from Goodnight Burbank and Abigail, Daniel Paul from ManiaTV, John Canning from Media Sherpa and Ryan Stoner from branded content agency Omelet fight it out over important stuff like:

Is television really over?  Yes and no.

Are we currently re-inventing storytelling? You bet.

iWidgets - Socialize your Brand

Ever wondered what would happen if Facebook applications weren't so damn expensive and so hard to produce?
What if any advertiser, media company or even the tiniest non-profit had access to a widget-building service to get their message out?
And not only on Facebook and MySpace but onto every social networking platform, blog, video community, dashboard or website destination?

Too good to be true?

iWidgets recently released just such a tool into public beta, and apparently made quite a stir at Facebook f8 last week. No wonder really, considering the lineage: The brains behind iWidgets is Silicon Valley veteran Peter Yared,  formerly CTO at  Active Grid,  Sun Microsystems and Net  Dynamics. The refreshingly opinionated founder assembled quite a team to provide the first  application builder that handles smoothly like Photoshop and puts native widget technology into the hands of every power user with a story to share out there.

"iWidgets is about giving you the ability to rapidly produce, publish, and promote engaging interactive widgets for your customers with an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop interface. iWidgets takes full advantage of the features of destination platforms, such as profile information or social graphs, so you can mix your website's data with your customers' social data and maximize the experience."

If you still need help figuring out the need for widgets, read up on these apps in a comprehensive article Peter wrote for Business Week.

Check out this informative video tutorial and then quickly build your own!

TED Talks: Chris Abani

The mighty novelist and poet Chris Abani will leave you speechless.

This clip from a TED talk he gave this past February in Monterey introduces us to a master storyteller at the top of his art: In the talk, Abani skillfully sets us up for innocent expectations of his Nigerian childhood, feeds into them with cheerful stories about his beloved, opinionated British mother, only to gently tear us apart with tales of police brutality, teenage imprisonment and heart-breaking acts of kindness, often from complete strangers.

In Abani's own words:

What I've come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion. Every day acts of compassion.

Watch this clip on Telling stories of our shared humanity, or an older one on Learning the stories of Africa from the 2007 TED conference. Then have a good cry. Then go & buy the books.

Zannel

For everyone not yet familiar with social networking / mobile / vc2 community Zannel: Consider giving the Zillion Channels destination a spin.

Launched in March 07 and recently upgraded to full blown networking capabilities, Zannel  already engages 100.000 plus members in instant chatting, mobile video and photo upload. With cool new widgets available, the site could be described as the Brightcove in the mobile space or 'Twitter with Pictures and Video' (recently in a terrific write-up in TechCrunch).

The model is clear and simple: Users create profiles and in return receive their personalized channels that can be shared and connected to any number of friends. Particularly impressive: Blazing-fast upload speeds that put the service ahead of its competition. In a recent  ad-hoc demo from Zannel staffers during a meeting in Santa Monica, a test clip shot midway during a conversation made it straight into Zannel in between two sips of decaf-latte. I'm not kidding.

Co-founded under the guidance of serial web entrepreneur Steve Hoffman last summer, Zannel also integrates its sizeable online following into the mobile experience.  I'm comfortable to predict lots of Zannel-surfing in the near future and plenty of room for everyone, including Kyte.