Spent the day at Challenge Day at Supernova. Not sure if I’ll be able to attend the rest of the conference Thursday and Friday, but today was rewarding. Spotted, met or spoke with: Susan Wu, Kevin Marks, Liz Lawley, Raph Koster, Deb Schultz, Mary Hodder, Jeff Schwartz, Brian Solis, Esme Vos, David Weinberger, Doc Searls, Shel Israel, Denise Howell, Greg Elin, Heather Gold, Sam Perry, Stephanie Booth, Reuben Steiger, host Kevin Werbach and lots of others.
Web video
A few highlights from today’s Web video panel:
Panelist Robert Scoble of Podtech: "We’re paying 14 cents a gigabyte to distribute video out to you."
Justin Kan of Justin.tv agrees: he’s paying 14 cents/gig.
Scoble is having another kid in September, yet no companies have contacted him to promote their brand or offer products for new parents to use. Traditional advertisers still aren’t grasping the possibilities of the online medium. "Five years from now, if I Twitter that I’m having a kid, I’ll bet a big company gets ahold of me within 30 minutes."
Scoble: "Facebook is the leading social network going forward. I don’t see anything else touching it." I agree. I need to upgrade my Facebook presence soon. It’s not just for students anymore.
I ask the panelists about the importance of web video hosting sites supporting downloads instead of just streaming, so that we can use, remix, mash up and comment on videos instead of just passively watching them. Some sites do this very well, like Blip.tv and PodTech.net. Others don’t, like YouTube (which supports just streaming and embeds) and Joost.
Scoble had a one word response: "iPhone." He then expanded on that: "Apple’s iPhone will force the industry to react to it. I can’t watch Justin.tv live through mpeg4." Steve Jobs will play kingmaker, deciding which content partners can be seen through the iPhone, due out next week.
If I have time, I’ll create an iPhone Content channel on Ourmedia, so that people can download videos to their iPhone that are cool and high-quality but don’t necessarily line Steve Jobs’ pockets.
Some sites mentioned during the panel:
Kyte.tv (from the guys at Joost), for mobile devices
Rewiring Politics
I moderated an afternoon panel today on Rewiring Politics, discussing how the Internet and new technologies are changing the dynamic between the electorate and elected officials, from political campaigns to governance in City Hall and Congress.
Spent 90 minutes throwing out questions to Julius Genachowski (Rock Creek Ventures/Obama ’08 and former chief counsel of the FCC), Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger (Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government) and Andrew Rasiej (founder, Personal Democracy Forum).
Greg Elin of the wonderful Sunlight Foundation had some advice for those who want social media technologies adopted by the presidential candidates: "It takes a log-ass time for this to happen." Don’t expect your favorite candidate to embrace these Internet technologies before they become widely adopted.
Some sites mentioned during the session:
David Cameron’s Webcameron
Mouse.org (an educational site for students)
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who put a Google MyMaps map on his congressional site chronicling the cities he visited in Iraq. (Oddly, it may have been taken down already because of possible violation of rules on the Hill.)
Later: Interesting Independent ticket for president possibility today on PBS’ NewsHour: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. They looked good together as a team. Especially with Bloomberg’s billions and 70% approval rating. Still a longshot, but with Bloomberg leaving the Republican Party, can no longer be discounted. Fascinating if there were three New York candidates on the ballot: Giuliani, Clinton and Bloomberg.
Update: New from John Zogby: President Bloomberg? Not such a longshot.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
At Supernova 2007