Quotes and photos from Pixelodeon

I had more fun at the first Pixelodeon videoblogging/filmmaking conference in Hollywood than I’ve had at any conference this year. Made some great contacts and learned a few things, too. Congrats to Jay, Ryan, Zadi and Steve for putting on a great event.

I put on an hourlong workshop with Markus Sandy on Ourmedia’s new channels feature, and I sat in on Dave Toole and Michael Verdi showing off SpinXpress as a free collaboration tool for digital media producers.

Here’s a large Flickr photo set of shots I took at the conference. And here’s the Flickr pool of the conference.

It was fantastic to meet folks like Abra Chouinard of TotalMMO.com, Veronica Belmont of CNET, Casey McKinnon and Rudy Jahchan of Galacticast, Jacqulyn Joy and Cornelia Gibrand of Richprettygirl, Daniel Liss of Pouringdown.tv, Drew Olanoff of Pluggd and others, and to hang with friends like Harold Johnson, Mikki Krimmel, Mike Hudack, Eric Rice, Rob Parrish and many others. I conducted a boatload of video interviews, so I’ll be posting those over the next month.

Here are some notes, quotes and observations from Pixelodeon that I haven’t been able to post until now.

Some of the trippier videoblog sites that received screenings here (the organizers plan to put all of the screened videos online): Channel101, Carp Caviar’s bottomunion.com, tomatopatch.com, alienresident.net and aaronvaldez.com.

From DivX CEO Jordan Greenhall’s opening keynote: “For God’s sake, go with the wave” [of the personal media revolution].

Remarks by Kent Nichols of AskaNinja.com:

“Audio is the most important thing” in a video.

“We cut out the second camera angle because it was too much hassle. Coverage is for pussies.”

During editing, “make it faster than you think you should.”

Ninja co-founder Douglas Sarine had the best line of the conference: “I personally believe that what we call ADD [attention deficit disorder] is actually the evolution of our species.”

Quotes from the Saturday keynote by Fred Seibert, founder of MTV who’s now the head of Nextnewnetwork.com:

"The world doesn’t care anymore" about intellectual property and copyright. "When the history of our era is written, the 20th century will be seen as the century of copyright, and the 21st century as the century that led to the dissolution of copyright. From the moment the Xerox machine was born, it meant the end of copyright."

Dan Harmon, the off-the-wall, out-there genius who executive-produced the pilot for the Sarah Silverman Program, at Sunday’s keynote:

In response to a question, he said, "Copyrighted music. Fuck it. Use it." (Cheers from the capacity crowd of 300.) "You’re not making any money off it. … Your biggest defense is being broke." An assumption that is only half valid, given that some of us own homes.

"When you’ve created something really amazing, they’ll come find you. They [Hollywood] will come knocking down your door."

"You’ll make money in the long run if you stop giving a shit about money."

In its lawsuit against YouTube, "Viacom is defying the laws of the universe."

"Don’t aspire to be like ‘real TV.’ [Real TV is screwed up.] It’s all about maximizing profits. … [Junior executives are running around] trying to show their bosses that they’re 2010-compliant" and their network won’t die under the onslaught of Internet programming.

Rob Schrab, Harmon’s partner, who executive produced the Sarah Silverman Program for Comedy Central and executive produced Acceptable.tv for VH1, at the same keynote on not fixating on financial costs: "The universe will provide if you give it back."

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.