Professor Richard E. Foglesong: Married to the Mouse: Walt Disney World and Orlando
This is the first book that I am reading via the Kindle reader on my iPod touch. Great book that shows how Disney maneuvered its way into establishing Disney World as it's own pseudo government, free from the oversight and controls of traditional city, county and state control. Hardly, a slam piece, it shows how centralized planning can lead to a better, more fully conceived product (think: Apple), but also shows the pitfalls for eager cities and states willing to agree to any and all pre-conditions to secure major corporate patronage.
Robert B. Cialdini: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials)
One of my recurring interests is better understanding how to influence the actions of others. This book looks at the psychology and underlying trigger mechanisms, such as reciprocity, that drive people to act in the way that you want them to. Relevant to people in sales, marketers and pretty much anyone who wants to turn the gravity of persuasion to their advantage.
George Friedman: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century
Provocative, enjoyable, compelling read that makes the somewhat counter-intuitive argument that the next 100 years is destined to be the American Age (US), replacing the European Age, which has been the locus of gravity for the past 500+ years, and that our emerging counter-challengers will be Turkey, Mexico, Japan and Poland - not China or India.
Jessica Livingston: Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days
Not since I read Accidental Empires many years ago have I had so much joy and insight reading about the AHA moments, the blood, sweat and tears, the mistakes, the victories and the lessons learned in the birthing of tech startups like Apple, Lotus, Hotmail and a couple dozen other seminal companies. If you are an entrepreneur or want to know what being one feels like, this is a must read.
Ian Williams: Rum: A Social and Sociable History of the Real Spirit of 1776
The history of rum, with the exotic spirit as a key character in the founding of the United States. Next book in my Chatopic group, and a fun read so far.
Pip Coburn: The Change Function: Why Some Technologies Take Off and Others Crash and Burn
I have been ruminating a lot about the relationship between user experience and user adoption. Coburn is one of my favorite writers/analysts from back in the days of Red Herring, and this book focuses on the user experience/user-centered approach to solutions thinking. Personally, Inmates are Running the Asylum is a better book.
Lynn H. Nicholas: The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War
I actually just saw the DVD and blogged about it. Brilliant and compelling. Captures the shocking scale and systematic way that the Nazis sought to plunder the world's great art as part of their plan on world domination and re-making humanity, art and culture. Wow!
Alan Moore: Watchmen
Just finished this graphic novel, written by same author of V for Vendetta, one of my favorite all time movies. Watchmen is being released as a major motion picture early 2009, and this novel is a classic to many, but to me it fell a bit short of the promised target. Why? Characters interesting but not compelling, story arcs came together in a bit uninspired fashion, and left with a bit of a EH sensation.
Chogyam Trungpa: Crazy Wisdom (Dharma ocean series)
For serious Buddhist devotees, Trungpa is the late great master; a real gift. This series of books is derived from seminars he led, so beauty is that you get Trungpa's synopsis, then Q&A from audience and then of course your own interpretation; a great way to triangulate on complex topics. This is my second time reading, as this is a time for Crazy Wisdom (search for my post on the topic).
Barton Gellman: Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency
This is a classic, IMHO. Really gives a good sense of how government works and how Cheney drove executive branch to reclaim lost power (of that branch). Cheney's depth of detailed knowledge on everything - policy, law, protocol, people and process is pretty impressive. Raises all sorts of questions on the delineation between him and Bush, and how that defines culpability.
Total behind the scenes on key events, not partisan or editorializing but very strong analysis and excellent narrative from many of the key players.
« GoogleTube: what it all means... | Main | vSocial gets some love on ABC »
The unification of social networking and online video is upon us.
The video interview with Bambi Francisco of MarketWatch that follows capture's vSocial's vision and product strategy for participating in this exciting space.
This is the news release on the topic:
vSocial Launches vConnect, the Social Networking for Video Platform.
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I don't know if you are aware of this, but after your video is finished playing, vSocial "recommends" I watch a video on how trafficgeyser can game Google Search by spidering a video out to all of the video platforms on the Internet, and then letting it seed visitors.
Something that is very true about video is that presentation matters more when you are talking about quality. I can read Matt Cassamassina's IGN Nintendo Wii reviews and they sound great, but when he is on IGN-TV, his comments don't sound as poignant. I haven't really seen anyone using vSocial or YouTube or another video platform and combine it with great presence. Usually, people do one taping and post it to the Internet. The amount of effort needed to get a REALLY GOOD video production is underrated.
Video platforms have therefore created a predictable new need: good video production.
Without good video production, sloppy vlogs (is that the right buzzword?) might not capture as many users. When you are dealing with customers considering whether to spend $500 a month for a service, you are probably dealing with customers who are also looking to do the same thing as trafficgeyser.com: game Google.com PageRank. And it's a pretty honest way to do it: If you have great presentation skills, you deserve to be a heavily trafficked vlogger.
Posted by: John "Z-Bo" Zabroski | November 26, 2006 at 10:18 AM
To your point, John, there is no doubt in my mind that someone will relegate/elevate (depending on your perspective) really good CHEAP video production into a cottage industry.
In the traditional broadcast advertising industry SpotRunner is doing that with the video ad creation process, using categories, templates and custom voices overs with a media buy and fulfill logistics value proposition.
Cheers,
Mark
Posted by: Mark Sigal | December 27, 2006 at 11:16 AM
ah ha! Finally a good use for the reference to the Nixon/Kennedy debate often referred to “study” noting that most people that listened to the debate said Nixon won and most the viewed the debate thought Kennedy won. Apparently this is really just political folklore with no real study to reference.
http://www.pollster.com/blogs/did_nixon_win_with_radio_liste.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_Nixon_debates#Trivia
But who needs studies when the issue is as obvious as the one you raise. Yes, the explosion in video from 3 broadcast networks, and a few hundred local affiliates, to any one of the billion cameras sold capable of taking video and being distributed socially would clearly reduce the quality of video.
Even the artistic styles of editing MTVesque or reality TV violates earlier rules of editing. The art of the jump cut made trendy is just beautiful. In earlier days they would say the editor was just plain lazy.
Hooray for progress.
While part of me (the purest and older part) agrees with you about good video production taking time, heck just have some good lighting and it would improve a lot of the current video quality issues; the other part of me believes we are in a transition of all sorts and it's fun. It allows for all kinds of experimentation. More importantly I don’t need a million people to like my experiment for it to be a success. I just need a few thousand to tell two of their friends, and so it goes.
This is a transition of art, of substance, of responsibility. We are in uncharted waters and it will take time to determine what is acceptable in terms of quality. Some accept the lack of video polish as sincerity, honesty.
Some excellent production houses actually go for the “Gonzo” look.
I listened to Martin Nisenholtz speak at the Streaming Media East show in May. He is the Senior VP of Digital Operations of the New York Times. He noted a common theme from one of the New York Times web site readers and now viewers since the Times has several video reports on its website. He said readers appreciated that some of the reporters looked uncomfortable being on camera as it conveyed to them a more human aspect to the story. Another comment was that the video stories were better journalism than stories on television news because the print reporter was trained to go after a deeper side of the story.
Any way you look at it, it’s a great time to be in a profession that involves communicating. I leave you with a gripping story that while penned by a New York Times journalist, Manny Fernandez, the emotions you’ll feel are mostly attributed to the medium of video. It’s called Johnny’s Cave about a homeless man’s plight in The Bronx. http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=7f5f12d1d283eab9a377567c6ee362b6cc76ceb7
Posted by: Albert Maruggi | June 03, 2007 at 06:34 PM
Hi
Looks good! Very useful, good stuff. Good resources here. Thanks much!
Bye
Posted by: rofovnifo | July 04, 2007 at 04:46 PM
Amazing how fast this is happening ... it's exploding and we're just at the tip of the iceberg.
Posted by: Partners in Grime | April 13, 2008 at 09:00 AM
Bambi is HOT!
Posted by: Robo | May 16, 2008 at 03:16 PM