Behind the curtains at PepsiCo HQ for Internet Week Innovation Summit
Online Influencers Talk Social Media Shop @ PepsiCo Internet Week
Social Media Guru Panel at PepsiCo Internet Week
Pepsico Preview: The High Line Transforms
Oh, what to say about the High Line – there’s so much! Yesterday, Dorian, a few others and I were guests of Pepsico and Friends of the High Line and taken on a special tour of the newly renovated elevated railway between W. 13th and W. 20th St.
The landscape is absolutely beautiful, but its impact is even greater if you understand it’s beginnings. We were lucky enough to get a chance to walk through the undeveloped area off of W. 34th St. to take in the contrast. I had assumed this part of the High Line would be under construction, but that was not the case. In fact, it may never be if current negotiations fail between Friends of the High Line and the railway.
With the photomotion video below, I wanted to show you the area as it is naturally, an overgrown, abandoned, rundown freight railway that has huge potential, which you can see transformed in the current space now open to the public. It’s a place for community, which I hope you all have a chance to enjoy. The song in the video is called Lewis & Clark by Camp Firewood, which is fitting given the High Line’s story. Big thanks to my friend Lucas Kavner who gave me permission to use the song!
It may not seem obvious at first, but there is an Internet Week angle in this story as well. Friends of the High Line used the viral power of the Web and other means to reach out to communities interested in preserving the abandoned space. The lesson here is if you feel strongly about something, share your support, evangelize and come together with others to enact change. The High Line is a great example of communities joining together and doing just that.
What happens when film and the Internet collide? The answer is more than a movie.
How do you build an audience using online tools and make money? That’s a big question for filmmakers today. There are so many ways to communicate online, it can be overwhelming, but the real way to find financial freedom and distribution all comes down to targeting the right audience.
During Internet Week IndieGoGo hosted, “Where film and Internet collide,†a panel discussion with filmmakers Gary Hustwit (Objectified, Helvetica), Christopher Roberts (The Believer, House of Satisfaction) and Noah Harlan (The 41st Blow). Scott Kirsner, author of “Fans, Friends and Followers,†led the panel as everyone gave their take on how to effectively use the Internet to build an audience and gain funding.
Hustwit kicked off the conversation by discussing his approach to documentary work, which is very targeted to niche audiences.
“I use documentaries to find out more about what I’m interested in – things people take for granted, where there’s a whole world behind,†Hustwit said.
This approach has proven successful for Hustwit who raised $75,000 for the film by selling merchandise, such as T-shirts and posters, via his blog before Objectified was released.
“If you’re not open to letting the Internet in than you’re blocking yourself from a powerful energy source,†Kirsner said to an agreeable panel.
Other key learning’s from the discussion include:
–Start blogging (at least nine months) way before the film’s release to connect with your audience. Building an audience before a film’s release is much easier than having to create interest after the fact.
–Be creative with your blog and make it intellectually interesting– invite guest posts, anything that will bring more of your audience to your site.
–Merchandise! Sell posters, shirts and merchandise related to your film to the fans. Sometimes something tangible is more enticing than a donation alone.
–Talk don’t just Tweet – screen your film in person not just online as it gives people a bigger reason to see your film if they have the opportunity to ask questions face to face.
-Gather email addresses & zip codes, so you understand the regional interest. Use sites like Eventful.com to determine where fan bases.
- Once you’ve established interest, look into corporate screening and speaking opportunities that are in line with your audience. Hustwit recently showed Objectified to designers at Nike.
IndieGoGo’s Slava Rubin: What fan empowerment means for indie filmmakers
IndieGoGo sponsored three film events this week: a Q&A and screening of Pressure Cooker at IFC, a panel covering “where film and Internet collide” and a filmmaker’s cocktail mixer where I caught up with Slava Rubin, one of the company’s founders.
It’s natural for independent filmmakers, musicians or any artists to put business on hold while they focus solely on content creation, but resistance won’t help with distribution. IndieGoGo aims to help filmmakers raise money and awareness, find cast and crew, and gain credibility for their film through the help of fans. On the flip side, fans get the opportunity to be a part of the creative process while receiving insider access and VIP perks for their contribution.
“If you have content you can engage your audience with than they will take part,” Rubin said, adding that the key is to identify and cultivate the right audience.
“There’s been a lot of success stories (on IndieGogo)” Rubin said. “From people raising $5 to over $22,000, people winning awards like SXSW and all the social media integration is free for them to use, so it’s not by accident that its starting to catch on.”
For more on film crowdsourcing, check out my interview with Rubin below.
At Least for Today, It’s Still a Google World.
Google Sales Rep Michelle Vincent
Weathermen across the state of New York predicted rain, but the sun won and offered a patio cocktail party at FIT on Monday evening for the Google 101 Training sponsored by the National Alliance of Market Developers (NAMD). After wine and cheese were passed around, Christopher Mack, the VP of Communications for NAMD, gave a brief intro about the alliance, which was founded in 1953. It was created to promote the African American consumer market and these days they are working to help salespeople and marketing teams understand targeted marketing. The alliance continues to promote networking and building marketing based on the African American consumer.
Michelle Vincent, a sales rep at Google, took over the meeting to answer basic and not-so-basic questions about Google with an emphasis on teaching how to use some of the company’s newest and coolest technology for advanced searches. It was an in-depth tutorial of the icon we now call Google.
Michelle did drop hints about Google Wave and how excited she and her team are to get to play with it, but confessed that she hasn’t actually gotten it, yet.
The session began with some simple and basic searches and a mild explanation of the Google Algorithm, which uses relevance to place things at the top of your everyday searches. Before I could focus on the words, we were talking about Google Insight and how it actually forecasts the future and offers marketers a place to view what people are thinking, doing and reading about. Here’s the blur of brilliance leading up to Insight.
There are new additions to Image, now; there is a similar search option to specify down to a color in the photo. Site Search allows users to do a general search on a specific site by typing “site: name of websiteâ€. There’s the new Public Data aspect that pulls mass amounts of information from the census bureau and can then aggregate the search findings into a graph form. Finally, my favorite is Hot Trends on iGoogle – it’s a snapshot of the hottest rising searches in the past hour! You can see immediately what is on people’s minds. Nothing soothes the mind, body and soul like this kind of instant gratification!
Now, take trends a step further with Insight and tweak the trending topics down to a specific region…or compare years…the possibilities are ENDLESS and make my job as a journalist even easier. When I need a story idea, this is the first place to shop.
Finally, for all you swine flu followers, there’s always Google Flu Trends.
Zannel: Your One Stop Update Shop
The men of Zannel, Braxton Woodham, CTO; Adam Zbar, CEO; Harry Evans, VP Technology
Zannel allows users to instantly share their personal updates, videos and photos to all their favorite social sites, including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, WordPress, Typepad and more. One update hits all of the sites you have linked to Zannel. It won a Webby in 2008 and was founded by Adam Zbar, CEO, Braxton Woodham, CTO, Harry Evans, VP Technology, and Steve Hoffman, former COO. Here is my Q&A with Adam and Braxton who couldn’t attend Internet Week this year due to the Zannel demands, but agreed to a cross-country interview with me, anyway.
Kelly Will: Who developed the program and how long did it take you guys to perfect it?
Adam Zbar: The product/platform was built by the development team that built the largest mobile media/ring tone platform in North America. They have been working together in the mobile space since 2001. Key team members include Braxton Woodham, CTO, Harry Evans, VP Technology, Scott Bendar, VP of Engineering, and John Yin, VP of Product. The initial platform was completed in eight months, and has been refined over the past 2.5 years based on input from our users and partners.
KW: What phones have you created apps for so far?
Braxton Woodham: Zannel has developed the iPhone App for major artists to stay connected with their fans on and off tour. The artist-branded app allows fans to view exclusive multimedia updates from the artist, to follow the tour on a map, and to purchase tickets, music and merchandise. Zannel is currently porting our app to the Palm Pre, Blackberry, and Android platforms. The mobile website has a sophisticated SMS/MMS/PSMS platform and it supports all mobile phones in North America.
KW: What artists might we know and love that are working with you today?
AZ: We recently launched the Dane Cook Global App and it has been a top 5 featured app by Apple. Other big users are Blink-182, Keith Urban and KISS… just to name a few. Zannel has also partnered with over 50 media companies since launch including Warner Bros., Playboy, Universal Pictures, Ubisoft, EMI, Road and Track Magazine and Versaly.
KW: Do users have to pay for Zannel?
AZ: It is a free, ad-supported service. Users only pay for premium content from artists via our paid iPhone Applications and premium SMS programs. For these products, Zannel offers pay-per-download, subscription-based services, as well as the upsell of artist music, tickets, and merchandise.
KW: So tell me about your user – what’s their preferred method of communiqué?
AZ: Zannel has millions of users and I would say that most access the service via their mobile phone vs. the web.
This last question is not for the faint of heart, but for all you true techies…
KW: Now give me the technical dish that will fly right over my very blonde and occasionally ditzy head!
BW: Zannel’s Instant Media Messagingâ„¢ platform is a cloud hybrid. The platform has core infrastructure that was initially deployed in 2006 (Linux/Apache/Java/Postgres) and uses Amazon EC2/S3 for media distribution. In addition to Zannel’s native iPhone applications, the platform supports both mobile and web browsers, and transcodes media to support over 800 mobile phone models. Zannel also has an open, REST based API for developers that is described here: http://groups.google.com/group/zannel-developers/web/overview.
Set up your Zannel account at www.zannel.com
Farewell Internet Week
I heard about Internet Week months before and I knew I wanted to be apart of this; however, I couldn’t have realized how much I would be able to learn over a period of a few days. I’m pleased to say that one of my majors in college was New Media. Basically this was a focus in Social Media and I never thought that I would be able to use social networks the way that I do now. From there, I moved on to doing PR for Digital Recording Artists in 2002. Since they only existed online, we were using various platforms to provide them visibility. I was excited to interact with their fans whether they were in the states or in Italy and Japan as was the case for many of them.
This love for Social Media, led me to focus on my love of fashion and I launched various blogs and found myself creating Kitten Lounge which covers fashion, style, beauty, food and music. Through this site, I not only publish daily posts but I also utilize various apps and widgets to share my message and to understand what my readers want from me. This assists me in my jewelry line, Kitten Couture as well and I love the feedback! Finally, my love for social media allows me to work as a consultant to various companies within fashion, beauty and even financial sectors. Sikara Designs Group educates my clients on the importance of this tool and also explains that this is not a stand alone practice but one they should integrate with their existing strategies.
I share all this to say that my world runs between fashion and social media and I spend time talking with others about what works for them or reading as much as I can online. To be apart of this experience was truly moving as the excitement that was felt in each event was full of possibility! Ideas flowed and since many of us work on various projects, it was wonderful to see someone share something that I would have never thought about on my own. Internet Week brought many concepts together whether you develop apps, are at the stage of obtaining funding or more. Although it’s impossible to get to all the events, the idea that so many functions were available and with the Social Communicators and others reporting this, we have an amazing archive that we can refer to! I appreciate everyone that I met and those who have remained in contact or will continue to in the future. I also love the ideas that I learned whether they’re something that I will be able to act upon or simply think about as I move on to future projects. In terms of my projects, these panels will definitely help me when I work with my clients as I can understand their concerns which will only be beneficial to our relationship and their audience as well.
Target Digiday - You’re Answers Start From Questions
I began today with mixed feelings - the last day of Internet Week. This day was high on my list as I knew that it would be one that would have a lot of information that I was interested in at Target Digiday! Today’s favorite panel would be the one that talked about targeting your audience via the use of apps and widgets. I went in thinking that they would discuss the ultimate app/widget (although I think there isn’t such a thing as everything must be tailored to the company) and instead, questions were posed that made me think about social media in a new way. My favorite question - ‘Are social networks meant to generate data about your audience or do you use it as a means to share your message’? This question has so many answers and I’m not sure if there are only two answers (using one over the other - it could be a mix). But it definitely says something that I say to clients I have worked with, you have to wonder what social networks are right for you and how you will use them to engage with your audience. Engagement isn’t about talking “at” but “with” and truly valuing the feedback that you’re given so that you can be fully aware of what is needed from you! This is an essential point to consider and the more detailed the answer and your attempts to extract or to utilize the meeting to transmit your thoughts, you’ll also have to wonder about the blurred lines of privacy versus finding the answers to these questions. Here is a snippet of the panel where the moderator posed questions for the panel to answer. In addition, I loved how people were texting their questions and it was placed on the board so that he could engage the audience!
