Deep Media

The Kaltura Hackathon: What's next for video?

When Kaltura, the company whose open-source video platform is used by everyone from the World Bank to Columbia Business School to HBO, asked me to be a judge for last week's Video Experience Hackathon, I was quick to say yes. With $50,000 in prize money, it was a sure bet to draw people with some cool ideas. So last Wednesday, on the final day of the annual Kaltura Connect conference in New York City, I sat down with IBM cloud services CTO Mac Devine, Sherpa Digital Media's Ben Chodor, and Zohar Babin of Kaltura to take a look.

The hackathon had taken place over a 43-hour period the previous weekend. By the time we got there, the 12 teams that submitted working applications had been narrowed down to four finalists. We were asked to judge them on four criteria: innovation and creativity (how original is the idea? does it offer a real solution in the market?), polish (does it feel hacked together, or is it well thought out?), design and user experience, and use of software tools provided by the sponsors—Kaltura, cloud hosting company Rackspace, and automated voice transcription outfit VoiceBase.

 

Jason Silva on the state of wonder

The Biological Advantage of Being Awestruck - by Jason Silva on Vimeo.

I've been reading a lot lately on the evolutionary advantages of storytelling—first in Brian Boyd's monumental On the Origin of Stories, which treats art in general and stories in particular as an adaptive response, and now in Jonathan Gottschall's The Storytelling Animal, which describes fiction as "a powerful and ancient virtual reality technology that simulates the big dilemmas of human life." So when Jason Silva (who was featured in conversation on this blog last month) posted a video the other day about the evolutionary edge that stems from the state of wonder, I took notice. 

Jason's video was inspired by his own reading—in particular, Nicholas Humphrey's Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness, which the Times Book Review described as "exuberant," and Ross Andersen's "Golden Eye," an essay on the marvels of deep space that appeared in the LA Review of Books. Jason borrowed the title for his video from Humphrey, but the exuberance is all his own. Enjoy. 

Peter Weyland of "Prometheus" makes a surprise appearance at TED: 'Allow me to introduce myself.'

Yesterday saw the release of one of the most compelling TED talks ever: Peter Weyland's in the year 2023. Of course, 2023 hasn't really happened yet, and neither has Sir Peter. But both will arrive soon enough—in June, to be precise, with the release of Ridley Scott's Prometheus. The TED talk—performed by Guy Pearce, who plays the seriously overreaching CEO of Weyland Corp. in the film—is one of those great in-fiction artifacts that make the boundary between entertainment and reality so fungible these days. 

The Art of Immersion on YouTube: IPG's Chad Stoller on viral video and Twitter as branded entertainment

 

Several months ago, as I was finishing a video on the making of The Art of Immersion, Paul Woolmington of Naked Communications suggested I use the book's YouTube channel to create a conversation about the issues the book raises—for example, how the Internet blurs the distinction between author and audience, story and game, entertainment and marketing, fiction and reality. It's taken awhile, what with my travel schedule and a bit of consulting work I've taken on, but the idea is finally being realized. First up: Chad Stoller, managing director of the newly opened IPG Media Lab in New York, on the blurring of entertainment and marketing—otherwise known as branded entertainment. 

'That's Brisk, baby!' (Part 2): What needs to happen for branded content to work

Everywhere I go this year, I seem to run into a branded content discussion. From DIY Days in New York, to the “Brisk: Machete” panel I did with Robert Rodriguez and Danny Trejo at SXSW interactive, to the Branded Content Salon I spoke at at LBi London, to Morgan Spurlock’s POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold at Hot Docs and Sheffield, the idea that brands can commission entertainment instead of merely advertising in it keeps popping up. The subject is not entirely new, of course: the term “advertainment” was coined more than a decade ago. It’s the momentum that's changing—picking up in large part because (Spurlock’s clever satire notwithstanding) producers are embracing it as readily as marketers. 

Robert Rodriguez, Danny Trejo, PepsiCo, and 'Machete': 'That's Brisk, baby!' (Part 1)

"Creativity, Celebrity and Brand Strategy: A Brisk Discussion of Ozzy and Machete" takes place at 4:30 PM Monday at the Austin Convention Center's PepsiCo Plugged-In Stage. 

What happens when you blur the line between advertising and entertainment? In the case of "Brisk Machete," a minute-long stop-motion video in which Danny Trejo reprises his role in Robert Rodriguez's Machete on behalf of Brisk Iced Tea, something very funny indeed.

TV watch: Will Hulu become a victim of its own success?

 

Hulu, the online TV service launched two years ago by Fox and NBC, has enjoyed incredible success with viewers — too much, it may turn out. 

Two weeks ago, comScore’s report that Hulu had pulled into the top three streaming-video sites was quickly followed by news that Disney — the corporate parent of ABC and ESPN—was taking a stake in the venture. But in the long run, those two milestones could be overshadowed by a seemingly much smaller bit of news: the decision in January to pull most episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia from the site.