- Eye Eye -
Yesterday, SpinVox attended the first ‘Amplified‘ meetup of 2009: The Future of Online Video, (FOOV). Hosted at The Institute of Contemporary Arts, the event hoped to covere a wide range of topics including Online Video Advertising Models, User-Generated Content, Mobile Technologies and many, many more…
I myself sat in on two sessions and helped out with a third:
Session 1:
Taking the advice of chief Amplifier, Toby Moores, I decided to join a group of people that I hardly knew at all and the four of us ended up talking about context-sensitive adverts on news reports.
For example - using online video, you wouldn’t really want to have crude pre-roll ads just before a feature on the situation in Gaza. However, maybe you *could* have some context click throughs to supporting the red-cross etc… There was input from someone from Reuters, an expert global linking/feeds and someone with a background in CSR programmes too. Great ideas from all.
Session 2:
This time round I joined the ‘Virtual Table’. Not a made-up place as the name portends, but in fact a very real table of people (just like Session 1) this time however, with a webcam (as pictured above) and mic focused upon the conversation. This setup allowed folk from all over the world to watch, listen and ultimately take part via a live-discussion/chatroom which enabled the viewers to offer in comments and questions to the table as the discussion went on.
This time round Toby, Mike and myself (amongst others - sorry, didn’t catch all the names!) talked about the future of online mash-ups… and how brands can build trust with their (sometimes already existing) communities. Examples in the film industry were referenced - such as The Dark Knight and the upcoming adaptation of The Watchmen. Allowing your community to take some content for free and allowing them to play with and use it under the ‘Creative Commons‘ (CC) licence can result in some fantastic bi-products.
‘The Die Hard Song‘ (link has some swearing) was used as great example of how a community can be embraced and built on if you just invest some trust in your fans; The 4th verse was added after Paramount saw the original and offered up the footage you see in the clip to help them finish it (after initally threatening to sue re copyright infringement). Fantastic stuff.
Session 3:
In this final session I took control of the chatroom that I mentioned above. Listening in to both conversations I fielded the questions from the discussion group and posed them to the members of the ‘Virtual Table’. It sounds like a boring job, but I can tell it was actually very, very exciting. Being the conduit from one actual place in the real world to a virtual place in the online world gave me a very real sense of turning the digital into the tangible. Making things *actually* real, so to speak.
With at one point 30 people across the globe tuning in and taking part, the table ended up taking questions from other cities around England as well as places as far reaching as Austrailia and the US.
Amazing stuff.
There is one question you might be asking yourself right now and that is:
“Why would SpinVox attend ‘The Future of Online Video’?”
That’s a very good question, that requires a very good answer.
All will be revealed very soon. In the meantime however, who here thinks releasing the SpinVox Mobsters under Creative Commons would be a good thing?! Hmm?!
I’d love to see what you guys would do with them 
Answers to the usual address… 
Ciao for now.
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