NewTeeVee posted an article about a Bear Sterns report indicating they think this is just the beginning of the explosion in online video.

“We believe that video will be at the very heart of the next five years of web evolution.”

Sounds good to me and is good news for New Media Expo.

Yesterday was the day we sent out all of the acceptance and rejection letters to speakers for the New Media Expo in August. I have a love / hate relationship with this day because I know I’m going to make a few people very happy and a lot of people very disappointed. We’re fortunate enough to get hundreds of proposals which means we can pick and choose from many topics to fit the “feel” and content we’re looking for in that particular year. We received over 700 proposals for just 52 spots.

Because the New Media Expo focuses on a “newer” industry, the speakers are chosen not because of how well they are known, but about how well we feel they can educate the attendees. The question I ask myself when making the final approval is, will this speaker/session have the attendee saying to themselves, “Wow, that session made the entire trip worthwhile. If that was the only session I attend here, it was worth coming!” Get 50-55 of those types of sessions and you’re conference will always be a winner.

I personally send every invitation and turn down email to every single speaker that sent in a proposal. It takes two days to send them all (doing nothing but that all day). Is it the best use of my time? I don’t know that I’ll always be able to do that, but it just feels right when someone has taken the time to put together a proposal and send it in. The downside is that I have to tell a lot of people I consider friends, that we don’t have a spot for them at the show. Sometimes it’s overlap in content, and sometimes it’s giving a shot to someone we’ve turned down the last three years and has refined their proposal over those years to be something really terrific. We had to turn down some pretty darn good proposals and it’s difficult to do, but tough choices have to be made.

Most people who are turned down are appreciative of the fact that we let them know and valued the time they put into the proposal. From my experience, most events simply don’t get back to the speakers – you know you haven’t been chosen because you never hear back from them. That’s not how I want to run my company and so whether I do it or our conference coordinators do it, we will always let the speaker know either way.

But as you can imagine, some speakers don’t take it well….at all. Each year we have at least one reply to the turn-down email that I post on our bulletin board in the office hallway – for a quick laugh and also to remind everyone that burning bridges is never appropriate.

Here’s this year’s:

Oh darn…Gee, I wonder how many of those 52 speakers are professional speakers? Like me. Gee, I wonder how many of those 52 are women? Women over 60? A women Professional Speaker over 60 into New Media. Very unusual, Very sought after…tell your committee to cram it….I’ll go elsewhere in August. Sour grapes, you betcha!

Probably a boys/geek fest with no class anyway…..well, that felt good to let it all out……..

Now bring on the real jobs…….

Patti Serrano
www.eClubNetworking.com

Aside from the fact that we have more women speaking this year than ever, all I can say is, thanks for confirming we made the right choice, Patti.

But we’ve got our conference lined up now and it’s one to be proud of. I’m looking forward to August!

PaidContent.org points to a study showing that for the Wall Street Journal to make up the revenues from it’s current paid subscriber base, it would need 12X the traffic.

Although not a great example of being “niche” I think this does argue that for some niche publishers, advertising simply isn’t going to provide the revenue necessary to sustain the business – simply because they won’t be able to get the traffic necessary to make banners, text links and other forms of advertising worthwhile.

Paid subscription for niche content that serves an audience well is also a very valid model. The more difficult it is to get that information elsewhere on the web increases the likelihood that the paid subscription model or pay-per-download model will work.

As independent media creation becomes more common, new ways of protecting that intellectual property will be necessary. Creative Commons was fine for the hobbyist who basically wanted to say, “I don’t want to make any money with my stuff and neither can you.” But for those who truly want to make a business of it, a better method is needed. Traditional copyright is fine, but there’s no easy way for the small publisher to license their work to someone else without having an attorney draft new documents for each licensee. However, a new service is attempting to make it happen – RightsAgent.

Here’s a good article about how they intend to make it work.

Anyone who has been writing a blog or reading a blog for more than ten minutes knows how vital the comments of any post can be. And it’s no surprise that the worst “flames” and “trolls” are the anonymous comments. If I was a mathematician of any sort, I could probably correlate the value of any given blog comment with the the number of comments that person posts anonymously vs. comments they post with their real name (any takers?). In fact, there’s probably a corollary out there that says the value of any system in general increases as anonymity within the community decreases. I did find one article that comes close to such a study.

I admit, I’ve posted comments on which I did not use my real name. Nothing I said was offensive or blatantly rude, yet the three comments I did post this year were – how shall I say this – more “aggressive” than I would have been if the conversation were happening at a reception. Yet there’s always a tinge of guilt that goes along with being an “anonymous coward”, as Slashdot calls them. PennyArcade.com sums it up best with a simple blackboard formula.

A quick search of the terms “anonymous comments” in Google delivered this interesting post entitled, the The Mystery of Anonymous Comments, plus many others. It’s obvious this issue has been addressed before.

As you might expect, the more readers a blogger has, the more they have to deal with the garbage. Robert Scoble, Mike Arrington and Jason Calacanis have all had to deal with it – with all of them either shutting off comments to individual posts or their blog entirely because it gets so bad.

Part of the problem lies in a vague “unwritten rule of blogging” that says that all comments must be allowed so that we can all have a world of transparency and justice. What a bunch of nonsense. I wish I could find the person that wrote that unwritten rule so I could anonymously comment on their blog that they’re a stupid fool. :) I’ve never subscribed to this and if a comment is lame, offensive, unproductive or doesn’t add anything to the discussion, I’m going to delete it. Heck, if it has bad grammar that might just be enough to get axed. So shoot me – it’s my blog – not your open forum. If you want a voice, you’re welcome to go to Blogger.com and get your own.

All this leads to one thing: the blogging world would be better if more people posted with their real name. And I’m willing to do my part. From this day forward, I am making a pact with myself and the rest of the blogging and message board world to always use my real name on any comment or post. If I’m not willing to attach what I say to my name, I shouldn’t be posting it anyway.

Feel free to post your anonymous comment – but don’t expect it to be there long.

Update: Looks like action is finally being taken against an anonymous poster. Hopefully we see more of this.

I’ve been immersing myself into the world of search engine marketing lately. One of the very first things I did was “Google” the term: “search engine marketing.” I was simply curious who made the top 10 listings in the industry where they teach you how to make the top 10 listings.

The first listing: Wikipedia’s page for the term “search engine marketing.” Search for “podcasting” and you get the same thing: the Wikipedia page for the term: “podcasting.”

The problem is, neither of those results deserve to be number one. I know what search engine marketing is. I know what podcasting is. If I know enough to type in the term, I know enough to know what the basic definition is. And I couldn’t care less about the history of the term.

I would guess that most people who type in those terms are not looking for definitions or history. They, like myself, are looking for help in the subject. The first listing should be the best “how to” article available, with the next 100 listings being a close second. Until Wikipedia starts listing resources and outbound links to great sites that answer the “how to” question, Google is wasting my time by making them them #1.

I’m curious if anyone has any experience with the battery drain speed of the iPhone when it has Wi-Fi on all the time vs. not having it on. Basically I’m looking for either scientific or unscientific tests (or even anecdotal evidence) that shows:

1) Battery use time until re-charge necessary WITH Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on all the time
1) Battery use time until re-charge WITHOUT Wi-Fi and BlueTooth on
2) Battery use time until re-charge with just Wi-Fi on
3) Battery use time until re-charge with just Bluetooth on

AdBrite, an Internet advertising company, has raised $23,000,000 according to PaidContent.org. Om Malik is saying it’s probably not the last infusion. The company raised $4 million in 2004 and $6 million in 2006 for a grand total of $35,000,000 to date. My only question: where the heck does all this money go?

I can see this kind of money would be necessary for something like a startup pharmaceutical company, where the cost of entering the game in both equipment and specialized knowledge is astronomical. But an Internet company? I just don’t see why so much is necessary. After four years, shouldn’t the company be making enough to fund it’s own growth?

I can’t imagine the first investors who put in the initial $4 million are pleased. If I’m missing something here, please let me know. But this news just solidifies the fact that I just don’t get the VC world.

I just unsubscribed from British Airway’s email marketing messages – for the second time – so who knows if this is actually working. After I clicked on the unsubscribe link, I was taken to a page where I have to choose which country site to go to. Huh? Then after choosing the USA site, I’m presented with a form where I have to type in my email address. Why in the world should I have to type in my email address? Anyway, after doing so and clicking Submit, the confirmation page says:

Thank you. We have received your request to unsubscribe from British Airways Group special offer emails. Please allow 10 working days for this to be completed.

Ten working days??? Are you kidding me? What on earth could possibly take two weeks to accomplish?  TNC New Media has about 1/10,000th of BA’s annual revenue and we have an automated one-click unsubscribe function in our email newsletters.

Give me a break, British Airways. This ain’t 1995.

I just finished talking to a reporter from one of the tradeshow and conference magazines about how to research starting a new event.  One of the things I mentioned was making sure your event was highly targeted for a niche community.  When I’ve said this, most people tell me their idea and it’s still rather broad.  As a general guidepost, take the audience you think is the perfect niche for your event (or website) and cut it in half again.  What you’re left with is probably the right niche.Worried about getting too niche?  Don’t.  Here’s a blog about one thing and one thing only - tomatoes - http://www.TomatoCasual.com.