Larry Kless' Weblog: New Media Expo 2008 Report: The Future is Videocasting

Sunday, August 24, 2008

New Media Expo 2008 Report: The Future is Videocasting

Known as one of the world's most popular conventions for podcasters, online video creators and bloggers, the 4th annual New Media Expo, took place in Las Vegas last weekend. In years past, the Expo was was primarily focused on audio podcasting but this year saw a rise in videocasting. Founder Tim Bourquin said that now it's 50/50 audio and video.

As Ben Parr of Mashable writes in, The Death of Podcasting and the Rise of Videocasting? No, It’s About Options, that, "We hear less about podcasts and and more about video shows such as Epic Fu, Pop17 and even TWiT live (now streamed by StickAM). The trend seems clear - podcasting is going by the wayside and videocasting is taking the helm."

Videocasters are big and with personalities like Gary Vaynerchuk leading off with the first keynote address it helped set the tone that you can be your own new media brand, and with 60,000 daily viewers of his Wine Library TV, you know Gary Vee definitely means business. He's a hero and celebrity in the videocasting and blogging community and is one the first to reach mainstream success crossing over to TV audiences with his appearances on Late Night with Conan O’Brien and The Ellen Degeneres Show. His blog says, "Gary’s fame can be attributed to his pioneering, multi-faceted approach to personal branding and business building."

With over 2000 attendees, Tim Bourquin calls the Expo "a fantastic weekend of education and networking!" and the conference program describes it as "a hands-on, exciting, "how-to" event with practical conference sessions about how to produce high-quality online audio and video content, grow a loyal audience, and even make a few bucks with your content in creative ways."

Steven Hodson of Mashable wrote about this last month in his post, Video Blogging Is Not The Frontier You Might Expect, where he made the point that video blogging is not the same as traditional text blogging and that it's evolving into the next new territory of social media communication.

So who attends the NME? Audience demographics can be viewed here, and the graph below charts the main reasons why they attend.
Why do they attend the New Media Expo?

While I didn't attend the Expo myself I managed to view a few videos around the topic of the video blogging boon. Along with Gary Vee's keynote another favorite was an amazing live demonstration by Will it Blend.

Gary Vee was also later joined by iJustine and Walt Ribeiro for panel session on what's the direction of online video. Ben Parr moderated the live session which was streamed live on Ustream and covered topics like mobile, live mobile streaming, Nokia N95 and Qik are the catalysts, life streaming and privacy vs. meeting everyone is the world.

Gary Vee said that in the mainstream world nobody knows the Internet celebs but give it time, we are the early adopters, live video, Twitter, Friendfeed, lifestreaming - people who have content will rule! You can read Ben Parr's post here
~~or click on the photo to link to~~view the video below.

Live streaming video by Ustream
Also, David Tamés of Kino-Eye.com sat down with Steve Woolf (Epic Fu), Zadi Diaz (Epic Fu), Steve Garfield (SteveGarfield.com), and Walt Ribeiro (Ustream.TV), for a conversation which was planned to be an audio podcast as he says below but turned out as video. Recorded on Saturday, August 16, 2008 topics discussed included "what was best about the show, issues as the big-players enter the space, and Net Neutrality."

The video is 19 minutes and David Tamés shared this about producing the video,

"I had originally planned this to be an audio interview, but when Steve Garfield gave me the video he shot video with his N95, it became a video. When I combined his video and my audio, I was impressed that the audio sync drifted less that a frame from start to end. The N95 is an impressive little camera, suitable for minimalist double-system sound with a digital audio recorder as we used it here."

This video features Tim Bourquin talking about how the NME evolved and where it's going. Watch more videos here.

I read some mixed reviews from some of the attendees which I've listed below and Bourquin himself went on record saying that he may quit the Trade show business altogether. But it doesn't change the fact that many attendees and presenters alike saw video becoming more of niche player in the blogosphere.
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