Read my Guest Blog Post on Nalts' "Will Video For Food" Blog, "Video & Your Smart Business Marketing Plan"

After a few weeks of Streaming Media West 2009 Red Carpet interviews, I'm breaking from the coverage to share news of my guest post on Kevin "Nalts" Nalty's blog, Will Video For Food. I want to thank Kevin for the opportunity to be a guest blogger on his blog and thanks as well to Jan Ischinger for the great editorial work on the post. I'd encourage everyone to visit Nalts' site and subscribe to his blog to read his daily posts and posts by other guest bloggers.

Last month, I had the pleasure of meeting Nalts at at the Online Video Platform Summit where he spoke on our Redefining Monetization panel session. It was a lively session that included Benjamin Wayne from Fliqz, Peter Csathy of Sorenson Media and Teg Granager of Adap.tv. The video from session should be online sometime soon. A few weeks ago, Kevin followed up with a note to "fellow online-video enthusiasts, virtual friends or BFFs" to see if there was interest in writing a short guest blog post on WillVideoForFood.com.

Nalts said,

"I thought it would be fun to have a series of various subject-matter experts chime in on various online video topics as 2009 closes out and we look at future trends for 2010 and beyond."

I was excited at the opportunity, and it's something I've actually been wanting to do on my own blog for some time, and have done on my OnlineVideoPublishing.com blog with a recent guest post by Tim Hawthorne, Creating a Frenzy with Online Video Contests, with another one from Tim in the works.

So needless to say, I wanted to join the fun and be a guest blogger on WillVideoForFood.com and sent a piece I had been working on to Nalts. It's an expanded version of the 250 word article I had sent to Streaming Media for publication in the December/January issue of the magazine, about looking back on 2009 and ahead in 2010 in social media and video.

Here's a short excerpt from the post...

Video & Your Smart Business Marketing Plan | Will Video for Food

December 17, 2009

Welcome WVFF Guest Blogger

Larry Kless

2009 proved the power of video and social media can change the world.

We experience the Presidential Inauguration with millions of friends on Facebook. We read breaking news stories from citizen journalists on Twitter. We saw live as-it-happens video on YouTube hours before the stories reached our televisions and the standard reports by traditional news agencies were read.

More than any other year 2009 saw the rise of video as one of the most effective communication mediums in world history.

Virtually, every aspect of video is now included in business. From concept, scripting, storyboards, production, editing, encoding, storing, managing, distributing, syndicating, tracking, analyzing, etc… Content producers, media companies, small and medium-sized business all have the same opportunities to build their business and become online video publishers like any major corporation.

Read the rest of this post on Will Video for Food

How Do You ooVoo? Getting to Know The People Behind ooVoo

Last week, following my video conversation with ooVoo CEO Phillipe Schwartz, I met with several others who work behind the scenes at ooVoo as part of their How Do You ooVoo? event. I learned more about their marketing efforts, upcoming events and product enhancements. I'd like to thank them all for their time to meet with me (Marty, Greg, Phillip and Lisa) and I look forward to more ongoing conversations.

My video conversations last week started with Chief Operating Officer Marty Walker on the business side of ooVoo. Marty joined ooVoo a few years ago from the Iams pet food brand for Procter & Gamble where he was vice president & general manager. Iams marketing strategy was was more "word of mouth" and they didn't spend millons of dollars on focus groups which he said is similar to ooVoo's current efforts. They started working with Joe Jaffee and his team at Crayon, who include Scott Monty, Greg Verdino and Deb Wiseman, on outreach and connection with social media influencers. The successful My ooVoo Day With... event is a product of that relationship.


Later in the video chat we were joined by Mansur from Saudi Arabia. It proved to be a challenge though to communicate with him since Mansur was 60% deaf and couldn't see us but we could see him. We both appeared as icons on his screen and he was only able to text chat with us. After a few minutes of attempting to troubleshoot the issue he signed off saying, "I love oovoo."

The next day I met with Greg Sobiech and Philip Robertson. Greg is responsible for marketing programs to attract and retain customers and Phillip is Director of Marketing Communications. We had a great discussion which included the upcoming My ooVoo Day With: Political Edition that's planned for late July. That event will be represented by 23 bloggers from all over the political spectrum (liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, Independents) talking about politics. Stay tuned for more information.

I asked if was possible to do an "ooVoocast" where a multi-party ooVoo chat could be broadcast to many and be interactive through chat. Phillip said yes it was by using SplitCam to broadcast your desktop to uStream.TV or any other broadcast solution. Tom Herman, Vice President of Product Development, has a detailed post on the ooVoo blog that describes how to Stream ooVoo Live.


My last ooVoo conversation of the week was with Lisa Abourezk Vice President of Marketing. We talked about what ooVoo is doing to get their message out how ooVoo is "an enabler of conversation." She said words really don't describe that "wow moment" of a multi-party ooVoo call and I have to agree, it really is a cool experience. (I recommend headphones though to avoid the echo.)

As part of their outreach efforts ooVoo is sponsoring 20 PodCamp 'scholarships' to college students interested in attending the PodCamp Boston 3 unConference scheduled July 18-20. Details are on the ooVoo blog. ooVoo also enables conversation by "ooVooing in" remote presenters at conferences like the annual BlogHer Conference in San Francisco which is actually scheduled this weekend as well. ooVoo also donated $20,000 to the US Air Force in a similar outreach as Cisco has done with their Telepresence suite.

Lisa emphasized that ooVoo's value is far beyond what you see. The more you use it the more valuable you find it. I plan to use ooVoo more often and I'm looking forward to the new features. In an upcoming ooVoo update it will include Java applet 1.7 version which will let you send a url to a friend who doesn't have the ooVoo client but does have a web cam to join the video chat through a web browser interface.

Thanks again to all my new friends at ooVoo for your time and conversation. I look forward to another ooVoo with you again soon.

UPDATE: From the ooVoo blog Phillip Robertson wrote this about PodCamp 3:

"While I'm at PodCamp, I'll also be joining crayon's Greg Verdino, SHIFT Communications' Doug Haslam and Morpheus Media's Adam Broitman in a session about "Smart Social Media Marketing." We'll chat about how ooVoo has been using social media channels to promote and implement programs like My ooVoo Day With... and the forthcoming My ooVoo Day: Political Edition, and to engage directly with both influencers and customers on a day-to-day basis in addition to social media and marketing with Greg, Doug and Adam – they are the experts and worth coming to listen to. I hope to meet some of you at PodCamp - so be sure to join us for our session. We'll be in the HIM Room from 11:15am to noon on Saturday, July 19. You can get all of the event details at the PodCamp Boston site."

My ooVoo Day With... iJustine!

I had my third My ooVoo Day With... videoconference today with new media connoisseur and "the internet" girl iJustine. It was fun to meet some new people and we all had a good time. There were a couple zany moments, as you can tell, which I've captured in this slide show. I say make My ooVoo Day With... an ongoing event! Thanks to everyone at Crayon and ooVoo for making it happen.