Klessblog's Top 10 of 2013 (Part I)

So, another year goes by in the blink of an eye and as we head into the new year, it's always time for reflection. I've seen many tech bloggers list the same top stories of 2013, with the general consensus that it wasn't a real big year of innovation and disruption as it's been in previous years. But obvious trends like adoption of mobile computing continued to rise, along with software subscription models, social media apps like Instagram and Vine, which sucked my data plan. Social media darling Twitter proved that its IPO was much more successful than Facebook. Online video viewing turned into binge watching, thanks to Netflix releasing full seasons all at once. Actor Kevin Spacey, star of the popular Netflix original series House of Cards, even went on record to urge studios to studios to revamp their distribution models. Video standards moved further to HEVC as the broadcast industry began rolling out 4K video solutions. There were plenty of MA's in the industry and leadership changes within many companies. Read up on all the news in any of the feeds I have on the side bar of this blog, including ReelSEO, Beet.TV, Fierce Online Video, Lost Remote, NewTeeVee, OnlineVideo.net, Dan Rayburn's The Business Of Online Video, StreamingMedia.com, VideoNuze, Web TV Wire, Tubefilter News, Nalt's Will Video for Food blog, MediaPost Video Insider, Vidcompare and the variety of Scoop.it feeds.

With all the movement in the online video and the technology space, many things changed but some remained constant. I actually lost track of things in a few months back due to my busy schedule and my blog entries dwindled to only a handful this year. But I have been busy and I thought I'd use this end-of-the-year post as a retrospective of Klessblog's Top 10 of 2013.

10. OTTCON March 19-20, 2013 - for the third year in a row I had the opportunity to attend and interview industry leaders at this annual Over-the-Top TV conference where top decision-makers and executives from the PayTV, Content Production, Distributions and Consumer Electronics and Technology ecosystems gather annually.
Special thanks to conference organizer and chairman Greg Fawson, President and Principal Analyst of X Media Research, Inc., for his support and collaboration over the last few years in working with me on recording the interviews. Look for those videos to be published on this blog soon.

Hear what are the innovators and industry leaders saying out the industry?  View interviews from OTTCON and get insights not found in the sessions or keynotes. (Here) OTTCONversations is produced by Larry Kless, President and Founder of Online Video Publishing [dot] com.


9. SnappyTV - Share clips from Kless Blog Live Interviews

I had the opportunity to learn about how cool SnappyTV is from my interview earlier this year with Mike Folgner, CEO of SnappyTV. SnappyTV offers a cloud-based suite of tools to create and share instant video highlights with friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter. Folgner created this animated GIF from the interview with the SnappyTV tools and commented that, "I said a lot of words, this is what I felt like in the interview."


8. Leveraging Women's Business Capabilities in Challenging Business Times - May 2, 2013
It's not often in my day job that I get the opportunity to work with an Academy Award®-winning actor, but this year I added Geena Davis to my list of clients. This event was sponsored by Kaiser Permanente in association with Deloitte and the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media and discussed how girls and women are reflected in media and the challenges facing women in the workplace. It was inspiring to meet Geena Davis and hear her speak at this event and she complimented that our sound was the best she had at any of her events. My thanks to my client and friend Jeanne Hughes for her partnership along with Elizabeth Sullivan in Event Marketing.

  Watch the video here: http://goo.gl/WXn0m
  Listen to the audio podcast here: http://goo.gl/d8auV


7. The Mass of Ordination and Installation of Most Reverend Michael C. Barber, SJ as Fifth Bishop of Oakland - May 25, 2013
In the same week I worked with Geena Davis, I was honored to be in the service of God, to produce several live webcasts for the Diocese of Oakland for the Episcopal Ordination and installation of the Most Reverend Michael Barber, SJ as the 5th Bishop of Oakland at the Cathedral of Christ the Light. This marked my biggest production for my side business, Online Video Publishing [dot] com, and I thank my clients Mike Brown and Jan Potts, my creative partners Pete Brown of PBA Media, Steve Dung of Visions Plus and Harvey Woo of Professional Sound Productions and my project manager Rachel Vaughn and all our crew who worked long hours to make the event an incredible success.

  Watch the Ustream webcast here: Part 1, Episcopal Ordination Mass
  Watch the indexed  video version here: Ordination and Installation, Bishop Barber — Oakland Diocese

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The countdown continues tomorrow with Part II of Klessblog's Top 10 of 2013 on this blog.

Until then, Happy New Years!!

Online Video Conversations: Mike Folgner, SnappyTV

This is my inaugural post for my new website Online Video Conversations, and features highlights from my interview earlier this year with Mike Folgner, CEO of SnappyTV. SnappyTV offers a cloud-based suite of tools to create, share, and archive live video highlights with friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter. Folgner used the SnappyTV platform to edit the following highlights from the interview where he discusses his company's history and product approach, and in this video he discusses ideas versus opportunity. Before SnappyTV, Folgner was co-founder and CEO of Jumpcut, an early web-based video editing platform, which was acquired by Yahoo! in 2006. He was General Manager of video at Yahoo! and also Head of New Products for Y! Brickhouse, an advanced R&D group at Yahoo! That created FireEagle and Yahoo! Live. He founded SnappyTV in February 2010, and the company is located in San Francisco, California. 

Watch all the highlights

My thoughts during the Larry Kless interview on ideas versus opportunity

Every video has 100 stories. We are building the right product to let the right user tell their story.

I said a lot of words, this is what I felt like...

What are we working on? The GIF Machine!

Cloud editing equals tweeting highlights

Our product approach

The SnappyTV team comes together

Early success with the monetization model

Get the highlights fast, the money will come

My history - Jumpcut to Yahoo!, leaving then identifying the problem that became SnappyTV

For more information: Contact - SnappyTV

Video Marketing Tips from the 2013 Video Summit [ReelSEO Creator's Tip #105]

The 2013 Video Marketing Summit was held on July 25-26 in San Francisco and is the largest and only annual event devoted to all things video marketing and video commerce. The sold-out event drew over 300 attendees and was co-hosted by ReelSEO and Liveclicker, and was held in tandem with the Liveclicker's Video Commerce Summit. This year's combined summit was Liveclicker's 5th annual and an inaugural event for ReelSEO, and drew a cross section of over 300 retailers, brands, and agencies attending either summit.

Over the last few years, I've interviewed attendees and speakers at the Liveclicker video commerce summit, and this year the tables were turned, when Tim Schmoyer asked me to share a video marketing tip for his weekly ReelSEO Creator's tips. He included me in the following video, with video marketing tips from Suzie Reider (Marketing Director, YouTube), Jim Louderback (CEO, Revision3), Reed Lucas (Director of Channel Management, Channel Factory), Rob Sandie (CEO, vidIQ), Sofia Stefou (Video Strategist, Sofina Media), Jason Cesare (Account Executive, Unruly Media), Jay Nolan (Producer, Ecommerce), and Anthony Bucci (Founder, RevZilla).




See my tip is at 1:15, "Tell a story and capture your audience, whoever they may be--marketers, consumers, your customers." Don't sell the product, tell the story.

For a summary of all of the video marketing tips, see the related ReelSEO article here: Quick Video Tips from Experts at the ReelSEO Video Marketing Summit [Creator's Tip #105]

For a full look at the event, speakers, schedule and video summit links, visit reelsummit.com.

For a preview of last year's conference, watch this video with interviews I conducted at Liveclicker's Fourth Annual Video Commerce Summit.


2013 Video Commerce Summit — Advancing video in e-commerce

See you next year!

Tweet #vsummit

Read Part Two of my Streamingmedia.com article, "No Second Chances, Part 2: Best Practices for Live Events"

Part two of my Streaming Media article, No Second Chances, Part 2: Best Practices for Live Events - Streaming Media Magazine, is now in print and online. The second installment looks at different ways to make the overall webcast experience engaging for your online audience using a variety of different video production techniques interactive tools. Live events have changed dramatically over the last few years with the evolution of enterprise video platforms and the rise of virtual events and live webcasting. Today, companies are now incorporating new and innovative ways to engage their growing online audiences.

Webcasting tools have become easier to use, and, with the development of interactive and social media tools, they’ve evolved from one-way broadcasts into two-way conversations. But just because you have myriad bells and whistles at your disposal doesn’t mean you have to use every one for every event. As I said in Part 1 of my article, “the key is to use the right technology to make it easy to reach the live audience and virtual attendees and provide them a quality and worthwhile experience.”

Here's a brief excerpt from part two:

THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE

We’ve already established that you need the right team with the right tools and the right capabilities at your live event venue. But what are the secret tricks to creating an engaging experience for your audience with streaming video, audio, graphics, and real-time interaction to move them from passive viewers to active participants?

If you only take away only one thing from this article, remember this tip: Don’t let your online audience be an afterthought. You need to cater to their needs by making their experience as engaging as the live audience’s, but in a different way.

Waiting for the big event to begin, in person and online (Photo credit: Harvey Woo)

Look no further than popular culture to see what "American Idol" has done to capture its live audience. The producers were deliberate with their intent, because they knew that the real show was on the screens of millions of TV viewers; it was not for the hundreds of people in the live audience. They didn’t skimp on production value, and, from the start, they introduced an audience response text-to-vote system that gave the audience the power to influence the outcome of the show.

Just think: What if you put that capability into the hands of your online audience? We’d be able to vote off every boring presenter known to mankind!

Corporate communications departments are seeing the shift as well. Donn Kanagaki, senior manager of IT communications at Kaiser Permanente, oversees the employee outreach events for the CIO and senior IT leadership, which incorporate a combination of a live event, webcast, WebEx, and telephone bridge in order to reach more than 6,000 employees across five time zones. About one-third of the IT employees are able to attend the event live via webcast, but the online numbers are growing. Kanagaki says, “We have to recognize that the majority of our employees that participate are watching online, so we need to look at ways to better engage them.”

While Kaiser Permanente CIO Phil Fasano addresses an in-person audience of several hundred, the live webcast reaches thousands of employees who can watch the event online and submit questions directly to the CIO and senior leaders. 

In the words of Marshall McLuhan, “The medium is the message,” and the message can be delivered more effectively using the latest interactive technologies. You may have to use a hybrid approach with a combination of tools based on the capabilities of your webcast or webconferencing platform. Beyond content design, it really does come down to pushing the limits of any platform and streaming technology to achieve the best two-way experience for your attendees and yourself.

TELL A STORY

The plain and simple fact is that no technology, however great it is, can make a boring presenter better. You have to design your presentation to the right audience using the best set of tools and production value to carry your message. But beyond any technology, presenters need to connect with their audience.

All the great presenters, from Steve Jobs to Gary Vaynerchuk to Isabel Allende, use storytelling to convey their messages. People respond to personal stories because they convey emotion and a universal message.

According to Tim Schmoyer, producer of The Reel Web for Reelseo.com and one of the most diversely skilled and knowledgeable people in the online video space, storytelling is important and the best way to get your message across. “Stories are something that everyone enjoys and appreciates, and there’s an emotional connection to stories,” says Schmoyer. “What we really believe in is that stories are much more compelling, especially if you can tell a story that answers the ‘why?’ question.”


Continue reading the full article at: No Second Chances, Part 2: Best Practices for Live Events - Streaming Media Magazine


My thanks again, to the many people who I have worked with over the years to help me learn what works best for live events, and what doesn't work so well. Also, my thanks to the many clients I have worked with who have trusted me to produce their live events. I also want to thank the following people for contributing to this article, including: Nick Balletta, CEO of TalkPoint, Donn Kanagaki, senior manager of IT communications at Kaiser Permanente, Tim Schmoyer, producer of the Reel Web for ReelSEO.com, Casey Wilms, product manager at Zencoder, Mike Folgner, CEO and co-founder of SnappyTV, Harvey Louie, technical director, producer, and consultant of the webcasting company Event Compression Group, my good friend and creative partner Harvey Woo, owner and creative director of Professional Sound Productions, my production manager and traffic controller  Steve Dung, owner of Visions Plus video production services and my IT partner and colleague James Adams, Manager of Virtual Event Delivery at Kaiser Permanente.

My thank you's could go on and on, so I'll cut it short, and finally extend my thanks to my trusted crew and "A" team for your professionalism and support, you know who are... (Sammy, Dwight, Dominic "Baby Dom", Marcia, Brad, Tom, Alfonso, Jason "JJ", Rachel "Ray Ray", Harold "Dirty B", Luke, Ricker, Lorin, Paul and Weyman "The Pro Sound backbone", and the Young Guns, Sam, Matt, Brandon and Josh, and again, Harvey.)

This article appears in the August/September 2013 issue of Streaming Media magazine as:  No Second Chances, Part 2: Best Practices for Live Events.

Businesses are increasingly depending on live event streaming. For expert tips on how to pull them off like a pro, read the second part of our series.
by Larry Kless

Check out my Google+ Hangout with Neil Davidson on, "The Core of a Successful Corporate Video"

Today, I had the pleasure of joining Neil Davidson, Founder and CEO at MyWebPresenters, in a Google+ Hangout to discuss, "The Core of a Successful Corporate Video", as part of his new Hangout series of talks with digital leaders. I was glad to join Neil's list Google+ Hangout guests, who've included: Conrad Weaver of Conjo Studios, Tim Schmoyer of ReelSEO, Justin Foster of Liveclicker, Tyrone Shum an expert on YouTube Video Marketing, Gideon Shalwick an online video marketing expert and Chris Savage of Wistia.

Google+ Hangouts have become a great way for people to "hang out" and have group video conversations and Google has added a lot of new features recently including: Remote Desktop, live rewind, and instant replay. The product has gained popularity over the last few years since its initial release in 2011 and relaunch as a standalone product at the Google i/o developers conference in May 2013. For more on the development of Google+ Hangouts and how it grew out of Google Talk, see this article: Exclusive: Inside Hangouts, Google's big fix for its messaging mess | The Verge.

I had a great conversation with Neil and you can see the topics we discussed in the interview questions below and watch our Google+ Hangout video for the full conversation.



Neil Davidson's interview questions:

1. Larry - you must have seen (and made) a few corporate videos in your time; what would you say are the commonalities that all of the good ones share?
2. How should a business go about fitting a video production into their marketing strategy? How can they decide what type of video to use and how to market it?
3. Which businesses would you say are leading the way in using video as a marketing tool?
4. I find that failures are normally good learning experiences. What is the biggest video failure you have had and what did you learn from the experience?
5. What are the big opportunities that you see in the coming year for those using online video? Is it just more of YouTube or are there other good opportunities out there?
6. What do you think of the short video format? i.e. Vine videos? Do you think that they will take off with businesses?

Watch all the Google+ Hangout interviews on Neil's YouTube channel at: Neil Davidson - YouTube.

Follow Neil Davidson (WEBPRESENTER) on Twitter.