Don’t Get Sued: A Guide for Content Creators

If rule number one for content creators is to make amazing content, then rule number two is don’t get sued!  Josh Sussman, counsel for CollegeHumor, Koethi Zan, counsel for MTV and Luke Paglia, counsel for American-Eagle marketing all spoke about legal issues the content creators need to understand.

The panelists were quick to point out that this was not an advice session and that a little bit of law knowledge is a dangerous thing!  They spent their time discussing aspects of the law, how it effects their clients and possible pitfalls for content creators.  Their first recommendation was to find your own counsel!! There are lawyers who do pro-bono work and there is a great website to find those lawyers.

While that may be the best ”advice” of the panel, they did discuss Fair Use and Copyright law.  Fair Use is a difficult beast to corral.   If you don’t know the Fair Use doctrine, this will help!  There are questions a content creator can ask to determine if they are within the parameters of Fair Use: How much of the original are you copying?  Are you supplanting the market?  Is the use transformative? 

However, the Fair Use doctrine is incredibly vague.  The quote that was thrown out by the panel was that “Fair Use is nothing but the right to hire an attorney!” When Fair Use cases go to litigation, the court rulings are always different and it is all based on individual interpretations of the law.  One of the panelists said that the only way one would know if they interpreted the law correctly, is if they actually go to court AND win. 

Besides the great discussion about the Fair Use doctrine, the panelists discussed using release forms.  Their biggest point was that a producer should never lie to make someone sign a release form.  Lying creates a claim of fraudulent inducement.  Nine times out of 10, a producer does not need to lie to get people on television.  People want to be on television!  They also stressed to not be shy about asking for a release.  A release can potentially save a ton of money, headaches and stress further into the process.

Overall, I thought this panel was fantastic.  As a content creator, I learned much more about the law and about the vagueness of the law.  I also learned too much about Jersey Shore.  Trust me, you don’t even want to know! 

SXSWi Interview with Trevor Yager of TrendyMinds

SXSW Interactive has proven to be a huge success yet again.  I had the pleasure of interviewing Trevor Yager who is the owner of TrendyMinds out of Indianapolis, Indiana.  We were able to get his perspective on the event, including a few of his favorite panels and discuss his invitation from the President and First Lady to attend the State of the Union.  TrendyMinds is full service advertising, public relations and interactive firm with a history of clients including Starbucks, Kevin Harvick Racing and LexisNexis.

Biking to Change the World, and Save Lives

DL Bryon (left) and Doug Ulman pose in front of a collapsable "travel" bike

Sitting in a room full of people, you can tell the bikers from the non-bikers.  Skinny jeans are dead giveaway, as well as the choice of pullover outerwear, and those who are wet from the ride on a rainy Austin day to the Austin Convention Center for the last day of SXSWi.

What do we find in bike culture?  Or, more important:  Who do we find?

There are so many personalities out there riding bikes.  The connecting factor?   The bike itself.

Well, with the popularity and usefulness of social media, DL Bryon of BikeHugger and Doug Ulman of Livestrong each decided that connecting bike culture and social media would be a great way to help change lives.

How?  By using social media to connect these groups for a higher purpose, such as raising funds for cancer awareness and research.  Most people are familiar with Lance Armstrong and the Livestrong campaign.   BikeHugger is a network of bikers that started with 7 people.  These 7 riders met one day for a bike ride that led the group to a pub and that was that.  The group grew quickly.  This past Saturday, during SXSWi, there were 1,000 riders.

So what do these riders do?  They organize through social media and raise money.   More important, is the ease in which they can now organize and accomplish their goals.

“The bike has democratized transportation,” said Bryon.  Like they yellow wristband of the Livestrong campaign, everyone could participate.   Social media has allowed for the same level of participation.

“Social Media has changed philanthropy forever,” said Bryon.   An audience member expands on these ideas stating that people used to staple, stamp, mail-out.  Now it’s transparent, real-time.  The efficiency with which these groups  can organize is astonishing.  Check out BikeHugger and Livestrong to see exactly what they have been doing.

And, beyond cancer, cyclists are trying to change the way we live.  The panelists discussed how we built our cities for cars and have made day to day living quite difficult.   In order to be “happier”, we need to develop our transportation systems, including sidewalks for walking.  The goal is to “make the world more livable”.

From Microblogging to “Microgaming:” Is Twitter the New Gaming Platform?

Most tweeple know how challenging it can be to say what you want in 140 characters or less, but these kinds of constraints are exactly what give Twitter a unique advantage in the gaming industry. In the Playing with 140 Characters: Designing Games for Twitter Games panel today at SXSW 2010, game designers Eric Zimmerman, Colleen Macklin, John Sharp, and Michael Edwards talked about some amazing developments in what might soon be called “microgaming.” Beginning with an actual interactive game with colored note cards in the audience, the panelists talked about basic game principles such as rules and structure, limitations, and systems. And while these principles are common in any game, they can easily apply to Twitter’s platform. For example, Twitter already employs “rules” and “limitations” like being able to DM only those people who are mutually following one another, and it is a system with many moving “parts” like @replies or links.

With its unique structure, some pretty interesting games are already being formed for Twitter. Here’s a video of Colleen talking about the two categories of Twitter games and some examples:

more about “Twitter Games“, posted with vodpod

Simpler, more casual minigames like Twivial and Twitbrain allow users to participate at their leisure, while other MMOs (massive multiplayer games) like King of Pop, 140 Blood, Spymaster, and Twirdie (Twitter golf!) might require more participation and interactivity, as well as more incentives to play.

Are Foursquare and Gowalla Really Games?
This new platform is opening up the idea of what a game really is. Even applications like Foursquare and Gowalla are considered “games” because they create challenge, game incentives, and interaction. Here, Colleen talks about Foursquare and compares it to Gowalla:

more about “What is Foursquare?“, posted with vodpod

Currently, these panelists and other game designers are trying to incorporate multimedia into Twitter gaming, and there still are many directions to go. RPGs, more data-based games, and Twitter-native games are just a few of the ideas that were discussed today. Do you play Twitter games? If so, which ones? If not, do you think you would ever play one? What are some potential concerns that might arise?

Wired Introduces Interactive Magazine on Multiple Devices

Scott Dadich of Wired and Jeremy Clark of Adobe led a discussion entitled After Magazines: WIRED’s Digital Rebirth.  Experience has shown that web is good for some things and print for others.  It is Wired’s intent to combine the two.  In the near future many magazines will be downloadable to a user’s portable device.  The panel discussed Wired and its plans for integration into anything from tablets and laptops to iPhones and the Nexus One.

Adobe Air, the program that runs TweetDeck and many other emerging apps, is the platform that the digital magazine will operate in.  Dadich and Clark introduce the magazine on a tablet built by Dell.  The two emphasize that design is one of the major factors to consider when developing content for consumer devices; content articles vs. content graphics and the way the two coincide in different devices.  A better design translates into an easier reading experience and that in turn creates deeper engagement and a connection to the consumer.  Wired has been working diligently on eliminating eye fatigue by considering the font and creating new fonts specifically for the interactive magazine.  The magazine also boasts built in audio, video and active images along with different formats for vertical and horizontal viewing.  Wired’s new interactive platform will link content that relates to one another with a clear and consistent UI termed revolution through evolution.

Beyond Algorithms: Search and the Semantic Web

The panel, organized by Nova Spivack of Radar Networks, has differing views on the definition of semantics including whether the term should be eliminated all together.  Search and algorithms were a big portion of the discussion and each expressed concerns over the lack of a reliable return rate.  Many searches take place on the web every day where users are provided with links to a place where answers may be.  What users really want is to know for sure.   Search and links are good for data retrieval; however, this information needs to do something for users. For valuable results, users must overcome the need to find answers by understanding what one wants; an ability to filter out the clutter. In other words, many people are tired of spending 30 minutes booking a flight. User’s desire structured data where the clutter has been filtered out.  There is more information out there than ever and users can only get limited results through a search engine. Search engines show literal matches and users want a level of abstraction that means something to people. With all the information that’s available, we need a better way to find it. This panel believes that slowly this is happening. Computers are beginning to understand what we want them to do. The web is starting to work together, visible with tools such as API’s. The web is starting to get to know who is asking the questions and can therefore provide more reliable results.

Process Journalism: Getting it First, While Getting it Right

I couldn’t have said it better myself…”journalism is a sausage factory.  It’s messy, but at the end it’s delicious!”

Those words led off the panel, “Process Journalism: Getting it First, While Getting it Right.”

It was a discussion of the ability to break news stories using technology, using social media and using citizen journalists.  Jesus Diaz of Gizmodo, Moka Panteges of Wikimedia, Monica Guzman of seattlepi and Robert Mackey of the New York Times spoke about using all three sources to do some really good journalistic work.  It was their point that you need to use all three of these concepts to be the all-encompassing journalistic outlet.

All three aspects intertwine and every panelist had a great way of discussing how to use them for journalistic purposes.  Robert Mackey used the example of covering the recent protests in Iran.  He noted that Iran has a good amount of bloggers and citizen journalists.  When the NYT used these sources, they were very transparent and pushed the fact that the NYT was having a “conversation” about the what was on the web concerning the protests.  For Mackey it is about using the web to find clues and there are multiple clues out there to find! For example,  he found clues about the validity of protest video on youtube by looking at street signs in the video and then checking them using google maps.  He also believes that user and reader comments are extremely important.  Those comments are usually from people who are passionate about a subject and know a ton about it.  Those comments help to verify clues on the web.

For Monica Guzman, Twitter has become an incredible tool.  “It’s one voice to make up many voices. It takes many voices to make up a story,” said Guzman.  When Seattlepi covered a citywide murder story, the Twitter feed from those in the city became an incredible source of clues to the story.  The tweet is a starting point and the journalist needs to use common sense.  However, Guzman shows that citizen journalists do good work.  They want to be reliable and in this instance, citizen journalists would correct themselves if there was a mistake.  ”People have always been police scanner junkies,” said Guzman.  “Now when there’s a crime, they tweet about it.” 

Moka Panteges discussed how Wikipedia is changing the world of the “overall story.”   Wikipedia entries become a dynamic articles that expand over time.  She understands that a Wikipedia article is not original reporting, but it is a real time aggregation of the news.  The numbers for Wikipedia are astounding.  There are 365 million unique visitors a month, with 15 millions articles in over 270 languages.  That’s a ton of eyeballs looking, editing and discussing posted topics.  Wikipedia puts an event into context.  It is the nature of the wiki-beast that over time the article becomes clearer and more accurate.  It’s a technology that needs to be understood.  While it is not a source, it is a starting place of real time news gathering.

It was Jesus Diaz who really brought it all together.  As a blogger, he broke the story about Steve Jobs and his deteriorating health.  As a blogger, he got a tip, he checked his sources, he broke the story, wrote it with journalistic integrity and then…got slammed for not being a journalist.  To be honest, it did not matter;  he had the story.  Here are two great write-ups!  I highly recommend reading the original blog post. 

Orignial Blog

CNBC tries to Catch Up with the Story

Thanks to Diaz, it is a perfect example of blogging beating the journalism elite.  It is time to recognize that blogs and citizen journalism do exist and they can do a damn good job!

Overall, the panel was incredible, as actual working journalists showed incredible examples of technology, social media and citizen journalism changing the face of journalism.  I think I see a crack in the ivory tower.

Oh if you want to check out the slides and information used…. Bit.ly/processjournalism  More great stuff from Jesus Diaz in the slides!

The Inside Workings of funnyordie.com

If you had 30 million page views a month, a deal with HBO for a weekly series and plans to start making movies, one would assume you had it all figured out.  For funnyordie.com CEO Dick Glover and Creative Director Andrew Steele, they are still figuring it out.

After over a decade of writing for SNL, Steele joined funnyordie.com, because he grew bored of the traditional medium.  He believes that the internet is a viable option at this point, but people are still trying to figure out the silver bullet.

Funnyordie.com has created a platform that works.  Besides the user generated comedy video content, they have been involving celebrities in the sketches they produce.  The set up works beautifully.  Their goal is to foster a place for talent to do whatever they want to do.  It can be anything from trying something new in a risk free environment, to supporting a cause or to even changing their image.

They do everything on the cheap.  This recent video combines a tremendous amount of talent….

Presidential Reunion

Everyone got involved for FREE!  Shot it on a Sunday, it was posted on that Wednesday.  Ron Howard directed this sketch and before shooting, believed that it would cost six figures.  Instead, it was under $5,000; most of that to pay for travel for the talent.  So how do you get Chevy Chase, Dana Carvey, Jim Carrey, Dan Aykroyd and the others in one room?  You give them a reason; the purpose of this sketch was to bring to light the need for financial reform.

Glover has been smart in the business structure as well.  His creative offices are based in Los Angeles and Hollywood.  The actual technology structure is based in Palo Alto and all the advertising sales and marketing offices are in New York City and Chicago.

While the platform of funnyordie.com seems to be working, much of the other things are a tad nebulous.  Glover laughed that they can guarantee eye balls, but they cannot guarantee how viral the sketches will be.  He said that just because it has a celebrity attached does not mean instant success.  They actually create office pools to try an guess what will be a success and what may not live up to expectations.

Do not take any of that as the venture being unsuccessful.  Their model of content is somewhat counterintuitive.  A stand alone niche website is supposed to fail.  Their site is definitely succeeding with seven million unique hits a month!

Along with the website and the HBO series, they are venturing into film making.  They are currently working on a single focused film with Tim & Eric.

The panel was Q&A based and at the end Steele said something that has really been echoed in many of the other panels this year.

“We are in a creative explosion. Everyone can make a video.  The one thing that drives all of this is hard work…you can be a movie maker in a second!  Go out there and do it right now!”

Selling Sub-Culture without Selling Out

There is something amazing about listening to different people with different experiences and different expertise talk about the same thing.  It is especially amazing when the topic is as tough as the one of creating relationships between sub-cultures and the corporate world.  It all came together at the Sunday afternoon at the Selling Sub-Culture without Selling Out panel.

Publicist and people “connector,” Jeff Newelt, led a panel of smart and savvy sub-culture aficionados who discussed how corporations and those who are leaders in their sub-cultures can work together.  Panelists included artist, Molly Crabapple, founder of Urb Magazine, Raymond Roker, indie publisher and Curser founder, Richard Nash, and highly touted blogger Gala Darling.

It is important to define the term sub-culture.  According to the panel, a sub-culture is a participatory culture that is intelligent and does not care about the mainstream.  It should also be noted that sub-cultures will eventually become the mainstream and cycles of imitation are tighter and more intense than before.  According to the panelists, the idea of “selling out” seems to be dying.  It’s about making a living, but still keeping the core interests of the sub-culture within the creativity of the artist.

The panel was quick to point out that corporations should follow some rules when wanting to involve sub-cultures with their product.

1. Don’t become a culture vulture! Treat your artists or musicians well.  Toyota/Scion was a great example of a corporation working within a sub-culture to promote a product.  They helped to launch and sustain music careers of those that participated in the campaign.

2. Hire the original artist or musician; do not rip off someone’s art.  Corporations should work off of cultural DNA and not steal ideas. Nike killed their brand for skateboarding shoes by stealing an idea rather than asking to use the album cover.  It killed their campaign, because the sub-culture crushed it.

3. Corporations should hire listeners.  The listeners should research and understand the sub-culture they are wanting to involve.

4. Creative contests are EVIL! It devalues the artists’ work and it is basically crowd slave labor.  Corporations should do portfolio reviews and not ask 100,000 artists to design a logo.

5. Corporations should look to empower people of a sub-culture!  There may not be a huge monetary return in providing workshops, educational seminars or even health insurance for a year for skateboarders, but it creates loyalty in a brand.  By giving tools to a sub-culture to succeed, it is investing in creators and builders.

The leaders of sub-cultures, the artists, the musicians and the taste makers have responsibilities as well.  This is not a one way street.

1. Don’t become a Shilldibeast. Molly Crabapple said that a Shilldibeast is a greedy individual who just takes the corporate dollar no matter what!

2. Do not support a product you do not personally believe in.  This is especially important for bloggers.  The blogger should stay true to their brand.  Once people realize that their favorite blogger is being untruthful, the blogger loses credibility within that sub-culture.

3. Work with a corporation that makes sense for YOU!  The relationship should not be about a short-term gain for the sub-culture artist or blogger.  By going with a short-term gain, it creates brand erosion.  The relationship needs to be a win/win for both artist and corporation.

4. Do not lose sight of the fact that content is a way of connection.  It only works by sharing with others and engaging those people.  That engagement is what corporations are trying to tap in to.

5. Be a leader in your sub-culture! It is no longer…”if you build it, they will come.”  It is now…”if you build something AMAZING, they will come.”

While guidelines for working with corporations were discussed, Richard Nash stated that staying indie is still the way to go.  In the changing economic times, Nash believes that the indies can ride it out.  For an indie label or publisher, it is not about volume, but it’s about connecting with people.  It is time to let go of the industrial way and it is time to connect and create interactions with listeners and readers.  It is no longer the world of the shelf; it is the world of the tag.

On a personal note, it was amazing to hear people discussing issues I have been thinking about for the past year.  It was certainly fun to watch the panelists discover they were all on the same page.

ScreenBurn Arcade SXSWi 2010

 

ScreenBurn is a great feature of SXSWi that gets bigger every year!  It’s a chance for video gamers to get hands with digital media industries.

This year’s exhibit is definitely promoting the art of the video games.  One of the best exhibits was a collection of 16 award winning creative achievements from the video game world.  Into the Pixel is presenting this work.

Harmonix has a full Rock Band set-up to promote the Rock Band Network.  It’s an idea some were just waiting to have happen.  It allows musicians and bands to self-publish their music in a Rock Band platform.  This allows the independent artist a way to create gameplay tracks of their OWN music for others to download and play!  Who needs a label now?

There was also a huge LEGO layout. Not sure why, but it is pretty cool, thanks to TexLug!