Bill Cammack

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2008 has arrived. 2007 was a complete TRIP, for real. The playing field changed right out from under us as we were playing the game. Every other week, there was some new technology that people flocked to and either disturbed or enhanced our interactions with each other and our friends, fans and clients.

As I mentioned in my Fast Company Expert blog, I realized that as quickly as I’ve been running to keep up with technology, just as quickly, I’ve been running ahead of, or, more importantly, AWAY FROM friends of mine that aren’t anywhere near the leading edge of technology and really couldn’t give a damn about it.

That’s not good enough for 2008. Nope. :/ This year, I’m taking my technological advancement in reverse and seeing how many of my friends I can recoup from the past. There’s no reason I should have 352 followers on http://twitter.com/BillCammack, and not one of them is a friend of mine from 5 years ago.

“Social” media is supposed to be just that… SOCIAL. If that’s true, I’ll be able to reconnect with friends and acquaintances from past phases of this long-ass life! :D Hopefully, I can find out who’s doing what and who’s working where and who has several kids and who moved to another country…

‘07 was all about business. ‘08 is about WE… The PEOPLE! :D

Bill C.
Cammack Media Group, LLC
ReelSolid.TV Season 03: Delusions of Grandeur

Are *you* a Tech Elitist? If so, how’s that workin’ for ya?

As it’s now Christmas, and we think of The Grinch sitting high on the hill, looking down on all the little people of the village with contempt… Let’s consider our own positions in our respective fields and how we’ve chosen social media sites & groups as well as whom we’ve chosen to affiliate ourselves with.

There was much change during 2007. More ways to communicate. More social sites to join. More video hosts with their own little gimmicks that made them slightly different from the rest. New video editing software. New storage solutions. New live streaming options….

As new opportunities arose, there was a lot of bandwagon-jumping. Sometimes it stuck, sometimes it didn’t. When Twitter was initially unreliable, OFTEN, eventually, Jaiku came along, and there was a mass exodus. The backup plan for when Twitter would go down was for people to immediately start posting on Jaiku until the problem was resolved. Eventually, Twitter became stable, and I didn’t hear a peep about Jaiku for months until they got bought by Google. All of a sudden, here come the Jaiku friend requests.

Even within Twitter, there was bandwagon-jumping. Apps were created so you didn’t have to use the twitter web page with your browser. Some people stuck with them. Some people bailed back to the web site when they realized how many twitter posts the apps weren’t picking up. Eventually, people found found satisfaction in how they received twitter posts. At some point during ‘07, Pownce became a player as well.

There was much debate about which status update application was better between the three of them. I ended up sticking with Twitter, and once every so often, I copy/paste redundant posts to Pownce & Jaiku for people that primarily (if not exclusively) use those sites. I’m also biased towards Twitter because I have 341 contacts there vs. 117 on Pownce and 50 on Jaiku, many of which are redundant for the reason I stated earlier. So, for the sake of this post, I’ll say I made the ‘elitist’ decision that Twitter was better for my purposes and essentially neglect the other two services.

On the social site front, I used to have a regular MySpace presence. I had somewhere around 500 “friends” that were rather randomly acquired. What I mean by that is that I had probably 100 contacts that I knew from some other site or forum or that I actually knew IRL and then another 400 or so people/companies that sent me a friends request and then essentially never talked to me “again”. :D … “Again” has to be in quotes, because they never TALKED to me the first time. All they did was click a button that sent me a friends request, and I accepted it. I enjoyed interacting with my actual friends on MySpace, but the vast majority of it I found to be utterly worthless. MySpace is fantastic if you’re a musician or an artist, but I didn’t make many new relationships on MySpace that were worth anything.

Eventually, Facebook stepped its game up, and I migrated to “the better site”. Similar to my Twitter bias for status updates, my MySpace dealings dwindled to ZERO. In fact, if someone didn’t have a facebook account, I wouldn’t even bother to look them up on MySpace. :) “Everybody who was anybody” was on Facebook, so there wasn’t any need to ‘waste’ time on other mass social sites. Recently, someone mentioned MySpace to me, and I inadvertently laughed and said something like “You *still* use your MySpace account?” She replied that she interacts with the people that she knows because of business on Facebook, but her IRL friends are all still on MySpace. I hadn’t thought about it before, but as I sit here on my Facebook hill with contempt… I’m now wondering how many of my ACTUAL friends are still down in the MySpace village, having never made the jump to “the better site”.

The reason Facebook is better for me is that I deal with social media every day of the week. Now that I’m thinking about it, for the average joe, MySpace is more than enough, and there’s no reason for them to look for better connectivity to more REAL people. So now I have to consider whether it’s more beneficial to me to move some of my Facebook-time back to MySpace instead of concentrating solely on the site that’s clearly superior for my purposes.

Next, you have video hosts. I use blip.tv because the options and functionalities serve my purposes as I maintain my own video blogs using WordPress, Show-In-A-Box and vPiP. Meanwhile, other people talk into their webcams and post videos to YouTube. I’ve posted a few videos to YouTube for test purposes, but I wasn’t impressed with the video compression quality at the time, I wasn’t impressed with the Terms of Service and I *CERTAINLY* wasn’t impressed with the dimwitted remarks people love to leave in the comments sections.

For those reasons and others, I’ve left YouTube just about completely alone… However, you can’t argue with the numbers of views that people get, assuming they get “featured”. YouTube has become the go-to for people looking for any kind of video under the sun, so just by having your video there, you have more of a chance of it going viral than if you oh-so-elitely plan, film, edit, compress, upload, post, tag and advertise your own videos like I do. :)

The question, again, is “How’s that workin’ for ya?”. Fortunately, another 2007 development is TubeMogul which enables you to upload a video once and have it distributed to multiple video sharing sites. TubeMogul also tracks statistics for you across several sites. So now, there’s less incentive to keep “all your eggs in one basket”.

I’m sure we can look forward to lots more fantastic developments in 2008. :) Personally, I’ll be paying more attention than I was this year as far as whether I’d like to consolidate or expand in the areas of status updates, social sites and video hosting sites. I didn’t even get to talk about live streaming options, like how I think Operator11 is infinitely better than BlogTV….. except Operator11 went completely offline for more than a week, so people like Jonny Goldstein had to retreat to other live streaming sites to keep their shows going. Of course, there’s no way to add a BlogTV archive to your Operator11 show archive, so c’est la vie. :/

Anyway… I think it’s in all of our best interests to pay attention not only to which new app or site has cool features or the elite people flocking to it, but also to whether we’re trading away communications with our core viewers, friends, contacts and followers. Just like The Grinch found out… it’s lonely at the top.

Bill Cammack • Cammack Media Group, LLC

In response to Got a Crush on a Celebrity…, Derek writes:

So it’s an uphill climb. Understood. But, there are guys out there that KNOW (think) that they are MORE than enough to take the challenge (think Pros vs Joes).

What kinda advice would the DG give to those guys? Would could a guy do once he’s left his life, moved to the city of his desire?

I’ll met enough people to understand your initial answer all too well (think “astronaunts”). A type-A personality guy (definitely NOT me) wouldn’t let something like reality stand in the way. They are the same guys that blow horns and give cat calls to pick up women (see my last video posting – I don’t know how to link it here).

Actually, this is something else I’ve never thought about because up until recently, all the stars were in LA/Hollywood. Unless you lived out there, AND were running in their circles, there was ZERO percent chance that you’d meet a star anyway, unless she came to your local mall to sign autographs or was doing a show in your town.

In the case of doing a show, you’re done. She’s there for business, and you’re not getting near her. If she’s there for a book signing or whatever celebrities do to meet their fans, you’re not going to have but about a minute near her so your best bet is to come in the door looking jiggy-fresh, slide her your number and tell her to call you… outside of the earshot of cockblocking assistants and managers, of course.

Anyway, at this point, now that there are internet celebrities, they’re way more accessible to average joes, because none of this is being done in studios under locked-down conditions. Consider YouTube, for instance, you have some of the most REGULAR chicks that are STARS on YouTube. They probably work as cashiers in the local Wal-Mart, even.

As far as actually getting on, there’s no specific formula to that, because as predictable as chicks are, they all get off on different things. Some chicks like bad boys, some chicks like nice guys… Play the wrong style and you lose. :) The only advantage you have in these situations is if the chick puts a lot of information online about things that she likes. That way, you can play it off like you’re interested in the same things and gain rapport.

So it’s not really different from the basic formula…

Gather information, then Fake It, Till You Make It! :D

Title: “The Holiday Sweater Song”
Directed/Written/Edited by Justin Johnson
Music: Steve Nelson
Vocals: Patty DeArteaga & Justin Johnson
Lyrics: Justin Johnson and Steve Nelson
Vimeo Permalink: [link]
YouTube Permalink: [link]

What says HOLIDAY COMFORT AND FUN more than a festive sweater, adorned with all manner of snowmen, snow women, dogs, snowflakes, and more. Let’s celebrate the beauty of holiday sweaters with some music combined with video!

HUGE thanks to all the people who submitted their videos for this, couldn’t have made it without all your support.

STARRING:
Jodi’s Kids

Alan and Wife

George and Nintern

Erik, Jared, and Lee

Giancarlo Florentini & Jon Grimm
http://wiseguypictures.net/

Amanda Ferri and Alex
http://bustedtees.com/

Shawn Pearlman

Ramon “The Iron Dove”

Steve Garfield
http://www.stevegarfield.com/

Josh Leo
http://joshleo.com/

Veronica Belmont
http://www.veronicabelmont.com/

Hayden Black
http://goodnightburbank.com/

Tim and Rachel
http://nextnewnetworks.com/

Streeter and Amir
http://collegehumor.com/

Michelle and Felicia
http://youtube.com/

Andrea Feczko
http://fastlanedaily.com/

Dave Seger
http://www.a-okfilms.com/

Dan Meth
http://methminute39.com/

Marissa Nystrom
http://celebzaredum.tumblr.com/

Erik Beck
http://indymogul.com/

Bill Cammack
http://reelsolid.tv/

Gary the Puppet

Nick and Richard
http://gawker.com/

Nick Douglas
http://valleywag.com/

Blame Society Productions
http://www.splu.net/

Erik X Raj
http://njfilmcore.com/

Kyle Fasanella
http://vilekyle.com/

The Thread Heads
http://threadbanger.com/

Halcyon
http://www.cockybastard.com/

ART BY
Ben Ross

MUSIC BY
Steve Nelson

LYRICS BY
Justin Johnson and Steve Nelson

DIRECTED / WRITTEN / EDITED BY
Justin Johnson

Reader Derek writes:

There are people out in the public eye that grabs your attention.

Using the “Dating Genius” tried and proven methods, how can someone make any good of this? Generically and academically speaking, mind you.

Actually, this is a very good question, Derek.

Becoming enamored with public figures happens to people all day, every day. That’s why the tabloids make so much money. Everyone’s interested in what their favorite celebrities are doing and saying as well as whom they’re currently dating.

There are two ‘problems’ with this. The first one is that you’re not getting the full experience of a person by watching their show. The second is that you usually don’t have any local access to the person in question, so you never get to experience what they’re really like.

Because of this, what people ‘fall in love’ with is only 1% of the actual person at best… unless they’re doing a personal videoblog where they’re authentically telling you about themselves, their lives, what they think and feel.

For example… I have a friend that’s very PHYSICALLY attractive… very beautiful, but her personality is so *CRASS* that I can’t imagine anyone wanting to date her for who she is as a person. Guys put up with her shenanigans because she’s an easy lay. Other than that, she doesn’t have any wins… None of them are actually “WITH” her. You could take that chick and make her the host of a television show or internet show, and guys would be ‘falling in love’ with her too, but that’s because she’d be reading a script and her true personality wouldn’t be revealed at all by what she’s saying.

There’s actually a third ‘problem’ with celebrity crushes… You’re not the only one.

Depending on your level of taste in women, there could be easily 100, 1,000 or 1,000,000 guys that ‘fell in love’ with her for the exact same reasons that you did, so even if she’s available and you have local access to her, it’s gonna be an uphill climb to get on.

DatingGenius

Charles Hope’s birthday party
December 11, 2007

Charles Hope, Grace Piper, Bill Cammack, Obreahny O’Brien, Rachel Clarke, Adam Quirk, Annie Arthur, Eric Rochow, Jackson West, Jared Klett, Nathan Freitas, Sonia Chaghatzbanian, Paul Idol, Brian Conley, CharlesHopeBirthday2007

BC_Unforgivable_Feb_2006.jpg, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

A Blast from the Past! :D

“Unforgivable”
February 17, 2006

A “Color Corrected” secton of “Blip On Blip #16: Green Science” [blip.tv/file/225834]