Bill Cammack

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The lineup left to right. Hermann Mazard, Bill Cammack, Sarah Cooley, Host of the Blip,tv Party Charles Hope and me Grace Piper, originally uploaded by gpiper.

Hermann Mazard, Bill Cammack, Sarah Cooley, Charles Hope and Grace Piper
blip.tv Summer Party, 2009

Bill & Charles, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Bill Cammack & Charles Hope

My friend Chris Brogan has inadvertently caused a stir. :D

From the little I’ve read about the situation, (you can read about it yourself, on Chris’ site) basically, he accepted a $500 gift card from Kmart to write a blog post about Kmart. He was completely transparent that he was writing a sponsored blog post. As part of the deal, he also received the opportunity to give away a second $500 Kmart gift card. Here’s what Chris says he did with the money:

“I realized really quickly that I could do two good things while satisfying the project request: I could give someone else a $500 gift card for the holidays, and I could use my shopping experience to buy toys for the Toys for Tots program. (My kids kept the jackets and my boy kept some pants.)”

This kind of thing was discussed AT LENGTH exactly one year ago, when Cheryl Colan made a post questioning Steve Woolf & Zadi Diaz’s sponsorship & advertising practices with regard to their show Epic-FU in her post “What Up, New Media?”. Cheryl posted a video on that page speaking about her issues if you want the background on that 99-coment-long saga.

The point in both cases was whether bloggers or content creators can GET PAID and talk about products with integrity at the same time.

While I personally don’t see anything wrong with Chris getting paid to blog about something, I see the problems that some people are going to have with the situation. Read the rest of this entry »

I mentioned back on September 5th that my friend, Bre Pettis was going to have the premiere of the pilot television series episode he did, called “History Hacker” on The History Channel.

Photo by Francisco Daum
Bill Cammack, Charles Hope, Grace Piper @ Bre Pettis
Videoblogger meetup, Art Bar, May 2007

Rudy Jahchan, Bill Cammack & Bre Pettis,
starring in “Epic Pose-Coordination FAIL!”

The premiere was on the 26th, and Bre had a “viewing party” in Brooklyn.
(Check out Bre’s posts about the show & party on brepettis.com/blog)

I can’t think of a better way to kick off my new Television category than with a friend’s show! :D

Basically, Bre likes to hack things. This means he takes things apart, sees how they work and makes OTHER things out of them or makes them have different functions than they originally had. Think of the television show MacGyver, except with time, resources, research and no villains chasing you while you’re trying to create stuff.

He’s been doing podcasts (shows on the internet) on this topic for a long time. They’re normally short, because people that watch video on the net have a short attention span. This means he’s had to condense the loooooong amount of time it takes him to do what he does into a few minutes. This kind of show translates well into a 30-minute or hour-long program (actually 44 minutes plus commercials), because there’s so much that ends up on the cutting-room floor that you actually COULD make long programs from what Bre does.

I know this because I’ve spent an hour MYSELF, just trying to get my lines down for a 7-minute video collaboration. :/

The Lab – Episode 06: “Hostin’ Ain’t Easy!”

Now, the thing about internet video shows is you have NO BUDGET. This means you have to get your point across with the least amount of production, because you can’t afford to hire people that will make your show look right. Well, in this case, they pulled out ALL the stops. “History Hacker” is really VISUALLY entertaining. They used either a greenscreen or more likely a white cyc to create Bre’s virtual environment:

The Shirtless Apprentice #21: Cyclorama 101

I was honestly SURPRISED at what I was watching, hahaha. I really wasn’t prepared for the polish that they put on Bre’s pilot. The show is easily watchable by people that aren’t even INTERESTED in what Bre’s talking about or doing. At the same time that it’s about hacking things, it’s a history lesson, there are animations, there’s compositing, great writing, multiple locations in multiple cities… I CERTAINLY wasn’t ready to see MIT’s “Infinite Corridor”, which I had to pass through a zillion times, going to class. I had assumed it was shot in Brooklyn, in one location, in the same style that Bre’s web shows are normally done. I was amazed and entertained.

‘Matter of fact, Bre’s show reminded me of a show I used to edit for AETN / History Channel called “Guts & Bolts”. It had the same mix of talking about mechanical technology and simultaneously giving history lessons. You don’t think about how IMPERATIVE it is for aircraft carrier catapults to work nearly 100% of the time until someone explains that if it’s only 99% reliable, one out of every 100 times you launch a multi-million dollar plane, it falls in the water. :D

Anyway, the show was great! :D I have it on DVR and am in the process of watching it again. I actually had to stop watching it, because there are just too many GREAT shots and lines and setups. For me, it’s overload, because I’m used to experiencing my friends’ shows 3 minutes at a time… NOT 44+commercials! :D

The layperson’s going to enjoy it. The techie’s going to enjoy it. The hacker’s going to enjoy it. Anyone interested in inventions or history’s going to enjoy it. I definitely recommend setting your DVR up to record it (assuming they’re showing reruns) or making time to sit down and check it out! :D

And if you DON’T watch “History Hacker”, this is what happens to you! :D

Photo by Rob Boudon

Karin: I KNOW you watched “History Hacker”, RIGHT?
Noneck: Yeah, Yeah… I got the torrent. I’ll watch it when I get home!
Bre: hehehe
Bill: Yeah. That’s what I’M talkin’ ’bout! :D

Bill Cammack | Television

Dan, Charles, Anastasia, Grace & Elena, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Dan Patterson, Charles Hope, Anastasia Uglova, Grace Piper & Elena Melendy

Behind the scenes @ blip.tv.
Prod/Edit/Camera: Bill Cammack

blip.tv’s Dina Kaplan interviews Grace Piper about social media, branding and her show/site Fearless Cooking

Shoutouts, Cameos & Photo Credits in this video:
Steve Garfield
Chris Brogan
Jeff Pulver
Laura Fitton
Sunny Gault
Charles Hope
Brian Shaler
NoodleScar
MissBHavens
Galacticast
VON
The Webby Awards
Bill Cammack

Grace & Charles, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Grace Piper & Charles Hope

Charles, Dan, Grace & Widad, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Charles Hope, Dan Patterson, Grace Piper & Widad Franco

Jose, Kathryn, Steve, Hilary & Charles, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Jose Castillo (ThinkJose), Kathryn Jones, Steve Garfield, Hilary McHone & Charles Hope

Raymond M. Kristiansen wrote a post on January 11, 2007 entitled “The Audience of Ten”. He also made a post with the same name to the Yahoo Videoblogging Group. They’re both good an interesting reads if you’re planning to do a “show” on the internet.

Basically, Raymond was making a distinction between having a few viewers and having many viewers. I understood TECHNICALLY, what he was talking about, but I didn’t have any IRL experience that would have made me really empathize with his points. His focus was on the HOW and WHY of doing a show being based on WHOM you were doing the show FOR.

I’ve kept Raymond’s concept in mind over the more-than-a-year since I read it. In the last month, I’ve had reason to revisit the concept to attempt to determine the “sweet spot” of “Audience”, as it pertains to me, personally.

My third and most recent “season” of ReelSolid.TV, my interenet video show, is entitled “Delusions of Grandeur”. This isn’t a personal statement, even though everyone that actually knows me IRL will tell you that DoG fits *me* PERFECTLY! :D The reason for the title is that as I contemplated WHY I would do a show, the reason is for the audience. I don’t have to do a show for ME, because I’m already living my own life. I already know what’s happening. I’m already getting laughs or education from what goes on around me. I’m enjoying NYC sights and sounds every day. So it’s not for me that I would make a show….. or, is it?……

Some people just enjoy being famous or internet famous. Some people enjoy being popular, even if they have to play themselves out to gain status/notoreity/fame/infamy. That’s of no interest to me, because I’ve always BEEN popular. I had a pivotal discussion with David Karp on June 10, 2007. I know what day it was because I shot this video:



As part of the discussion that day, David brought up the concept of “popularity”, and I insisted that that had nothing to do with my doing shows. At the same time, he sparked a question for me, which was “What’s the goal? Why do it?” which correlated with Raymond’s question “Who do you do it for?”

DoG is indicative of a cycle. In order to do an internet show, you have to delude yourself into the believe that someone, ANYONE is watching your show. Otherwise, by definition, there’s no point in putting you videos or audio or text ON the internet. It’s a beacon… A message in a bottle. You don’t know WHO’S going to get the message, but you’re hoping… BELIEVING that somebody will. So in order to do a show, you pre-fabricate your audience in your own mind, then you speak to that audience, and hopefully a REAL audience catches on to what you floated out there into the stratosphere.

Some people don’t have this problem. They just love to see/listen to themselves talk. :D That’s great for them, because they don’t need an audience. They just need to have a camera pointed at them to feel accomplished and happy with what they’re doing. More power to them! :D

When I decided on DoG, I wasn’t thinking about Raymond’s “Audience of Ten”. I was thinking about the audience at large. I was thinking about the people that randomly land on my site because of google searches. I was thinking about the people that happen to be looking for a topic that I happen to have had something to say about and just dropped in. I was NOT thinking about “core viewers” or “passionate viewers”. I wrote “Are You A Tech Elitist?” from the standpoint of someone that was focusing on the non-core and recognized a deficiency in my own core relations. With more and more Twitter followers and more and more Facebook and LinkedIn contacts, my time was being spent managing the social media masses instead of relating to the core. This is what brought me back to Raymond’s concept.

When I returned, however, I wasn’t focusing on the numbers being the difference. I was focusing on RELATIONSHIPS being the difference. The perfect example for me is my iTunes feed.

I receive stats on how many times each of my videos is pulled through iTunes. That number has never been higher than 30 within, say, 3 hours of a video release, and it’s currently sitting around 6 within the first hour. iTunes doesn’t give you any feedback about WHO IT IS that’s downloading your videos. Another thing is that when people use iTunes, they can take your show with them on their iPods or iPhones, so all you understand as the content creator is that there was one download of your video. That doesn’t mean that that person didn’t watch it 18 times and show it to their friends. So… In the mindset of focusing on the social media masses, I completely neglected my iTunes feed, meaning that as I redesigned BillCammack.com, mentally catalyzed by Tyme White, I broke my link from my video category to my iTunes feed and didn’t bother to check it because “in the grand scheme of things”, it was only 6 people anyway, right?

I received my wake-up call when my friend Adrienne Brawley asked me “So… what happened to your iTunes feed?”

All of a sudden…. And I mean *ALL* of a sudden, I completely, fully and POSITIVELY understood WHY I needed to fix my feed, and WAY MORE IMPORTANTLY, I recognized the sector of the audience that’s important TO ME when I make videos or write posts. I suddenly realized that amongst the random hits I receive from people looking for dating advice or footage of snow in Manhattan, NYC, I have a few, VERY IMPORTANT hits that I get that are from people that are ACTUALLY INTERESTED in what I’ve said or done now. Interestingly enough, DoG glosses this over, because you delude yourself into believing that lots of people care, which makes everyone like fans in a stadium. It’s the opposite of not seeing the forest for the trees. It’s not seeing the individuals for the crowd.

What it’s about for me certainly isn’t “popularity”, as I told David. Popularity’s useful for people that just want to be admired by a bunch of people they have no relationship to. It’s about having a good conversation IRL with Kenyatta about a blog post we both commented on. It’s about Tim saying he enjoys my work. It’s about Lux being able to rattle off DatingGenius concepts to new people that hang out with us because she’s watched me DEMOLISH people with the DG Live Show so many times already and people always come up with the same arguments. It’s about instigating-ass Annie throwing me under the bus every chance she gets. It’s about Charles laughing with me over something I said or did on the net. It’s about Grace shaking her head when I break down “the real” to her. :D

So, finally, I understand Raymond’s concept, and I agree with it for the most part. As I do videos going forward, I’m going to do them for the audience that I know I have and that I enjoy receiving feedback from. I might do them for individuals or I might do them for groups. I am NOT going to be focusing outside of that, however I welcome anyone who finds anything interesting to watch, give feedback or join in the fun. :)