Bill Cammack

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This is a response to Tyme White’s article: “Experienced vs. inexperienced ‘advice’”, which was a response to my article, “Personal Brand? No Crossover”.

@Tyme: Good points.

First of all, I was specifically talking about internet shows. Actually, FIRST OF ALL, no… I don’t have ANY experience with hiring ANYBODY to be the figurehead or “face” of a show. What I *DO* have experience with is watching a show and determining whether a) it’s good, b) it sucks because of the production (technical issues), c) it sucks because of the script-writing, d) it sucks because the face of the show is entirely talentless, or e) EVERYTHING about the show sucks.

Granted… That MAY be because I’m an editor AND a show producer.

I wouldn’t know what the average joe/josepine takes away from looking at a show that “fails” (whatever that means in the context of this discussion). All I can do is ‘project’ and believe that distinctions are made between whether the show a) wasn’t good, and it’s the talent’s fault, b) wasn’t good, and it’s NOT the talent’s fault, or c) WAS GOOD, but got shut down for other reasons (or didn’t make money or didn’t grow it’s audience… whatever you’re defining as a “failed” show).

For instance, we just received news that MobLogic was shut down. According to articles on the net, Lindsay Campbell is still an employee of CBS. Before MobLogic was cancelled, they were outputting sporadically compared to the regular schedule they were using when they first started.

Without “inside information” from “the horse’s mouth”, there’s no telling what the reason was for the shutdown. It just so happens that WallStrip was shut down on the same day, apparently. Let’s say the average person isn’t going to search for articles about WHY a show got cancelled, and all they know is that it was here today and gone tomorrow.

What that person’s going to take away from the show, as far as the “face” of the show, is the sum of their experiences from watching her. They either liked her style, didn’t like her style, or felt she was inconsistently good/bad. If she gets selected for a new show, that sentiment is going to drive whether that viewer goes “YAAY!” or “oh no. She got ANOTHER show? :/”. That’s what the talent has to carry forward, their own performance. Unless the public feels that the show “failed” because the talent sucked, the ending of a show, which as you mention, is the BUSINESS side of things has nothing to do with the ENTERTAINMENT VALUE they received from the talent.

Read the rest of this entry »

Twitter changed the game as far as blogging. Instead of posting something, and MAYBE people would stop by your blog and MAYBE they’d read your articles and MAYBE they’d leave a comment, all of a sudden, what you had to say was being pushed to people who actually REQUESTED to hear what you had to say by following you and then either checking the site itself or installing an app or widget on their computers or phones.

Twitter > Bill

I noticed that the traffic on the Yahoo Videoblogging Group fell off DRASTICALLY as Twitter presented a far better and faster way for people to get immediate responses to questions than an email list.

I also noticed A LOT OF PEOPLE putting a lot of their ideas on Twitter instead of their own blogs. I didn’t really think much of that until I talked with Tyme White about it ten (10) months ago, back in March, 2008:

Tyme: “Yes, the conversations are moving away from blogs but the problem is the same problem that has always existed, one I warned about at least two years ago. How many times has a writer published an article, a larger site wrote about it, and the conversation took place every where but on the writer’s site? Same problem – the writer would have to keep up with those conversations. Now, the same root problem exists, but there are many more sites where the conversation can take place. The writer publishes the entry and now a discussion can happen on the originating blog, any blogs that write about it, any site that aggregates content (Reddit, Chawlk, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc.), Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, any of the social sites that are popping up, forums…the list is long.”

The question is: does it matter to the writer if the conversation takes place in other places? If the answer is no, the writer would have one strategy. If the answer is yes, it does matter and the preference is for the conversation to take place on their blog, well, that would take a different strategy, wouldn’t it?”

So, referencing that practically-one-year-old post by Tyme… Does it matter where *YOU* blog your material? I blog mine to BillCammack.com. I post references to my blog posts on Twitter and Tumblr. Read the rest of this entry »

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. :)

Tyme White linked me to Caroline McCarthy’s article where she interviewed Lindsay Campbell. I found this exchange particularly interesting:

McCarthy: The “girl in front of a camera, talking about stuff” has almost become a Web cliché by now. How do you hope that Moblogic will be different?

Campbell: One of the things that we’d like to move beyond is just being a Web talking head, like a Web counterpart to the TV talking heads. So a lot of the talking on the show is going to be done by people that we meet all over the country, and eventually hopefully in other countries, about the topics that we’re talking about. I’m not an expert, I’m just expert at talking to people, and that’s how the stories are going to get formed.

I found it cool that Caroline brought up what I affectionately call “the formula”, since it’s been my experience that everybody knows it’s going on, but nobody wants to discuss it.

“The Formula” for internet shows is that no matter how your content is aggregated, researched or scripted, make sure you have an attractive female in front of the camera to “talk about stuff”. That’s pretty much it. :D The obvious problem here is that it’s very tough (if not impossible) to tell who’s tuning in to hear about the content, and who’s tuning in to “check out the chick”.

Does it matter why they tuned in? No. Views are views. Sponsors and advertisers want to know how many times their ad is going to be shown. Revenue Sharing is based on hits, not “reasons why”. Also, I’m not knocking utilizing Eye Candy (EC) to draw attention to a show or product or get guys to concentrate on the screen long enough for your message to get across. :D It’s the same thing as having “booth babes” at conventions or car shows.

Or, is it?……..

I think it’s very important to note what percentage of your show’s props are due to content vs the looks and hopefully TALENT of the EC. There are several flavors of EC:

1) Entirely Talentless = Just looks
2) Knows how to read the teleprompter, but not theatrically
3) Enthusiastic and personable, but not knowledgeable
4) Researched and wrote her own material
5) Actually lives what she’s presenting about, obviously knowledgeable and speaking from a first-hand, in-the-trenches perspective.

I suppose flavors 4 and 5 might not qualify for EC, because you’re not “dressing up the show” by having her speak. She’s not a front. She’s the actual show. If you ran into her in person, she could intelligently engage you in conversation about facts that didn’t come up on the show or tangents she didn’t explore. However, for the purpose of this discussion, I’d like to include all the flavors as we consider how dependent your show is on the EC.

So… Let’s think about what happens when “The Face Of The Show” leaves the show…..

Let’s say you’re doing a show with an ECfl5. Actually, there wouldn’t be much for you to do except tell her when the camera’s on. :D She knows the material, she’s prepared what she wants to say, and really all you’re doing (if she needs you for anything at all instead of producing her own show completely independently) is helping HER to bring her vision to the masses. There is no “leaving the show”, because she IS the show. If she makes another show, it’ll be the exact same thing, with a new name, and without YOU connected to it. :)

ECfl4 is pretty much the same thing, except it’s likely that the research she’s doing doesn’t make her AS unique as an ECfl5, though she’s still extremely important for the show to have the same style and delivery. If she leaves the show, not just the look of the show changes, but you’ve lost the ability to write the shows in the same way that you did when you were building your audience. Also, if she joins another team or makes a similar show on her own, she automatically transfers the style of your show to hers. You can get another researcher, but if your viewers don’t appreciate her looks AND her new style, that might be all she wrote.

ECfl3 is a pretty good combination for both sides in a show break-up. :) Guys love to watch her talk. She’s fun and interesting. She’s someone that they would love to actually meet in person at a conference. Perfect. :D At the same time, since she’s not the writer or researcher on the project, none of the infrastructure disappears if she leaves. She’s “acting” what you tell her to act, so that’s what she’ll do on her new show. There are mannerisms that she’ll bring to the new venture that come from working with you or your team, but for you, transitioning to new on-air talent is seamless. She’s basically an informed spokesperson. The information doesn’t leave with her, and next week… (well… whenever you get new EC hahaha) the show goes on as planned.

ECfl2 is pretty much dime-a-dozen. Imagine the reading skills of a used car salesman in a late-night low-budget television commercial. “This. Is. Not. A. Lemon… Believe. You. Me….. I. Gah.Rohn.TEE. Ya. That.” In this case, you might be better off taking your chances and using an actual guy. :D … Or, at least a less-attractive female that can actually deliver the lines well and make your show look intelligent.

The problem here is in comparison to the better flavors. ECfl3 is like having a conversation with a friend. ECfl4&5 are like hearing a technical conversation… Like last year at BlogHerBiz ‘07 when Lisa Stone moderated a panel which included Google’s VP of Search Products and User Experience, Marissa Mayer:

So, once you’ve heard knowledgeable women “kick it, off the top” about intelligent and progressive subjects, you’re just like “oh, come on :/” when the ECfl2’s trying to read sentences and pause because she sees a period, and didn’t understand until then that the sentence was about to end. :D

Also, that’s the fault of the producer or whomever’s in charge of the production. If there’s a bad read, have the talent DO.IT.OVER! :/

Which brings us to ECfl1, hehehe… This is when the producer says “I don’t care WHAT you people think! I know she can’t act and I know she can’t read, but she looks good, so I’m going to get hits and that’s all that matters”. Content-wise, these could actually be silent videos, or at least without her talking, because nobody’s listening anyway. It’s kind of a cycle… Since the EC has no mental connection to the material (if you bothered to write any material in the first place) the people who find out about your show and continue to watch it are tuning in to see how the EC looks this week. Because of this, if she leaves the show, your ratings leave with her because the EC *IS* the show, so you’re kaput.

So… Interestingly enough, if you’re a show producer, “middle of the road” is the way to go. If she knows too much, your show suffers when she leaves because she removes the infrastructure. If she comes off as a dolt or a simpleton, your show suffers when she leaves because NOW you have to survive off of the merit of your content….. Content which you disrespected in the first place by not selecting the right woman to represent your project from the giddyap.

And now, in the spirit of EC, I gratuitously embed pictures of Caroline McCarthy and Stephanie Frasco so people will click on my article! :D

Map of stats from BillCammack.com/live on Monday, March 03, 2008

Known visitors: Tyme White, Phil Campbell, Liam Cassidy, Nathan Freitas

ok… So that’s a wack title. :D

I decided not to let figuring out a title bog me down during my productive time, which is the morning. I just wanted to make a note to document facts and give some propers where they’re due.

I’ve been virtually lampin’ with Liz Burr for quite some time now. I believe “lamping”, which I first heard from Public Enemy’s Flavor Flav has its origins in the fact that in NYC, we have a lot of lamp-posts, so if you’re hanging out, especially at night, you’re very likely to be near one, which would make you “posted up” at the lamp, and therefore “lamping”. If you’re doing something A LOT or to an extreme point, the term “cold” is added, which would mean if you’re chillin’ HARD, you’re “cold lampin’”.

Anyway…..

So I’ve been virtually lampin’ with Liz Burr for quite a while, and more recently, Tyme White. These ladies are both hardcode internetters, which I thought *I* was until now. :D

Now, there’s tons of stuff for me to learn and find out about on the net, and lots of people to interact with remotely, so that’s why I stay connected. However, I don’t give a damn how it actually works. I don’t care why my iChat can connect to your AIM. I don’t care if my website “knows” your website. Actually, I didn’t even know that it COULD know your website. :/ As long as I can do what I WANT to do, fine.

So here comes Tyme… All in the business [like she loves to be ;)] talkin’ ’bout “Why is your media all over the place?”. I went to explain it to her, not ‘defend’ my reasoning, just tell her about it… and I realized that I didn’t have an answer to that question. With a little more introspection, I realized that my internet strategy was based on how I used to think and not how I currently think. I was using a shotgun approach of being everywhere and on everyone else’s blog, whilst having nothing to say on my own blog. :) That was fine with me, because I DIDN’T have anything to say on my own blog. It’s a cycle…..

Without viewers/readers, you’re tossing media into the air by posting it to the internet. You’re talking to nobody, or you’re talking to everybody or anybody. Putting something on your blog assumes other people are going to read it, unless it’s a collection for yourself, so you can go back and read about and watch the stuff you’ve been doing over the years. Some people blog that way, like putting their diaries online. Since that’s not interesting to me, I was rather cool with posting on other people’s sites and being a part of THEIR conversations with THEIR readers/viewers instead of posting things for MY viewers that don’t necessarily care what I have to say about somebody else.

Now, that’s all well and good until someone wants to know about Bill, BillCammack or Bill Cammack. What I was doing with *my* site was giving people the information I wanted them to have, instead of congregating information about myself and letting THEM choose what they wanted to check out. At the time, over a year ago, that made sense to me. Everything in its own compartment… However, I hadn’t reevaluated my own goals for internet positioning, even though I advise OTHER PEOPLE how to position themselves on the net. :D

Consolidation didn’t matter to me because I broadcast what I’m doing anyway on twitter, pownce, jaiku, facebook, rarely myspace, email, iChat, whatever every time I do something. This is because whomever happens to be “listening” to me right now can choose whether to click on the link or not. So if I twitter one site this morning and a different site this afternoon, it doesn’t matter, first of all because they’re turned into tinyurls in the first place, and second, a click is a click. I’m bringing my offsite posts even MORE off-site by masking them twice more. 1) tinyurl, 2) twitter, 3) offsite post.

I’m not going to go through the myriad points that Tyme made, but a major one for me was when she said that people are less likely to join some other site that requires membership in order to respond to your posts. I had had experience with that JUST THIS WEEK when I had posted something offsite to a group that just locked down their site so people have to have an account with them in order to post. My friend skyped me and informed me that she had something to say about my post, but she wasn’t going to join that site and give away her personal information just to comment. I was glad enough to chat with her about it over skype, but I see now how that’s a loss all the way around. I WIN because I get her reaction to my post, but everyone else loses, because nobody gets to hear it but me. Then I lose, because I don’t get anyone’s reaction to HER reaction. Then SHE loses, because nobody reads the brilliant things she has to say. Then I lose because I don’t get to respond in text to her text response…… So this big CASCADE is all because I posted to a walled garden instead of to a site which lets you input your name and other information right on that page and speak your piece.

Besides the excellent and relevant points, it became a drag for me to scoot around from site to site to find posts that I had made on different topics. So… In the vein of ReelSolid.TV’s 3rd season, aptly entitled “Delusions of Grandeur”, this is now the Bill Cammack fansite! :D

That’s right. :D This is now my own fansite. All Bill, All the time. :D MuuuuHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!

So if you want to know what Bill has to say today, (which I don’t know why you would, but DoG affords me the ability to not care at all one way or the other! :D) come on through. I’m still planning on my Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Studio screencast series, but other than that, I’m ditching the “show” format. You get what you get. It’s your fault for clicking on the bookmark! :D You might get “Bachelor Cooking Show”. You might get “Girlfriend Auditions”. You might get a birthday party in a quiet-ass bar.

You might get interviews. You might get bike riding. You might get a turtle on the floor.

Whatever you get, that’s what I had for you. :D Enjoy it! (or not, hahaha)

Getting back to the point…

Once I had the concept of doing things differently, I needed the implementation of that. This is where I learned the umpteenth lesson of this week. Remember how I mentioned that I don’t care how things work? Well Liz Burr and Tyme White care, and at first, I tried to keep up with and absorb their suggestions. Unfortunately, A) there were too many suggestions, and B) each suggestion was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to understanding how they came to that understanding in the first place. Very soon, I found myself spending more time googling ish than changing my site, so I dropped that and just did what they said to do and added what they said to add. Sure, I had to be happy with their layout suggestions, because it’s *my* site, and I’m the one that has to look at it and feel proud that it represents ME, but if it weren’t for them, on the technical/infrastructure side, my site would look exactly like it did last week, and I’d still be researching templates and fantasizing about what my new site is going to look like… eventually.

What I learned from this is WHY.PEOPLE.NEED.CONSULTANTS! Seriously.

Since I do everything myself, filming, music, “acting”, editing, color correction, compositing, compression, site design, uploading, blogging, tagging, advertising….. I never need consultants. Other people come to The Kid when they want their videos done in a quality fashion. This time, *I* was the one completely in the dark, and I’m fully aware of how NOWHERE I would be in this process if I didn’t have someone who already knew their way around and knew the WHYs and WHY NOTs about the infrastructure of building sites. Admittedly, it’s not a good feeling AT ALL to admit you can’t do something, even if the fact of the matter is that I’ve applied myself to learning other skills during the time they’ve applied themselves to what THEY know. It’s like the more they talk, the more you realize you’re actually standing in a deep hole, in the dark, when you thought you were at ground level in Times Square at lunchtime.

So, amongst many other things, that was my takeaway from this situation. As a consultant who doesn’t need consultants, I got a glimpse from the other side. I got to be the producer that sits behind me on the couch, wondering what’s going on on those multiple screens that keep changing and then somehow, magically, what you said you wanted happens on the television screen. I got to experience myself through experiencing Tyme & Liz doing their thing. It’ll help me choose what I do and don’t want to do as projects. It’ll help me understand who appreciates how much time they’re saving and how much better their productions are by calling in the pros….

Props to the ladies. Welcome to my new fansite… Let The GAMES Begin!!! :D