Bill Cammack

Two years ago, in May 2008, I wrote “Fame, Popularity & Star Power” and then “Fame (Part 2)” two weeks apart from each other. The main point was that I was trying to figure out how to articulate my thoughts about fame in order to respond to an opinion my friend Dave had expressed about why I do what I do.

I never actually figured out how to exactly articulate the difference between what I’ve done for basically my entire life and what a lot of people do now. Today.. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I ended up watching a video where someone interviewed Melyssa Ford. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, there was an horrible earthquake in Haiti that measured 7.0 on the Richter scale‎. We won’t know until the sun comes up how horrible it was, because electricity AND telephone service was knocked out.

My long time friend and college homeboy, Pascal Antoine is Haitian. He founded and has been maintaining a website called HaitiXchange.com for a lot of years now.

I normally don’t watch the news at all, but I’ve been fascinated by the recent trend of channels showing 3% news and 97% punditry (people giving their OPINIONS about what the news means instead of showing us a bunch more news stories). So I turn on the television around 8pm and flip to CNN, where the slot says “Campbell Brown”, so I’m like “*yawn* Here we go!”, and she has a different look on her face and the marquis below her reads something like “Hospital Collapses In Haiti”. Read the rest of this entry »

ok.. *NOW* I’m completely over this video and y’all never have to hear about it ever again! :D hahaha

Thanks again to Erik Beck for inviting me to participate in the “Harry Potter vs. Voldemort Rap” video, which just passed 2,000,000 (two million) views! :D

An amazing experience for me. :D I can’t express enough how much fun it is to be a fan of my own ultra-talented friends! :D

Erik, J-Rad & Bill

YouTube Link: Harry Potter vs. Voldemort Rap
 
Behind The Scenes clip:
 
Mobile version: iPod Video (.mp4)
 
~ Bill Cammack | @BillCammack

* The text below is the beginning of the video. If you can’t see the video embedded on this page, click here to watch “Safe Sex Tutorial (Big Willie Pockets)” on YouTube. *

Big Willie Pockets

Alright, y’all. New in November, 2009. Today is November 4th and what we’re going to do today is we’re going to talk about Safe Sex, but we’re going to get into some more interesting topics than what you normally hear about.

Now.. Let’s say you’re chillin’, right, so here’s you, you’re hangin’ out. You’re having a good time. You’re Big Willie, You’ve got the big pockets, right? The big BIG pockets. DEEP POCKETS, Money for days…

Now, you’re chillin’ you go to the club and you meet a chick, right? So she’s smiling, like everything’s groovy, so you’re feeling like everything’s groovy too. So you decide, unfortunately for you, not to use safe sex, right? So, next thing you know, BOOM.. waah, waah… there goes like, little kid, you know what I’m saying?

Now, the problem is, here, that first of all, I mean you’re just hoping she’s a cool person, she’s nice and all that stuff, but the problem is, here.. that THESE are now going to get diminished, right? So now we’re going to go get our eraser for your Big Willie pockets, and we’re gonna do this, you know what I’m saying? So NOW, Your pockets look, you know, more like this.. It’s like half of the Big Willie…

Click here to watch the rest of “Safe Sex Tutorial (Big Willie Pockets)” on YouTube.

~ Bill Cammack | @BillCammack

Requests For Action

I’m not sure what I think about Requests For Action (RFA)… What I mean by that is that for instance, I’m about to take part for the second year in a row in a videoblogging series that a few of my friends and I do called “New in November” (newinnov.tumblr.com).

Personally, what I would do regarding the site/series is INFORM people that it’s going on or that it’s available. What I would NOT do is request for them to do something about it, such as follow it, reblog it, RT it and DEFINITELY NOT “Please rate my video 5 stars!” :/ Read the rest of this entry »

“Content is King” is a lie that’s been perpetuated in web video circles for a few years now. “Eye Candy” has always been.. Queen.. but I’ve recently noticed that the tables have turned and Content actually *has* overtaken EC..

I wrote about EC in March 2008 and mentioned “the formula”, which was that whatever actual content you had, the way to get views for your show was to have an attractive female as the ‘front’ or the ‘face’ of the show. She didn’t have to know or understand JACK about JACK so long as she could look good and read her lines. I probably noticed this formula in 2007, since I got started in online video in 2006.

Regardless of the content, the most popular shows were headlined by a female that was nice to look at. Period. (with the one obvious exception being Ze Frank’s “The Show”)

It was even worse on YouTube, because everybody knew that YT took the picture that represented your video from exactly 50% into your episode. If your video was 6 minutes long, the still YT would take was @ 3 minutes. So.. Regardless of what the actual content was, people would figure out the final length of their show and insert a few frames of a chick in a bikini exactly in the middle. They’d upload their show, YouTube would pull the image of the bikini chick, all the boys would click on it expecting to see some ass, the video would get popular and then eventually ‘featured’, where it could really take off and get more views. Read the rest of this entry »

Well… That was fun! :D Thanks again to Erik Beck for inviting me to participate! :D

Bill, Lindz & Erik

YouTube Link: Harry Potter vs. Voldemort Rap
 

Bill Cammack HPvsV, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Bill Cammack in Indy Mogul’s “Harry Potter vs. Voldemort Rap” video

5 days = 478,874 views

97,140 Views And Counting…, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

97,140 views and counting…

I’d love to hear from some of the ladies on this topic. What’s the deal with chicks selling T&A in internet videos? I don’t have to point any fingers, because y’all know who y’all are, and you know what you’re doing, but this video I just watched by TokenBlackChic hits the situation right on the head:

Future?

What I’d like to know from the ladies is “What, exactly, is your intended career path after amassing fans by selling T&A?” Read the rest of this entry »

Please keep your eye on the ball, people. Wake up. Stop letting people tell you gibberish that clouds your minds to the facts, if you’re going to hire them to work for you or even associate them with your brand.

Some people in this space are always “Talkin’ LOUD, and Sayin’ NOTHIN’!”. The funny thing about this is that since for the most part, there aren’t real professionals in ANYTHING strewn across the Social Meda Expert world, the only thing that businesses have to make their hiring decisions on is what people tell them who know only marginally more than they do to begin with.

As an example, let’s look at the video aspect of Social Media. Basically, video on the net is an extension of the fad of emailing jokes to people in the mornings. You would come to work and turn on your computer and there would be several jokes emailed to you from people that thought the jokes were funny. Eventually, this style of passing an email from person to person was termed “viral”, and the goal became to make “viral videos”. Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks *ENTIRELY* to becoming aware of Jonny Goldstein and his show Reinventing Television in October, 2006, I’ve been doing live shows for almost two years now.

At this point, doing live shows has become a fad. Justin.TV, LiveVideo, Yahoo Live, Mogulus, Operator11, BlogTV, Ustream, Stickam, is YouTube doing live video now? There are tons of people doing live shows now, but to what effect? For what purpose?

I streamed several sessions live from PodCampNYC 2.

I do live shows from my “Live” page:

I still follow and participate in Jonny’s shows on BlogTV:

IME, There are only two reasons to do a show live. 1) You’re broadcasting time-sensitive information, or 2) You want your audience to be able to interact live with the hosts & guests.

Time-Sensitive Programming

Time-sensitive information would be the new Apple announcements as they’re occurring or maybe a sporting event like a football game or an MMA event. Basically, it’s a replacement for people not being able to travel to that location and view it themselves, in person. This is why I was streaming sessions from PodCampNYC. There were people in other towns that I was in communication with that were interested in seeing what was going on in NYC *while* it was going on.

In this case, there was communication with me, but not with the people doing the panels. The idea was to give the experience of “being there”. Then again, *I* was the one doing the show, not the panelists, so there actually WAS direct interaction with the host.

Most of the services I mentioned will save your video for you as an archive. This means that if your information isn’t time-sensitive, more people will watch the archive asynchronously than will tune in at that particular day and time to watch your show live. The only incentive they have to tune in live is reason #2.

Audience Participation

The only reason to bother tuning in to an internet show at a particular time instead of watching it whenever you get around to it is that you’re going to have a different experience during the live show than you have watching the archive.

George Kelly did a live show on Yahoo a few months back that I thought was really enjoyable and well-done. George plays guitar, and instead of having people tune in to watch him play whatever he had already decided, he was taking requests from the chat room. Automatically, there was value added, because the show was being created on the fly. Meanwhile, the text-chatters were socializing amongst themselves. George was in and out of attention to the chat room and “a fine time was had by all”. :D

Jonny Goldstein‘s shows are fun because he does them consistently and has built up a “studio audience” that’s gotten to know each other via his show and maintained our relationships via other formats of social media. Jonny’s very attentive to the chat room, and he’s more of a facilitator of conversation than someone that just sits there talking to a guest as if there’s no live audience.

The reason I was thinking about this is that as stingy as companies are in trying to leverage pre-recorded video and UGC (User-Generated Content), I can’t see *WHY* they would turn around and waste their money making LIVE shows that are the exact same experience as the saved archive. Where’s the ROI? Are there really so many extra people tuning in to the live show that it justifies the expenditure? Isn’t it just preaching to the choir? For that, assemble the same hosts & guests, turn a video camera on, turn it back off, edit & upload that video and you’ll have just as many people watching it while retaining ducats in your video budget to create some worthwhile programming.

Perhaps ask yourself “What difference does it make if my audience watches my show live versus if they watch it later today?” or “What difference does it make if my audience watches this show next Tuesday, or next month?” If the answer is *NONE*, then save your money and focus on pre-recorded content.

~Bill Cammack

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