I’ll be speak­ing for the first time tomor­row at Cinequest, the annual inde­pen­dent film fes­ti­val in San Jose, Calif. Details:

Buck­ing the Estab­lish­ment – Should Indie Films Forgo Tra­di­tional Media?

Pan­elists:
Marla Halperin — Magic Lamp; Pres­i­dent of Pub­lic­ity and Pro­mo­tion
Elliot Kotek — Mov­ing Pic­tures Mag­a­zine; Editor-in-Chief
J.D. Lasica — Co-founder of Our­me­dia and Bid4Vid.com
Pat Saper­stein – Vari­ety; Senior Edi­tor
Jim Dob­son — Indie PR; Owner
mod­er­a­tor: Jens Hussey, Cinequest’s Direc­tor of Pub­lic Relations

Topic:
The media plays a pow­er­ful role in a filmmaker’s life — not only to get the word out about a film in release but also to cre­ate buzz on prod­uct that has not yet been signed to a dis­trib­u­tor. Due to an ever-changing media and dis­tri­b­u­tion land­scape, indie film­mak­ers are shift­ing focus away from tra­di­tional media out­lets and are turn­ing to new media. Are blogs beat­ing the trades? Are high-profile reviews still nec­es­sary or are they dinosaurs com­pared to Inter­net social mar­ket­ing? This fas­ci­nat­ing panel of top media guests will offer a glimpse into a realm that is a con­fus­ing entity for many film­mak­ers to nav­i­gate. This is a great oppor­tu­nity to learn how to stay ahead of the trend and use your PR dol­lars and time wisely.

Web­site: Cinequest.org

Admis­sion: $15 here or at the door.

Later: Had a smash­ing good time at Cinequest, includ­ing meet­ing some of the peo­ple run­ning the fes­ti­val (now 18 years old), reps from enter­tain­ment pub­li­ca­tions and espe­cially the inde­pen­dent film­mak­ers whose work comes from a place of pas­sion and deep per­sonal commitment.

The ses­sion won’t be pod­cast and I wasn’t tak­ing notes on stage. Suf­fice to say I encour­aged film­mak­ers to think out­side the box, to exper­i­ment with new forms of reach­ing out to their audi­ences by embrac­ing alter­na­tive media forms like Seesmic, BlogTalkRa­dio and new kinds of trail­ers that include the filmmaker’s authen­tic back­story, per­sonal nar­ra­tive and rea­son for mak­ing the film. It’s not about mar­ket­ing, it’s about con­ver­sa­tions, mak­ing your­self avail­able for inter­views by blog­gers, par­tic­i­pat­ing in social net­works where the audi­ence is, and tak­ing part in a larger narrative.

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San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle: Big names and big ideas together in Monterey.

The TED (Tech­nol­ogy,
Enter­tain­ment, Design) con­fer­ence is often described as a place where
you go to meet peo­ple who are much smarter than you. It’s also not a
bad place to meet peo­ple who are much richer than you, much more
suc­cess­ful and gen­er­ally much bet­ter known.

Indeed, the cor­ri­dors of the Por­tola Plaza Hotel at Monterey
Bay, along with the Mar­riott across the street, were crawl­ing with
power bro­kers and pop cul­ture icons, artists and altru­ists for the
four-day con­fer­ence, run­ning Wednes­day through Saturday. …

I’m often asked if Chris Ander­son has invited me to TED. No, not yet, though came close last sum­mer for this week’s event. I’ll get there one day.

Mean­time, here is this year’s $100,000 TED Prize win­ners — see the short video.

And here is some blog cov­er­age of the event.

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Given the num­ber of lies and the amount of dis­in­for­ma­tion spread by the right, it’s worth repeat­ing this over and over and over.

Today’s San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle: The right plays on Amer­i­cans’ fears in attacks on Obama. Excerpt:

If the ascen­dancy of Obama and Sen. Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton in the Demo­c­ra­tic race shows that Amer­i­cans’ atti­tudes toward race and gen­der have evolved, the lat­est round of media images allud­ing — incor­rectly — to an over­seas Mus­lim upbring­ing for Obama will test the degree to which Amer­i­cans fear for­eign­ers  in a post-Sept. 11 world. Obama is a Chris­t­ian who never wor­shiped at a mosque and was raised in a sec­u­lar house­hold. He attends the United Church of Christ.

The anti-Muslim bait­ing has shad­owed the Obama cam­paign for more than a year, when a widely cir­cu­lated, yet untrace­able, e-mail stated he was Mus­lim. The Obama cam­paign thinks enough of the power of these rumors that part of the cam­paign Web site is ded­i­cated to debunk­ing them, using head­ings such as “Barack is not and never has been a Mus­lim.” The con­tents of the anony­mous e-mails also have been debunked by var­i­ous media outlets.

Still, for much of the last year, the Mus­lim whis­pers have largely passed below the main­stream media radar. …

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I’ve been doing an infor­mal series of video inter­views with peo­ple about the issues on their minds dur­ing this piv­otal elec­tion year. Recently I caught up with Kate Aish­ton, a res­i­dent of Wash­ing­ton, DC, who’s a staffer at the Aspen Institute’s Com­mu­ni­ca­tions & Soci­ety Program.

Kate talked about the lack of rep­re­sen­ta­tion in Con­gress for res­i­dents of DC. Here’s our 2-minute video inter­view:

Watch video in MPEG-4 | Our­me­dia page
Flash ver­sion on Inter­net Archive

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The teams at Our­me­dia and Out­hink Media are happy to announce the launch today of a new sis­ter site: Bid4Vid.com.

For any skilled pro­ducer who has wanted to earn money by shoot­ing and edit­ing video, we think you’ll like the idea: Already about 30 buy­ers (busi­nesses or indi­vid­u­als in the mar­ket for a video) have posted con­tract jobs look­ing for expe­ri­enced pro­duc­ers who can deliver a pol­ished production.

You can see a list of jobs here and pro­duc­ers here. More than 800 pro­duc­ers — many from Our­me­dia — have already reg­is­tered. The map at the top of this page shows you where the US-based pro­duc­ers are based.

We hope you’ll check it out and send me any sug­ges­tions, ideas or crit­i­cism. Please blog it or spread the word to any­one you think would be inter­ested in par­tic­i­pat­ing. Don’t be shy about join­ing — reg­is­tra­tion is free, there’s no oblig­a­tion to bid on a job, and accept­ing a job costs only $30 total.

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Ven­ture­Beat: Face­book adds fea­tures to lure in filmmakers.

Face­book is mak­ing moves on Hol­ly­wood. The com­pany has intro­duced a new fan “Page,” called Face­book
Film. It’s a tem­plate of a Face­book Page that comes loaded with appli­ca­tions
intended to help film­mak­ers reach and inter­act with Face­book users.

Founder Mark Zucker­berg has been talk­ing about Face­book becom­ing more a media
com­pany for some time. First, Face­book became a new sort of pub­lish­ing com­pany,
with its news feed offer­ing. Now Face­book is reach­ing out to other parts of the
media. …

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Mark Glaser at PBS’s Medi­aShift:
Dis­tinc­tion Between Blog­gers, Jour­nal­ists Blur­ring More Than Ever.

The time-worn debate of Blog­gers vs. Jour­nal­ists has finally run its
course. For years, tra­di­tional jour­nal­ists scoffed at blog­gers as
pajama-wearing scream­ers, while blog­gers have pointed to MSM (main­stream
media) as secretly biased and obso­lete. While the extrem­ists in this
argu­ment have had the stage shout­ing at each other loudly (and it
con­tin­ues to this day),
what has hap­pened qui­etly in the back­ground has received less
atten­tion: Main­stream media reporters have started blog­ging in droves,
while larger blog oper­a­tions have hired sea­soned reporters and focused
on doing tra­di­tional journalism.

How indis­tin­guish­able are large inde­pen­dent blogs and tra­di­tional media sites? Take the fol­low­ing quiz:

1. Who won a recent Polk Award for inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism, a blog­ger or MSM reporter?
2. Which big New York-based web­site has four edi­tors and four
reporters, and is look­ing to hire two more reporters — a blog or
tra­di­tional media out­let?
3. Which site hired a young blog­ger fresh out of col­lege? Blog or MSM site?
4. Which site in Sil­i­con Val­ley edits 80% of sto­ries before being pub­lished online? Blog or MSM site?

Answers: 1. Josh Mar­shall, Talk­ing­pointsmemo blog­ger;
2. Gawker blog;
3. NYTimes.com, hir­ing TVNewser’s Brian Stel­ter;
4. GigaOm blog. …

“I think the argu­ment about blog­gers vs. jour­nal­ists
has been over for years. We’ve all co-existed just
fine for a while now, and the truth is, the
dis­tinc­tion is less rel­e­vant every day. There are
thou­sands of jour­nal­ists who now blog, and there are
lots of blog­gers who are trained jour­nal­ists. Josh
Mar­shall win­ning a Polk Award is a sign that the
dis­tinc­tions are becom­ing less rel­e­vant. I don’t think
read­ers care whether what they’re read­ing is in a blog
or not. What they care about is whether they trust the
source of that infor­ma­tion, whether it’s a main­stream
site or a pure blog.” — Jim Brady, exec­u­tive edi­tor
of Washingtonpost.com

Great quote from Brady. It’s a point Dan Gill­mor, Jay Rosen, Jeff Jarvis and I (and oth­ers) have been mak­ing for years, and it’s good to see it becom­ing a wide­spread reality.

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San Jose Mer­cury News: Yes! I want my pri­vacy. Yes! I want my Face­book. Inter­net users say they want to pro­tect their per­sonal data, then share it with total strangers. (Mer­cury News illustration)

Amer­i­cans are con­flicted about Inter­net pri­vacy. They say they want bet­ter pro­tec­tion for their per­sonal data, but often trade away safe­guards to con­nect with friends or find what they are look­ing for online. …

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Sorry that I’m miss­ing this week’s We Media con­fer­ence in Miami — I got a lot out of last year’s gathering.

Check out the inter­ac­tive flash fea­ture at the top of the page. (I see Michael Smolens, CEO of dot­SUB, is there.) Some inter­est­ing posts on the We Media blog, and Leonard Witt at PJNet has been live-blogging the conference.

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David Ardia at the Ide­aLab blog: Media Orga­ni­za­tions Back Wik­ileaks in Court. And why it’s important.

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