Rob's Blog

Under the Radar

Strangely enough, Marshall McLuan's name was mentioned at the Under the Radar Conference at the Microsoft campus in Mountain View California. But I thought of it first! He really did predict the future, even according to one of the moderators, envisioning the existence of the Internet. Under the Radar previews little known or unknown companies in the social media space, in various stages of funding or development. Lots of video aggregators, most notably I think, Mary Hodder's Dabble, which did in fact win "best in show." I also found PodOmatic and Big in Japan(PodServe) interesting turnkey podcasting sites. And of course blip.tv is an excellent all-purpose vlogging tool and resource, which keeps getting better. All in all a good conference, though very different from Vloggercon. This was very much more business-related, but it was a good juxtaposition.

Vloggercon06 - Understanding Media

Vloggercon'06 is over but not forgotten. It was a great experience for networking, knowledge gathering and fun. There is such a groundswell of enthusiasm for the media by young people who might be the first generation of kids to have grown up inherently DISTRUSTING the traditional media outlets. They grew up not on Walter Cronkite, but on Comedy Central and MTV, so their bias is to treat "old media" with a healthy degree of skepticism. Even having graduated from "old media" myself, I can see their point, though the most interesting work produced is personal, funny, informative, educational. I find whatever explicit political commentary I saw as a bit heavy -handed and not as effective as the creative use of new media as an empowering individualistic tool of expression. As Marshall McLuhan said MANY YEARS AGO, "The Medium is the Message." He also coined the term, "global village." For an old media guy, he seemed to be pretty prescient! Understanding Media might be worth another look today.