I am the co-host of a weekly podcast called The Bella Buzz with Desiree Scales, the CEO of Bella Web Design. We have great conversations about topics related to online marketing. I am posting the programs here for the Overflow audience. This is episode 78.

I strongly believe that the future of content discovery and presentation on the web will be as a result of curation.  A powerful role in our digital futures will be that of the Curators, who will develop strong communities around their topic of expertise.  Digital Content Curation will become a science taught in academic institutions.

Please share your comments!

This week on The Bella Buzz podcast, we talk with the CEO of Mech Media and Founder of Shareist.com, Scott Jangro. Scott has an outstanding reputation in the Affiliate Marketing industry. In 2010 he was honored with the Affiliate Summit Affiliate Marketing Legend Pinnacle Award.

His current efforts are focused on developing a robust curation platform that provides stellar aggregation functionality, with visually appealing content presentation, combined with social features, that advances the evolution of information discovery on the web.

The act of digital content curation is born out of the typical meaning of the word applied to art galleries and museums. A curator will examine and evaluate numerous items for inclusion into a very specific exhibit presentation. Those that are deemed worthy are included, and those that are not are discarded. As applied to the current state of the web, a curator can provide a valuable service in the face of the growing challenge web users face, the exponential growth of the amount of content published on a daily basis. A curator will aggregate and maintain a collection of links to relevant, original content on a specific topic.

As the amount of published web content becomes a staggering sum, web users are finding it more and more difficult to locate the content they are seeking through algorithmic search. It also becomes difficult to distinguish the original source content from the scraped, auto-generated, repackaged article designed to simply generate pageviews. It is an important aspect of the curator’s responsibility to start at the seek and discovery phase, but continue to drill down to the original source of the material.

A well curated presentation of a topic will contain links to original sources of content that have been exposed via a thoughtful and continuous search for relevant information. It will also contain bits of editorial content that the curator has included in order to put the links into context with the rest of the presentation. Why was this included? What is the most relevant portion of the content? .. These types of insights from the curator will help the visitor determine the best content for further exploration. In this digital information era, the topic curator will be as valuable as a skilled reference librarian while providing a preservation service to future explorers by compiling a comprehensive resource on a topic.

A less obvious component of curation comes from the additional social elements that are incorporated into the platform. By allowing user comments and sentiment ratings, the curator can re-examine the inclusion of the content in the topic and use the perpetual feedback loop to improve the quality of the presentation. A curator can select to include or ignore suggestions from the users, but the overall refinement of the topic improves its relevancy over time. This is an advantage to digital curation that is not quite available in offline scenarios. A participatory community develops.

To put the content curation concept into perspective for a business owner, the ability to achieve a consistent content publishing strategy has proven to be successful, as numerous business blogs have been introduced covering a variety of topics. The pushback has always been the time commitment for coming up with original content while operating a business. By adopting a curation strategy, a business owner can provide customers with the information that they are seeking, including some original content and editorial, while developing a significant “reference library” within their specific industry.

Larger businesses might adopt the use of curation to keep their field staff informed about the latest developments within their industry, including company updates, and product sales and marketing information. A Sales Manager could develop curatorial responsibilities, with content presented behind a firewall that allows the team to read up on the most important internal and external articles, to help them close the deals they have been pursuing.

As we continue in this evolution of information discovery, it is quite likely that the search engines will modify the algorithm to reflect the value of content curation in the future, and a renowned curator will provide signals to the search engines that the content included in their collection has merit.

The Shareist platform is currently in an “invite only” beta, and expects to open to the public within the next few months. Listeners to The Bella Buzz podcast can submit a request for setting up a curation site simply by indicating that you heard Scott on the podcast. Visit Shareist.com to sign up for your content curation platform.

Scott has also produced a video that will help you get a better sense of launching this curation platform – How To Set Up Your Shareist.com Website.
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The Bella Buzz is sponsored by Constant Contact. Connect, Inform, Grow. Constant Contact’s leading email marketing, online survey and event marketing tools help all types of small businesses.

Theme music for The Bella Buzz is Fallen by Digital Chemistry, available for download at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Bella Buzz directly from iTunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The iTunes Store.

I am the co-host of a weekly podcast called The Bella Buzz with the CEO of Bella Web Design, Desiree Scales.  We have good conversations about topics related to online marketing.  Thought I would also post the programs here for the Overflow audience.  This is episode 48.

Hot off Desiree‘s speaking engagement at the Magazine Association of the Southeast, we speak with an award winning publisher Rajesh Jyotishi, publisher of Khabar Magazine. Khabar is focused on the Southeast Asian community of Georgia and surrounding areas.

The topic of magazine publishing and content creation is very interesting taken as a bellwether for the direction that internet development is headed.  As consumer electronics in the form of an iPad become more prevalent with widespread adoption, the magazine industry and publishing in general will be looking at everything from production and distribution to revenue opportunities of the future.  It is great to have an industry leader to discuss the way some publishers are dealing with the changes.

The business model that RJ has employed for the course of his 17 years as a publisher is one where the costs are subsidized by the advertising revenue only. This allows him to publish a free digital version on his web site that can be read beyond his geographic target audience without cannibalizing any revenues.  This also provides some added value to his advertisers who might in fact reach some customers outside of the Georgia area.

The application provider, or digital publisher, that RJ uses for Khabar is called Page Suite. There are competitive companies that are also looking to help bring digital publications to the web. Another option would be Issuu.com. At the very basic levels these services allow you to turn a print document into a robust format that includes links, embedded video and reporting features for a solid business option.

There does need to be some distinction made between publishers building applications compared to creating a simple digital version of a magazine.  Popular Science magazine has been a well used demonstration version, and this is a great video that explains what their development team had to consider when building the app.

Mag+ live with Popular Science+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.
As you can see, building a magazine app is completely different than taking a current print edition of a publication and turning into a digital form.

From a publisher’s perspective, RJ considers it a necessity to have a print edition to compliment all of the digital options that are available to us today.  His belief is that many will still want to have the tactile interaction with the content, especially with his niche audience.

Desiree’s straw poll was that it is an even split regarding preferences for digital over a print version at this point. Other factors to consider in a digital publication is the ability to include affiliate marketing or performance marketing links which provide real ROI to an advertiser based upon reader activities.  Also, the social media “sharing” capabilities place additional value to a digital edition.

Theme music for The Bella Buzz is Fallen by Digital Chemistry, available for download at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Bella Buzz directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.

This week on the Overflow Podcast we take a look at a web community that Fluid Media has built called Baseballisms.com, as a way to demonstrate the need for adapting, organic, and of course Fluid approaches to your web presence.

Based upon this real case study with our own baseball community, we can attest firsthand to the fact that no matter how great the original concept for a web site might be, it will end up morphing and changing to meet the needs of the audience.  If the site does not adapt, chances are the growth of the community will be severely limited.

Baseballisms started as a site where we attempted to collect email addresses to distribute daily messages containing public domain content.  Instead it has become a fan based community where our content is supplemented by user generated content.

We believe that putting the web site on the WordPress blogging platform, and now using the Thesis Template, we have been able to maintain a level of flexibility that would otherwise have been hampered by developing a traditional html web site.

Fundamental branding however is important to establish a strong foundation. This actually allows for flexibility to make modifications to the features and services provided by the web presence.  Keep good branding tactics in mind from the start such as fonts and color choices, multiple applications of logo, a strong tag line .. all of these things can help to maintain a consistent message even while being fluid in other areas.

In the end, be solid and fundamental in developing your brand initially, so that it allows you the freedom to be fluid so you can adapt to what your community is telling you that they want you to be.

The opening and closing theme for the Overflow Podcast is called The Information Age, by Anthony Fiumano and you can find it at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Overflow Podcast directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.

This week on the Overflow podcast, it is the first ever solo effort by Joe Magennis, due to Cameron‘s travel schedule.  I believe it is the hardest form of podcasting since you have no one to use as a sounding board, no one to step in to help you gather your thoughts or to let you catch your breathe.

The overall theme of this post is .. Are you where you thought you would end up? Our agency, Fluid Media has certainly undergone some changes over the years. We have tested alternative strategies flowing us into pools and eddies but we have continued to move in a singular direction downstream.

Before we get into that part of the podcast though, I try to speak to the inspiration that I received from listening to Sam Harrelson ‘s Affiliate Fortune Cookies (which is now Thinking.fm) podcast during it’s great run.  Sam was able to make me recognize the many signs over the course of my life that pointed me towards producing audio content.

The tools,  and most importantly the distribution models are now at all of our disposal to record our authentic voices and to tell our stories. It is time to take advantage of the opportunities and not let the signs go unheeded.

I get into a ramble about the transition that the agency made as we looked at offering SEO services, and purchasing the site called CoastalBean.com so that we could practice keyword targeting and PPC practices before offering them to clients.

Next I discuss our concept about Baseballisms.com and the use of affiliate marketing, pay for performance as a way to monetize rich media content like videos and podcasts.

Ultimately, the service that we can bring to the table is creating rich media content for clients that have long lasting value and make some form of contribution.

One thing we will be doing in the near future is working towards clarifying our own brand by migrating from the BeFluid.com domain to a more accurate domain at FluidMedia.fm.  This hopefully will represent the business that we do and will help anyone find us on the web.

Who are you? Tell us what you do and how you have made it to this point.  We want to make sure that we are speaking to you in a relevant way, and please share so that we can collaborate on ways to contribute great content on the web.

When it comes to looking to the future and trying to decide where to direct attention, I would be hard pressed to not include the opinions of Eric Schmidt CEO of Google for consideration.

On March 6, 2009, Schmidt appeared as a guest for a full hour on The Charlie Rose show.  Rose had been visiting with many of the dignitaries of Silicon Valley including Evan Williams of Twitter, Marissa Mayer also of Google, Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, Jeff Bezos of Amazon .. and a fascinating segment with Marc Andreesen entrepreneur of all sorts.

Rose started out with a brief background on Schmidt’s hiring at Google, and then launched into a complete dissecting of the business model as it exists, where it is going and what technology is doing to our culture.

There is always the push and pull tugging at the base of the brain that says “beware of Google’s power”, but at the same time, all indications point to the fact that Google does consider putting efforts towards projects for the greater good.  As you will see during his discussions about the Flu Trends project and Google Earth.

Schmidt’s term for the ability to mine all of the data that is being amassed is “collective intelligence”.

In reference to all of this information he predicted the ability to communicate globally will come about by the ability to translate all of this information on the fly.  Note the matter of fact nature of the comment where he foresees texting between two people who don’t speak the same language because the computing power will enable the message to be converted to the recipients native tongue.

Clearly, Schmidt sees the most influential technology changing the way we use the internet as mobile.  The number of mobile devices in use today are staggering, the capabilities from GPS, to cameras, to streaming content are going to personalize the experience to massive adoption levels.

To close it out, we talk about how the impact of all of this information at our fingertips has on our children.  We talked about this issue on the GeekDads@Home podcast .. in particular the conversation focused on the results that the author Don Tapscott uncovered in writing the books Growing Up Digital and Grown Up Digital.

View the Program and let us know what you think:

For some reason…. the word legacy has been on the brain lately. Are we doing good things with this moment in time when accessible tools for creating, communicating and collaborating (how’s that for alliteration?) are developed and refined on a daily basis?  It would seem like a wasted chance to not take full advantage of these platforms.

However, legacy as the term defined by Merriam Webster as “transmitted by an ancestor” only felt partially right for describing the sense of purpose that has been gnawing as of late.  Although, I have envied those that have achieved the great accomplishment of authoring a book or composing music that lives well beyond their physical being … where I am coming from is more in line with compiling Knowledge.

For a business perspective from the past, institutional knowledge was attempted to be documented via policy manuals. Those with the task of compiling would discuss practices with the implementers, document their findings to be analyzed and revised by higher ups in the organization, and ultimately published and distributed as a way to pass on this information.

The great missing elements were;

A) True collaboration, in the sense those with the most detailed and explicit knowledge were filtered by those that were doing the documenting.

B) Ease of access and search functionality for this knowledge was hampered by the limitations of paper in a binder.

C) Refinement of the knowledge by way of simple editing tools, which would allow for updates as new knowledge was obtained.

This great bank of knowledge was obsolete almost as soon as it was published!

This is no longer the case as knowledge can be gathered and shared in real time via blogs, audio podcasts, video podcasts and ultimately collected, refined, protected and transmitted via Wikis.

Taking the extra step of establishing a Wiki seems to be the culmination point that has been missing as we have morphed from the various stages of internet functionality … however, it represents THE ultimate purpose for all of this.  Yes, it’s great that we can shop, chat with long lost friends, build communities, and send 140 character updates, but there can be nothing more responsible than compiling and refining your personal knowledge in a way that is accessible for others.

The capability is not only limited to the demands of corporations but can be applied to social scenarios  such as parenting, the arts, hobbies, etc.

A great example of creating knowledge in a real time way and transferring that information into a searchable, cross-referenced database has been developed by Leo Laporte at his great TWiT Network.

All of the information about the hosts, shows and references from his vast array of programming can be found at the TWiT Wiki. As Leo, the hosts and guests on the podcasts discuss current topics, the information that they bring to light is updated into the Wiki as another means of distributing the knowledge.

Why shouldn’t we operate under the same premise? As we are all investing considerable amounts of time creating rich media content for the web, isn’t it our responsibility to compile the information in such a way that it can be transferable?

Blogs are a great linear form of stating facts and opinions with some level of search functionality, however the content tends to scroll off the front page and land in the archives. A wiki format creates a much simpler way to maintain and access this information .. including the ability to update and collaborate.

Just think how you would feel if you had the ability to peruse your parents or grandparents Wiki detailing all that they knew about farming, blacksmithing, pottery .. or whatever their area of interests might have been.  It would be fascinating as well as informative!

Now, go forth and Wiki ….

Throughout my adult life, I have been thinking up various applications for technology.  I can remember sitting in a bar called Peabody’s in Binghamton NY discussing the possibility of inventing vending machines that would be placed in college dorms to dispense soft-serve ice cream cones.

That concept never really took off, but that kind of thought process has remained a constant for me.

Most of the ideas lose some steam and fade away, but some developments actually take root and turn into something functional.  Presently, I’m not considering turning my attention to bringing something else to life, it’s more like I am making a wish list and expecting today’s great innovators to come along and meet my demands.

I am thinking about my IPhone and the amazing applications that are being developed.  There is a great two part series rundown of IPhone applications at Todd Crawford’s blog called Todd Talks.  I recommend looking over his advice and choosing the most appropriate applications for your needs.

The application that I want to see developed for my IPhone corresponds with my growing frustration whenever visiting medical treatment facilities.  There is great debate about letting a company like Google store your personal medical records, prescriptions, allergies and all pertinent information in their vast databases for access via ubiquitous web applications.  This certainly raises serious concerns over patient privacy and many health care industry regulations would have to be amended to prevent unlawful searches.

However, I am a big proponent of cloud computing and my ability to access my work files from any internet connection has had a tremendous impact on my daily productivity.   I believe that this same concept of secure data storage can be successfully applied to the medical records industry.   As I sit with my wife or daughters trying to “remember” various procedures or treatment scenarios, always thinking that it has been over ten years since my last tetanus shot, reminding the doctor what our next scheduled visit might entail … I want that information at my fingertips!  It drives me crazy to see them scribbling on a form document that gets turned over to some office admin to manually key into our precious life records.  I’ll concede that I have been fortunate not to have had any major medical issues and maybe the procedures are better at the higher levels of treatment, but technology should allow me to maintain and access my own personal records no matter where I am seeking care.

Searching the ITunes Store there are certainly some manual entry, record keeping applications, that apply more towards simple fitness regimes.  There is even a physicians “chart” application that may lead in some interesting data portability directions.

But there is one application that piques my interest …. It’s from a company called Life Records Inc. and the application is called My Life Record. They may be on the right track.  For $49.99 the application allows me to store and access my entire family’s records.

Data entry is still a problem … a fax number and a code given to the Doctor to submit the records to the company doesn’t compel me to sign up, and it relies on HIPAA regulations that require the doctor to transmit the information to the company.  I want to use the IPhone’s extraordinary synching & imaging capabilities to get the records on the spot with a plug in and download at the end of my visit, while it simultaneously synchs with the cloud for data storage.

I also need a much better assurance and comfort level with the service provider to rely on this technology, which is why I believe it is going to take a major company initiative from the giants such as Google, Microsoft, Oracle or some other major data warehousing company to meet the needs of the entire transaction .. from doctor’s office, to application to patient.

Now get to work!

Fluid Media is pleased to announce the official launch of a web site for King Custom Cycles.  We are excited about the opportunity to assist our good friends Laura & Phil King in expanding their community base of motorcycle enthusiasts via Web 2.0 tools, and to help them generate business for their parts and repair business.

Let’s share with you some of our initiatives:

First, to touch on the logo design for the brand.  We were brought in on the tail end of the design process and Cameron was able to salvage some of the elements that had been developed, but immediately the concern regarding the “distressed” look revolves around replication issues on merchandise and smaller collateral.

So to avoid losing the little K in custom and other smaller bits, a non-distressed application is being created for certain usage.

We also added a secondary color palette and font styles for use on the web site and collateral materials.

The intention of the web site is to ultimately act as an online community where friends of King Kustom Cycles can interact, exchange tips on great places to ride, discuss new gear for their bikes … or just pass the time during the intervals when not on the road.  In order to achieve this objective we are integrating some exciting new applications and are waiting for others to be released from beta testing!

We set up shop owner Laura King with a Facebook account so early on we can take advantage of the Fotobook plugin allowing her to upload pictures from the Shop, shots from sponsored rides and all the cool events they have planned … and they can be ported over to the site from Facebook.  More importantly the photos and her activity stream are distributed directly to her growing circle of friends (her social graph) in the Facebook community.  Short term marketing objective is to promote the benefit of joining Facebook to her customer base, and to encourage the millions of Facebook users to “friend” her & become a fan of the King Kustom Page.  This direct form of communication is the future of internet marketing strategies.

We’re also waiting for the ultimate rollout of Facebook Connect from beta and the development of a WordPress Plugin that provides for the portability of a user’s web presence. What this means is that as a Facebook user you can log into your Facebook account and via OpenID have a single login point for any site that has integrated Facebook Connect.  Instead of having to login to comment and participate in numerous communities (and my how we hate to keep track of all those User Ids) your Facebook Connect ID provides you a solution.

Beyond the login aspect of Connect you are also gaining the integration of commenting and posting appearing in your Facebook activity stream so that your network of friends are aware of your activity.  Using Facebook Connect on King Kustom Cycles we will be able to deliver marketing messages, event updates, and activity streams to our exponentially large friends network.

We also determined that it would be beneficial to set up a weekly podcast for Laura and Phil.  This rich media content is an easy way to communicate all of the exciting activities happening at the shop while eliminating the grind of trying to write a weekly post.  We’re in the process of trying to name the podcast so that we can develop a brand around the weekly shows. You can check it out at the bottom of the post.

These are the early stages of this site, and we could ramble on about long range micro-blogging communities and the setup of the Disqus commenting system distributed content, but we’ll save those topics for another day.

WOW, we live in an amazing time in the development of internet tools .. and communication in general. I can’t wait to implement these game changing, community systems that are right now in the early stages of development.

I’ve detailed the enormous potential of using Twitter in brand building, and was very disappointed when the Track functionality was shelved (for business or technical reasons we don’t know) earlier this summer. However, while we were all lamenting the discontinuance of service, the Gillmor Gang podcast of July 21 included guests Evan Prodromou of Identica and Loic Le Meur of Seesmic/Thwirl. I listened to the discussion led by Steve Gillmor about federated communication via microblogging services such as Identica, and it immediately peaked my interest! I set up my account that day.

They discussed many exciting aspects of Identica including the fact that tracking would be available with the platform, plus many more features that would be built by the open source community itself … however, the most powerful element they discussed was the distribution of the Laconica platform (Identica is built on it) to a wide variety of entities.  Evan can envision the ability to add micro-blogging to a community as simply as installing a WordPress blog is today.

I can envision so many businesses and organizations that would be able to take advantage of this kind of power. Evan’s objective is to get micro-blogging to the level of ubiquity as email is today. Keep in mind that email used to be a silo’d communication tool where you could only send messages to others within your same provider. Did you have a Compuserve or a Prodigy account?  We need to get away from the silo’d limitations of our current micro-blogging platforms.







But back at the end of July there wasn’t a whole lot happening at Identica. I set up my Twhirl client and subscribed to a few people .. but the conversation wasn’t that engaging since there were so many more people on Twitter.

This week things got interesting! Leo Laporte and Randal Schwartz had Evan as a guest on the FLOSS Weekly podcast and instantly determined that Leo would be setting up his own micro-blogging community at http://army.twit.tv. He has a built in community from his podcasts, live streaming and radio shows, and his Twit Army of followers has responded enthusiastically.  So I now have an account set up in that community as well.

Now here’s the REALLY cool part .. Laconica is working towards the ability to allow users to cross post & cross subscribe among other Laconica communities, so you can avoid managing multiple identities and reading multiple streams!  In essence, as an individual builds out their own social graph connecting various networks and communities, there will be a single location or application where the user can read and post among all of the communities they are interested in.  The problem with silo’d communities today is that you have to register, set up a profile, log in, check back etc etc… to use them effectively.  I’ve heard so many people say they haven’t checked their (fill in the blank), Facebook, Linkedin … account in X weeks.  With the new form of open, federated communities you won’t have to, you will always be plugged in to your network and communicating with fellow users through a single stream.

What’s a real world example?

Right now I am in the process of working with a client who is opening a motorcycle service shop.  The owners are interested in developing a strong base of local riders who trust them to perform superior service on their equipment.  The owners are also very involved in advancing a local riding chapter that organizes events, hosts charity rides and in essence builds a community with the repair shop as the center …

I see micro-blogging as a way for the entire group to communicate about upcoming rides, as a way to follow riders who might be taking a long cross country trip, or simply to connect when the weather turns against getting together for a day on the open road.

Now add in a federated system that spans across other riding communities on the web.  The riders that are traveling cross country can post and subscribe to other chapters in cities where they are visiting, allowing them to find the best bike shops, hangouts etc.

Locally the owners can post to other chapters within the state to coordinate fund raising events …. all while maintaining the same sense of a community that shares common interests.  You can’t really get that with a “fire hose” micro-blogging system like Twitter.

The service shop business will benefit as riders coming through town are able to communicate with the owners by tracking “Motorcycle repairs Atlanta” on Identica and will find a burgeoning community to tell them that they can pull off I-85 in Tyrone to take care of that repair issue.

I’ll say it again .. WOW .. we are at the cusp of an amazing new dimension of communications and community building on the web.

This past Saturday night I watched the future of “television” .. at least in the form that I personally believe to be the direction that the format is headed. It all started with a twitter post, and ended up with me staying up late at night watching a live stream of Wilco playing at the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago.

After a day full of the usual weekend responsiblities, I was kicking back ready to watch a baseball game and reading through current tweets.  The following message from someone with the handle ATTBlueroom (I’m sure it is someone who serves in a Community Manager role) caught my attention, “Broken Social Scene and Wilco are up next on tonight’s Lolla webcast.” I am a huge fan of the band Wilco, so I got very excited to log on and check it out.

What I experienced made me realize that the famed “convergence” of television and internet that has been spoken about since the early dotcom days is upon us.  The stream was flawless on my dsl connection and all I wish was that I had a better sound system on the computer so that the full music quality could have been experienced.

The added feature of communicating with others via Twitter while simultaneously watching the show only added to the excitement.  Actually attending the event in person would be the only better shared experience.

Some observations:

• Apple TV and other web connected television appliances are going to explode on the scene shortly as the next big consumer appliance
• Using Twitter as a way to announce programming is a must for any broadcast channel
• ATTBlueroom actually needs to do a better job of monitoring the conversation to interact with viewers.  I had two people directly state that they were having trouble with the feed and it would have been a perfect opportunity for some direct company involvement (Contact me if you want to talk about my ideas!)
• I suspect that the issues were due to only having the option of Windows Media Player as the format for the stream, and possibly it would serve to have a variety of options based upon the users preferences.
• Television plus Twitter (or another communication platform – gaming consoles allow for actual conversation) for live events is going to be an integrated part of the viewing experience.  It will be important to allow the viewer to directly compartmentalize the communication being received however.  Non-relevant tweets during the broadcast would detract in some cases, which leads to more sorting of conversations into silos along with a search (track) functionality.  This is making me reevaluate the silo interface of TweetDeck, which just needs to become more stable at this point.
• Sporting Events, Concerts, Award Shows, Political Debates … any event that is being broadcast where interaction with others in real time adds to the experience will benefit from this convergence.
• It’s still unclear how the entire monetization strategy will work in these live events.  They could have interjected lower third promotional messages or sponsorship logos without harming the quality, but I believe that branding messages will need to be more subtle to be acceptable.

Wilco demonstrated why I believe they are the best band in the land right now.  The AT&T Blue Room broadcast was very well done in terms of production, while needing some assistance in the community interaction area.

I was extremely glad to have been part of the event, and wanted a big encore from the band as they left the stage.  I know we’ll see more of them and more of these types of events down the road though.