Crowd Funding – Blogadultery

David Mandel warned me that he was cheating on me with a post on Mulligan’s Kickstarter campaign on a different blog. He called it blogadultery! The invention of the word alone deserves a link to it, so here it goes.

A New Year – Yet Again

Like Birthdays and assorted anniversaries, New Year’s Eve has the nasty habit of sneaking itself into the calendar year after year. For years I was looking for the perfect way to spend New Year’s Eve. In the old days there would be fireworks on the frozen lake of St. Moritz in the Swiss Alps at midnight. However the hotels nixed that since guests would go home after freezing their feet off at the fireworks – not good for sales. The fireworks are now on January 1st.

Then I spent a few years ‘running’ the midnight run in Central Park. One year my friends and I left a rather boring party and went for a long walk on the beach in Long Island. The worst year was when we had a nice party until midnight came around and all couples started either making out or slow-dancing and my also-single friend and I sat there feeling a bit left out.

A few years ago my sister and I decided to organize a sledding party with fondue dinner – also near St. Moritz in the Swiss alps (which by the way is where I’m from – so don’t think I’m jet setting around the world to St. Moritz for New Year’s eve – my family is there). We had all organized the evening to a “t” – when I double checked on a hunch with the sledding venue the day of December 31st around noon only to be told that “we’re closed today because of prior issues with alcohol and who ever told you we were open didn’t know what they were talking about”. I nearly fell out of my socks. I had a party of 15 people and no place to go and about six hours to reorganize.

We scrambled and finally saved the night with a combo of an early pizza dinner, sledding without the help of motorized transportation and a vicious game of charades. The night was such a success that this year – five years later - we had to curtail our list of guests. There’s no hangover, much physical activity, all ages (18 months to 80 years - no sledding there) and no slow dancing at the stroke of midnight… – a perfect way to start the New Year, I think.

I hope you have at least half as much fun as I have sliding into the New Year and don’t be shy sharing your favorite way to spend New Year’s eve.

Happy 2012!

Crowd Funding – There Already! – Part 8

Part eight of our Crowd Funding Series co-producer David Mandel talks about reaching the Kickstarter goal - early in this case - and what's next and what could have been done differently (if anything). 

1. You past the all-important 30% threshold in less than two days of your campaign AND reached your goal in 12 days. Did you wish you had set your funding goal higher?

I think there’s been a mix of emotions since hitting our goal. Obviously there’s a ton of joy and relief at how successful it is, and how quickly we accomplished it. But your question gets to the heart of those little nagging doubts we now have in the back of our heads - should we have set a higher goal? Will wrote me on Dec. 9th, at which point we had raised $8,030, or 80% of our goal: “If I may, I think we couldn't have picked a better goal. We definitely don’t want to already have passed it, but we're in no danger of not getting it.”

I think that hits it on the head. We’re really happy that we hit our goal, and although it’s the minimum we needed in order to finish the project, we’re still able to raise more via Kickstarter. As Kickstarter points out on their website: “94% of successful projects raise more than their funding goal.” (source: http://www.kickstarter.com/start.

We’re now trying to do everything we can to keep getting the word out and continue to raise as much as we can. By reaching our minimum, we’re guaranteed to receive the money, and that is a huge win for us.

2. Did you find that there were peaks and lows in the funding cycle? I.e. a lot of backers in the first day or two and then a leveling off?

You can see for yourself the ‘slope’ the donations took in the attached screenshot, which is of the project’s Dashboard - or central control for your Kickstarter project. This user backend of Kickstarter was actually just recently given a major overhaul, and is filled with incredibly useful information - including the various sources of donors (e.g. Google, Twitter, Facebook), and what percentages they make up of the total pledged.

Getting back to your question, we hit a bit of a plateau on Day 5, where we hovered around the $7,500 mark for a few days. On Days 7-8 we had only a couple of small donations. Then things picked back up again on Day 9, and by Day 12 we broke the $10,000 mark!

I suspect that a lot of Kickstarter campaigns have similar-looking graphs. Maybe they’re not quite as steep at the beginning, but I have heard about the plateau and about the sudden rush towards that goal-line as people notice how close you are and want to help you break through. To be honest, this all happened much faster than expected, and so we were still in the planning stages of some of our next steps when we realized they might not be necessary.

3. What is your strategy to keep the momentum going?

We’ve always considered this Kickstarter campaign to have two goals: one is the money, obviously, which is pretty important; the other is to start getting the word out about Mulligan, and now that we’ve hit the financial goal, we can start to focus on this. So we’ve begun to reach out to blogs and other media that cover independent film in the hopes of getting some press coverage for the movie. That would be a big win for us. We’ve also continued to proselytize on Facebook and have focused a bit more on catching up in the ‘Likes’ department.

Aside from that there’s our wonderfully original idea of releasing clips of the film on Kickstarter - I think/hope that this is part of the secret of our success. Every backer who pledges any amount gets access to several scenes from the film that we’ll be releasing over the next two months - that’s right, long after the whole Kickstarter campaign is over we’re going to keep sending out these clips. But the only way to access them is if you donate before the deadline. We hope that this, both encourages more people to donate between now and Dec. 31 - and that it allows us to keep in touch with our supporters and build momentum for our festival release(s).

4. How do you feel about over reaching your goal (other than the fact that “it feels good”)? Any reservations about the justification, let’s say?

If anything, it’s a relief that we can focus our energies on the other tasks we need to do for Mulligan. We’ve started submitting to festivals, which is a crazy process because once again we’re trying to meet deadlines and get out DVDs of a rough cut of the film - this was sort of the issue that caused the Kickstarter campaign to delay launching. We’re also starting to coordinate the post processes that the Kickstarter campaign is for: color-correction and sound.

But it’s great to be worrying about this stuff and not be ultra-concerned about Kickstarter anymore. I’ve stopped hitting ‘refresh’ on the Kickstarter page 3,982 times a day - I sometimes go entire hours without checking it now!

We do feel as though we can still raise a decent amount more than what we have now - we’ve raised about $500 in the last week, so we’ve definitely hit another plateau. I’m hoping that with a little bit of media coverage we can hit 150% of our goal - $15,000. We’re only $4,000 away from that, that’s a drop in the ocean compared to what we’ve already accomplished!

Crowd Funding – Why Give? – Part 7

After the launch of the Mulligan Kickstarter page last week – I must confess that I did check their progress for a while obsessively. It was just too cool to witness in real time as donations came in. A day after their launch they had met the 30% threshold, which seems to be the point of near guaranteed success to finish the campaign fully funded, which after all is the only way the moneys pledged will be paid to the fundraisers. Now, ten days later they have surpassed their $10,000 amount! (While writing this I’ve had to readjust this paragraph several times to adjust to their fast accent to the $10K mark and now that they’re safely over I can at least stop worrying about being current!) Ha!

I just finished watching the first four minutes of the feature – a privilege reserved for backers! Smart move.

One reason I’m engaged – other than knowing co-producer David – is that the director, Will immediately friended me on Facebook after I ‘liked’ the Mulligan Facebook page. Then, less than 24 hours later I got a nice thank you email with some fun facts and additional information, as well as an attachment of the Mulligan poster. They immediately made me part of their ‘family’; this of course AFTER I donated. So why donate in the first place?

I know virtually nothing about the film. I didn’t know Will’s work until I watched the pledge video. So, first and foremost I’m a backer, because of David. I abused him for a few years at Clock Wise Productions, first as intern and then as assistant editor and editor (the abuse was fully mutual, by the way, including my favorite David story – more on that some other time). Secondly, David ASKED for my support in a private email.

The thinking goes, I guess, that if we all support the project with a relatively small amount, say $25 which is what we might spend on an evening going to the movies and having a drink (ok, half a drink in New York), we do some good and support independent art. As my mother always says (this in German: auch Kleinvieh macht Mist): Also small farm animals produce shit. This is to say – much small shit also piles up to a big pile of dung.

In other words: prepare your lists of people to ask for support – personally - and give them something to get excited about. And we’re back to the all important preparation. The selling points are: ask, great video, decent backer give a-way’s. As for the give-a-way’s: I think they are quasi inconsequential to friends and family, but super important if the video should go viral and attract an outside your inner circle following – these are now people who don’t know you personally and will support on the basis of, ‘cool’ and ‘passion’ factor, or ‘activism’ factor (more for docs) AND who really want a piece of the pie. I.e. get to see advance footage, get an advance peek at the final project, or get a DVD at a good price break, etc.

Bye, bye, I’m back to their website to watch them go over 100% - follow me! Mulligan Kickstarter.

Crowd Funding – Kicking off the Process – Part 6

In our Crowd Funding series we've now - finally - have had lift off.  David and his team on Mulligan launched their Kickstarter Campaign yesterday and they're doing great!  And you can help them do even better by going to their Kickstarter page.

I'm as a tough an audience as it gets and I loved - absolutely loved - the video they put together.  Special mention to the music - what I heard was outstanding.  The animations are very cool and the video does a great job in telling what they need the funds for AND getting you excited about wanting to see the movie.  (The only thing in need of improvement: for a non-film person is, that it might be hard to understand the muffled voice of the director when he explains some technical terms).

Clearly the team put a LOT of effort into this and it seems to be paying off handsomely. I expect them to totally exceed their goal! They did their homework and I give it an A+.

Here a few questions I asked David:

1. What was your to-do list for the kick off day?  Lead-up was mostly about getting the video done. There were a few last-minute changes to the ‘Story’ section - basically the main part of the Kickstarter page where you describe the project, explain what you’re trying to raise money for, and other details. So we added some extra info to that section and once we had the video in its final format, we launched - at approx. 11am EST yesterday.

Will, the director, also launched the Facebook page late last night. There wasn’t much setup involved, and he’s fairly active on there (he frequently chides me for not being on Facebook). Our strategy is to treat the Kickstarter page as our biggest face/front for the movie right now, with Facebook a close second. The thinking is that we don’t want to bog people down with a website, Twitter, etc. Just get them to the Kickstarter page and let them learn about the movie through there.

2. How many emails/letters/solicitations did you ‘save’ for the kickoff?  It’s hard to count, because between the three main people involved, I’d guess close to 1,000 emails were sent yesterday. Some were based on lists of people who are fans of the web series ‘Reception’ that Will and and Graham, the producer have been working on for a year. That has a sizable following, and those fans had been getting emails in the lead-up to today because a new episode of ‘Reception’ gets sent out every week.

I’m sending out personal emails one-by-one, so I’ll probably be doing that whenever I have time for the next four weeks. I think it helps to do it that way if you have the time and resolve. Getting a Facebook poke or whatever wouldn’t necessarily get me to a website and to fork over dollars, so I’m hoping to seduce people the way I’d want to be seduced. :)

3. Where did Kickstarter make your life easy and what drove you nuts?  Kickstarter’s interface is very slick and easy to navigate. Uploading photos and videos and making text changes and descriptions is very easy, and done in a way that allows you to make changes without the fear that everything will blow up. They really nailed that, and I think it’s probably a big key to their success. Only have one minor gripe about Kickstarter - they don’t give you much direction in terms of what’s the proper format/specs for the video, so I think we were a little concerned we’d upload it and it wouldn’t look/sound right. Fortunately it’s not the case, and I think it’s hard to just blame Kickstarter for lack of guidance - there are just too many damn video formats floating around nowadays.

What really drove us nuts was making the video, which I’ve discussed in the previous post and which is in no way Kickstarter’s fault. They actually have really great suggestions and guidelines for making a video and - wisely - encourage every project to make one as a way of increasing the chances of a successful campaign.

4. What was the unexpected?  Nothing was unexpected, which I suspect is a result of lots of planning and agonizing over every last detail. :)

5. What was the ‘this sucks’?  Nothing really sucked. OK, so one small thing. Apparently, shortly after launching, a stranger came and made a comment on the Facebook page about the pricing of our rewards. Not a disaster or anything, and I guess someone else came along and deleted the comment. Whatever, it’s part of being on the internet. “Haters gonna hate,” as they say. We spent a lot of time thinking about our rewards and our pricing, and for someone to just come along and make some idiotic remark… alright, I’m over it.

6. And what was the “this is awesome” moment?  Well, that first donation felt pretty good. So did the 22 after it. It’s been less than 12 hours, and we’ve raised over 1/8th of our total goal! (Note: by now, 36 hours later they are nearly 1/3 there). That’s pretty exhilarating. I’ve had to resist staring at the page and clicking ‘refresh’ every 30 seconds. We’re really proud of the video (me especially, since I edited it). It took weeks and weeks and lots of starting from square one. But when I try to step back and be objective about it, I’m pretty convinced it’s a great pitch video. I wish there was a way to quantify the effect it has on people - friends, strangers - when they see it and decide whether or not to donate. I can’t, but I can semi-confidently tell myself that that video is a big reason they choose to give us money.

7. What was the first contribution? How does it feel?  Haha, the first donation was from my brother, Jon, who was one of the first people I emailed. The next two came from very close friends of mine and Will’s. The most wonderful feeling is to see a donation come in, and immediately Will or I email one another (and Graham) and ask “Who is this? Is this someone you know?” and then finding out it’s a stranger. It’s a lot more validating to see someone who has no ties to you and is therefore much more objective about making a gift. That’s a real confidence-booster, and definitely makes you feel as though someday that same effect is going to happen when a random person sees a trailer or a poster for the movie at a movie theater. We’re so grateful for all the friends and family who have come out so far to support it, but at the end of the day you can’t pack a movie theater with them. Unless you’re a polygamist.

Giving Thanks

Switzerland does not have a holiday to give thanks and I think every country should. My first Thanksgiving in America – I had been here for 11 months - I must have had about a dozen invitations so I would not be alone. I do not remember where I went, but I do remember one of my first Thanksgiving meals in the following years spent with the big family of my friend, with all the trimmings and the leftovers for days after and, of course black Friday – what a concept.

There was nothing not to love about Thanksgiving – it’s non-denominational, no gift giving involved.

One year, maybe 15 years ago, I hosted a thanksgiving dinner for ten people. Trouble started early when I picked up the 20 pounds turkey from the farmer’s market not realizing that a 20 pound turkey was going to weigh 20 pounds (duh). It had never occurred to me either that the turkey might not fit my oven – it did with 2 mm of clearance all around. Then I did not tie the legs together with nylon but left the cotton strings the bird came with, which of course singed and disintegrated in the oven which resulted in a literal spread eagle and a VERY dry affair. The one thing that did turn out great was my mom’s recipe for gravy and we sure needed it for the dry turkey. Needless to say I have been the very fortunate recipient of invitations to Thanksgiving ever since.

Thanksgiving gives me an opportunity to reflect on what I am thankful for without being caught up in the frenzy of the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. Other than a roof over my head, food on my table and the newest gadget I am thankful for having the opportunities I’ve been afforded by my upbringing and my education, for a really cool job I love and for working with so many awesome people that run the gamut from CEO’s of fortune 500 companies, to community leaders, diplomats, college students, teamsters and some serious divas (of all sizes, shapes and forms).

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you!

Crowd Funding – What’s Taking so Long? – Part 5

In our Crowd Funding series we are following in real time the Kickstarter campaign for an independent feature called Mulligan. 

That is: by now we thought we’d be in the thick of it, but as it goes with these things, the start of the campaign has been pushed back twice. Below a short interview with David Mandel, the co-producer of Mulligan on what’s going on.

What was the reasoning behind pushing back the start of the Kickstarter campaign?

Unfortunately, we were just too busy and too rushed, and didn’t want to release a substandard project just because of an arbitrary self-imposed deadline. Since we first started preparing for Kickstarter we’ve had to:

• Find a sound mixer

• Go through and figure out the sound issues in the movie

• Upload footage and sound files back and forth between people on different ends of the country

• Do some minor additional editing

• Coordinate ADR sessions for 4 actors, all of whom are working on other projects in four different time zones. Yes, 4.

• Prepare for and submit a DVD to SXSW film festival

Meanwhile, this same group of people is also busy prepping our next feature, to be shot in March.

That’s a lot to work on when it’s your primary job, but everyone involved in this is already working a 9-5, so to try to make all of this happen AND get the Kickstarter campaign in shape… let’s just say we were running on fumes by last week. So everyone agreed it didn’t make sense to just launch on our original date, especially given that we have nothing to lose by delaying, and everything to gain by making sure that when we do launch, we’re doing it in the best possible way. Deadlines are important, but there’s no need to force ourselves into a corner and put out an inferior product.

What’s been the most difficult aspect of getting ready?

Without a doubt, the video. The video has to do so many things - convey the story, be appealing without feeling too needy, explain what the money’s for and how it’ll be used, show off the footage, and just generally touch people. It took a while to coordinate shooting it - probably unnecessarily so. Then to edit it. Then we started sending out drafts of it to friends and strangers, and the responses weren’t good. So we’ve taken the feedback and gone back to the drawing board for the video. It’s painful, but there’s no question we’re doing the right thing. Had we launched with that video, there’s a chance we wouldn’t have raised the full amount. And there have been - and still are - lots of arguments about how to proceed, what to leave in and what to take out, etc. It’s all good, it’s part of the process.

We’re very lucky in that we’ve got the time and the determination to try and get this to be the best it can be, and again, not be pressured because of an external deadline. So we’ve pushed the launch date from November 18 (last Friday) to December 2 (next Friday). The biggest lesson here is that you should always try to get feedback on something you’re sharing with the world - and that you should give yourself enough time to adapt when that feedback isn’t glowing.

Crowd Funding – Who’s DOING It? - Part 4

If we go back to part 2 of this series on Crowd Funding and look at “Outreach” and what needs to get done to have a successful run in fundraising for an independent film (documentary or narrative) it’s clear that it’s all in the preparation.

So I asked my friend David Mandel who’s the co-producer of an independent narrative film called Mulligan to share his experience of preparing, launching and hopefully successfully finishing his Kickstarter campaign. David and his team are planning to launch on Friday, November 18, 2011.

Here a few questions I asked David during the preparation process:

1. Why Kickstarter? Very few other options exist - Kickstarter seemed to be the best known, either through their own marketing or because so many other people have used it. I’ve gotten a couple of emails about Kickstarter in the past and after looking through the website and browsing several projects, it seemed like a good fit - they have a relatively high success rate (not sure the exact numbers) and their overall approach and layout are very attractive.

2. What did you do to prepare? I’m working with Will, the director and Graham, the producer (I’m a co-producer) on it. It’s a bit tricky because Will and Graham are currently out in LA - but Graham’s moving back here right before the campaign starts. We’ve sent close to 100 emails back and forth about amount we need, what rewards to give, how we’re going to do outreach, etc.

The reward system is what has occupied the biggest part of our thinking (see below), but every aspect gets a lot of thought and discussion, particularly because we feel as though we’re trying to raise a significant amount of money (also see below). The division of responsibilities is still being hammered out, but basically I will be primary on updating and managing the Kickstarter page, Will will be working on Facebook and other social media - as the director he is much more the ‘face’ of the movie, and Graham has been working behind the scenes to negotiate the rates for the various expenses for which this money is being raised.

One big thing to come out of this process is that, succeed or fail, we believe it’s a good marketing opportunity. It’s very much a ‘launch’ for the movie, even though it hasn’t even been submitted to festivals. Our thinking is that spending this much time and effort to raise awareness for the movie at this stage will pay off down the road if and when it gets into festivals or gets distributed. And I do suspect that - if done right - this campaign will have a positive effect on festival/distribution opportunities.

3. How did you choose the ‘goodies’ - (called Rewards on Kickstarter)? This has been the most overthought aspect of the whole process. We did a lot of research into various other projects on Kickstarter, paying close attention to the rewards and the donation levels - that relationship is very important. Many stress that you shouldn’t do ‘the PBS/NPR’ thing, i.e. ask $100 for a tote bag. Having spent some time in the non-profit world, I know why that is done, but I also understand why some feel it’s a ridiculous price.

So, our goal was to come up with good rewards that people would want, mix in some humorous stories/selling points about them, and try to price them accordingly. This obviously gets much harder as you climb up the tiers of donor levels - it’s hard to think of anything you can provide that’s worth $500 or $1,000. We also tried to steer clear of rewards that would require a lot of time and energy to ‘produce’ and/or mail - we haven’t made DVDs yet, and as you might know, printing and copying them is both expensive and time-consuming.

Where possible, we tried to come up with digital alternatives that would be easier and cheaper to deliver, without making people think we were ripping them off. Most people probably feel a DVD of a movie is worth more than a digital download of it - even though the digital download is in some ways more useful because it can be played and accessed anywhere. I’d like to say we were thinking of our carbon footprint, but the reality is we’re all working jobs in addition to this movie, and don’t have the time and money to print and mail 100 DVDs.

You also have to think about your potential donors - some of these will be friends, family, acquaintances, but hopefully there will be lots of people who have never heard of you or the movie, and what would any of this be worth to them? The best thing is to try to sell the movie, sell yourself, and make people feel as though they’re being acknowledged and reward them on multiple levels.

4. How did you choose the length of the ask (30 days)? Some research suggested 30 days was the ideal timeframe. It matches our schedule of needs, and it’s during a time of the year when (hopefully) most people will be in a giving mood: Thanksgiving and early December. I think it gives us time to learn and adapt as we progress, so that if we do hit a ‘slump,’ we can regroup and think of ways out of it before the clock runs out.

5. How did you choose the amount realistic to raise? Did you base it on need or based on what you think you can raise? We’re trying to raise $10,000. This is probably the hardest thing to figure out, and it’s one of those things that has to be partially based on reason and partially based on emotion/hope. We know how much money we need based on certain deliverables: festival submissions, color correction, sound design, a website, etc. It's hard to ask people for money - even though the project is more than worthy of it. Everyone knows what today's economy is like, that there are problems out there that need people's money and attention. But this is a film that very much deserves to be made and seen, and I'm confident if people could see the full finished product, they'd take the afternoon off and plunk down a movie ticket’s worth to see it. I hope that translates to a successful fundraising campaign.

I can safely say that having exhausted all cheap and free possibilities; this is the minimum amount that we can ask for in order to guarantee making this movie the best it can be. It’s also reassuring to know that should we go over our asking price, we get to keep the overages.

How do we know we can raise this much? Mostly from looking at similar projects that have been successful on Kickstarter, and from acknowledging how much thought and effort we are putting into this. Because of the stage we’re at with the film (picture-lock), we can show off clips from the film, and I think that’s going to be the biggest selling point. The movie sells itself, and I suspect it’ll be a lot easier for people to commit to a project that’s so close to completion and one they can already watch parts of.

Next on Friday, November 18th: Questions for David: how is the countdown to the launch panning out? Any surprises? Anything you’d do differently?

And you, dear reader: leave us your comments!

How do I Fund my Documentary – Interlude

After having written about crowd funding, attending the Independent Feature Project week seminars for documentary filmmakers in September and reading anything and everything about documentary funding, outreach, sourcing, networking and ROI’s I’m a bit tired. I think I’m going to take a nap now. Oh right, I sold my sofa to fund the Kickstarter campaign – we needed a great video to launch. Well, then I’ll just go to bed - no pillows though – that was ruined on one of the late night working sessions to reach out to backers before the Kickstarter deadline expired. It’s actually quite comfy sleeping without my pillow – I just sometimes have a hard time adjusting my eye line at the computer screen now that I carry my head at a permanent 45 degree angle because I can’t pay for the chiropractor to set my spine straight, but it it’s well worth it – I raised another $25 by pre selling a DVD of a film I have pitched so many times I recite it in my sleep and I have done so much outreach work for it that I have to pinch myself every once in a while as a reminder that the film hasn’t actually been shot yet. Maybe I won’t nap after all. Sound familiar? Welcome to my world.

But how DO I FUND MY DOC? Find a sugar daddy. If that’s against your morals or you are too old for a savory sugar daddy, find some other outlet for your passion and creativity. I highly recommend blogging – cheap, fast, instant gratification, no help needed.

The above mentioned Independent Feature Week of seminars had two days of seminars geared towards independent documentary filmmakers. One of the seminars was titled How to Fund your Documentary. IndieWIRE’s Sophia Savage wrote a nice recap on the seminar. The recap is worth the read – the seminar itself was not so inspiring (I guess that’s when I found a Wiki entry called “death by Power Point” – need I say more).

Both days I heard a lot about pitching and three projects were pitched in front of an audience. Nothing new – just the good old points rehashed yet again: your doc should (must!) have an untold, character driven story. You need to have unique access or position to tell that story and you need a certain urgency to sell. Add a dash of salt et voila!

But as my friend Aideen would say: we’re excellent at what we do but we are not geniuses. And at my tender age I must confess – I know she’s right. If I had a genius I would imagine that by now it would have stuck out its head and asked for a drink. So where do I go without the genius in my back pocket? Work twice as hard or get a day job (yuck!).

The question of course is never answered: how do to fund your (that is my) documentary? I’d love for one of the panelists to look me in the eye and say: Nina, go to so-and-so and they’ll fund your film soup to nuts (or was it soup to desert?). Now, that would be a nice ROI for the $140 I paid for the seminars.

As Wendy Levy from Tomorrow Partners said: we have to be interactivists not just filmmakers. Amen.

A Kickstarter Campaign Followed in Real Time

Our next Crowd Funding post will be on November 9th.

A filmmaker friend of mine and his team behind the film Mulligan is starting a Kickstarter campaign on Friday, November 18th, 2011. We will be looking over his shoulder during the preparation and then during the month of crowd funding and get a behind the scenes look at the mechanics of a campaign. But more importantly we will get a real time peek and a blow-by-blow account of the different phases of crowd sourcing: the successes and the maybe not so smart decisions he and his team made. With, of course, a running commentary from me.

It should be great fun and we can at the same time help him spread the good word (see earlier post from today)…..

Crowd Funding - Your Backers - Part 3

"Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted." — attributed to Albert Einstein

There is much talk about Social Return on Investment, which in a way works brilliantly in tandem with Documentary filmmaking which more often than not comes with a cause attached. Narrative Films have a harder standing here.

If you look at the history of crowd sourcing and funding  you see that the platforms that pioneered before Kickstarter where mostly attractive to investors because they put a personal story and a face to their investments. But still: they were straight money investments. It’s easy to say: you give me $250 now and in 18 months I will return $300 to you: it’s a clean, clear-cut deal, no emotions involved, no room for interpretation. Only: we, as independent filmmakers, know that, but in the rarest cases, we cannot promise a principal plus interest in return on investment.

So we look elsewhere. When you crowd fund a project you engage backers on a totally different level, they do not only support you financially, they also provide encouragement, support, and public validation. Backing through crowd funding creates a stronger bond for better and for worse as the backer supports not only our work, but also you (or your team).

Let’s say our levels of support are:

1. for $1 you get a thank you credit on the film’s website
2. for $10 you get a thank you credit on the film’s website and in the film’s credit roll  
3. for $25 you get all of the above plus a DVD copy of the yet unreleased film and a poster
4. for $250 you are now an associate producer of the film (and get all of the afore mentioned benefits)
5. for $2,500 you get all of the above and a cameo in the film 

As of level 2 you are heavily invested. Your name is now not only on the website (where it can be removed in a flash) – it’s now in the credits of the film and stays there for all eternity. It better be a brilliantly good film – otherwise your backers are going to be embarrassed to see their (potentially) good name associated with a project of dubious creativity (or worse: content). Choose your benefits carefully – give a backer the option of anonymity. Public acknowledgement might be more than backers bargained for.

The more your film is on message and is cause related the easier it will be to reach out and find people willing to back your film. In finding your audience and you might be surprised to find that your audience is not who you thought it was. One group might not like the slant on your message, another might not be ready to ‘hear’ your message, and support might come from a group you would have never thought of.

At the IFP week a filmmaker spoke about a documentary she had produced about a young marine coming back from Iraq. Naturally she thought that the marines would be her first audience. She invited them to a screening with a discussion after to find out how they could help support the film. The scene after the screening must have been very awkward. There were quick good-bye’s and the vaguest promises of support. The marines who saw the film where still on active duty; they were not ready to see the documentary, nor able to acknowledge what happens after deployment. The filmmaker later found great support for her message in the war veteran’s and mental health communities.

What I learned:  the crowds don’t come to you – you need to find them, be it for a Kickstarter campaign or an outreach effort to show and share your film and ideas.   It’s hard work and endless contacts made, but if you are passionate about your film (documentary or fiction) and you have a strong message you will get there (whatever your “there” is) and you will find alliances in the most unlikely places – mark my words.

Abraham’s Children Screening at Park51

We had a wonderful screening of Abraham’s Children at the community center and mosque Park51 on Friday night. The venue is still a work in progress, but with the clean white walls and ample rooms it is rather impressive. Currently Park51 hosts a photo exhibit, called NYChildren by Danny Goldfield and it showcases one photo each of a child from each country around the globe that lives in New York City. Naturally a screening of Abraham’s Children was a good fit.

The Question and Answer session after the screening was expertly moderated by Park51’s Brandon Newton and on the panel with me were Robina Niaz from Turning Point and Samir Selmanovic from Faith House.

The discussion and Q&A revolved much around the fact that as much as the film shows happy and well adjusted children that seem to have no issues being American AND Muslim the reality can be very different. Robina talked about the difficulty to advocate for women and children when there are not only strict confidentiality issues but also many taboos surrounding especially girls growing up in America with traditional foreign-born parents. Samir talked about the ease with which these children in the film practice their faith and how the strong families and their communities help them be rooted and centered and how he hoped some Christian children could learn from that experience.

There were so many great questions in a very respectful and positive setting that I could have gone on for ever talking about the film and its message.

My favorite question was what my personal take away from the film was in terms of what I had learned about Islam. It’s a big question and there are so many possible answers to it, but I would say two things.

Actually the biggest learning moment for me was to realize that Islam is not a religion the way I was taught religion as a child in Christian Europe, where there is a strict separation of church and state; but that Islam is more than a religion, it is a way of life and it regulates and influences ALL aspects of a Muslims live. That I think, is also where most of the misunderstanding and fear comes from between Islam and Western culture. We (western countries) have spent so much time separating state and church, that a total fusion is a novel (or really old) thought that might not be reconcilable with a Western and Christian believe system.

The second part to that question is the human aspect. I learned so much about humanity making this film. The “other” is not other if you get to know “it”. The generosity of spirit and sharing meals and sharing laughter and ideas was at times overwhelming and made me very humble. Sharing of one’s resources in western culture has somehow gone by the way side.

A big thank you to the Park51 team: Katerina Lucas, the executive director, Sadaf Choudhry, Brendan Newton and Sam Chalfin who took the great pictures below.

Samir Selmanovic, Nina, Robina Niaz, Brandon Newton

Both photos by Sam Chalfin

Crowd Funding - Outreach - Part 2

Backers are invested in your project, both figuratively and where it hurts, they are the peels of the onion around your project core and they help you reach out further. Treat them well. But before you can treat them well you have to reach them and you have to have a plan on how to do that and how to SUSTAIN the outreach. Especially on a documentary which can take years to complete.

My guestimate is that for every one in 1,000 social media online backer you get an action; unless you’re a superstar (which if we were we would most likely not be dabbling in crowd sourcing to begin with, or at least hire someone to do it for us – but what would be the fun in that?

A nice episodic anecdote about the film I am I is on Peter Broderick’s blog, the maverick independent distribution consultant. Kickstarter has a hall of fame. The most successful film funded was Blue Like Jazz. Click on the link and see how they set up their project. It’s succinct and funny and it had of course a great head start because it was based on a bestselling book with the same title by Donald Miller who had a big and loyal on line following.

Roughly what you need to get your outreach going is:

Proposal:

• Think about your pitch: 20 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minute versions
• USP – why YOU - what is your unique selling point?
• Think about financing beyond crowd funding
• Prepare several budgets (calculate for different scenarios)
• Time line

Pre-campaign things that you need to have lined up:

• Basic website 
• Graphic element you can use for on-line presence, mass emails, postcards, announcements, etc.
• Teaser video (not a trailer) – talk to your audience directly and get them to donate with urgency

Pre-campaign outreach:

• Align yourself with non-profits and interested groups that can lend you their support to give you credibility and their network of fans, friends, followers and members to help you reach out
• Bolster your twitter following (remember the 1 per mille rule) as well as your FB friends and fans (and if you have good business contacts on LinkedIn and have built your Google+ circles – it won’t hurt either)
• Email outreach list with a distribution channel like Constant Contact with a layout/design that mirrors your website
• Relevant blog
• Having a follow up video for a final push might help too
• Letters and contacts lined up to hit big sponsors the moment you are ready to launch your project on line
• outline of what you will be giving backers in return for their investment (set realistic goals and be original without embarrassment)
• Lots of coffee and RedBull
• Help
• And: give your kids up for adoption and find a loving home for your dog

Before you set a deadline and upload your project:

• You need a firm grasp on what your goals are financially and time wise
• How much are you asking for?
• How much can you expect?
• Do you have a matching/gap donor in the wings should you be close but not at your goal an hour before the deadline?
• How are you sustaining a respectful follow up and communication with your backers after deadline and until you can deliver on Your promised goods?

What did I forget?

Enjoy and let me know how it went….

Crowd Funding - The Basics - Part 1

For a few months now I’ve been saving links (in the not so old days it would have been news clipping slowly yellowing in a folder) about crowd funding and on Kickstarter in particular. I have enough material (and opinions) at this point to start a series. And you guessed right: here’s a (mini) series on the general topic of crowd funding. I’ve known about Kickstarter and its counterpart IndieGoGo since 2009 and I have used IndieGoGo for a distribution outreach for my film Abraham’s Children with mixed results. 

Both online platforms have gotten press of late with new investors for IndieGoGo and the announcement that Kickstarter was chosen by the World Economic Forum as one of the technology pioneers of 2012. For the WEF report click here.

To set crowd funding into context, Bill Clark (@austinbillc) wrote a recap of the history of crowd funding on Mashable‘s, September 15th, 2011 issue. I highly recommend reading this short article.

Yesterday Kickstarter announced on their blog that they have as of last week 1 million backers and Mashable announced today that Kickstarter surpassed $100 million in pledges. To put this into context the fiscal year 2011 budget for the National Endowment of the Arts is $154 million. At the current pace of more than $2 million in pledges each week, Kickstarter backers are pledging more than $100 million a year!

Let me give an example for those who are not following and are about to bounce off: on either website you can choose to support any project you like. Most likely you’re there because someone sent you a heart throbbing email asking for your support. Let’s say you choose to support an independent documentary with $25 that gives you in return a DVD of the film once it’s finished. The film (project) is looking to raise $10,000 to pay for music licensing rights and has a fundraising deadline of January 24th, 2012. Your credit card only gets charged after the deadline passes and if the project has raised at least its proclaimed goal of $10K by the deadline. Otherwise your pledge goes uncollected (and the project does not get made and you do not get the DVD). Each project has different levels of support. It can be $1 for your name to be listed as a supporter on the project’s website, to $5,000 for a cameo in the film or a singing part on a music album. The sky is the limit. 

The statistics that Kickstarter put out yesterday are very interesting: most notably that the biggest contributions happen in the $11 -$25 range (nearly half of the 100 million raised to date – 30 months since inception). The number that really interested me however is how many projects were successful. Note: on Kickstarter (unlike IndieGoGo of the old days) your fundraising has a time limit set to it, which seemed counterintuitive to me at first and was the reason why I chose IndieGoGo over Kickstarter in 2009 for Abrahams’ Children – but, the urgency that a time limit creates is of great value when raising funds (this for all the procrastinators out there). Of $100 million pledged, about $84 million where successful and about $12 million failed and $5 million where given “live” meaning off line. Unfortunately there are no stats on how many actual projects that translates into.

This fund raising model does two things, it a creates the above mentioned urgency and secondly protects a supporter from giving money to a project that will never happen for lack of having reached a fundraising goal. The challenge for the filmmaker in our example is to make sure that the limit set for the raising of funds is realistic but not so low that several campaigns are needed to deliver on the goods promised to backers. And this is the biggest challenge with films; documentary or fiction: our budgets are not in the single digit “K” range, but mostly in the 100K plus range. How much do we rely or have to rely on crowd funding?

Do we fundraise in many different steps and run the risk of stressing our welcome with friends, fans and followers, or do we run the risk of setting our goal too high and not reaching it by the deadline? Not to speak of the fact, that these campaigns are a huge amount of work. Uploading your project on either Kickstarter or IndieGoGo does not mean anybody is going to support it. There are entire social media outreach strategies behind these campaigns in conjunction with old fashioned ways of communicating, like email, and – yikes - phone calling. You need to produce at least one pledge video and a plethora of ancillary graphic, writing and other creative materials – which are all fun to create but can cost money and definitely will add the ‘time sink’ called independent movie making.

What is your experience? Care to share?

Next: reaching out to those backers of yours.

The Trash Trend

To be filed under: “We must be the change we wish to see” Gandhi

I’ve always wondered how trends start, who instigates them and how they spread. A few years ago I read “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference” by Malcolm Gladwell, but don’t remember much hands-on ‘how to’ advice. I’m the last person to set a fashion trend and I’m afraid I’m not going to start any kind of visionary or intellectual trend either.

But now, inadvertently I might have started a trend after all – it might be wishful thinking, but here it goes: let me call it the Trash Trend. Very sexy, I know.

Sunday I got back from a quick bike ride in Central Park and as I pulled up to my condo I noticed a few big ticket trash items strewn around our entrance. As I did at my old home which was a brownstone without a super in attendance I started picking up the trash and walked it over to the trash bin at the curb and since I was at it I picked up a few more items there. The result was much easier on the eye. I went home, took a shower never thought of it gain.

Two days later I get an email through our building’s Google group: a forward of a guy who had posted on http://www.everyblock.com/ an exact description of what I had done and how great it was and he had never seen anybody but himself pick up trash off the side walk in Harlem. I was flabbergasted that anybody would have noticed, let alone write about it. What ensued was an on-line conversation about the merits of picking up after others. And our discussion got quite a few “thanks” – that’s akin to the FB “like”.

Here’s my take on it. I firmly believe in the broken windows theory. Quote: “The broken windows theory was first introduced by social scientists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, in an article titled "Broken Windows" in the March 1982 edition of The Atlantic Monthly. The title comes from the following example: Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside. Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars.”

Littering is a one of my (many) pet peeves (can you tell I’m Swiss?). I have asked strangers in my neighborhood over and over again to pick up their trash when I see them litter. The guy who commented on my action noted in the email exchange that he was taking to a friend, walking down 116th Street, commenting on the trash, when he got a nasty stare from a person walking in front of them. And I must add that 116th street between Freddie and Adam C Powell is notoriously “trashy”. I think there’s a big difference between ‘commenting’, sic: criticizing and doing.

I have never had anybody give me hard time for picking up trash on the street. Mostly I get thank you’s and the occasional stare of disbelieve. And most of the people I ask to pick up their trash do so and apologize. And the cool thing about getting older is that kids actually listen and pick up after themselves when I tell them to.

Now: every now and then there’s a person who will litter in front of a house to spite the occupants. So be it. I’ll gladly keep picking up their trash too and take the high road and if I catch them I will (politely) tell them to use a trash bin. Littering is a lack of education and respect for oneself and others.

I come from a culture where littering is a major no-no. Every kid, every tourist, every person who has ever littered in Switzerland will know what a swift and forceful reaction they get from total strangers and will think twice the next time. Policing a strict no-litter policy citizen driven and self-regulatory, no intervention by authorities needed. I think it's a matter of respect for oneself and ones surroundings; a matter of self-esteem and taking pride in one's street, block or neighborhood.

Somewhere in a New York City park I saw a sign that read something like: don’t litter, use the trash receptacles: they’re free and easy to use. Are you with me?

The Big Unfollow - For All The Idiots (Keep Reading)

A few weeks ago Chris Brogan posted a story on being “unfollowed”. I read it, thought it was very interesting (as I think about 98% of his writing is and I have no clue where all his information and ideas come from; he’s either got a huge head or very dedicated and smart people working for him).

A few days later, as I’m preparing to write an email to a friend I’ve not heard of in a long time I go onto FB to make sure I have his new (and ever changing) physical location right, not to ask him how Florida is when in effect he’s moved on to California. I type in his first name, and…. nothing. Strange I think. Type his name again … nada. YIKES. He’s un-friended me! I have a bit of a gut reaction and think immediately: “what have I done wrong”?…. “is he mad at me”? Alas – it turns out he’s un-friended us all – no more profile on FB. Uff.

Chris Brogan unfollowed everybody on Twitter to take care of a spam issue. The reactions he writes where at times visceral, even hostile and some just plain strange. I’ve noticed that I have about the same amount of Twitter followers every time I log on, which is three to four times a week (I know not enough, or too much – depending on who you are), but I do average a new follower daily. That means seven people think I’m boring enough to drop me from their Twitter list every week. That’s a sobering thought.

When I started my Twitter account I would follow everybody in an account that was similar to mine, hoping I might find an audience (back then mostly for my film Abraham’s Children). It mostly worked like a charm until I went to unfollow the lot to make space for new conquests. “Retaliation” was often very swift.

I use FB, LinkedIn and Twitter to reach out and to communicate my thoughts on what I think is newsworthy. News coming to me: I’m not so good with. With (still) only 24 hours a day is there ever enough time to digest but the tip of the social media iceberg, let alone interact and react?

What are the rules of politeness around a friend or a follower? How do people see themselves in the numbers of their friends and followers? Who is actually reading Tweets and status updates of all their followers? Who even notices if you ditch them? Are the numbers of followers and friends the currency of our social networking self-worth? Are we all communicating out but not across or between? How much are we taking IN?

In the old days of email marketing (about a month ago), a 15% click rate was great. With Twitter and FB I think we’re not even touching 1% but racing right into 1 per-mille. In every one in a thousand follower I have a potential customer or client. That’s another sobering thought.

Dammed if you do and dammed if you don’t. Read: time-sink-run-with-the-crowd-idiot if you do and dinosaur if you don’t. I choose idiot. And you? (If you’re reading this my money is on idiot…).

One More

So much is being said and will still be said on the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York. And as a New Yorker there are so many thoughts, memories, emotions and questions that do come up in these days as the coverage of the anniversary is steering towards a media overload. And here I am feeding the beast.

My personal story is thankfully rather dull – despite this there is a very nice article in a Swiss magazine that talks to eight Swiss New Yorkers who experienced the 9/11 tragedy and are still in New York. The journalist, Ralf Kaminski did an outstanding job recording and writing the eight stories. And reading them – in their simplicity - they are so revealing and relevant. For those of you who speak German here goes a link to the Migros Magazine article.

I would love to write about the broader scale of the changes in the past ten years and how we all have to move into this or that direction and make this a better and safer and smarter city and country, but I won’t.

The ten year anniversary ways heavy on my heart and I just want to say that I’m thinking of those who have lost loved ones and still are struggling and congratulate those who have had the strength and courage to move on and rebuild.

I know many who woke up a few weeks and months after 9/11 and changed their lives for the better, who stayed strong for their children and those who needed it the most. You are the real heroes in my mind. And like the small stories in the Swiss Magazine, it’s all the small stories here in New York and everywhere that make the difference. One day at a time and one action at a time. Onwards and upwards.

Eid Mubarak

It is Eid al Fitr – the end of Ramadan. To stay in the neighborhood of my last blog entry – that is physical neighborhood I wanted to share what I experienced this morning. It made me think about so many things at once.

I woke at 6:45 AM and as always (weather permitting) I opened all the windows in the house to let some fresh morning air in. On Frederick Douglass Boulevard a lone male voice was calling for prayer. Allah Akbar! The strong voice sang in a surprisingly strong and carrying voice. Normally very adverse to any kind of unduly noise I had to smile. It’s only once a year that the local mosque up the block calls to prayer on the streets; onEid al Fitr and I did not mind and was imagining the excited children with their Eid presents and parents (I imagine) relieved that the fasting was over and they could properly hydrate during the hot summer days.

Suddenly I heard a voice from a window: “Hey, stop it, stop it, stop the noise!” This I thought very curious – we are subject to HOURS of pounding car stereos (the kind that makes your chair skip with the ‘thump’, ‘thump’ of the base), young women in yelling matches and cat fights, people holding entire conversations yelling down the block and I have NEVER heard anybody lean out the window complain. Was it the early morning hour that woke one of our ‘out of work’ neighbors that prompted the complaint? Someone who had been partying all night on the block? Of course the Muezzin carried on – I’m not sure if he even heard the complaint.

I was thinking what an upside down world; where no one leans out the window to tell a nuisance noise to stop but the Muezzin who calls out once a year gets reprimanded. I’m thinking next time I’m up all night because of a car stereo, rather than calling 311 and waiting for naught until the police comes by to stop the noise I’ll just get up early in the morning and do a bit of yelling myself.

Violence

I just got home from an extended stay in my native Switzerland and came back to Harlem New York a week ago to a flurry of Google-Group messages from my building about a recent killing on our block and the aftermath thereof. Last night, a few minutes after I got home and after a day of seemingly peaceful block party a man got stabbed and bled to death in front of our building – it was 8 PM.

Violence is obviously something that finds you everywhere but we prefer to see it on the screen, not in front of our own houses or towards our loved ones and ourselves.

Violence perpetuates violence. But where does violence come from? Violence is a preemptive strike against fear. Fear of what? Fear of being ‘dissed’, or fear of being violated first; a verbal menace getting to the point where action needs to be taken to not lose face; a situation seemingly out of control being controlled by violence – on the street, in war, at home.

America has a huge tolerance for violence on the screen. I hear mothers tell me that they’d rather have their children see violence in movies, TV shows and video games than a naked body or an embrace. I could not disagree more.

Violence perpetuates violence. If children play violent games and watch overly violent shows that perpetuate violence as cool – no wonder there is such a lack of respect for other’s wellbeing. Especially if there is no parental guidance to make sure children understand what is real and what is not, and what the consequences of their (potentially) violent actions are.

I’d rather have children (and I have none) see a naked breast and an embrace on TV than violence.

The Future of Storytelling from a Documentarian’s POV

Chris Brogan’s series of posts on the future of media, work, marketplaces and community got me thinking about the future of storytelling.

The future of storytelling is non-linear (sadly, as far as I’m concerned), media centric and for that reason flexible, I would venture to guess also more fragmented and modular. Storytelling will be increasingly interactive, in cases even crowd-sourced, free and digital. Copyright will get a run for its money and will need to reinvent itself. Curation of content will take on a big role. I also think the message of the story will become more important.

The message has always been the core for documentaries; and maybe I’m co-mingling message with truth. As documentaries will have to adapt further to non-linear, media centric, flexible, interactive and free – how does that change the story? Marshall McLuhan: “The Medium is the Message”, says that societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the medium by which people communicate than by the content of the communication.

Where IS the message? Where IS the story? What story does the medium itself give us and how will it shape us into the future? How will eternal story lines of Romeo and Juliet, Pygmalion and the Iliad come to us? Is the internet the message or the medium or ultimately the meta-medium. I would suspect all three.

Happy Birthday Switzerland

720 years ago the foundation for Switzerland was laid, when the men of the region of the three original cantons threw out the Habsburgians and formed the Swiss confederacy also known as Confederatio Helvetica.

As much as America is in its adolescence today (see my post of July 4th), Switzerland is an old lady – actually make that a grumpy old man. If there were characteristics to summarily dispense on the Swiss it would be: opinionated – because being neutral does not mean you don’t have a strong stance on issues, traditional and change-adverse, a wee bit stubborn, quiet and modest. We believe our actions will speak for themselves, no need to go shopping with them and no fear that others will if you don’t.

We are of course very punctual (you kind of have to if you sell the watches we do), quality driven, reliable and dependable and yes, to a Swiss person those are two different qualities. I would like to add a great sense for esthetics; maybe that’s why so many Swiss are gifted designers. The Helvetica font was created by a Swiss: Max Miedinger in 1957. It was an instant hit. The documentary Helvetica about the font is very cool.

Happy Birthday Switzerland: I wish that you could loosen up a bit and find a way to combine the old and true with the new and exciting and that you can remember that change can be good! You are the “awesomest” country in the world, but you need to learn to participate in it and accept the change you invite by doing so.

“I don’t have a TV”

I love when people tell me they don’t watch TV, or they don’t have a TV. TV zaps your time like nothing else – well maybe a child (any age) will too, but I always think that people who tell me they don’t own a TV or they don’t watch TV are trying to go the high-brow route of not wasting time with “that stuff”.  For full disclosure: I own a TV and I watch TV.

Here a scientifically insignificant study on “watching TV”:

Case Study #1:

My parents, (in Europe), pay a state mandated TV tax for each TV in the house (two), they have a cable box and have dinner at 6:30 PM so they can watch the 7:30 PM main news segment on public television. The exact same news segment will be shown on an alternate channel at 8 PM, but my father favors the ‘freshness’ of the 7:30 PM news, not to mention that the 8:00 PM news interferes with the movie shown at 8:15 PM. If I call from New York – which I seem to always do during the news – I’m being told to call back – after the movie. The toilet probably flushes at the same time in all of Switzerland during the only commercial break in a 90 minute movie.

Case Study #2:

I have a TV in my living room, a digital cable box with DV-R, a Roku box, and a DVD player. I watch the same four or five shows nearly exclusively because I stopped channel surfing since I have the DV-R. I have no concept of which show runs on which network at what time and what day of the week. I watch TV when I’m done with work, I fast forward through commercials, lest I disappear into the kitchen.

In real time I only watch NY1 while I go through my morning routine which makes me dip in and out of the living room. Occasionally I will sit down for an ‘event’ like the Academy Awards or a Royal Wedding (sorry to say, but I had a visitor who insisted).

Case Study #3:

My co-worker, a 26 years old recent college graduate, doesn’t watch TV – she makes a point out of telling me so. She watches Hulu, YouTube and Netflix – but her laptop is tethered to a digital monitor, the digital monitor is an old TV which stands across the sofa in the living room…. but she does NOT watch TV.

So, we all still watch something, be it life TV or canned goods; we call it ‘watching TV’ or ‘not watching TV’ – does it really matter?

My parents spend 2.5 hours a night between the news and a movie – their TV dictates when they eat and go to the bathroom.

I watch TV when I have “time” – some weeks more, others not at all – the shows are always there on my cable box. I want to believe that I watch more focused, however I do tend to watch ‘one more show’ because it’s there on my cable box and it ONLY runs for 40 minutes if I zap through the commercials.

My co-worker culls her viewing from many different sources and has left the structure of TV viewing behind her entirely.

How have YOUR TV consumption habits changed and how do you think it will affect the future of content production?

The Cyber-Gap

The internet has opened doors to an unimaginable wealth of information, education and commerce opportunities; it has enabled emerging pro-democracy movements in Egypt and Algiers, has empowered dissidents worldwide and is closing geographical and physical gaps around the world.

The Internet is hands-down a great enabler. At the same time the gap between educated and under-educated, poor and rich, rural and urban, empowered and disenfranchised is growing – rapidly.

How are people around the world going to engage when they have no internet access? No access to on-line education, commerce, potential jobs and clients, information, social exchange, passing of ideas, or civic engagement? The more our world moves onto the internet the wider the gap becomes between the haves and have not’s of internet access and economic power.

To this day 70% of the U.S. population visits the public library not only for their reading and research projects, but also for their computer and internet use, according to departing New York Public Library president Paul LeClerc. (NY1 “New York Times close up” edition with Sam Roberts).

Within the thirty-four OECD states the U.S. has fallen from fourth place in 2001 to 15th place in 2006 in broadband penetration. (See graph) . Availability is one reason, pricing another. Where today Ireland and Switzerland are the countries with the best price points in the OECD for adding high speed internet to an existing phone line, the US is in the lower third of that list.

If we want to keep up economically with the rest of the world (Asia foremost and Europe) we have to make sure that all areas of the United States have access to broadband internet; and soon. The lost potential of talent and the education gap are too great to ignore.

Happy Birthday America

This is my first Independence Day as an American citizen. I have lived half my life in Switzerland and the other half in the US, or more precisely in New York, which by all accounts is not like the rest of the country. At my swearing-in ceremony a few months back quite a few people asked me how I felt as an American: I feel like a New Yorker and always have. Being an American is something I have to get used to.

New York was love at first sight. As any true love we’ve had quarrels, made up and deepened our relationship. 9/11 wounded New York deeply but also sealed my commitment to this city as a place to thrive, live, learn and love. I love New York for its energy, its grit, its people. New York passes no judgment. All nations, colors, levels of madness, cultures, religions, fads and neuroses live here in an unbelievable hodge-podge. Everybody is ‘other’. Every ‘other’ is the ‘normal’. What is there not to love?

Now that I’ve officially upgraded from New Yorker to American I can vote, I moved from “you” to “we”. I’m not an outsider looking in, commenting, I’m now on the inside and I can say “we” when I have an opinion. I can also apply for grants I previously did not qualify for… Most likely I will be called for jury duty the moment I register to vote.

Happy Birthday, America. My wish for you is to leave your teenage years behind and grow up to be a fiscally and politically responsible country, one that values educating future generations and goes out into the world to be a nurturer and not an oppressor. I’ll be watching closely and participating in my civic duties.

Doing Business in the US

On my last blog I ended with the quote: “He/she who makes the most noise will be heard”. This was in relationship to the future of Social Media and the onslaught of information that is coming at us and the need for filtering and curation. Interestingly enough this is also a quote I use each time I make a presentation about how to do business in the US or how to do business as an American in Switzerland. My clients are either Swiss (throw in a few Canadians) who relocate to the US or Americans who move to Switzerland.

One of the few big differences in doing and surviving, business in the US is that you need to speak up – never assume that your actions or accomplishments will speak for themselves – if you don’t make sure all know of them you run the very real risk that someone else will take credit for it.

This goes for meetings and team work as well. Whereas Swiss people will search consensus and a happy medium, Americans will look to choose a leader who will give directives. With all of this there are of course many subtleties and nuances, but the bottom line is: you need to be heard and rise above the fray if you want to succeed in the States. In Switzerland you want to reach a consensus that all can agree on and move forward from there, decisions are taken by a show of hands, the majority rules.

Curation, the Human Algorithm & the Future of Social Media

There are two expressions I keep coming across in reading about the future of everything that’s web-based and, social media in particular: “content curation” and the “human algorithm”.

The definition of curation is that it’s the caretaking or presentation of things entered into a collection, either physical or digital. With the onslaught of information from all sides, some sort of curation needs to be implemented to collect, filter, verify and disseminate news, entertainment, human interaction in the broadest sense.

An Algorithm, according to Wikipedia is an effective method expressed in mathematics and computer science as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function. (Gosh I don’t miss math classes). Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing and automated reasoning. So in a way, an algorithm is the mathematical brother of more artsy curation.

So where does curation and the human algorithm come to play? Where curation means that people manually verify and decide what content to present regardless of the readers on-line behavior, the human algorithm is a program fed by ‘trust agents’ to get you real-time information you’re looking for based on your previous on-line behavior and searches. The human comes as much from your behavior as it does from the behaviors of millions of other on-line users that share some of your on-line habits. However the above mentioned ‘trust agents’ are key.

In curating or in programming the challenge lies to find trustworthy sources and networks of followers with ‘good reputations’. Tweets and social content needs to be tied to networks of so-called trust agents and their sub group of followers. Connectivity – being linked to and linking – is the most important thing to attain trustworthy status.

Somebody with a whole lot of followers on Twitter who has a lot of “links” and “recommendations” will, in a Google search on that person, come up over another person with similar content but lesser reputation and trust. This kind of ranking is referred to as the “human algorithm” – I’m oversimplifying this.

You might want to read the following: Brian Solis on “The Human Algorithm and how Google ranks Tweets in real-time Search”, Mark Little of Storyful: “The Human Algorithm”, which really talks about curation and Mathew Ingram of Gigaom writing about the ”Future of Media: Curation, Verification and News as a Process”. The last two articles are bit redundant, but both talk extensively about the verification process of actual news stories, which is fascinating and labor intensive.

And to round it up: Soren Gordhamer from Mashable talks about the Future of Social Media and the three pressing questions regarding the future of social media: distraction, filter, and capacity.

The first is self-explanatory and so is the third, but I would like to expand on the second a bit, filter: increasingly search engines give us information they THINK we want to see. If you where to Google your neighbor from your home computer and then again from a coffee shop you could quite likely get entirely different results. Google, Bing and other search engines are filtering the search for you based on your browsing history, social media interactions and on-line purchasing habits. This brings Gordhamer to ask for three options: filtering needs to be transparent, we need to be able to make choices in the filtering applied and there needs to also be an unfiltered option.

Gordhamer’s observation is; as we will be increasingly inundated, overwhelmed and clogged up with irrelevant and relevant information with still only 24 hours a day. The new paradigm is no longer the questions of the many different ways of sharing on line, but the question of RELEVANCY.

And with relevancy being the new paradigm shift in the near future of social media we are back to curation and human algorithms. He/she who makes the most noise will be heard! What else is new?