Joining The Conversation

I heard about The Conversation this summer and immediately bought a ticket:

[P]ioneers at the forefront of change in cinema, video, games, media and technology are coming together to share ideas, insights, and innovations. Our focus is on new tools, new distribution channels, and new rules.... The format of the gathering will be experimental: rather than a traditional conference, short talks and demos, "fireside chats," and roundtables will spark a dynamic series of overlapping conversations.

Their guest list is enough to make any independent filmmaker salivate—Peter Broderick, for instance. His recent article in Indiewire about the New World of Distribution for indie filmmakers is germane to how (I think) digital entertainment will be distributed. Hunter Weeks is another gem on the list—he's one of the co-creators of 10 MPH, a documentary about two guys crossing the United States on a segway. Week's movie home page is an exquisite example of how to use the internet to market your own movies. Other notable invitees hail from Netflix, Createspace, Filmbaby, JibJab, Lucasfilm, ILM, The Webby Awards, and YouTube. See the complete list of speakers at the bottom.

One really appealing part of The Conversation—you can throw out your own ideas. I thought about it for awhile and this forum seems ideal to mention some of my own predictions on the future of digital entertainment. Frankly, in one form or another, I've been observing, discussing, and molling over the movie industry for three years and have a pretty well-informed opinion about it. So I decided to make a presentation of my own about license-based entertainment which will be a riff on a recent article I wrote about iTunes' Death Knell. My ardent hope is that my presentation isn't eclipsed by someone else's brilliant 90 minute lecture. I do hate redundancy.

The Conversation takes place all day this Friday and Saturday. Tickets are still on sale, but a little steep now at $150. But if you have nothing to do, come be my own peanut gallery!

COMPLETE LIST OF SPEAKERS

• Alex Afterman, Founder, Heretic Films
  
• Alex Lindsay, Founder, Pixel Corps
  
• Arin Crumley, Director, As the Dust Settles and Four Eyed Monsters
  
• Barbara Robertson, Journalist, CGSociety, Computer Graphics World, Digital Production
  
• Chris Thilk, Director of Marketing, Spout LLC
  
• Cliff Plumer, Chief Technology Officer, Digital Domain
  
• Dan Gregoire, Founder, Halon Entertainment
  
• Dana LoPiccolo-Giles, Co-founder, CreateSpace (formerly CustomFlix)
  
• Danae Ringelmann, Co-Founder, IndieGoGo
  
• Dean Valentine, CEO, Comedy.com and Founder, Symbolic Action; former CEO of UPN and President of Walt Disney Television
  
• Diana Barrett, Founder, The Fledgling Fund
  
• Evan Spiridellis, Head Art Guy, JibJab Media
  
• George Strompolos, Content Partnerships Manager, YouTube
  
• Graham Leggat, Executive Director, San Francisco Film Society (Moderator)
  
• Gregg Spiridellis, CEO Guy, JibJab Media
  
• Hunter Weeks, Director, 10 Yards and 10 MPH
  
• James LeBrecht, Berkeley Sound Artists
  
• Jason Harris, President, Mekanism
  
• Jeremiah Birnbaum, CEO, SF School of Digital Filmmaking
  
• Jesse Keane, Chief Technology Officer, CinemaNow
  
• Jim Sommers, Senior Vice President, ITVS
  
• John Batter, Co-President of Production, DreamWorks Animation SKG; former Group Studio General Manager, Electronic Arts
  
• John Gaeta, Visual Effects Designer, Speed Racer and the Matrix trilogy
  
• John Knoll, Visual Effects Supervisor, Industrial Light & Magic
  
• Jonathan Marlow, Executive Director, San Francisco Cinematheque; formerly at Vudu and GreenCine
  
• Josh Wiggins, Senior Director of Global Strategic Sales, Ascent Media
  
• KC Blake, Anywhere/Anytime Content Lab, Entertainment Technology Center@USC
  
• Ken Eklund, Writer & Creative Director, "World Without Oil"
  
• Ken Goldberg, Director, Berkeley Center for New Media
  
• Lance Weiler, Filmmaker & Editor, The Workbook Project
  
• Michael Ferris Gibson, Director, 24 Hours on Craigslist & Producer, Truth in Numbers: The Wikipedia Story
  
• Michealene Cristini Risley, Independent filmmaker, Tapestries of Hope
  
• Mike Curtis, HD for Indies
  
• Mike Shiley, Director, Inside Iraq: The Untold Stories & Dark Water Rising
  
• Nick Braccia, Creative Director, Deep Focus
  
• Peggy Weil, Artist & Game Developer, "Gone Gitmo" and "The Redistricting Game"
  
• Pete Ludé, SVP, Sony Electronics
  
• Peter Broderick, President, Paradigm Consulting
  
• Phil Tippett, Founder, Tippett Studio
  
• Reed Hastings, CEO & Founder, Netflix
  
• Rich Bradway, Associate Dir. of E-Commerce & New Media, Boston Symphony Orchestra
  
• Richard Kerris, Chief Technology Officer, Lucasfilm Ltd.
  
• Scilla Andreen, CEO, IndieFlix
  
• Scott Kirsner, Editor, CinemaTech
  
• Ted Hope, Co-Founder, This is That
  
• Tiffany Shlain, Filmmaker & Founder, The Webby Awards
  
• Tim Napoleon, Chief Strategist for Digital Media, Akamai
  
• Wendy Levy, Director of Creative Programming, Bay Area Video Coalition
  
• Woody Benson, Managing Partner, Prism VentureWorks

Support Your Local Visionary

Dr. Gerald Bull wanted to build cannons his whole life. His lifelong dream was to build a cannon to launch satellites into space. His break came in the late 80's when he was commissioned to build the largest cannon ever... so large, in fact, that it had to be assembled in parts and laid at an angle on the side of a hill. Its length was 156 meters (about 500 feet), its bore would be 1 meter wide, its weight would be over 2,100 tons, and have a range of 750 kilometers (about 415 miles).

When Gerard Bull first presented the cannon project to his staff, and after he recited the long list of all its daunting engineering problems, they said, "That's impossible."

And he replied—excitedly—"Yeah, isn't it great?"

Bull was a visionary, and like so many other visionaries before and since, nobody else could see what he saw. Rather than open their eyes to new possibilities, his staff's gut response was extreme skepticism. But Bull didn't listen. He bullied them into tackling the so-called "impossible" problems. They labored for months. And he got his cannon built (click the picture to see it).

This is the problem with most human beings (myself included, I'm ashamed to admit), at least in the Western world—we resist change, even if the change is better for us. Anything radically new is intrinsically suspect. And the seed of an idea is killed before it even gets planted. The visionary sees the goal and finds a way to make it happen—the non-visionary sees what's available and so can't see a feasible way to reach the goal.

Regretfully, I am cursed with a visionary mind. I say cursed because having a visionary mind means you are condemned to a life of perpetual daydreaming, seeing possibilities which others don't, can't, or won't—that makes it a struggle to get others to open their minds wide enough to see what I see. It's exhausting. Many of my ideas are usually met with a polite nod, apathetic dismissal or, at worst, open derision. Thus, most of the time, simply because I'm so tired of being met with a lackluster attitude, I just shut up and keep all my new ideas to myself... but privately tinker with them until I can provide the non-visionaries with some meat to chew on. Since my ideas' early stages have no money to be developed into something ostensibly valuable, they are fueled only by my own enthusiasm and nothing kills enthusiasm faster than a simple non-visionary quip, "Nobody will ever use that. Why are you wasting your time?"

So here's a simple request to all you non-visionaries: if you ever hear someone come up with an idea which sounds crazy to you, stop yourself from saying, "That's impossible", or "That can't be done", or "You're mad! What if X or Y or Z?" Instead, try to reframe your reaction: "OK, I don't see how that could be done, but if it could, how could it be done?"

I'm developing a massive idea now—I've shared it with a few close friends and they love because it's useful and it has legs to stay around awhile. I feel it has the potential to be larger than Myspace if it catches on. But I'm careful about whom I talk to about it, and not just for legal reasons... most people don't see the possibility until it already exists.

There is another downside to being a visionary—you can be so thirsty to see your dreams realized that you lose touch with your ethics. For example, Dr. Bull's "supergun" was contracted by Saddam Hussein and not only were the canon's parts eventually confiscated by British customs officials, but Dr. Bull was assassinated outside his house in Belgium, probably by Israeli or Iranian secret police. Doomsday Gun was a TV movie made about Dr. Bull and his tragic ending.