Behind the scenes, DadLabs has been impersonating a tech company for the last week or so. And it’s actually been kind of fun for us to get our geek on.
It all started with an over-the-transom email to Erick Schonfeld, an editor at TechCrunch (the leading tech/Silicon Valley/startup blog) in response to his call for folks interested in appearing on a panel on the subject of grass roots marketing. The TechCrunchers were coming to Austin for one of their MeetUp networking events, so in a what-the-hell moment I threw my hat in the ring.
A few days later, a list of panelists came out and it included executives from places like Dell, Golfsmith and the Lance Armstrong Foundation. So that was that. Until Schonfeld emailed to ask if I was still interested, and did I know anyone who could shoot live streaming video for the event. And thus, I somehow wind up on the panel, and DadLabs ends up an official sponsor of the event.
The panel itself was a little controversial. There were 18 (?!) of us on the dais, and the announced list was all men. Local tech reporter Lori Hawkins noted the omission, word went out and Julie Shannan of Girlstart was added (these gals are coming into the studio to shoot some interviews next week). I agree that there should have been more balance on the panel, but in all fairness — look how I got in. Personally, I couldn’t get past the sheer number of panelists.
The after party was at Pangea, the trendiest bar in Austin, and we basically had no business being there. But we began to put our master plan into action. The general idea was this — get permission from the TC crew to take a camera to the party, have Owen do funny interviews of the attendees, send Jamie off to edit all night, send a brilliantly produced and utterly hilarious video to the masterbloggers by the next morning that would then be included in the “wrap-up” post about the event.
And then there we were. Front page. A nice little PR coup.
Then I was off to San Francisco for the iHollywood conference on web video at the behest of the lovely and talented Daisy Whitney. Daisy has clearly emerged as the most important blogger/writer on the web video beat, so I do what she tells me.
The conference was pretty small and insider-y, but some interesting thoughts on the future of web video (niche directories instead of YouTube), and lots of marketing language that I will probably steal to try and sound like I know what I am talking about.
But now, thankfully, I’m back in Austin and looking forward to dinner with the family.
Who handled the live streaming video for that event? I did a live streaming show from Taiwan for a few months using Ustream.org, but became frustrated with their technical problems and apparently “missing in action” customer service.
We used Ustream also. The live broadcast was great, but we’ve run into lots of problems with the archived version, and the customer service is AWOL.
My main reason for choosing their service was the ability to convert and extract the videos for distribution purposes. That is the specific tech problem I’m having with them and NO One seems to be willing or there to help. There is another site called mogulus.com but they don’t offer that option at all.
Unless you do anything yourself, you’ll never get what you want. An artist is only happy with their own work, no one elses’, trust me on that. There will be growing pains and bugs to work out. You guys have done a terrific job tackling a multi-headed dragon through the easy issues and the tough ones, with some of the toughest yet to come. All with humor that is unmatched on or off the web. I could say “don’t sweat the small stuff”, but you know just as well as I do that it’s a flat-faced lie. When you’re heading up the show, no sleep is to be had when it isn’t perfect. Been there, done that.
Treat your family as your number one client and nothing, I mean nothing will ever stand in your way.
Bri-
You go with your bad self, Daddy Clay. Very cool. That’s some fancy elbow rubbing. I’m knee deep in poo.