DEAR NEW YORK INTERNET PEOPLE:

(and internet people EVERYWHERE!)

BarCampNYC4 NEEDS A HOME!

BarCampNYC is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants. The Fourth BarCampNYC is looking for a home, and we need your help!

Some of my friends and readers might know that I am helping to organize barcampnyc4 and we have been having trouble getting a space.

What we need

• Capacity: 300 people
• Classrooms: 7ish + Auditorium
• Cost: we can afford $1,500ish for space
• We Need Internet: Wifi or wired
• BarCamp is traditionally an Overnight event: (but we can move the overnight to NWC)
• Prospective 2009 Dates:
• - 3/28-3/29- 4/4-4/5- 5/2-5/3

WHAT YOU CAN DO?

Help us find a space! Maybe your school, work, or exceedingly large home could be a venue. Help spread the word! Blog, twitter, email your friends, shout it from the rooftops.

Please, do contact us if you’re interested in sponsoring BarCampNYC4!

For more information: barcamp.org/BarCampNYC4

Contact: info@barcampnyc.org

#barcampnyc4

CES this year sure was an exciting show, but the product that interested me the most was the HP mini 1000 Mi Edition. I have been very happy with my computing combination of iMac and iPhone, but lately I have been traveling around a lot more, and it would be nice to have a small laptop to surf the web with. What I like about the HP is the fact that it is very small (only 1″ thin and 2.25 lbs), but with a reasonable sized keyboard (92% of full size), it runs on linux, and the price starts at $329!

I don’t think after being such a hard core apple user that I could go back to windows even for a small netbook so I am happy that HP is giving consumers the opportunity to try a new OS. But I still find myself scratching my head, where is Apple on this?

It would appear that there are two arguments in the “where is the Apple netbook” debate.

#1 The macbook air is as close as apple is going to get to a netbook, it’s small and portable, yet powerful enough for apple to sell it.

#2 The iPhone and iPod Touch are Apple’s versions of a portable internet browsing device.

Now while these both seem like good arguments, I still don’t buy it. I don’t think Apple is trying to get into the netbook game because they have stated that they can’t build a computer for less than $1000 and be happy with it. Now while the Macbook Air is very portable, it is also very expensive. And while the iPhone has good internet capabilities, it doesn’t match the kind of work I can get done when I have a keyboard and a webcam.

These factors are really making me lean toward the HP. Apple give me a break on this, I would gladly pay $600 for an Apple netbook than ran OSX, just throw me a bone here.

What would you do? And how do you feel about the whole netbook catergory of laptops?

Earlier today I was reading a letter from an IASTSE union crew member sent around to his fellow union members. You may not have heard of the IASTSE (The official Web Site of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States, Its Territories and Canada) but the members of this union often will work very closely with SAG (Screen Actors Guild) members. The letter was in regards to a contract that is on the table to add a “New Media clause” to the union contract.

“If ratified by our members, the ridiculous “New Media” clauses will guarantee that the vast majority of New Media productions will be made non-union for decades, if not forever. What little New Media production our members do under this contract will not be paying fair residuals into our Health and Pension Plans, if they pay any residuals at all (most will not). And on top of that, our members will have to negotiate their own rates, conditions, crew size, job responsibilities, etc., ON THEIR OWN, on a PRODUCTION BY PRODUCTION BASIS, since the proposal does not contain any of that.
If our members must negotiate their own employment contracts in New Media, and the majority of the members have little chance of ever getting health coverage, just why is it we need a union, anyway? For the magazine subscription?
And forget the new “organizing” plans – what have we got to offer the crews on New Media (most of whom will already have IATSE cards in their pockets) to help us organize? No wage scales, no working conditions, and virtually no chance at health coverage? Good luck with that.

….

Let’s send the negotiators back to DO THEIR JOBS, and bring us a contract that protects our members and their families, and that guarantees that New Media productions will be made by our members under a fair contract with fair residuals.”

Now to fully understand how I feel about unions you would need to know more about me than most people do. My father is a SAG member, and has been my entire life. When I first started doing internet video he immediately wanted me to join the union. At the time that made absolutely no sense, especially since I was just doing a video blog. But as time went on and I started producing more internet content he really wanted me to take a look at SAG union contracts to make sure I was getting paid fairly. I still had never taken a look at anything that SAG had to say about New Media, because I was sure that it didn’t apply to me.

However, after reading that letter today it really got me thinking about unions in traditional media, and how it will all shift over when the lines become more and more blurred.  So I went digging through the SAG website to see what they had to say about New Media. I have to say that I was surprised by what I found.

“Screen Actors Guild has been busy both getting out the word on its contracts for New Media and collecting information from producers and others working in the space. Here are a few of the events SAG has attended over the past year.”

This all really got me thinking about productions that I am currently involved in. Currently I am a creator/producer/talent for my own podcast that is in production with a new online television company. This company certainly falls into the category of a start-up, and I never really thought to bring up SAG or the IASTSE in any of my conversations with the founders there, and I still am not convinced that I should have.

If these contracts were to become standard across all podcasts, and web video projects; would we all really benefit from it? Or would it just squash so many bright hopeful start-ups right out of the gate just with rules, contracts and pay scales.

I admit that I have zero experience with unions, and I would really like to start a discussion here about what this all means for our industry.

This is a re-blog of a post I wrote for New York Tech Scene which just officially launched today. It’s a community blogging project that I have been trying to get off the ground for a while. Check it out!

I became compelled to write this post after seeing a twitter update from @naterkane.

I started to ask myself the same question. It seems like everything that I do, create, or attend seems to have 2.0 slapped on the end of it. Why is this? Why do we seem to have this fascination with this term? I decided to check the @replies to see what other people’s thoughts on the subject were. I found one from Jonathan Vanasco that was very interesting.

While I think it was a little harsh, he had a point. Adding 2.0 is you trying to say something about your event, product, etc; that you can’t seem to put into other terms. I myself have fallen victim to this trap. When it came time to title my video show I titled it “What’s it all about: Web 2.0″. While I don’t think that my offense is that bad because I am using the full term “Web 2.0″ I tend to have a problem with people slapping 2.0 on everything, especially in places where it makes no sense.

2.0 alone seems to refer to some kind of upgrade. There was version 1 and now there is version 2. It made sense and it was a system that worked until the O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004 where the term web 2.0 is credited for being coined. But now the term 2.0 seems to describe a group of people that are in the Web 2.0 community, and anything that they do, even when not tech related at all must have 2.0 on it.

At some point I guess we all excepted it as the norm, until someone comes along and questions it. But to end this on a light note, in my search I noticed a comment on Gary Vaynerchuk’s HUGE announcement today.

this is a reblog via fimoculous:

So here we are again — playing Nostradamus in media, technology, and pop culture — with 36 predictions for 2009:

1. Hatahs: 4chan digitally antagonizes an entire race of people into self-inflicted genocide.

2. Facebook: By the middle of summer, you realize that you’re logging into most websites via Facebook Connect. You get a creepy feeling in your gut about this, but it’s so damn convenient.

3. Politics: After a freak caribou attack injures Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Sarah Palin joins The View.

4. Newspapers: At least three major daily newspapers cease to exist. The most likely members of the carnage: the Denver Rocky Mountain News, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

5. Yahoo: Fuck it, Lycos buys it.

6. Twitter I: Facebook finally buys Twitter, but only after a price war with Google ramps it up to a ridiculous nine-figure valuation. Unsurprisingly, this is Twitter’s big plan “to make money.”

7. Twitter II: But seriously, just like those stories in 2001 about people who [shock!] make a living off of blogs, the “Twitter professional” will somehow become a reality.

8. Twitter III: A major news event happens that no one live twitters. NYT writes three stories (Styles, Tech, and Media) about this phenomena, quickly dubbed “Twitter Shock.”

9. Starbucks: After trying everything else imaginable, they introduce a new “buffet” option, which is a surprise hit.

10. Daughter Moguls: In the most convoluted assassination plot ever devised, Christie Hefner, Shari Redstone, and Elisabeth Murdoch join forces to commit triple patricide. Vanity Fair dedicates three eInk covers to the incident, with heads that morph from father to daughter.

11. Magazines I: Some rich kid on the west coast launches a magazine called Charticles, which consists only of… yeah. Choire Sicha commits suicide in his St. Mark’s apartment by paper cutting himself to death with the debut issue.

12. Magazines II: Monocle raises its newsstand price to $1295.00.

13. Magazines III: Doy, of course Portfolio goes under. The final cover story is mysteriously about cotton gin inventor Eli Whitney.

14. Gossip Girl: In the Christmas ’09 episode, Chuck and Blair finally fuck again. The recession ends.

15. Subscriptions: Against all seeming rationality, several new online subscription publications show up on the scene.

16. Where The Wild Things Are: You know what? The movie actually does suck. Gen X icons Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers are pilloried by a millennials who claim old people just don’t get it. They’re kinda right.

17. New York Times: After Brian Stelter notices that David Carr has refriended Jayson Blair on Facebook, the New York Times asks Carr to take a drug test. Upon failing, he returns to Minneapolis to run City Pages, which ends up being the last remaining alt-weekly at Village Voice Media.

18. Online Video: Something’s gotta give. Two of the “big” three — Revision3, ON Networks, Next New Networks — cease to exist by the end of the year. And when 23/6 and Funny Or Die expire on the same day, Alley Insider’s headline is “Funny Or Dead In 24/7.” Normal people have no idea what any of these things are.

19. Terrestrial Video: Something’s gotta give. One of the “big” five is morphed into a cable outlet.

20. Daily Beast: Tina Brown uses her consulting role at HBO to pitch a reality series about her own website. No one thinks it will go into development, but then Aaron Sorkin and Mark Burnett sign on. Julia Allison and Arianna Huffington are super pissed.

21. Tina Fey: First woman knighted. Now Oprah’s pissed too.

22. Google: They do a lot of stuff that no one expects, but the surprise application of the year is some sort of mashup between three core Google products: Reader, Chrome, and Docs. Oh, and maybe Android, just to make this pshit sci-fi.

23. FriendFeed: Not only does your mom still has no fucking idea what it is, but your friends don’t either.

24. Publishing: 49 books are published that chronicle the end of publishing.

25. Music: Proving that fake stuff always wins, Lonely Island’s album debuts platinum — the only album to do so this year.

26. Lara Logan: Dueling February covers of Parenting and Playboy.

27. Gawker Media: Nick Denton predicts armageddon, using copious Excel graphs to elucidate his point.

28. Mad Men: After negotiations break down with AMC, a rumor floats that a movie is in the works. It is eventually released in 2012 on the same day as the Arrested Development movie.

29. Diablo Cody: Released in September, Jennifer’s Body becomes the first young adult movie since Heathers and Clueless that resonates with grown-ups. While you try very hard to think of a new reason to hate her, Diablo casts Sasha Grey in her next film. Backlash-to-the-backlash-to-the-backlash-to-the-backlash ensues.

30. Words: Webster’s Dictionary names undershare word of the year.

31. Online Media: Trying to take advantage of cheap labor, hundreds of “me too” small startup publications launch. They will call themselves “online magazines,” but they will be blogs.

32. Microsoft: They! Will! Suprise! You! (Actually, no they won’t. You hear this every year. Their online version of Office will be begrudgingly cool, but it will have one severe flaw that renders it unusable.)

33. Apple: After Biz Week’s “Is The Innovation Over?” story appears, Steve Jobs retires at the end of the year, surprisingly citing health reasons.

34. Education: 37 percent of the people you know go back to grad school.

35. Digg: It does not get bought and Kevin Rose does not go on a date with Jennifer Aniston. Every boy in the Valley weeps at a shared realization: their sense of worth is over-valued.

36. Rupert Murdoch: He dies in a freak yacht accident. Sumner Redstone, Padma Lakshmi, Barry Diller, David Geffen, Rachel Sklar, Hoobastank, and Shaquille O’Neill are also on board, but all survive. Foul play is suspected, and an investigation reminiscent of the board game Clue ensues. A rumor spreads that Murdoch’s cryogenically frozen brain is in an Anaheim basement next to Walt Disney’s frontal lobe and the Arc of the Covenant. Michael Wolff sells his next book, The Brain Eaters, for $10 million. 17 people buy it; 4 read it.