It’s actually a lot like the stuff Dr. Tanzeem Choudhury was working on when I interviewed her for a Technology Review video back in 2008. In fact, when I first read about the Fitbit (thanks to friend-of-Candleblog, Robot Kasten), I assumed it monitored other sorts of telemetry too, like your heart-rate, skin temperature, the local barometric pressure, etc. As Dr. Choudhury showed me, with those additional data points and some clever software, you can learn all sorts of fascinating stuff about how you’re living your life day-to-day.

The implications for this sort of technology are pretty amazing. Yes, it can encourage us (through a combination of social-networked peer pressure and sheer geeky awesomeness) to live healthier lives, but it can also keep us honest with our doctors when they ask us how active we’ve been since our last visit. It can tell us other unintended interesting things, like how often we have sex and for how long. I can imagine Fitbit data being subpenaed in legal cases involving violent crimes or even car accidents. And this is just one data set involving an accelerometer. Imagine what these things will be like with microphones and video cameras gathering data and generating reports about our activities. Now imagine all that data searchable via an engine like Google (searchable by you — nobody is forcing you to publish this data, though there is a privacy can of worms here too, obviously) — how useful would that be?

What did I eat for dinner last week? click. What was that book the guy at the coffee shop recommended a few days ago? click. What was it my boss wanted me to do again? click. How many calories did I consume in 2012 compared to 2011? click. How many times did I ride the elevator last month vs. taking the stairs? click. What percentage of my life is spent sitting in front of a screen? I dare not click.

When we look back at the lives of our parents and grandparents, we see them through photographs, letters, maybe some home movies if we’re lucky. From here on out, the definition of what we mean by “history” changes. Future generations will have more data about the lives of their progenitors than they will know what to do with. What will your data stream say about you?

• Here’s the initial story from the WaPo, covering the basic details of the court’s decision.
• Here’s the first really clear-headed reaction piece I read, dissecting (and debunking) the various implications and suggesting some possible fixes.
• The Economist similarly weighs in.
• This piece at publicknowledge.org comes right out and says the court ruling is actually a good thing because it will force the FCC to reclassify broadband under title II regulations.
• Barbershop Punk is a new documentary about net neutrality that features Robb Topolski, the guy who caught Comcast “in the act” of throttling peer to peer connections and started the whole Comcast v. FCC thing.
• Candleblog pal Casey Rae-Hunter put some of his thoughts on the subject up at The Contrarian.
• Congress, for its part, is being… well, congress.

• Clay Shirky has your must-read future-of-media essay for the week: The Collapse of Complex Business Models.
• Speaking of Shirky, he’s one of the respondents to this Pew Research Center survey about the Impact of the Internet on Institutions in the Future.
• Cory Doctorow says he won’t buy an iPad and says why you shouldn’t either.
• Stephen Fry’s take on the device is somewhat less critical.
• American Indy film pioneer Hal Hartley has remastered his 1991 American Playhouse film, Surviving Desire, and is offering it as an mp4 download and as a DVD along with his two excellent early shorts, Ambition and Theory of Achievement. The shorts would be better served living on vimeo or in some other embeddable, linkable format rather than being tacked onto a for-pay download (at an extra charge, no less). As it is, only existing HH fans are going to see them and there’s a potential for a whole new generation of fans out there. You listening, Hal? This is a missed opportunity. (UPDATE: Kyle Gilman from Possible Films commented that “existing licenses with Hal’s sales agent forbid us from distributing Ambition & Theory of Achievement outside of North America. Putting them up on Vimeo or even on our own website would be a violation of that agreement.”)

Often at SXSW when I’m at a presentation that I have some expertise in, I feel like I know as much about the subject matter as the presenters (or if it’s a bad panel, I think I know more). But Shirky is way smarter than me and really thoughtful and articulate and inspiring. He synthesizes these facts about web culture and derives this really hopeful outlook from them. I managed to chat Shirky up after his talk and get some advice for my presentation tomorrow.

Lunch was with PSFR listener and notes-taker, Mike McCaffrey. Nice to get a chance to chat with him.

I took some time out from the day’s schedule to take some pictures around the convention hall (nothing to post yet, but I will). Then I caught the incomparable Jeffrey Tambour doing his actor’s workshop. I saw him do it two years ago and I learned more about directing actors from that hour and a half session than I did while making all of my films put together. This year was equally great.

I had to skip out of the Tambour thing to go meet Charlie from the Sheffield Doc Fest about the possibility of me going to the UK in November to talk about community media. I hope that comes together. I’d love to visit the UK (and I know Emily would love it too).

Then it was nearly time to get over to Manuel’s for our dinner reservations. Andy, Todd, Adam, Lawrence, Ian and I had an awesome dinner. Chicken mole. mmmm….

Then that crew hoofed it over to the out of the way place called Clive for drinks. We met up with a bunch of other Vermonters there and had a really great time. While we were there an entourage of limos and beautiful people showed up — obviously for a secret after-party for some film. Some investigating later and we were able to suss that Malin Ackerman (Silk Spectre in Watchmen) was in the party.

I met some Vermonters I didn’t know, including some nice folks from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. Good times hangin’ with the homies.

Now I have to do some prep work for my presentation tomorrow and get some sleep. Sweet dreams, Internet.

1. I’m presenting this year, which means there’s an added level of nervousness and excitement right there. Plus I have to, you know, prepare for that.

2. A TON of Vermonters are going this year, which is awesome. I remember back in 2006 when it was just me, a couple of jerks from Union Street Media (I kid, they are my best SXSW buds) and one lone staffer from Norwich University. Now it’s a party, by jeezum crowbar! The added local social scene is awesome, but requires more social organizing.

3. Social media is actually really useful this time. Last time I went to SXSW was two years ago when I was but a Twitter noob. Now I have a Twitter list devoted to SXSWers and it’s much easier to keep tabs on folks’ comings and goings, BUT it also means that on top of all of the usual organizing and schedule-making, I have to organize my social media life. And yes, I’d like some cheese with my whine.

If you’re going to be in Austin this weekend, you can stalk me in the following ways:

• Watch this blog. I don’t know how often I’ll be blogging during the trip, but if anything REALLY awesome happens, you can bet I’ll post about it here.
• Follow me on Twitter, and consider following my SXSW10 list. It’s a group of Vermonters, awesome people, and awesome Vermonters who are at the conference with me.
• Join the Vermonters at SXSW Facebook group.
• Check out my SXSW schedule (note that these are tentative – they’re things I’m interested in attending, but I’m also going with the flow, as it were).
• Come to my talk about community media on Monday afternoon!
• And if you REALLY want to send me letters written in your own blood, shoot me an email so we can exchange cell #s.

Now I have to go pack!

I live in a neighborhood that has never been connected to BT because of the expense of laying the fiber lines underground. Despite having never had access to the service promised by BT, I recognize the unique and amazing asset that the network represents for the city. I strongly urge you to consider the extraordinary level of expertise being offered by the Group of 9, and to support their bid to step in and save the flailing state-of-the-art fiber network.

Best,
Bill Simmon

And here’s a ridiculously awesome hack of the idea. I wish I’d thought of this.

Still, watching the video, made by the folks at the social media marketing online magazine, Social Media Examiner, it occurred to me that one thing I do know a thing or two about is film & video production. This thought occurred to me because I found myself rolling my eyes and making some snarky judgments about the video I was watching. Then it occurred to me that if was so smart I should stop muttering judgmental comments at my monitor and use that energy for an entertaining (doubtful) and useful (hopefully) post about something I actually know about.

So here’s the video:

Darren Rowse Interview from Michael A. Stelzner on Vimeo.

First off, let’s talk about what’s right about the video. Technically speaking, there are two main things that are good about this particular production and they’re both biggies: The picture is clear (decent exposure, in focus, not back-lit, etc.) and the audio is excellent. I tell my students this all the time and even though I’m more of a cinematography nerd than an audiophile it’s true: the secret to good web video is good audio. Viewers will forgive all kinds of bad picture before they’ll suffer through bad, muffled or echo-y audio. The other kind words I have to say about this video are content-related. Social Media Examiner has interviewed some big names in web content and social media, and while I haven’t watched all of their videos, if this one is any indication, the content is actually fairly useful — in other words, they’ve taken Darren Rowse’s advice to heart and are delivering content that their readers and viewers want.

Okay, now onto my nitpicks (and for the Social Media Examiner folks who will inevitably read this post [nobody can trackback like a social media blogger], I intend these remarks to be constructive and useful, not just snark-filled rants filled with invective):

*First off, there’s :34 of lead-in before any content starts. That’s even long for TV these days, let alone the web. Get to the content, we’re busy web surfers out here.

*Secondly, the title of this piece is “How Bloggers Should Use Twitter.” The length of the entire video is 12:27 but it’s minute five before Twitter is even mentioned and minute seven before anything resembling the subject of the title enters the conversation. If this was a written blog post I’d accuse the writer of burying the lede.

The basic problem here is that the interview is simply unedited. It’s a 12-minute talking head without a single cut, which is fine as an archival document of the conversation, but it leaves the work of finding the relevant bits of the interview entirely in the viewers’ hands. Imagine if this was a text post containing the same interview, but written out instead of being a video. You’d expect the writer/editor to provide some context, highlight the relevant parts and get rid of the deadwood — that’s what editors do. You might even expect the questions to be re-ordered so that the really meaty, interesting stuff is up front. There’s a reason video editors and text editors share a verb — they’re very similar jobs.

*Another issue is the on-screen graphics. It’s a good idea to use on-screen graphics to add meta-information to the video you’re making, but in this case, all we get is an occasional standard lower third identifier, telling us who it is we’re looking at. But this information is already available to us. This isn’t TV. There’s a contextualizing web page that the video is embedded in that almost certainly contains the same info in multiple places. In the case of a Vimeo embed like this, it’s right under the video frame! So use the lower third convention to give us useful info at points in the video where it makes sense. For example, when Rowse (finally) talks about getting addicted to Twitter, throw his twitter ID up on the screen! Maybe we want to start following him.

*As long as we’re talking about visual content, I’ll point out that video is a visual medium. I know it seems obvious, but when you produce a video for the web (or anywhere else) it’s a good idea to consider how the content is enhanced by having a picture rather than just being an audio track of someone talking. If all you’re giving us is a talking head for twelve minutes, there’s not much purpose in me continuing to look at the picture. The video frame is a different medium of information into which you can channel all sorts of useful stuff without breaking up the flow of the audio content. Ideally, the picture and sound complement each other — like showing cutaways to images that relate to the content being discussed. Without leveraging the visual part of the medium, all you’ve really done is made a podcast that won’t play very well in iTunes.

Of course, all of these issues take time to correct. Video editing is nothing if not time consuming.

To be fair, Social Media Examiner is not a video blog, per se. The video content is added value to an otherwise list-heavy social media magazine. I’ll also add that the issues I’m discussing here are not unique to SME — they can be found in video all over the web. This just happened to be the video I was watching when I decided to write about web video dos and don’ts (thanks, Darren Rowse!).