Category Archives: LetsKnit2gether

The e-mail I just sent to the FCC

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Dear Chairman Genachowski and Commissioners Copps, McDowell, Clyburn, and Baker:

My name is Eric Susch.  I have been producing an internet video show called Let’s Knit2gether for over four years now.

http://LetsKnit2gether.com/

I’m the little guy, the small business person who always gets mentioned in the abstract but who rarely gets a chance to speak for himself directly.  I, and many others like me, are trying to pioneer a new form of video entertainment and information exchange, outside the traditional forms of movies and television that are dominated by large conglomerates.  This new cottage industry needs Net Neutrality desperately to survive.  We’re in direct competition with large companies like Comcast Cable and Time-Warner just as blogs were in competition with newspapers and magazines six or seven years ago.  Because the net was “neutral” back then, blogs (for good or bad) were able to broaden the scope of the marketplace and bring information and opinion to the public at large that the big media news organizations weren’t.  That’s what we are doing in the video space.  We are creating video content that big companies don’t want to take a risk on and we’re delivering that content to millions of viewers who thank us every day for providing something new and different.  Please don’t shut down this new innovative marketplace by giving those who control the wires of the internet the power to discriminate against certain data.  The consumer’s and the producers should decide what content is readily available, not the middle-men who control the wires.

I share the concerns that Union Square Ventures has outlined on its blog:

http://www.unionsquareventures.com/2010/12/an-applications-agnostic-approach.php

I urge you to work together in the coming weeks to improve this proposal along the lines described in their post.  I support your effort to create an application-agnostic regulatory framework for the Internet.

Sincerely,
Eric Susch

Leo Laporte Jayne Hat 2.0 unboxing on TWiT live

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Here’s the letter CAT wrote to Leo:

Hi Leo!

Two years ago, (almost exactly) I had the idea to make you a Jayne Hat so that you would have something to wear during your new venture on TWITlive.  When you received the hat, I was so excited to see that you really appreciated it.

Over the years, fans of both TWIT and LetsKnit2gether would send me pictures of you, your daughter and others wearing your hat as part of a “Jayne Hat sightings” picture collection.

Recently, someone sent me a picture and pointed me to a video of Colleen happily wearing the Jayne Hat as she was leaving the TWIT cottage for her new adventure at Google. Now, although I am thrilled that amongst all the hats that you have in your collection, she chose the Jayne Hat to grace the halls of Google, I couldn’t leave you without one.

So, here is Jayne Hat #2.  Wear it well and remember, “A man walks down the street in that hat, people know he’s not afraid of anything”.

Thanks for all your support,

CAT
LetsKnit2gether.com

a good vendor is hard to find

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The test of any vendor is not the quality of their products or the price. The true test is how well they handle problems. I’ve dealt with a lot of professional video vendors over my 25 year career and most are mediocre, some are really bad, but occasionally one really stands out. Bodelin Technologies who make the ProPrompter II LCD teleprompter has shown me that they are definitely one of those rare vendors who deliver excellence.

ProPrompter and notebook

We’ve been using the ProPrompter II LCD on our show Let’s Knit2gether for over a year now. (We first used it on episode 7 – Felting part 1.) I’ve been on the set with and known several different companies that make teleprompters. (I actually used to scotch tape script pages into long runs and load it under a small black and white video camera back in my live news days… but I guess that dates me so we won’t talk about that.) In any case when we started Let’s Knit2gether we needed something simple and easy since this was New Media and it was just the two of us doing everything.

I’ve been a fan of GeekBrief.tv from the beginning and they mentioned on their site that they were using a ProPrompter II LCD and liked it. I’d never heard of Bodelin Technologies but I checked out the prompter and eventually bought one.

The prompter is light and easy. No counter weights. No complicated rail system. It just clamps onto the end of your lens. Setup time is minimal. We were even able to get a foot switch so CAT could control the software all by herself and I could concentrate on what I was doing while we were shooting. It made a significant improvement to our show.

Near the end of last year the small LCD monitor on the prompter just died for no reason. A quick e-mail to Bodelin support with a picture and description of the problem got a response back with within hours. The e-mail even included a return authorization number. I packed up the defective monitor and got a brand new replacement within a few days, no questions asked. I was actually quite surprised. No hassle, no searching for receipts to check warranty status, no extended turnaround times, only one simple e-mail to support. Problem solved, now get back to shooting. This kind of service is very rare and deserves the highest kudos.

Podshow implodes into Mevio

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mevio logo

Looks like podshow is re-organizing and changing their name. I was never really sure if Podshow was going to succede. Here’s why:

In 2005 I was heavily invested in my broadcast television career. I saw the writing on the wall however and I was fond of saying, “It’s 1955 and we’re still making radio drama. Pretty soon somebody up in corporate is going to figure out that it’s cheaper to hire one guy to spin records all day and we’ll all be out of a job.” I decided to jump off the old media ship, take a risk, and try something new. But what?

I eventually decided that podcasting was the way to go in part because of what I was hearing from Adam Curry on the Daily Source Code. I followed the launch of Podshow in 2006 mainly by listening to the DSC and Podcast411. I was also studying video shows like, Rocketboom, Tiki Bar, diggnation, Rumor Girls, and GeekBrief.tv. The later two shows were with Podshow.

In the summer of 2006 CAT and I started working on Let’s Knit2gether as a new media test case. We wrote some episodes, started shooting, finished a pilot episode, learned about RSS, and put up a WordPress blog. We stayed up all night for about a week and finally posted our first episode literally hours before getting on a plane to Ontario, California for our first Podcast Expo. We were determined to be podcasters when we arrived and we were. We had one episode!

At the expo we soaked up everything. We were still new to the game and we needed to learn as much as we could from everybody else. When we were leaving to go back home I remember turning to CAT and saying, “Where was Podshow? It was supposed to be this big deal and they didn’t even have a presence here.”

After we got home I found out that all of “Podshow was there in full force!” They were riding around in limos and having a grand old time. What? We were all over that place, actively searching out as much information as we could find, and we didn’t even notice them. Podshow was obviously in a serious bubble. I wrote them off right then and there. Any company that gets into a brand new industry and thinks they are the center of the universe separate from everyone else, is doomed to failure.

So now they have a new name, Mevio. OK, setting aside the fact that companies typically re-organize and change their branding right before they go out of business, maybe this will work for them. Hopefully this is actually a new direction and not the same old thing with a new name. They seem to be trying to do something more like Revision3 who, in my mind, are doing things right. We’ll see…

Grabbing the Same Old Eyeballs

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gruesome knitted eyeballs

This is a response to a post on Michael Geoghegan’s blog called Podcasting – It’s a Community Not an Industry.

Podcasters, it is time you face the facts. If you are waiting for a podcast advertising service to ride in on a white horse and rescue you from your monetary woes, let me help you: start looking elsewhere.

Over the past year we’ve basically come to the same conclusion as Michael. The various new online ad “networks” aren’t going to do much for you as a podcaster.

The promise of joining an online “network” and automatically getting ads (and payment) as you focus only on making your content has always seemed a dubious promise to me. I do a video podcast about knitting which I think is a strong niche with lots of potential. In the various meetings we’ve had with these online “networks” it’s always been about raw numbers with very little consideration of the strength or subject of your content. There seems to be a blind focus on grabbing eyeballs, and advertising as the only way to monetize those eyeballs. Last year pre-roll ads were the answer. This year it’s overlays. The online mainstream media and all the VC money seems to be focused on developing advertising technology ONLY. No other options are being explored with such vigor. However, this is a new industry. Everything is changing very fast. There are a LOT of things that aren’t going to work. We really need to be exploring many new, different, out of the box models to find a FEW that are really going to be successful and repeatable.

The focus today seems to be to try to give the traditional ad buyers exactly what they want. The problem is, all they want is what they know. And all they know is what works for them now on TV and radio. I don’t think a traditional broadcast model is going to work for podcasting. We’re seeing a paradigm shift in the media industry. The Digital revolution is separating content from delivery technology. Shows go everywhere and aren’t confined to the specific distribution technology they were created for. At the same time the content producer is moving closer to the consumer. In the TV broadcast world there are lots of middle men. There’s the producer of the show, the cable channel corporation that pays for the show, the cable TV systems that delivers the show, etc. etc. before you can see it in your living room. With podcasting it’s, producer –> internet –> viewer. Any monetization model is going to have to leverage this greater simplicity. The mass media models from the past aren’t the answer and that’s all anybody seems interested in trying to develop.

So, I called podcasting an “industry” above and I guess I should probably respond to what Paul Colligan posted on his blog about podcasting NOT being an industry. These days I use “podcasting” as more of a synonym to New Media. The whole landscape is changing and constantly morphing into something else. It’s harder and harder to be strict about the definitions of specific technologies. For example: Our show Let’s Knit2gether is technically a podcast because it’s downloadable with an RSS feed but on the new AppleTV you can just click on it and play it. Does that make our show NOT a podcast? We also sell DVDs. Is our show a podcast when it’s on DVD? I don’t know anymore. In any case the media industry is changing rapidly. What it is becoming may be unknown (and un-nameable) but I still think it’s an industry.

A final thought. There’s so much more in Michael’s post to address. CAT and I have been talking about it all day. I think I’m going to cut it off here though and save the rest for future posts. When I made the decision a few years ago to shift my broadcast TV career into New Media I expected it to be a wild ride with plenty of excitement and change. I have not been disappointed in that respect and I’m sure there will always be plenty to comment on next time.

picture – maryjanemidgemink

Two and a half minutes with Steve Garfield

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(Whoops! I wrote this entry a few weeks ago and I guess I never posted it. Still getting the hang of this blogging thing…)

stevegarfield.jpg

On the last day of the Podcast and New Media Expo, CAT and I sat down for a quick sandwich just before having to leave to catch our plane back to NY. We happened to sit next to one of the Internet’s first video bloggers, Steve Garfield. He had seen our latest show, liked it, and wanted to interview us for his video blog. We only had a few minutes but that’s all it took. We went out into the hall and he recorded us on a tiny digital camera. Check out the interview.

It was a pleasure to meet you Steve!

The one that got away

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Sometimes when shooting a documentary magic happens right in front of you. It just happens and you know that you’re suddenly capturing an important moment that will enlighten the show, the one moment that brings meaning to everything else. You freeze, do your best not to shake the camera or fall over, and just let what’s happening in front of you happen. I had a moment like that on March 22, 2007. Magic happened right in front of me. I saw something that I had never seen before. The only problem was that my camera was locked in it’s case at my feet because we were forbidden to shoot. Let me explain:

CAT and I were invited to a big event at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York city. It was the kick–off promotional event of Stephanie Pearl-McPhee / The Yarn Harlot’s new book. Here’s part of her blog post/invitation:

The point of the evening is to get a whole whack of knitters into one room, then invite the media to come and see. Straighten them out on the world of possibilities, provide all of us with a moment that we can point to and say “See? Do you see what I mean?” An evening of proof. (Apparently The Knitting Olympics and Knitters Without Borders did not provide the world with this proof.) Now. The auditorium holds 750 people. This means that I could really, really be humiliated here (that’s the only part I don’t like. The image of me and the media in this huge auditorium while I try to explain that there really, really are a lot of knitters, I swear it.) but I don’t think that that’s going to be the case.

CAT and I were ecstatic. It was an event right here in NY, a message that was dear to our hearts, and they needed the media to cover it. Our video podcast and this event were a match made in heaven.

We then spent the next three days trading emails back and forth with the organizers. For some reason they kept throwing up crazy roadblocks that prevented us from shooting. What was going on? Don’t they want the publicity? Don’t they want the 5000 or so knitters who watch our show to know about the new book? According to the blog post they wanted the media there. We were very confused.

We finally got an e-mail the night before from Stephanie herself asking us to not shoot while she was speaking. We made arrangements to meet with her earlier in the day in Central Park but we couldn’t capture any of the main-event in the evening that people were coming from all over to see. OK, fine, we don’t understand but it’s her event so we won’t shoot it.

I didn’t think we had a show at that point but CAT is a big fan of the Yarn Harlot and she still wanted to go. We decided to make the best of it and see what we could get. We could always decide later to not post the show if we didn’t have a story.

We shot interviews with knitters before and after the event. Some of the knitters were a bit confused when we asked them to “guess” what Stephanie was going to talk about but we knew we couldn’t shoot inside and we needed something, anything, to fill the hole. I thought that we might get by somewhat on the knitters enthusiasm and to some extent that turned out to be true.

I also stole some shots inside the auditorium before the event began. There were about 650 knitters in there sitting, waiting, and knitting. It was still a prelude to the actual event but at least it was something visual and not just people talking about something that’s off screen.

Then I packed my camera away and CAT and I sat down for the presentation. It went well. There was humor and “snarky comments” as some of the knitters we interviewed had predicted. (Her speech was essentially an expanded version of her blog post/invitation.)

At one point Stephanie asked the 650 or so assembled knitters in the audience a question.

“How many of you read blogs on the internet?”

About 600 hands went up into the air right in front of me. It was like that moment in Close Encounters when they ask a crowd of people where the music came from and all the hands in the foreground pointed up to the sky.

CE3K point up

“Man,” I thought. “That would have been an amazing shot.” Then she asked another question.

“How many of you write a blog on the internet?”

A few less hands went up but it was still quite impressive. Everything started to go in slow motion for me. The magic was happening. I felt the camera bag next to my foot. Should I reach in, grab the camera and try to get the shot? No. We agreed not to shoot the event. Probably take too long to power up the camera anyway.

“How many of you buy yarn online?”

Every single hand in the damn room went up. That was it. That was the moment. The economic power of knitting was on display. This was exactly what Stephanie hoped would happen in her blog post before the event. It was spontaneous, powerful and honest.

I saw it. My wife saw it. All the knitters in the room saw it. But unfortunately none of the people there needed to see it. And the people who do need to see it (the bankers, the “muggles”, etc.) will never know that it even happened.

I can describe what happened. I can show you still pictures of Stephanie standing at the podium. I can show you pictures of knitters sitting in an auditorium. I can show you talking heads of people just before and just after the event. But I can’t show anybody the actual magic… I can’t show anybody the actual “proof” …because it’s gone.

I hope somewhere, sometime, someone will organize another event like this and create another magic moment, so knitters will be able to show their numbers to the world. I’ll try to be there with my video camera, pointed in the right direction, in focus, and steady. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll catch lightning in a bottle again rather than just selling a few books to the choir.

LetsKnit2gether episode lk2g-014 Yarn Harlot in NYC to Represent