Last week, the City Council revealed its new website after months of delay. But while most agree that it is a good step, the site has received mixed reviews from people dealing with the intersection of technology and government.
The Councils’ new site is meant to be more stable than the old site, which was notorious for crashing. It offers more details on committee hearings, including direct links and briefings. An RSS subscription is now available for the committee’s calendars, and there are plans to add RSS features throughout the site in the future. Council members also have the ability to update their own pages as they see fit, and can add such features as voting records, calendars and press releases if they choose. The Council’s communications office is training staffers and even Council members on how to do so.
Cathilea Robinett, the executive director of the Center for Digital Government, said the new web site is very sophisticated for a council site. “This is an excellent use of technology with several innovative features. Congratulations to the New York City Council for a citizen-centric and citizen-friendly site.” The center publishes a yearly survey ranking American cities on their use of technology to reach out to constituents. (New York City has not been in the top ten large cities since 2002, when it ranked fourth.)
Councilmember Gale Brewer, chair of the Technology in Government Committee, was happy about the new site as well. She says that it is now much easier to find legislation, and finds the additional information available for committee hearings useful. But her enthusiasm was tempered by what the site didn’t have. (more…)
NY-based KickApps is announcing this morning a new partnership with Advertising.com to monetize video content built on the KickApps social networking platform. Social networks using KickApps can select advertisements as either pre- or post-roll messages. I assume this means videos that use the KickApps video player.
Revenue share percentages were not disclosed. I like this deal because it helps small publishers to earn more and provide better ads than with smaller advertising networks. In fact, most of the smaller ad networks can't even support video ads.
Currently working as a media consultant for Beauchamp Communications, O’Gorman boasts an impressive resume with more than four decades of experience in the television industry. Alongside Reese Schonfeld, she co-founded CNN in 1979 and served as an executive producer of both The Book Channel from 1984-86 and The Food Network from 1992-99. Additionally, she received four Peabody awards for her work as a documentary film editor at CBS.
“We’re thrilled to add Pat to the For Your Imagination team,” said For Your Imagination’s CEO, Paul Kontonis. “Her unrivaled experience in the television industry will be immeasurably helpful in allowing us to continue to create outstanding online television shows and branded content.”
Biography Pat O’Gorman is an award winning television producer and director with over 40 years experience. Presently, she works as television network and media consultant for Beauchamp Communications. Pat was the executive producer for the Television Food Network (1992-99) and the Book Channel (1984-1986). She has worked as an editor on "60 Minutes," CBS’ "Who’s Who," "Crime Watch Tonight" and as an editor and producer for Woman’s Magazine. In 1979, Pat started CNN with Reese Schonfeld, and developed a program for "Video Journalists" to teach all aspects of Journalism and TV News. In addition to her plentiful professional experience, Pat has received 4 Peabody Awards for her work as a documentary film editor at CBS. Pat has collaborated on many projects; "Cambodia", a documentary reported by Ed Bradley and "Assassination MLK", reported by Dan Rather, are two of her finest.
A new project I’ve been working on with Darrell Silver, Erin Sparling, and Lee Semel launches today: CommandShift3.
It’s like Hot or Not, but for websites.
Started on a lark during a NYC Jelly session with Adam Varga, Darrell Silver, Dan Lurie, Erin Sparling, and Lee Semel, we’re really proud to open it up to the world today.
I say much “awaited” because (I feel no shame in pointing out) leading up to the release of the official list there was a large amount of activity on, and buzz around, a site I put up (using BricaBox) called the “Silicon Alley 100: People’s Choice.”
This was a place for “the people” to nominate and vote on folks to be recognized for their influence in the NY tech scene.
It was this list which stirred up quite a controversy within the nextNY community and greater NY tech scene, garnering scathing posts from folks like my friend Charlie O’Donnell along with mostly excited and engaging posts from folks like Greg Verdino and Darren Herman, to name a few (hereare a fewothers).
Regardless of opinion, it was clear that with the People’s Choice version of the list everyone had an opinion. Either it was the best thing ever that “the people” had their own version of the list, or it was an example of how “the people” are ineffective at measuring influence and power.
So, when the Insider finally released their list last week, my first questions was, “How close were We?”
The answer:
Pretty darn close.
Minus some pretty big holes.
Plus some holes filled in by big misses on the Insider list.
What the list shows is that the “people’s” list had about 20 of the 100 people on the SAI list, under-weighting the average person by 13 places. This under-weighting was due, in part, to the fact that the “People’s Choice” list included 6 of the 21 unranked “Up and Comers” that the Insider recognized. (Full Disclosure: SAI put me in this list, which I can only attribute to a “typo,” as Caroline McCarthy did for herself.)
Now, there are several ways to interpret the difference in weighting of the lists, but I think it has to do with community and entrepreneurship versus power and the establishment. To illustrate this point, consider the folks who were most under-weighted and most over-weighted by the People’s Choice list.
Most under-weighted by “the people”:
Quincy Smith
David Rosenblatt
John Borthwick
Must over-weighted by “the people”:
Allen Stern
Andrew Rasiej
Charlie O’Donnell
What makes the first three folks “power and the establishment” is that their influence in exerted on the exiting and king-making side of “influence” (supposedly the measurement we were going by). Quincy buys “new media” companies; David sold DoubleClick; John sold Fotolog. It’s not a knock on them or SAI: It’s an observation of one way to measure influence.
The “over-weighted” folks, however, are the foot-soldiers, the folks changing (read: influencing) the face of NY tech literally from its grassroots.
Perhaps it’s a chicken and egg question, but I’m not surprised the “the people” sided with the grassroots side of influence (the egg?).
Anyway, I think the type of influence each list weighted is an important way to analyze what went on. Another way to analyze the two lists is by omissions.
Looking down the SAI list, it’s clear to me that “the people” missed some pretty important people altogether. Consider these “holes” (in order of measured importance):
Michael Bloomberg
Alan Patricof
Tim Armstrong
Jim Cramer
Then look at these omissions from SAI’s list (in order of measured importance):
David Rose
Stephen Colbert
Arriana Huffington
Clay Shirkey
Once again it seems to the a “people have spoken” vs a “powers have spoken” thing. Again, not that “power” is a bad way of measuring “influence,” it just shows you from what mindset a “people’s choice” list comes from and from what mindset a curated “kind-maker” list comes from.
So, I’m interested in what *you* read into these two lists. I personally believe that each has its place and each is important in its own right. I wouldn’t want the “official” list to have many of the folks who made it into the top of the People’s Choice list, but I also think a people’s choice version keeps the “official” guys honest.
Besides from the usually cries of “lists are stupid,” what are your opinions? I’d love to see a blog post or a few comments of your reaction.
Tonight was the last NY Video Meetup of 2007. There were major technical issues throughout the evening which forced one presenter to next month and kept us focused on the Wiffiti board for half of the time and doing individual intros for another piece of the evening. Frankly I was bored so my recaps below are short and blunt. Below are the videos for each presentation. I will allow this as normally the Video Meetups are quite good.
ModMyLife
I could swear I've seen this demo for ModMyLife before. The basic idea. They have actors who they don't pay act out stunts in NYC that the audience decides on. It's cute, not sure if it's the next killer idea but it's a good time waster. They won't let the actors do anything illegal or "dumb" so not sure how far they will go. But they do have "digg-like" voting.
Redlasso
Redlasso lets you take clips from other sources and put them together and then save or upload the final clip. They also monitor stats on where the files are stored. Questions around copyright and monetization came up - he had no concrete answers on either.
OriginDigital
The sponsor of the event - they showed off their Odaptor product. You upload videos, it converts them, makes an xml, makes various formats and can send them to various providers. Didn't really see anything unique or new - though it seemed very smooth in interface.
Sportsbone.tv
The only content creator of the evening, Sportsbone.tv creates video shows about football with a "funny" twist using lots of props it seems. A couple bits were funny. A woman in the audience suggested they do the shows live as the football game is in progress, I thought that was a nifty idea. Ten friends from college create this - each one focuses on another aspect of the business.
In this extra special BigScreen LittleScreen Meetup on Tuesday, December 11th, we'll watch more short online video works and then discuss creative, production, and technical issues. Special guest screenings presenters include Matthew Carlin from Agency.com, Ranjit Grewal from jamstar.tv, Kirby Ferguson from goodiebag.tv and Paul Kontonis from For Your Imagination presenting a "Pink the Series" Success Case Study and Discussion. Welcoming and networking is from 6:30-7:30pm and the presentations begin at 7:30pm. This Meetup is moderated by Matt Semel from 10ton and hosted by For Your Imagination, 22 West 27th Street, 6th Floor - between 6th Ave and Broadway. Seating is limited and the event is BYOB. To reserve your spot, sign up here.
Amie Street founders Elias Roman and Joshua Boltuch discuss how their independent music social network functions as a fun and innovative community for discovering and buying music online.
What we learned about Amie Street:
A fun, transactional, online community for independent music
If users promote a song which becomes popular, they receive credit to purchase more music
Expanding with corporate sponsorships, and with animea nd manga in Amie Street Japan
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A new project I’ve been working on with Darrell Silver, Erin Sparling, and Lee Semel launches today: 
Tonight was the last 
