March 2004

Jason Calacanis and Brian Alvey from Weblogs, Inc. hosted a panel about how to make money blogging. Someone took the trouble to type up a transcript, and if you have any interest in blogging or journalism - especially as a career - you’ll find it a very interesting read. Calacanis, who did most of the talking, sounds a bit like Quentin Tarantino. If you keep that in mind, you’ll find the transcript even more amusing.

An important point: Calacanis estimates that a good-to-great blog requires 5-25 posts a day, taking 4-8 hours. Not trivial. It also targets one subject and/or has a significant following, so for the time being (and the foreseeable future) CrackTeam.org won’t allow me to quit my day job.

Web resources from the discussion:

bOINGbOING - former cyberpunk magazine turned kick ass weblog
engadget - a gadget weblog under the Weblogs, Inc. umbrella
the social software weblog - another Weblogs, Inc. site
gawker - a weblog that?s famous for some reason (one of those NYC invented celebrity things?)
Feed Burner - a site for managing/manipulating RSS feeds. I seem to recall a negative connotation to it, like it can be unethically used to publish someone’s content without giving them proper credit.

Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist, gave a speech about his site and why he thinks it works as a virtual community. I have very little experience with his site, which he describes as a collection of classified ads, but forums have allowed an interesting community to form around them. Since the ads are organized by city, the site has become a user supported collection of city guides.

I found his talk personal, humorous, and engaging. You can access his Powerpoint slides here. Craig’s an affable fellow who’s dedicated to his work, and as of late, various social/political causes.

This panel was on the pros and cons of using High Definition video for independent films. What follows is a summary of the points raised by the panel, and why I’m choosing DV - not HD - for my short.

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I found Austin to be a cool city. It has an exciting population, chock full of artists, filmmakers, musicians, and hipsters (and probably hippies, too). As many residents are struggling artists with liberal world views, it seems much more suited to be the capital of California than of Texas. While it’s not the film town that NY or LA is, it seems to be much more excited about being a film town than either of those cities. This is the 11th year for SXSW, which started out as a music festival, then added film, and finally interactive topics. This makes sense from the city that bills itself as “the live music capital of the world” (it’s now working on becoming the clean energy capital of the world). For many residents, SXSW has become an important ritual, and locals seemed to make up the majority of attendees.
     While it certainly has its charms, there were a few things I found off-putting. Perhaps in an effort to appear more “green”, trees lined most city streets, and had an inordinate number off birds flocking to each one. Looking at the white-spotted ground, you know there is certainly no “five second rule” in Austin. It also seems to have a high homeless population, especially in the downtown area, and while I can’t be certain, I believed I was approached by scammers twice. As the Silicon Valley of Texas, Austin’s housing market has risen considerably, which compounds the problem, albeit their housings costs are ~40% of SoCal’s. If you’re alone at night, it can be slightly discomforting. Granted, that’s probably true of most cities, and I didn’t expect any violence.
     That said, I can see why I’ve often heard friends say that Austin is the only viable city in Texas. It’s just cooler.

I returned Wednesday from South by Southwest (SXSW), where I had access to the Film and Interactive tracks. In short, it was really cool, and I?d recommend it strongly to any member of the Crack Team. There was far too much to do, and I ended up missing all parties, the trade show, and the web awards. However, I did attend some very thought provoking panels and saw a few films. So, ok, that doesn?t sound as cool, but as an info junkie and armchair philosopher/sociologist/film critic, I had my priorities in order. And just doing that felt like a marathon.

As I have time, I?ll post about various panels attended, films viewed, and observations gleaned while at the conference.

The film “The Passion of the Christ” has become an event-movie, much
like a hot Hollywood franchise (eg: Star Wars, The Matrix, Lord of the
Rings). As such, I can’t wait for the sequel (I’ll explain in a second).

Many viewers at the showing I attended last week were the devout, like the
elderly ladies in wheelchairs with oxygen tanks and masks. They probably
don’t go to the movies as much as I do, and this movie was an event that they could not resist. Other viewers were the curious, people that are trying to
measure their strong stomachs against 2 hours of purported blood-letting and
torture. Finally, there were the skeptics. It’s all over the news that this movie
is a piece of anti-semitic propaganda, made injudiciously at best, or maliciously
at worst. That final group of viewers were here to verify for themselves
the truth of these charges.

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That was probably the biggest story of Oscar night - no upsets. Lord of the Rings swept like a broom, and in some categories I felt it was carried by its own momentum rather than its merit. I loved the books and thoroughly enjoyed the films, which I admit was an insane undertaking, and should have been recognized earlier. Perhaps if it had, maybe some more deserving nominees (IMHO) might have won. As Agent Renegade has said, the Academy loves films that put a lot of people to work, and the trilogy spread the wealth to over 25,000 people. Well, I guess I’m a lot happier for it than I was for Titanic. Here’s my take on a few categories:
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