Full Transcript:

Benjamin Higginbotham: Benjamin Higginbotham and Ed Kohler from technologyevangelist.com, I am here in Minneapolis, Minnesota the Technology Evangelist world headquarters. Ed, where you are right now?

Ed Kohler: I am out in San Jose, California.

Benjamin Higginbotham: And what in the world are you doing there?

Ed Kohler: The Video On the Net conference is going on, so I am hanging with Jeff Pulver and friends.

Benjamin Higginbotham: That seems cool now the conference itself actually starts tomorrow. So, what were you doing all day, today, other than drinking?

Ed Kohler: I was sitting in conference room, sipping on martinis and wine and cheese and things like that.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Meet anyone interesting, hear anything cool?

Ed Kohler: Yeah, its pretty fun. I just to see a lot of the big wigs that you hare probably heard of before, people like Om Malik and Jeff Jarvis and you know people that run some of these sites such as Dina Kaplan from Blip.tv or Dimitri from Veoh.com People that are really making this video on web stuff happen.

Benjamin Higginbotham: So, what are they have to say? What are they trying to do there?

Ed Kohler: Its interesting, its broken up in two groups, basically like artists and suits. Where the artist are the people who are creating content and there is one to find a way to get their videos out everywhere and hope the world watches their content and then you have the suits, who are the people from major suite bureaus who, they want to see their content out there everywhere, but on their own terms, so they are more like bankers.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, so you hung out with some cool people, you saw the artists and the suits, althought I think the suits would argue that they are artisits too…

Ed Kohler: I think artist need suits.

Benjamin Higginbotham: All right, fair enough.

Ed Kohler: Daily Show's John Stewart, probably isn't the person who should be selling commercials, who knows…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Alright, probably, not. So what else, did you see any cool products or is that all tomorrow?

Ed Kohler: The exhibit opens tomorrow, so there wasn’t much going on as far as products, but one company I did happen bump in to launch was interesting is called ComVu and they have a product or the application you can run on your cell phone, that actually allows you to stream video live from your phone.

Benjamin Higginbotham: OK, so like a video conference, what am I doing with that?

Ed Kohler: Lets say, if you want to be a citizen journalist, for example, where if you produce out of town and you just see something that is amazing happening, you could rip out your phone and just start taping that right there and you could immediately go to the web, so of course the trick is whoudl I actually want to be watching that, so it might help to have something little bit more scheduled than that, but you can actually use it, here is the little scope for you that’s not out, that’s on the website yet and that is, they are going to allow you to stream live from your phone to your YouTube account, so you can basically publish to YouTube directly from your phone, just straight.

Benjamin Higginbotham: That’s cool, so I can go from my cell phone straight to YouTube create my video on demand video wherever I am. I think that’s a huge potential application, especially for breaking news stuff too.

Ed Kohler: I think that breaking news will be a huge thing, because there are hell a lot more citizens and are journalist, so citizens will be journalist where if they just happen to see the first person on the scene or something by happen chance , there are in a powerful position to just take advantage of the software…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, that could be potentially world changing stuff, right there.

Ed Kohler: I think so, its never a bad thing to have good reporting of what’s going on in the world.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Well, good reporting, I mean there is…I can’t spit the words out, there is a lot of training that goes behind journalism, as you are finding out, as you are trying to do video on the fly and using, learning things aboutB roll and how much work that actually takes, general citizens don’t know any of that. Now, breaking news there is no B roll for breaking news, there is nothing that needs to go behind that, but there is not that much breaking news in the world. There is, but at the same time there isn’t, so what else, where is the noise going to end. You know what I mean?

Ed Kohler: Yeah, that’s good point. I think things like neighborhood fires, if neighborhood, if next door neighbor’s house got on fire, you could be the first on the scene, to get that smoke piling out of the roof, then…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Hopefully you didn’t start the fire…

Ed Kohler: No, I hope people don’t go and try to make a career for themselves that way.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Oh, that’s sounds like really cool stuff. So, what do you got planned for tomorrow?

Ed Kohler: Tomorrow hit the exhibit floor and talking to all the different companies out there, find out things such as Ad models, distribution networks, how do you do with this challenge of creating online video that can cost you a hell lot of money to distribute, there are a lot of different people like such as Neokast that we met recently with Bob Cringely, so there's that side of it and then the big one is ad models, how are people making money on this stuff.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, that really hard, monetization of online video is difficult today, I am not to say that it won’t be fixed, but today that’s a pretty huge hot button I think.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, it seems like some of the ways that’s been that lot of online shows just don’t have a large enough audience yet to really excite advertisers. I mean advertisers are starting to dip their foot in the water, but if they can’t buy a million impressions on a show or something than it might not be that interesting to them. So, the sites like Blip.tv or Veoh.com they are working on that by trying to aggregate a couple of shows together, for example, to create a theme around a topic, so may be you would have a group of technology shows or home improvement shows or cooking shows or whatever.

Benjamin Higginbotham: All right, I look forward to your reports tomorrow and before you go, I thought this is absolutely hilarious, Technology Evangelist owns a couple of really nice HVX 200 High Definition cameras. So Ed, which camera did you bring with you to the show floor?

Ed Kohler: I didn’t bring any camera with me on this show, but I stopped at Frys and I bought a Panasonic somethingorother…I don’t actually know what the model of it is, but it was the last one they had with the close out, so its like 300 bucks, it works OK, I have a tripod for it.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I just thought that was funny, like the one thing you needed to have and the one thing you forget in Minneapolis.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, I found out that Panasonic manuals are very hard to read.

Benjamin Higginbotham: All right Ed, I look forward to your reports tomorrow and we will be in touch soon.

Ed Kohler: All right, thanks Ben.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Thank you.