“Twenty years from now we’ll look back and say, ‘Gee, telephone numbers were a goofy thing,’” predicts Internetologist Len Hause

Part 1 – download

Part 2 – download
In this Talking Portraits interview, Hause predicts that phone numbers will no longer be needed. After giving a summary of the evolution of telephone numbers—from simple 4-digit numbers accessed through a local exchange to today’s numbers that designate locality, region, state, and nation of origin—Hause describes how content and context (the mode of transmission) are becoming more and more orthogonal (independent of one another).

Given the number of choices we have now, including Internet voice applications that use only name-based addressing, Hause describes how and why the telephone number as we know it will give way to a futuristic persona-based system that allows us to contact one another using a names.

Bio

Len Hause is an Internetologist and founder of MashBrain where he consults on Internet marketing and technology strategies. He was a Fellow of the Technical Staff, Associate of the Science Advisory Board, and Marketing Director at Motorola where he spent more than 30 years in management roles and as an individual contributor. He has been recognized as a pioneer in the adoption of Internet protocols and culture within the Enterprise for collaboration and organizational learning. While working in the semiconductor business, he learned firsthand about the importance of the convergence of the Internet and cell phone technology.

Hause frequently participates on executive, educational, corporate, and government advisory boards and consortia. He is also an active member of Austin’s musical community. He holds a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from Lehigh University. (more…)

It’s time to update you on my whereabouts the last couple of weeks.

◊ The big event was the launch of ’showbizzle,’ and that started with a bang.  Unique visitor traffic and views of the episodes shot up rapidly the first two weeks after launch. From what I can tell, about 50% of the traffic view the episodes on the showbizzle.com site and the other 50% of the views are coming from the 10 video distribution sites we’re using with TubeMogul.com. It’s heart-warming to see episode views shoot into the thousands in such a short period.

If you have not visited the showbizzle.com site yet, then make a point to check it out. Have fun, and while you’re there go ahead and become a member. The quality of the video and performances is stunning. Though I’m biased, I’ll have to admit that I check the new views each day (three new ones Monday through Friday) to see how the characters are doing in their very dramatic and at times funny lives.

◊  My copy editor, Jenny Meadows, at her so-appropriately-named business (MyCopyEditor.com), gave me some good advice during one of our conversations. Once a week (or so) she’ll post here a very short summary of all the media I produce for various clients. I create two audio interviews a week typically; one for EnterpriseLeadership.org and one for TalkBMC. I am in the process of making some of these video-based for BMC Software who sponsors both the sites. I am working closely with the BMCtv group to define a workflow that is fast yet maintains good quality for video podcasting. The issue, as you can imagine, is how to capture an interviewee on a video podcast in some kind of consistent way that has appropriate quality. BMC folks are spread out all over the world, though the majority are in Houston, Austin and the San Francisco area. So I’m testing a variety of approaches: Capturing video from webcams; sending out a camera for them to use; and, of course, scheduling them into a studio at BMCtv (Austin or Houston) when they come into town. It’s an interesting project and I’m enjoying the journey. You’ll see results from this in a couple of weeks.

◊  Gary Powell hosted a Friday afternoon social media training event at his place. It was a non-stop question-and-answer affair with some extremely talented independent individuals who have businesses on the web. Truth is, I learn a lot during these kinds of small-group trainings, and one of the points that kept coming up was expanding the use of Facebook for your business.

I’ve been hesitant to recommend Facebook for business use until recently. However, there seems to be a gradual shift in adoption of greater numbers of people across a widening demographic. A good reference to learn more about marketing on Facebook is an e-book by Justin Smith called The Facebook Marketing Bible. You can download this sizable PDF for a very resonable price considering the insights it holds. Smith claims to be keeping the book up to date, which is a plus considering how quickly Facebook use is evolving and changing.

◊  Have you heard about the game-changing product from Canon: Canon EOS 5D Mark II? It’s a still camera that shoots HD video at 1920×1080p with audio. Yeah … amazing. If this rings any bells of interest for you then you simply must check out this review of the Canon EOS 5D Mark II. (It has me interested and I’ve been a Nikon guy for years).

Tom

I’ve been giving this a lot of thought lately – how to produce a podcast mini-series and maximize its visibility. Another name for such a mini-series is webisodes. Think of these as 2- to 3-minute pieces that typically make one point and string together a series of them around a theme or topic. An enthusiastic example of this is Gary Vaynerchuk’s videos on Viddler.com. Highly recommended from a motivational perspective if you’re wanting to build your own brand/business on the Internet. He’s like the modern-day, energized Pied Piper of motivational speaking.

What I want to illustrate here is that there are many different ways to produce your media. You’ve got to first decide if you want to do audio or video. Clearly audio is easier to produce. It takes less time  and money to record and produce a piece or series of pieces that you post on the web. It’s fairly easily to post audio files for streaming, either on your blog or using a service like Libsyn.com (or LIbsynPro.com if you need an enterprise solution). I use LibsynPro to centrally manage and distribute the weekly TalkBMC and EnterpriseLeadership.org shows.

Like audio podcasting, there are many ways to produce your end result; however, I’m seeing some changes in the way a web audience is consuming content. I don’t have hard facts on this, but it seems that people are wanting smaller chunks of information to watch or listen to. If you have a number of points that need to be made about a topic, then a mini-series fills the bill. Someone can choose to listen to the ‘chunks’ they have time to hear or go back and catch them later. ‘Chunks’ have the added benefits of making it easier to remember what you’re being told, one piece at a time, and easier to locate the piece of information you want.

Though Gary is more like a constant flow of video podcasts (multiple ones a week), you don’t have to emulate him, and he’s not saying you should. Every podcast, whether it’s audio or video, needs to be of interest and educationally useful to the audience. ”How to” content always wins out over fluff and will continue to be seen and heard. I created a Flash-based animated training tutorial (moving graphics and still pictures with audio track) about SEO some 5+ years ago, and people are still writing me about how much they learned from it. Received a note from a doctor in New York this week, asking me to send a proposal to help her website be more visible.

This just reinforces in my mind what we’ve been told repeatedly in the audio podcast realm: It’s all about the content. Make it relevant and educational. Take the audience’s perspective – what’s in it for them? Get yourself out of your ego thinking that video podcasts are a way to get on the Internet and be popular and rich. Always, always remember ‘what’s in it for them.’ Put yourself in their shoes.

The only exception to this is if you can write or create content that is so dramatically entertaining that you have an audience just waiting on pins and needles for your next episode. An example of this is www.showbizzle.com which will be released in late September. But keep in mind, the executive producer of this effort also wrote the 90210 scripts that were so popular in the ’90s on traditional broadcast TV.  But of course, don’t let that scare you. If your passion is drama and/or comedy – go for it. Do what you truly deeply want to do, but think about the quality of your productions – that will separate you from the crowd.

You likely have some ideas cooking. The issue is how to produce something with quality.

I’ll be covering more of that soon. You can take the kitchen tabletop approach that Gary and so many others do: Turn your PC or Mac around with the Webcam running and just start talking – echoey room and all. Sorta like reality TV. Gary pulls it off by moving around to different places and using different little cameras. More importantly, he’s CLOSE to the camera with an engaging enthusiasm that feels like an electric charge. He wants you to have what he knows and he’s authentic about it.

But like audio podcasting – if everyone is doing that how does the cream rise? How does the better content get seen? There are two components of this – the quality of the production sets you apart, and the way you distribute the content on the web helps you be visible.

I’m planning on working with AMS Production Group here in Austin and with tools like TubeMogel.com to further illustrate these points. So stay tuned.

Tom