A little update on VideoNuze today: I’m pleased to share a new VideoNuze logo and fully redesigned web site and daily newsletter. I hope that you’ll find the logo to be modern and lively. The icon is meant to evoke both the “play” nature of video and also a sense of “forward movement” that tries to capture the dynamic state of our industry. I also hope that you’ll find the web site and newsletter clean, simple and easy to read, which were my primary goals with the redesign project.

Irrespective of the new logo and redesign, the core elements of VideoNuze remain: daily (or almost daily) posts, constant curation of relevant news from third-party industry sources, “Inside the Stream” podcasts I’m privileged to record each week with nScreenMedia’s Colin Dixon and periodic “Perspectives” byline articles from industry executives (more of which I’d like to run). On the main navigation bar are easy links to VideoNuze’s upcoming events and last but not least there’s a tab to browse by “Categories” and search.

An updated logo and redesign have been on my “to do” list for longer than I care to admit. Part of me has felt like the proverbial “cobbler whose kids have no shoes.” On a daily basis I write about the most up-to-date happenings in our industry, yet the design of my own site and logo were a little bit “Soviet era” if were to be honest. In my defense though, I don’t think I’ve slacking off; over the years since I launched VideoNuze, I have written approximately 2,500 posts (that’s about 2 million words in case you were wondering), curated nearly 20,000 news items from third-party sources and recorded over 600 podcast episodes.

Beyond the content, I have organized over 20 VideoNuze events that have been attended by thousands of colleagues and at which hundreds of executives have spoken. I’ve also organized panels and keynotes at major industry events like NABShow, CES, etc. that have been attended by many others. November 16th and 17th will bring VideoNuze’s highest impact event yet, the Connected TV Advertising Brand Suitability Summit. And for the first time, in 2022, there will be three VideoNuze events focused on CTV advertising. I’m really excited to share more details about them soon.

Whew!

Back in 2003 I left the last corporate job I ever had, running business development and partnerships for a well-funded tech company (that ultimately crashed really hard) and started doing some consulting. That led to sharing links to articles about interesting industry news items with friends, then to writing a periodic email to a small group of industry friends, then to starting VideoNuze, creating events, more consulting work, board/volunteer work, investing, teaching a grad class at Boston University, etc. etc. Life sometimes goes in very hard-to-predict directions.

Eighteen years later our industry is at a point that was unimaginable back in 2003 (I’ve often told the story that when I first “hung out my shingle” several very smart industry friends cautioned me along the lines of “Gee Will, you really think this video thing is going to become big enough to devote yourself to like this?”). Obviously we all know the answer to that question today. Analyzing all this stuff on a day-to-day basis and then trying to articulate it to VideoNuze followers for all these years has been an amazingly rewarding intellectual challenge that I wouldn’t trade for anything - except maybe to be able to play golf like Tiger Woods, just for a day.

It’s been an incredible ride for me personally, and hard as it may be to believe, I think the ride is still actually only in its earliest days. The energy and resources that I observe going into further transforming the video/TV industry are more significant than they have ever been. The stakes - and the opportunities - for every established and early stage media and technology company are higher today than ever. The evidence of this is everywhere - from YouTube TV and NBCUniversal struggling to find eventual terms to renew their distribution agreement, to Scarlett Johansson suing Disney for $50 million over the company’s release strategy for “Black Widow” to forecasts of connected TV advertising hitting $100 billion per year by 2030 in the U.S. alone. And on and on.

Thanks to everyone for your ongoing support of VideoNuze and your/your company’s efforts to help transform our industry. The best is yet to come. Buckle up.