Just back in from 2 days at Digital Hollywood. First, kudos to Victor Harwood for successfully expanding the conference to 2 adjacent hotels this time around. As always, it was a major schmooze-fest. Some quick observations: tons of energy, lots of networking and meetings, and many people trying to figure out how to turn ideas/technologies into real businesses.

 

I moderated a session that should win an award for Clunkiest Title (see more about session here), but we had an standing room-only audience and all our panelists were fully engaged in a spirited discussion. (I certainly learned a lesson - don't bring up the whole "how's-broadband-going-to-connect-to-the-TV" discussion with only 10 minutes to go! Everyone has an opinion on that one.)

 

Executives from 3 content providers (Showtime, IMG and Associated Press), plus 3 technology companies (thePlatform, Digital Fountain and Entriq) thoroughly hashed out everything from how distributors will distinguish themselves in the broadband era (answers included optimizing advertising, best user experience, most traffic, not possible) to how broadband-only content providers generate a following (viral distribution, building a brand, doing distribution deals) to what business model has the most potential (some agreement that ad-supported and paid will eventually both work, but that ad-supported is where much of the action will be for a while).

 

It's just so fascinating to me how quickly we've moved from the "here's what I think's going to work" stage to "here's what is actually working" stage. While I'm fond of saying that the broadband video industry is still in the 1^st inning of its ultimate evolution, there are already a lot of very solid lessons learned.