Catching Up – NY Video 2.0 MeetUp

August 2, 2007

I’m cleaning house. This one should’ve been posted a few months back.

Jamison presented at the NY Video 2.0 Meetup at the end of April. Robert Sandie, the young, tall, enthusiastic CEO and Founder of video-sharing site Viddler, was also slated to speak and gave a great demo of his product. What makes Viddler different? Searchable tags and text and video comments.

During playback, users can tag specific portions of a video and leave whatever commentary they choose. Not only does this make the video more navigable by allowing you to direct others towards specific points in the timeline, but it adds more searchable metadata to each clip.

Check it out in action below. As an added bonus, you get to see Jamison present to New York’s web video crowd and an unexpected guest appearance by the Vayniac himself, Gary Vaynerchuk (Tilzy.TV page).

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Catching Up: Thoughts on Launching

May 9, 2007

It’s been a month since Jamison and I launched Tilzy.TV, and we’ve been at this non-stop ever since.  Before we flipped the master switch to send this puppy live, I was almost certain that it’d be easier on the flip side. 

"Pre-launch" was a phase we worked in for the better part of a year and was filled with a certain set of problems that needed solving (What does this site look like?  How do we make some sense of this industry?  What needs to happen to get this up and running?).  While we were jumping over development hurdles and navigating through content hoops I would delude myself into thinking, "Things will be easier after we launch.  This will be more manageable."  Whoa.  I was wrong. 

I’m sure that if I’d taken a moment to visualize the coming months I could’ve better anticipated what "post-launch" would entail, but I couldn’t have accounted for everything (How will people react to the site?  What will they hate?  What will they like? How do we find time to update, troubleshoot, manage, market, travel, and publicly relate?).  We’re involved in a FAST-paced industry.  New developments and technologies are rapidly emerging, spawning new conversations, new paradigms, and new problems that need to be solved.  There’s no way to foresee it all. 

But that’s the fun part.  Not knowing what’s next and thinking of dynamic and creative ways to use innovative technologies to challenge norms and overcome challenges is why I’m involved with this internet thing in the first place.  I’ve always dug solving problems.  That’s why I’m doing this and I’m learning that’s why entrepreneurially-minded people do what they do.

This "post-launch" environment isn’t as easily navigable as I had anticipated, but along with the challenges it’s providing some fertile ground for learning and opportunity.  After six months of idle conversation about the site and six more months of serious work, it feels good to be up and running. 

– Josh

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