Pat O’Gorman, an award winning television industry veteran, has joined New York City online media company For Your Imagination and will help develop their online web video programming and serve as a senior advisor.

Currently working as a media consultant for Beauchamp Communications, O’Gorman boasts an impressive resume with more than four decades of experience in the television industry.  Alongside Reese Schonfeld, she co-founded CNN in 1979 and served as an executive producer of both The Book Channel from 1984-86 and The Food Network from 1992-99.  Additionally, she received four Peabody awards for her work as a documentary film editor at CBS.

“We’re thrilled to add Pat to the For Your Imagination team,” said For Your Imagination’s CEO, Paul Kontonis.  “Her unrivaled experience in the television industry will be immeasurably helpful in allowing us to continue to create outstanding online television shows and branded content.”

Biography
Pat O’Gorman is an award winning television producer and director with over 40 years experience. Presently, she works as television network and media consultant for Beauchamp Communications. Pat was the executive producer for the Television Food Network (1992-99) and the Book Channel (1984-1986). She has worked as an editor on "60 Minutes," CBS’ "Who’s Who," "Crime Watch Tonight" and as an editor and producer for Woman’s Magazine. In 1979, Pat started CNN with Reese Schonfeld, and developed a program for "Video Journalists"   to teach all aspects of Journalism and TV News. In addition to her plentiful professional experience, Pat has received 4 Peabody Awards for her work as a documentary film editor at CBS. Pat has collaborated on many projects; "Cambodia", a documentary reported by Ed Bradley and "Assassination MLK", reported by Dan Rather, are two of her finest. 

A new project I’ve been working on with Darrell Silver, Erin Sparling, and Lee Semel launches today: CommandShift3.

It’s like Hot or Not, but for websites.

Started on a lark during a NYC Jelly session with Adam Varga, Darrell Silver, Dan Lurie, Erin Sparling, and Lee Semel, we’re really proud to open it up to the world today.

Much thanks to everyone who’s given us advice and support, including the celeb designers who recorded short videos we’ve hidden in the site for you to find. (Khoi Vinh, Matt Linderman, Taylor McKnight, Derek Powazek, Brad Smith, Ryan Sims, Dan Cederholm, Chris Messina, Ben Brown)

In an industry shaking move, four of the most influential new media organizations in New York - SobelMedia, NY:MIEG, The Producers Guild of America/New Media Council and For Your Imagination - are teaming up to bring you a Holiday Get-Together on Wednesday, December 12th starting at 7pm at For Your Imagination, 22 West 27th Street, 6th Floor. You can RSVP at the Facebook group or email bash@foryourimagination.com. For Your Imagination has been at the center of the most influential and industry shaping events in new media and online video events in New York City in 2007 ranging from Video 2.0, BigScreen LittleScreen, nextMadisonAve, CenterNetworks, nextNYers, Revver Content Creators and OneWebDay and this event is no exception.

Last week, as many are aware, the Silicon Alley Insider released the much awaited Alley 100 list.

I say much “awaited” because (I feel no shame in pointing out) leading up to the release of the official list there was a large amount of activity on, and buzz around, a site I put up (using BricaBox) called the “Silicon Alley 100: People’s Choice.”

This was a place for “the people” to nominate and vote on folks to be recognized for their influence in the NY tech scene.

It was this list which stirred up quite a controversy within the nextNY community and greater NY tech scene, garnering scathing posts from folks like my friend Charlie O’Donnell along with mostly excited and engaging posts from folks like Greg Verdino and Darren Herman, to name a few (here are a few others).

Regardless of opinion, it was clear that with the People’s Choice version of the list everyone had an opinion. Either it was the best thing ever that “the people” had their own version of the list, or it was an example of how “the people” are ineffective at measuring influence and power.

So, when the Insider finally released their list last week, my first questions was, “How close were We?”

The answer:
Pretty darn close.
Minus some pretty big holes.
Plus some holes filled in by big misses on the Insider list.

Today I finally got around to posting a quantitative analysis comparing the list up on Google Spreadsheets. Check it out. I think it tells an interesting story.

What the list shows is that the “people’s” list had about 20 of the 100 people on the SAI list, under-weighting the average person by 13 places. This under-weighting was due, in part, to the fact that the “People’s Choice” list included 6 of the 21 unranked “Up and Comers” that the Insider recognized. (Full Disclosure: SAI put me in this list, which I can only attribute to a “typo,” as Caroline McCarthy did for herself.)

Now, there are several ways to interpret the difference in weighting of the lists, but I think it has to do with community and entrepreneurship versus power and the establishment. To illustrate this point, consider the folks who were most under-weighted and most over-weighted by the People’s Choice list.

Most under-weighted by “the people”:

1. Quincy Smith
2. David Rosenblatt
3. John Borthwick

Must over-weighted by “the people”:

1. Allen Stern
2. Andrew Rasiej
3. Charlie O’Donnell

What makes the first three folks “power and the establishment” is that their influence in exerted on the exiting and king-making side of “influence” (supposedly the measurement we were going by). Quincy buys “new media” companies; David sold DoubleClick; John sold Fotolog. It’s not a knock on them or SAI: It’s an observation of one way to measure influence.

The “over-weighted” folks, however, are the foot-soldiers, the folks changing (read: influencing) the face of NY tech literally from its grassroots.

Perhaps it’s a chicken and egg question, but I’m not surprised the “the people” sided with the grassroots side of influence (the egg?).

Anyway, I think the type of influence each list weighted is an important way to analyze what went on. Another way to analyze the two lists is by omissions.

Looking down the SAI list, it’s clear to me that “the people” missed some pretty important people altogether. Consider these “holes” (in order of measured importance):

1. Michael Bloomberg
2. Alan Patricof
3. Tim Armstrong
4. Jim Cramer

Then look at these omissions from SAI’s list (in order of measured importance):

1. David Rose
2. Stephen Colbert
3. Arriana Huffington
4. Clay Shirkey

Once again it seems to the a “people have spoken” vs a “powers have spoken” thing. Again, not that “power” is a bad way of measuring “influence,” it just shows you from what mindset a “people’s choice” list comes from and from what mindset a curated “kind-maker” list comes from.

So, I’m interested in what *you* read into these two lists. I personally believe that each has its place and each is important in its own right. I wouldn’t want the “official” list to have many of the folks who made it into the top of the People’s Choice list, but I also think a people’s choice version keeps the “official” guys honest.

Besides from the usually cries of “lists are stupid,” what are your opinions? I’d love to see a blog post or a few comments of your reaction.

Tonight was the last NY Video Meetup of 2007. There were major technical issues throughout the evening which forced one presenter to next month and kept us focused on the Wiffiti board for half of the time and doing individual intros for another piece of the evening. Frankly I was bored so my recaps below are short and blunt. Below are the videos for each presentation. I will allow this as normally the Video Meetups are quite good.

ModMyLife

I could swear I've seen this demo for ModMyLife before. The basic idea. They have actors who they don't pay act out stunts in NYC that the audience decides on. It's cute, not sure if it's the next killer idea but it's a good time waster. They won't let the actors do anything illegal or "dumb" so not sure how far they will go. But they do have "digg-like" voting.

 

Redlasso

Redlasso lets you take clips from other sources and put them together and then save or upload the final clip. They also monitor stats on where the files are stored. Questions around copyright and monetization came up - he had no concrete answers on either.

 

OriginDigital

The sponsor of the event - they showed off their Odaptor product. You upload videos, it converts them, makes an xml, makes various formats and can send them to various providers. Didn't really see anything unique or new - though it seemed very smooth in interface.

 

Sportsbone.tv

The only content creator of the evening, Sportsbone.tv creates video shows about football with a "funny" twist using lots of props it seems. A couple bits were funny. A woman in the audience suggested they do the shows live as the football game is in progress, I thought that was a nifty idea. Ten friends from college create this - each one focuses on another aspect of the business.

In this extra special BigScreen LittleScreen Meetup on Tuesday, December 11th, we'll watch more short online video works and then discuss creative, production, and technical issues. Special guest screenings presenters include Matthew Carlin from Agency.com, Ranjit Grewal from jamstar.tv, Kirby Ferguson from goodiebag.tv and Paul Kontonis from For Your Imagination presenting a "Pink the Series" Success Case Study and Discussion. Welcoming and networking is from 6:30-7:30pm and the presentations begin at 7:30pm. This Meetup is moderated by Matt Semel from 10ton and hosted by For Your Imagination, 22 West 27th Street, 6th Floor - between 6th Ave and Broadway. Seating is limited and the event is BYOB. To reserve your spot, sign up here.

Amie Street founders Elias Roman and Joshua Boltuch discuss how their independent music social network functions as a fun and innovative community for discovering and buying music online.

What we learned about Amie Street:

• A fun, transactional, online community for independent music
• If users promote a song which becomes popular, they receive credit to purchase more music
• Expanding with corporate sponsorships, and with animea nd manga in Amie Street Japan

Yuli Ziv, previously creative director at interactive agency 360i, introduces user-generated magazine MyItThings.

This morning I sat down with Yoav Ilan at the 'Bucks to discuss his new startup, SeeToo. SeeToo is a peer-to-peer social video service which lets you share a video with a family member or friend in a real-time environment and chat as well. Yoav believes that some videos aren't meant to be shared on a public stage and sometimes you want to share the video and walk someone through it. We took a look at his new baby crawling on the floor and he spoke about how he shares the video with his parents in Israel and they can see their grandbaby crawl and chat at the same time.

So here's how the service works. After signing in, you select your video to share. SeeToo processes the video which takes seconds. Then you send the link to the video to your friend or copy it into IM. The other person joins in and the video syncs and you watch the video together. You can annotate the video by clicking on it and chat as well. The other person can take control and do the same things.

We tried videos over 500mb and they were ready in 15-30 seconds. The video plays using streaming from one pc to another pc - SeeToo stores nothing. In addition, the other party saves nothing as well. Yoav says it's much faster than uploading the video to a sharing service which could take hours (I agree).

Some comparisons will be made to Seesmic but they are different. Seesmic has simplified video sharing and SeeToo has simplified video interaction and collaboration. They have raised about $1 million from several people including Israeli investor Yossi Vardi.

We spoke briefly about the business plan but Yoav asked me not to post the details. He's also got some interesting expansion plans for the product as well coming in 2008.  

It seems like a fun service and useful as well. I could see future expansion into B2B for product sales and more immediately usage with military members sharing videos with loved ones back home. Closer to real interaction than uploading a video to YouTube. The interface is simple and could probably use some more color and life -- perhaps they are holding that part back while in beta?

If you'd like an invite to the beta, use the code 'centernetworks' and visit SeeToo.

I finally got the clips from my Fox appearance two weeks ago (thanks CriticalMention.com). It's a bit weird seeing yourself on TV. I feel like I talk funny, look funny, move funny, etc...and just for the record, that isn't an invitation to agree and start cracking jokes on my blog ;)


It was definitely a fun experience and I'm looking forward to doing it again - in fact, I'll be on Monday December, 10th. So for all of those early risers out there, check out Fox Business on Monday between 5 - 7 AM and you'll see my ugly mug up there.

My real hope is to turn Fox onto the idea of using content from TickerHound (once we open the site up in a couple of weeks) so I can feature members and their contributions to the community. Hopefully they'll be into the idea.

I mean, Fox Business is part of News Corp. and all, but it's essentially a start-up media company focused on finance here in New York. TickerHound is a start-up media company focused on finance here in New York. That sounds like a match made in heaven to me :)