From: Jeff Davis (jdavis@socketscience.com)
Date: Thu Jun 17 1999 - 17:03:00 MDT
Dear Max,
I know you're busy so I won't engage in a lot of chit chat.
I went to Extro 3. Couldn't afford the whole cost, but with the help of
the lovely Natasha, I paid some, and manned the front table in exchange for
the rest. Among the most enjoyable occasions of my life. I thought then,
as i do now, that it should have been available to the larger audience
waiting in front of their tv's for something worth watching--something to
get excited about. And here you are about to go at it again. But this
time I'm ahead of the action, able to make my suggestion when something can
still be done about it.
Now, I am all but absolutely certain that you've covered this ground
already. How could it be otherwise? It's so obvious. Yet I have never
heard, vis a vis tv offerings (though I have no great knowledge of tv
offerings), nor on the extropians list, of a cable or videotape offering of
the extro 3, nanotech, transvision, or other conference, of whatever sort.
(I remember from extro 3 that there were people there taping the entire
event, so I "know" the materials exist.)
So I see two or three ways to go here--by the way, I fully expect that the
recording quality of the extro 3 tapes, and other sub-professionally
recorded events, and the sound quality, probably don't come close to
"broadcast" quality, and that post-production clean-up is likely to be both
expensive and of limited benefit; nevertheless, you have the "finished"
product there in the can, ready to go. A kind of freebie ready to be turned
into money,...er, revenue.--
1. Get someone to market Extro 4 for you, on cable and on tape.
2. Get someone to market a broad range of conferences, including ours (If
I maybe so bold as to consider myself one of the family.) as a niche market
cable/videotape offering,
or
3. Initiate an extropian business enterprise, and do it ourselves. Re this
last consider: If we are entering "the information age", then being a
collector and distributor of information should, by definition, be
economically viable, if not lucrative. The kind of information that comes
from conferences is--I'll stick my neck out on this on--high quality, but
not currently considered for broadcast because of--I'm guessing again--low
demand and sub-broadcast-standard production values. But shortly, when
access to such materials (full bandwidth video) becomes possible on the
internet, demand should be higher and production values less of an issue.
At which time, an inventory of product and an established position in the
marketplace makes you a player. There are lots of high tech conferences
out there that the world is hungry for but can't afford to attend. When,
in short order, the filaments of the net connect to that hunger (if not
already) you have a happening thing. (Someone might suggest that those who
would be interested could, as they do now, get their info by reading the
conference proceedings. But I would suggest that a human narrated
treatment clearly is richer and greatly broadens the audience.)
Meanwhile, a cable tv, videotape, and --how could I have overlooked it--
"Conferences on CD" distribution enterprise seems a ripe extropian
enterprise.
I'm willing to help. And I'm here in the Bay Area.
Anders,
Is Transvision 99 on tape?
Best, Jeff Davis
"Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
Ray Charles
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:04:13 MST