How two TV vets turned the TV model on its head, launching the first network-quality Internet series while maintaining ownership and creative control.

Is machinima finally ready to become a mainstream filmmaking platform? Multimedia artist and filmmaker Douglas Gayeton spent nearly a year locked in a spare room on his Northern California farm filming his experiences inside an online virtual world called “Second Life". The result was “Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator", a documentary recently purchased by HBO. This special screening will be followed by a conversation between the filmmaker and James “Hamlet” Au, noted author of the recently published *Making of Second Life* (HarperCollins). They discusse the filmmaker’s machinima methods and strategies, the series of events which led HBO to purchase the property, and offer advice for taking your own machinima projects into the big time.

With the recent rate hikes impacting Internet radio, only the big guys benefit. Or do they? Will Internet radio look and sound like FM in the next five years? If so, how can the little guys survive? And, considering the challenges and costs, why would they even want to? This session will explore the positive and negative aspects of entering and staying in the Internet radio space, discuss how to make independent Internet radio work financially, and provide expert opinion on the future of Internet radio.

Moderator: David Hyman CEO, MOG Inc

The term guerrilla communication refers to unconventional forms of communication and/or intervention in more conventional processes of communication. Communication guerilla is a specific style of political action drawing from a watchful view of the paradoxes and absurdities of power, turning these into the starting point for political interventions by playing with representations and identities, with alienation and over-identification. The talk’s starting point will be a rather trivial insight: information and political education are completely useless if nobody wants to listen. Guerrilla communication doesn’t focus on arguments and facts like most leaflets, brochures, slogans or banners. In its own way, it inhabits a militant political position, it is direct action in the space of social communication. But it doesn’t aim to destroy the codes of power and signs of control. Communication guerrillas do not intend to occupy, interrupt or destroy the dominant channels of communication, they focus on detourning and subverting the messages transported. But what’s new about all this? Nothing. But standing on the shoulders of earlier avantgardes, communication guerilla doesn’t claim the invention of a new politics or the foundation of a new movement. It is merely continuing an incessant exploration of the jungle of communication processes, of the intertwined and muddled paths of senders, codes and recipients.

In 2008, a team of filmmakers will create an exquisite corpse (google ’surrealists’) feature film to explore how narrative changes when it is collectively owned. Each team will create a 5 minute segment on film or video. When they are finished, they will pass the last minute of their film to the next team, along with headshots of the actors involved, and an object featured in their segment. No other information will change hands. The next team must incorporate one of these elements into their piece and will have 2 weeks to write, cast, shoot, and edit their segment. The final product will be a feature-length film, in which all of the elements that make up the narrative will be revealed for the first time. The panel, comprised of the major creative filmmaking roles (director, writer, DP, editor, actor) will discuss the changing rules of content creation, new ways to look at content mashups and their implications. The panel will explore issues of ownership in the world of YouTube, creative control, traditional story structure, and what happens to all of these when they are shattered by an arbitrary set of rules that mandate surrender of control.

So you’ve played Wii sports? But what’s next for the wii? The Nintendo Wii has enjoyed great success as an entertainment system, with sales surpassing other next generation game systems. Can its revolutionary input devices be used for non-entertainment purposes, such as education? Computer based training has traditionally used standard interface devices, such as a mouse, keyboard, and monitor. Can the Wii’s motion sensing and wireless pointing capability create more engaging and immersive learning experiences? Simply put; can it increase the learning retention rate? So far there have been some non-entertainment uses of the wiimote in medical applications like physical therapy. Also, the low cost of the wiimote has led to an explosion of homebrew experimentation. However, there are almost no examples of it being used for education yet. Panelists for this session include instructional designers, game designers, and software engineers with e-learning experience. This session will explore the idea of teaching with these devices when the goal is to teach, not entertain. But can wii do both?

The video on-demand (VOD) distribution market is gaining momentum. From web downloads to set-top boxes and DVR purchases, it is becoming increasing viable delivery vehicle for filmmaker’s work and a new revenue stream for producers and studios. Find out where the on-demand market is headed as we talk to the leaders in the industry.

Moderator: Chris Hyams CEO/Founder, B-Side Entertainment

Online video and social networks are the new proving ground for musicians, filmmakers and artists yet to be discovered, but more importantly, they act as powerful and authentic communication channels for established artists.

This panel will explore the ways technology is changing artist promotion. User-generated content, experimental viral marketing and tearing down the wall that separates artists and fans will be some of the concepts discussed.

This panel will discuss the usage of music for various online formats, including (but not limited to) podcasting, blog MP3 postings, internet radio, and vlogs (or other video). This session will address the different copyrights, licensing, and royalties associated with different types of use. Learn how and why you need to get copyright and/or licensing clearance for the music you use, and which clearances you need for which uses in order to operate legally. We will also discuss copyright royalties, royalty payments, and royalty collectors, including SoundExchange, ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC.

Moderator: Elise Nordling Marketing Services Manager, IODA

San Francisco. Chicago. Philadelphia. The list of governments that have tried and failed top-down municipal wireless projects around the country includes some of our nation’s largest and most influential cities. But is municipal WiFi therefore consigned to the dustbin, destined to fail wherever it’s tried? “Take Municipal WiFi Back” will take an in-depth look at the viability of municipal WiFi networks around the country and whether top-down or emerging grassroots networks are best equipped to handle this pressing issue. As broadband adoption grows and millions of WiFi hotspots pop up around the country, companies like FON are leveraging the strength of community WiFi to help build viable wireless solutions for major cities around the world. Grassroots approaches to WiFi have focused on leaving the bureaucracy behind, but face challenges in terms of expanding their reach and gaining momentum. Top-down municipal networks promise ubiquitous coverage but have run up against formidable barriers concerning cost of construction, cost of maintenance, and implementation. Both have a goal of eliminating unlawful WiFi “piggybacking” that opens up millions of Internet surfers to dangerous invasions of their personal privacy. Stop by this panel to find out the latest about attempts to bring safe, secure and ubiquitous WiFi coverage to our cities.

This session will outline ways for print publications to forge deeper, more satisfying relationships with readers through presence- and attention-centered microblogging services like Twitter, Jaiku and Pownce, as well as through audio and video services like Vimeo, blip.tv, YouTube and SoundSlides.

A United States Navy trauma surgeon shares his experience caring for combat casualties in Ramadi, Iraq during a seven month stretch of the Iraq War. He describes the challenges in caring for critically wounded American troops, Iraqi civilians and security forces, and enemy combatants in an austere environment with limited resources and personnel. All the while he is able document his combat experiences and communicate with his family and friends back in the States with a videoblog maintained throughout his deployment.

Moderator: Carlos Brown Trauma Surgeon, Brackenridge Hospital

Green design and sustainability has influenced every major industry, including software. Green software applies green design and sustainability principles to the design, engineering, and architecture of software and hardware systems. Software, though intangible, has an intrinsic relationship to hardware. This panel explores what green software means, how sustainability can impact software products and corporate cultures, and how technology leaders can approach problem solving and innovation from a sustainable, green POV.

Open Source software is everywhere and powers the most sophisticated products. Building on this work of others makes for strong foundations for your own products. Learn about the pros and cons of using and participating in the open source community and how this participation can get your product out faster and better. Using examples taken from his work in commercial and open source projects, Jack will show what you get, both good and bad, from using and participating in open code. He will also show how you can monetize components by dual licensing.

The all-knowledgable webmaster is long gone, replaced by groups of specialists. When they work well together awesome things happen. When they don’t the results are ugly, insecure, inaccessible and slow, assuming they launch at all. What’s the magic that great teams have in common, and what can we learn from them?

Every popular website eventually runs into the same problem: how to scale. In general, you hope for as much traffic as possible when you are developing a new application, but what would happen if you actually got it? Could you keep up with the increase in users, data, bandwidth, servers, and everything else that makes your application go? This panel aims to expose some of the key issues that you will face as your traffic grows, with insight from people with proven track records working on complex, high volume systems. Topics such as load balancing, caching technologies, and database use will be discussed. The end goal is that we would like the audience to leave with a better understanding of the issues that they will face when their applications start to get material amounts of traffic, with the hope that they will be able to better plan for growth.

The Usability and Accessibility for the Web International Seminar, organized by the State Government of Nuevo Le-n and the Universidad de Monterrey, was held in July 26 2007. At the conclusion of the two-day conference, the organizers issued the first Manifesto on Usability and Accessibility for Mexican Government Websites. With input from conference participants and experts of UA web 2007, the Manifesto was signed by 23 Mexican states and 3 municipalities. The Manifesto states that , ‘It is the duty of the creators and administrators of new technologies to improve people’s quality of life. As administrators, our objective is to create and maintain websites that are both useful and easy to use for the widest possible audience: usable and accessible websites. We believe that government, academia and the private sector should work together to achieve this objective.’ In this session we will look at the 10 point commitment contained within the Manifesto, meet the people who led the development of the document and learn more about the barriers and successes of implementing the Manifesto.

Moderator: Sharron Rush Exec Dir, Knowbility.org

This talk will delve into the secret techniques used by JavaScript library authors to create comprehensive libraries that work seamlessly across browser environments. We’ll look at everything from fixes for strange browser quirks, tricks for gaining speed, to tips for writing smooth animations. This panel will be held by experienced JavaScript Library developers who have, cumulatively, many decades of JavaScript development experience under their belts. Everything discussed will be backed up with publicly available, rock-solid, code.

Piracy can no longer be thought of as a nuisance. It is the paradigm through which people obtain music. This panel will discuss specific tactics on how piracy can be harnessed to our advantage and why it is a positive thing for the music industry.

Music and the surrounding experience, including festivals and concerts, are more popular than ever. At the same time, the music industry is facing seemingly insurmountable challenges, including lagging CD sales, piracy and the popularity of singles over albums. As labels struggle to invent new revenue streams, a number of ad-supported digital business models have emerged that enable free access to music and could prove to be a new hope for the music industry.

Moderator: Tamara Conniff Group Editorial Dir, Billboard Information Group