On the Hunt: Innovation in Internet Video

The super cool thing about being “Mass Innovation Nights” is that we get to spend our nights (and days) looking for cool stuff to show you.  We get to see the neatest stuff out there before it comes to Mass Innovation Nights.  We’ve been busy networking and searching for nifty things to bring to Waltham.  Today was no exception — it was a two-fer.

In addition to the Open Coffee meet-up at the Andala Coffee House this morning, we headed into town this evening for the latest in the Vilna Shul Speaker Series — held at the very very cool Vilna Shul, Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture, right on Beacon Hill.  (Of course, MIN loves Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation but this was nice too.)  This evening, the all-star panel was moderated by Chris Herot and focused on the State of Internet Video.  The panel consisted of:

* Matt Cutler , VP Marketing & Analytics, Visible Measures
* Branko Gerovac,  Media Strategist, Founder of Blackwave & SeaChange
* Matt Kaplan , VP of Solutions & Chief Strategy Officer, PermissionTV
* Brock Wagenaar, Director of Solution Engineering, Yahoo Video (formerly Maven)
* Andy Roberts , VP Advanced Technology, Azuki Systems

After the introductions and sandwiches (sponsored by Goodwin Procter) from the Milk Street Cafe (which MIN’s hubby insists used to be vegetarian) Branko kicked things off with some perspective on the billions (with a “B”) of minutes of video being consumed online.  We also got a quick lesson in the storage and the size the “pipe” necessary to deliver video.  All pretty attainable.  Basically, it sounds like Internet video is now very do-able, just waiting for a business model.

In addition to an overwhelming sense of optimism from the panel, we also got some lovely quotables from the panel.  My personal favorite from Matt Cutler (talking about the importance of customer service) says his happy customers have told him, “We don’t like to spend money with people who give us crappy service.”  They prefer to spend their money with him.  Now that’s a tweet with a capital T for Twitter-ready.

The panel also left us with action items:

• “Go out and make jobs.”
• “Figure out what consumers will see as an acceptable business model.  What will people pay for?”
• “Don’t watch your favorite show on the night it first airs; wait a day, watch it online and CLICK THOSE ADS.”
• “Become your personal anthropologist.  Be aware of what you do and share that information.  What are other people doing?  Are they doing the same thing?”
• “Create demand for Internet video — demand is good.”

Now, who said what?  Can you tell?

(Note:  Next Vilna Shul event will feature a fireside chat with Paul Sagan from Akamai on March 31.)