I love reading a book or two per month! This month I’m reading The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. The book’s core premise is that startups should build a minimal viable product (MVP), release it, get feedback, learn, iterate, and rapidly shape the product towards establishing a solid product-market fit.

How this methodology applies to video project development is that perhaps you shouldn’t create a long-form video, or develop a full web series until you know it will work and get traction. A minimal viable video (MVV) if you will. So maybe instead of writing a script for an 8 episode web series, you should write pilots for 4 potential shows, create those, see which one of them resonates best with viewers, and then develop that particular series fully. Pilots are a good way to learn about how your viewers would like to see the story develop (and if the story is strong enough to move forward in the first place), and which characters are liked and which ones aren’t.

This is something to think about, always try to do extraordinary things but minimize the risks associated with developing original content. Create something fast, release it, learn, and you should have a better idea of what can work longer term.

And of course by all means, if you’re passionate about a story and want to see it all the way through then go for it because nothing feels better than creating something you love. If a topic or subject makes you feel good inside, then go for it no matter what others may say to you.

Always be listening, always be learning, and stay foolish and hungry.

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I recently had the honor of doing an interview with the talented Amanda Walgrove of The Faster Times and The New York Egotist. Amanda had some intriguing questions for me, see what I had to say below.

How would you describe the Spidvid model?

So Spidvid is where the world’s video creators and talent connect, build teams, collaborate and partner up together on projects, and produce video entertainment together. Our slogan is “Make Video Together.” Spidvid’s model empowers open video production on a global level by offering a collaborative set of tools to manage projects from inception right through to distribution.

How did you come up with the idea for Spidvid?

I personally wanted to create my own quality video entertainment but didn’t want to pay costly freelancers and contractors to do so. So I thought creating web based software that enabled me to partner up with the talent I needed on my team made a lot of sense, and doing so in a formal structure outside of the traditional social networks. Additionally I was inspired by Seth Godin as in 2008/2009 he talked a lot (via his blog) about openness, collaboration, new media, and connecting individuals together. I searched for a video collaboration site that leveraged these trending elements and found nothing so that further inspired me to build this product.

What kind of unique possibilities for creative content does Spidvid provide for that we haven’t yet seen from other platforms?

I think it’s all about empowering individuals to be able to create video entertainment that they couldn’t have otherwise. It’s all about centralizing like-minded individuals together in a community where they can openly collaborate together by leveraging each other’s time and talent, and giving them the tools to manage their projects and relationships.

In terms of property rights, why is Spidvid’s revenue distribution model for the filmmakers so important or revolutionary?

Our mission is to enable team members to share content ownership together, the “project pie” as we call it. You see this happen in big Hollywood projects where key actors and team members get project percentages but it hasn’t happened in this relatively young online video space. With more and more video creators collaborating and partnering together, we see a real opportunity to offer a formalized solution to this problem. Verbal agreements have been the norm to date, but this won’t hold up long term as projects get more extensive and abundant, and this space evolves into a real business opportunity.

Will Spidvid prove to be a helpful service for those looking to break into certain facets of filmmaking?

I think it’s a great way to jump into filmmaking. So if you write scripts but need a team to collaborate with to make things happen on screen then Spidvid is a great solution for doing that.

While the Internet provides for a great deal of social interaction, it seems that in terms of content creation — blogs, vlogs, journalism — a lot of it is still being accomplished individually and then released into a community for discussion. Why is it important to stress the collaborative side of creation, not just consumption?

I think that content creation and specifically video is all about collaboration since it takes a few team members with specialized skills to be able to successfully complete projects. I think what we seen early on in online video was creators trying to do everything themselves which produced less than ideal results, but with the ability to bring on team members as partners it allows the creator to start and complete more projects easier, and it gives members a vested interest.

Why do you think studios might be hesitant to transition from traditional media into digital media?

Because they don’t want to disrupt their traditional cash cow. Studios are afraid of change, and wish that things could always stay the same, but unfortunately their production models are under pressure, their audiences are fragmenting, and most importantly their budgets are shrinking thanks to disruption on many levels. We are seeing traditional studios move towards the digital world now as digital pennies are growing to digital dimes and will eventually become digital dollars as the space matures. I believe we are only in the 2nd inning of a 9 inning game.

How do you think new media will transform storytelling?

I think that creators and producers have to listen to their audience within social media circles to see where they should take their stories, and develop their characters. If a high percentage of viewers dislike a character, or are uninterested in a particular story line then the writers and the team needs to take a hard look at the future of their content.

Was Spidvid involved in the IAWTV awards? What do you think of them?

I think that whatever initiatives are done to enhance awareness and growth of our space then it’s great. The IAWTV does a fantastic job of evangelizing online video, and the tight knit community is really growing and learning together which is fantastic to see. We’ve had many IAWTV members on our podcast, and to get their perspectives and hear their stories related to the future of online video is very encouraging and inspiring.

What’s your best advice for anyone looking to get into the startup life?

I would say to just jump in and do it. Get in early, create a crappy product, fail and learn, listen like crazy to your users, and try to find the right product to market fit. And find a solid co-founder or two who can help you in the areas you’re weak in. Take your time building your team because startups are like a marriage in that you need partners you know, like, and trust, and who can be there in the good times and especially the bad times. I would also say to not get too attached to your startup as it will make you emotional and can lead to making bad strategic decisions in every aspect of the company’s lifespan. Oh, and find mentors who keep you optimistic, hungry and foolish, and inspired to change the world.

This interview was originally posted on The Faster Times and The New York Egotist. Thanks to Amanda for this opportunity!

The incredible folks over at crowdsourcing.org recently reached out to me out of fascination for Spidvid, with regards to how we are applying crowdsourcing as a concept to collaborative video production. I was asked to write a guest blog article, which I graciously accepted, and the result is below.

When we set out to launch Spidvid, a decision had to be made–whether to form a small traditional entertainment studio which could develop original content, or do something original to challenge the status quo.

In late 2008 Seth Godin was writing about connecting people together, collaboration, openness, new media, going to the fringes, and other cutting edge concepts. Connecting the dots between wanting to do something different and what Seth was saying, it made sense to see if these elements were being applied to the video or film production model, and from our research the answer was no.

Video remixing and mashing was big around this time–where someone could upload a clip, and then others could download that clip with the purpose of adding value to the clip, and then sharing that improved clip with the hopes that yet someone else can add value to it too, and so on. While this was a cool phenomena to see the crowdsourcing power of video production on a large scale, the results were often mediocre because videos often didn’t have a compelling story, value wasn’t always added as it morphed along, and there was always someone who had to use a popular song for background music with no copyright clearances.

The goal for Spidvid was to always have an open video production ecosystem, but remixing was too open and chaotic. So the big idea was to crowdsource talent to create video entertainment where each individual on the team was responsible for something, and allow the members to set how the compensation split will work. For example, if a team has a video creator, 2 actors, 2 videographers, and an editor, the creator and team decide on each member getting 15% except for the creator getting 25%. If the video makes $1,000 in ad/sponsorship revenue then each member would get their pre-determined fair share.

So Spidvid fits into the crowdsourcing landscape as the site that aims to connect and empower individuals to create original video entertainment together, either locally, nationally, globally, or a combination of all three.

The concept came together over many months. “The back of the napkin” happened to be in the notes section on an iPod Touch leading to those concepts getting coded out as features over the next 8 months. On beta launch day in January 2010, 187 users signed up to get profiles thanks to our marketing efforts leading up to the launch day–including press releases, blog posts, getting small niche sites to write reviews, and most importantly–word of mouth and mouse.

Spidvid has grown up a ton–going from a concept with no users, to a public beta with 187, to now in late 2011 with 3,000 members, over 1,000 video projects launched, 250 projects completed, and over 1.2 million views.

Spidvid 2.0 is now being designed and developed to feature a simple and elegant user interface (UI), make video project work flow easier, add more social tools and location features. Spidvid 2.0 should launch in early 2012, and by 2015 full feature films will be produced by Spidvid’s collaborative community.

Here’s the lessons we’ve learned about crowdsourcing so far:

#1 — Projects need to be compelling, otherwise people won’t be inspired and motivated to jump in.

#2 — The collaborative objectives and goals must be clearly articulated before starting a project.

#3 — The benefits and value must be laid out so each individual understands what they are getting for their time and talent investment.

The most surprising thing to date is how fast the crowdsourcing model has taken shape over the years. It used to be that we had to educate people on our new media concept, but now the majority of users understand what’s going on as soon as they jump in to our community.

The majority of our users come from connections on Twitter, which makes scaling our community up fast challenging, but users coming in tend to be more active since they’ve had personal interaction with us before joining.

I wasn’t much of a video creator before starting Spidvid, but now I am since I have a platform to attract talent cost-effectively and quickly. I’ve been creating many entertaining “how to” cooking videos and really enjoy the connections and partnerships I’ve built up over the past couple years.

It’s exciting to think there have been many videos and films created that wouldn’t have otherwise existed without Spidvid’s crowdsourcing product to leverage. What keeps us going is knowing that the next big hit video or film may come from our community, making an impact on that production team, along with the thousands or millions of viewers that consume the content. There’s a lot to be excited about in the crowdsourcing space, especially for video production, and we hope you’ll be watching it all unfold with us.

Guest author: Jeremy Campbell is founder of Spidvid, which describes itself as “a social platform that empowers video creators/filmmakers and other like-minded individuals to connect, form production teams, collaborate on projects, create and distribute content, and automatically give credit and compensation back to each team member involved.”

Note: Here’s the original posting “Spidvid’s Lessons Learned About the Crowd and Video Production” on crowdsourcing’s remarkable site, which you should definately check out!

Have you ever heard the term “social graph” before? Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder and CEO of Facebook made the term famous on May 24, 2007 at the Facebook f8 conference. The social graph has been described as “the global mapping of everybody and how they’re related.” Since then “_______ graph” has been getting thrown around the web for other websites, including Quora being called the “interest graph” and Hunch being called the “taste graph.”

I thought about what kind of “_______ graph” Spidvid is becoming many months ago, and came up with “video production graph” or “video project graph.” I suppose either term could mean “the global mapping of everyone’s videos, and the connections between the individuals for the original production projects.” I actually bought VideoProductionGraph.com and VideoProjectGraph.com because Jason Calacanis has me obsessed with buying new domains.

Facebook helped us get our connections online which ultimately led to the social graph, and my vision for Spidvid is to get every video creator’s projects online to become the video project graph or video production graph.

This is just something that came to me and I merely decided to throw it out there to see if it sticks. I don’t believe every huge Web company needs to become a “_______ graph” to be the dominant player in any given space, I think the terms are for reference and association more than anything else.

If you have something to say regarding the “_______ graph” phenomena the comments below are all yours!

My friend Adam works in PR and has never created a video, or even been part of a production before in his life. But as soon as I told him what myself and film community are doing with Spidvid, he instantly wanted to be part of a team that produced an entertaining video.

I’m putting together my team for Blog Hacker and because he looks professional, is confident, and intelligent I thought he would be a good actor for the entrepreneur role in my short film. I proposed this role to him and he put on a HUGE SMILE because it’s the perfect way for him to break into the world of video. His girlfriend is beautiful and talented so I asked Adam if she would like to play the entrepreneur’s girlfriend, and he all but guaranteed her collaborative participation. As a bonus, he has a high quality 1080p HD camera that he’s never used before, so guess how his camera is going to break into the world of video! Yep you guessed it!

I believe that Spidvid will continue to attract individuals from all walks of life, because people want to be part of interesting new opportunities, and what better than a fun video project to launch into. It can be intimidating jumping into something new, which is why our community and platform make an effective solution to that problem for the world of video.

The premise of this post goes back to our vision for Spidvid, which is open and collaborative video production.

If you have something to share, please do so by posting a comment below.

Karim Kanji and Soniya Monga host the Social Media Show, a show that talks about social media (obviously), startups, new media, tech, politics, and other interesting topics. On Halloween this year Spidvid made its way onto the show which featured GigaOM story teller Matthew Ingram who talks about Mesh Marketing, and an interesting discussion was had about our open video production platform.

You can watch (or listen to) the incredible conversation below, or if you are low on time then tune into the 44:00 mark to hear the startup spotlight put on Spidvid, and me as an entrepreneur.

Have a comment about this episode of the Social Media Show, Spidvid, or something else? Add a comment below, and leave your website link so I can connect with you and check out what you’re up to heading into 2011!

Been thinking up creative ways to increase projects on Spidvid, provide some extra incentives for video creators, and get the Spidvid community more engaged with new opportunities.

So today we are launching an initiative for current and future Spidvid creators where we act as a video project producer.

Here’s how the Spidvid Creator Initiative works:

- A video concept or script must be submitted to us and pre-approved.

- Each created video should be 1-5 minutes in length.

- Each video needs to have good original entertainment and production value.

- Each video must be ad-friendly for brands.

- Since collaboration is at our core, each video must be created with at least one Spidvid community member. A team member can quickly and easily get a free Spidvid profile.

- $50-$500 will be provided for each project budget.

- The video creators and his or her teams will be given 25%-50% of the content ownership.

These are the key points of our Spidvid Creator Initiative as of today. There will be likely changes over time, and so updates will be well communicated here on our blog, in our newsletter, and via Twitter and Facebook. If you have any questions please contact us, or post a comment below.

What we’ve typically seen in the video production world is one of two scenarios.

The first is the traditional model which involves producers paying out money to all of the talent, and retaining 100% (or close to it) of the content ownership. There are buyers of talent and content, and there are sellers of talent and time.

The second scenario which we’ve seen take off in the last few years (thanks to America’s Funniest Home Videos and YouTube) is groups of friends and/or family coming together to collaborate on home made or amateurish productions.

A third scenario (Spidvid) now offers the ability for individuals from across the world to partner up with each other regardless of their backgrounds, talent, or locations. It’s kind of a hybrid model from the two above in that individuals remotely partner up together on production projects, share content ownership, leverage each other’s unique talents, and create quality video entertainment that may not fully rival high-budget projects but be 100x better than 99% of the crap created by friends and family.

We are working hard to create the Web’s open and collaborative video production ecosystem. Join us to empower a movement that challenges the status quo of traditional studios, and flips the video creation model on its head.

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A lot of money is flowing into online video companies these days, mainly for advertising, distribution, and some new media studios are getting spun off from the larger Hollywood studios. The important area that’s being overlooked is the production model as for the most part it remains relatively closed, but thankfully collaboration is playing a larger and larger role for every production team.

Production has long taken place via closed studio silos, which has succeeded because studios had the assets, money to attract professional talent, and distribution partnerships to make the model work. But now as every day goes by quality video content is getting cheaper to create, distribution is available for free all over the web, and so the last part of the equation is money. We are seeing more and more creators raising money for their web series and short film projects through websites like KickStarter, and using Spidvid’s platform you can partner up with other like-minded talent to create the video entertainment you envision.  Studios like to control the production model, and keep 100% of the content ownership, but this model is starting to be disrupted as the landscape is evolving towards openness, collaboration, and new forms of partnerships.

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A few short years ago an entrepreneur couldn’t build and scale a successful tech or media company without raising millions of dollars in venture capital funding. The same can be said about a video creator or filmmaker where they couldn’t create a hit show or film without the resources that a corporate studio provided. Fast forward to 2010 where we are seeing many startup companies and films succeeding without the support of big corporate money. I don’t know what you think about all this, but to me it’s truly refreshing to see new possibilities and opportunities, and to watch as the business and media industries rapidly change like never before. Look no further than Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook as I believe that he’s the poster boy for the new generation of business visionaries, innovators, and leaders.

Our vision is to grow Spidvid into the web’s open video production ecosystem where individuals share and aggregate their talent and resources together so new video entertainment can be created. Studios are still needed for the most part to develop and promote feature films, but many top web series and short videos/films of the future will be the result of collaborative teams that crowdsource their funding, and leverage new marketing tools at their disposal for free.

I thought up this connection between studios and venture capitalists the other day when I was working out, and couldn’t resist writing a post about it. I’m both an optimist and evangelist when it comes to new media and business, and it’s very exciting because we’ve never seen the world transform so drastically so fast like we are today. This post is a bit random, but I hope it provided some good food for thought.