I’m writing this while sitting in the 2007 Beyond Broadcast Conference going on today at the Stata Center’s Kirsch Auditorium here at MIT. At the moment the director of Four Eyed Monsters is adressing us live from LA via an iChat video conference, tossed up on two 30-foot projected screens at the front of the room. On the same panel is Kenny Miller from MTV Global, Elizabeth Osder from Yahoo! and Jesse Walker from Reason magazine.
It’s funny. People in the audience are slurping all this up like oxygen, and to me this stuff is like water to a fish – it’s so ubiquitous and obvious that the majority of it is just “Well, yeah.” It makes me hopeful about the imminent job search – but it also makes me think some more about what’s involved in actually implementing these insights.
I’m also highly amused by the idea that I’m taking fashion tips from a conference. “Kenny Miller is wearing a dashing black blazer over a chocolate-brown Oxford button-down shirt, under which is just a touch of color from a cranberry-red t-shirt. Jeans and designer shoes complete the outfit. Our host, Steve Schultze, cuts a fine figure in a slate-gray blazer over a light chocolate Oxford and a black t-shirt, again over jeans and brown dress sneakers.” There’s a ton of usual schlubs in the audience as well, of course, but I’m impressed by the dozen or so characters here that are similarly dressed. Apparently I need to go polish up my wardrobe a little before going on the conference-and-interview circuit.

“I don’t look a lot at the competition. I look at what we want to do, what the audience wants to see from us… Is the audience liking what we’re doing, and is it growing?” – Kenny Miller

(A brief aside: I grew up with a Kenny Miller being the local rich guy in our small town. Nothing against that Kenny Miller, but I like this Kenny Miller a lot better.)