Spin Flow

Spin Flow

the fine art of moving digital media

the fine art of moving digital media

an Outhink sponsored community website about media production for the creative professional

an Outhink sponsored community website about media production for the creative professional

Maiden Voyage

We just want to help. We want to help take the frustrations out of producing digital content. We have been working hard to help creative professionals spend their time doing what they like and want to do: make cool media so that they can share it with their friends and find an audience for their product, an audience that likes it enough to pay for it.

We have spent the last several years working with creative professionals to help improve their ability to make great content and now we want to help you. We have pulled together a great team of videobloggers and technology to help you learn how to or improve how you create digital media. We want to help you be the best producer of digital media. We now have the tools and ability to publish our creative works in our own voice, when we want, where we want, to those people that care the most. There is a significant need emerging to improve the quality of user generated videos and we want to make it as easy as possible for you to go up the learning curve and produce videos as compelling as commercial television and beyond. We love to create.

In a business environment we use several processes that help us take the waste out of what we do, so we can do those things that we like to do. We are starting our “Maiden Voyage,” to bring together those that have a passion for creating new media production techniques. I hope we do justice to the community.

When I want to get something done I first look for the team that can come together and make something great happen. Look at the credits for any movie, song, magazine and for that matter when we try to get something done in business we want to find the great teams to make the most important things happen. In sports, yes we use the same lingo.

Why can’t we just do it? Finding the team starts with what we are trying to get done. If we can bring clarity to what we are trying to get done, what it will look like when we are finished, what experience does the audience have, is there a way to measure it? Who can I pull together? What different outcome would happen with a different set of people or people and places that they come from.

One of our first examples of this was using our file sharing technology to create mashups for SXSW. We got rights cleared to allow a group of people to take a song and make their own music video. Several people did this from around the country and it was shared at SXSW. A more recent global example was with Alive in Bagdhad, where film was shot on the ground in Bagdhad, produced in Boston, edited in San Antonio and distributed around the world. We believe their will be more and more video produced in a distributed fashion, with people connecting from around the world to tell their stories.

We have brought together a great team of people. A starting place to learn how to videoblog through Freevlog, a community at Ourmedia and a set of tools based on our patent pending peer to peer technology called SpinXpress. We hope you come along for the ride.

Posted by Dave Toole on February 25, 2005 at 08:43 AM in About This Site, Member Stories | Permalink | Comments (0)

What we know so far

SpinFlow is workflow enabled by ad hoc secure file transfers, time-stamped and registered documents that ensure trusted access, as well as many new features that will be invented on the SpinXpress platform. SpinFlow will change the way established and newly organized teams collaborate. The ability of producers and managers of creative teams to tap talent in real-time, allowing more dynamic combinations of new and existing ideas, challenges the status quo and opens the path to creative explosions that test the limits of traditional organizations. SpinFlow is work-plus-freedom, something evolving that must be documented as it grows into a well understood way of getting creative projects from inception to completion.

New forms of collaboration are producing incredible new creative content. No longer are teams limited to the narrow confines of geography. Whether producing music, making movies or television programs or just working together on rich media files within the enterprise, creative professionals have never had so many opportunities to connect.

Dave and his team at Outhink have built a powerful and secure peered filesharing system for professional collaboration, a virtual private network technology I think provides the foundation for improving the way people work together. Dave, as he mentioned below, has asked me to help document that new way of working, the opportunities and challenges it presents to creative teams and their managers. He calls me "executive editor," but I would prefer consulting blogger or, better, an eclectician who finds and illustrates the new connections that are changing work. In ancient Greece, a philosopher was "eclectic" if they were not aligned with any particular school of thought—in the new world of work there are already a lot of philosophies and I borrow freely and critically to make clear how and why things are changing.

The whole point of SpinXpress and the notion of Spinflow processes is to put you in charge of your destiny, to bring the organization to the edges and open a new range of collaborative resources to the artists, organizations and managers who must come together to make big things happen.

My background? I've been an writer about and entrepreneur in the field of media for almost 20 years, though much of the first 10 years my work was focused primarily on computing. Then, computing morphed into every cranny of media. As editor and publisher of Digital Media: A Seybold Report and co-host of the Digital World Conference, I was very fortunate to meet, interview, write about and even introduce many of the people who have reshaped media since the appearance of the Web. As chief content officer at ON24, I built the first 24/6.5 (we took part of Sunday off) webcast financial news networks, a completely personalized audio and video feed of news and analysis for investors. I published one of the first electronic books in Voyager format in 1991. My involvement with Audible Inc., which I continue, has put me behind the microphone and in the trenches of time-shifted audio production and distribution since the very beginning. I've designed user interfaces for community sites and have built software and services in a variety of markets.

So, my background is eclectic and that's why Dave asked me to do a little piloting here.

There is also a financial relationship, folks, so I am writing here as a commentator with an agenda: To illuminate where and how Outhink's technology fits and can be customized to serve creative professionals. I'll be critical and your coconspirator in making Outhink products better, not a spokesman for the company. But, I am paid to do this, so always feel free to question the ideas and links made here if you think they are self-serving. I welcome the opportunity to discuss why I made certain decisions. Moreover, if you want to participate in discussions at any point, jump in. This is a research process in the making, which will help Outhink make a better product and help developers integrate its capabilities into a wide range of tools that enhance the creative process.

We're going to be launching this site with regular postings from around the Web and a series of interviews with audio and video producers. Stop by each day to see what's new or add us to your RSS subscriptions. I promise it will always be interesting and worthwhile.

Posted by Mitch Ratcliffe on February 24, 2005 at 03:26 PM in About This Site, News | Permalink | Comments (1)

People

Spinflow_logo_128_1Lots of people are helping create the content this site or building and supporting the associated community.  These people include:

Thanks!

Posted by apperceptions on February 22, 2005 at 09:19 AM in About This Site | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Express Yourself!

We welcome your feedback  Please share your ideas and suggestions using the comment form below or visit our new discussion forums.

Also, if you would like to get involved with SpinFlow, we are looking for creative professionals to join in and help create a useful and exciting community.  We are at a very early stage of development and in need of  your input and ideas.

One area we need particular help with is getting the word out about the SpinFlow and SpinJamming concepts.  If you are someone who would like to give a public presentation related to the production and distribution of digital media, please consider SpinFlow as a potential collaborator or sponsor.  Are you an audio or video expert? Got a workshop outline or idea?  Want to have some fun (it's hard work too!).  Then send us an email, tell us your idea and we'll see if we can find a sponsor for you who can help out with a few expenses and provide some fun goodies for your workshop or event participants (free stickers at least).

We also need people to create and publish content related to "the fine art of moving digital media" for creative professionals.  We encourage publication under the Creative Commons "attribution" and "share-alike" licenses. Got a good idea for an article or video?  Want to share your audio or video success stories (and the challenges too!)?  Then send us a proposal and let's see how we can make that happen.

Posted by apperceptions on January 20, 2005 at 07:35 PM in About This Site | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack