Audio: Panel on the Future of Hollywood, from USC

Thursday night's panel at USC's Annenberg School was a lot of fun... I'm posting some rough audio of about half the conversation here. The question it begins with is: "What's the biggest opportunity in the entertainment industry today?" It goes on to cover indie distribution, Internet content, and digital 3-D production.

The panelists were:

- Cliff Plumer, CEO, Digital Domain
- Steve Schklair, CEO, 3ality Digital Systems
- Evan Spiridellis, co-founder, JibJab Media.
- Brian J. Terwilliger, CEO, Terwilliger Productions and Producer/Director of "One Six Right"
- David Wertheimer, former president of Paramount Digital Entertainment and current CEO of the Entertainment Technology Center @ USC

Here's the MP3 file... or just click play below. It's about 30 minutes long.



Here's some Annenberg coverage of the event.

Thanks to Elisa Wiefel Schrieber, Giovanna Carrera, Z Holly, and Dean Wilson for making this event happen!

In L.A.? Free Event on Technology and the Movies, February 19th

I'm really excited to be partnering with USC to put together an evening event on Thursday, February 19th. It's being jointly organized by the Stevens Institute for Innovation, the Annenberg School for Communication, and the Entertainment Technology Center.

We're calling it "Innovation in Hollywood: Past Present & Future," and it happens just before the 2009 Oscars, on the USC campus. I'll be giving a quick overview of Hollywood's tech history, and then moderating a panel of modern-day innovators. It's free -- but you do have to RSVP. I hope you can make it, or spread the word to folks in LA who might want to join us.

In BusinessWeek: "Innovation Lessons from Hollywood"

BusinessWeek Online ran a piece this week related to Inventing the Movies, titled "Innovation Lessons from Hollywood."

From the piece:

Ever since Thomas Edison and Kodak founder George Eastman helped invent the movie industry in the 19th century, the people who populate it have tended to give the cold shoulder to every new tool, technology, or business model that comes along. From sound to color, television to home video, computer animation to the Internet, each new idea has been dubbed too expensive, too unreliable, just a fad, or a threat to existing business models.

And yet if Hollywood hadn't eventually embraced each of these innovations, it's unlikely that the business would have survived.

Hollywood, it turns out, isn't so different from every other successful, established industry—from health care to financial services to auto manufacturing. Amazing amounts of energy are spent fighting ideas with the potential to expand the business and enable it to survive.

Along with it was a list of "18 People Who Changed Hollywood."

'Inventing the Movies": A Technological History of Hollywood

I've been doing a bit of early promotion for my next book, "Inventing the Movies," which aims to be both a technological history of Hollywood and a parable for innovators of any stripe about the challenges of introducing new ideas to an established industry.

(Update: It's now available on Amazon, and the book's Web site is live.) It's technically not out until September (and not yet available on Amazon), but A few traces of it are starting to show up on the Interweb :

- A nice long podcast on The Workbook Project
- A quick take on the book from David Tamés, one of the experts I asked to review the manuscript
- A guest blog post for Harvard Business Online
- A write-up of a presentation I gave earlier this year in Providence, RI about the book, along with a podcast of that talk. This talk was also the keynote at the Making Media Now conference in May.

There are two sneaky places where you can purchase an early copy of the book now... the paperback version is here, and the digital/PDF version is here. (Update: And now the Amazon version is here.)

Finally, here are some nice blurbs from people who've read the galleys:

"For anyone interested in a well-paced, accurate, and eminently readable chronicle of the fits, starts, foibles, and triumphs in the digitization of an entire industry, don't wait for the movie… read this book!"

Bob Lambert
Senior Vice President, Worldwide Technology Strategy
The Walt Disney Company

"Hollywood loves a good story, particularly one where the ending remains to be told. 'Inventing The Movies' is a dual-track story about how technology enabled the movie industry we know today, and how technology will either enable, or disintermediate, the movie industry of the future."

Gary Beach
Publisher Emeritus
CIO Magazine

"In his new book, 'Inventing the Movies,' Scott Kirsner takes you on fascinating romp through the movie industry's hundred-year love/hate relationship with technology and innovators. The book is an entertaining read with fascinating historical research and fresh insights from interviews with a long list of contemporary luminaries including director Peter Jackson, computer graphics pioneer Ed Catmull, and entrepreneur Mark Cuban. With a keen attention to multiple perspectives, Kirsner presents the view of industry executives who are reluctant to innovate, and contrasts their views with the innovators who have advanced the many technologies like projection, color, sound, non-linear editing, digital projection, internet distribution, etc. that have transformed the industry over a century of change and revived it over and over again for many generations of audience. 'Inventing the Movies' is a lively book of interest to innovators in any field."

David Tamés
Videographer/producer/editor
Kino-Eye.com

"'Inventing The Movies' crystallized my own experience of trying to sell technological innovation into this more-than-resistant industry. Through Scott’s insights and the retelling of a history I only partially knew, I better understand my own rollercoaster ride that took over a decade before digital cinema was embraced by the entire industry. I thoroughly enjoyed the concise and poignant stories of how such things as sound and color almost never made it to the big screen despite the obvious benefits."

Russell Wintner
President, Wintertek, Inc.
Former executive with Technicolor, CineComm, and AccessIT

"'Inventing the Movies' is a comprehensive look at the changing landscape of cinema, a detailed history of determination, innovation and risk. This work is perfect for anyone wanting to have an understanding of the past, present and future of the medium. An excellent read for those interested in cinema and a must-read for anyone looking to enter the tech or film industry."

Lance Weiler
Director/producer
'Head Trauma' and 'The Last Broadcast'

OK, now I'm blushing.

Podcast: 'What Innovators Can Learn from Hollywood'

I gave a talk last month in Providence, Rhode Island for a gathering of technologists and CIOs from colleges and universities, the title of which was "What Innovators Can Learn from Hollywood." The podcast is here, though it seems they've snipped out all of the movie clips -- all of which are covered by the Fair Use doctrine. Ah well. The talk also has a lot of photographs, too, which you'll have to imagine.

Here's the description:

Technology innovators sometimes expect that users will embrace new ideas and new tools with open arms. In reality, most innovations are met with hostility and indifference, and it can take a lengthy campaign to persuade organizations to change the way they work. In an illustrated spin through Hollywood history, journalist and author Scott Kirsner will demonstrate how innovators like Pixar, George Lucas, and Bing Crosby (yes, "Mr. White Christmas") have changed the movie industry while facing enormous resistance. He'll also describe the three kinds of people that exist in every organization and some of the key reasons people tend to rebel (or go into a shell) when confronted with a new piece of technology.