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January 19 2013 was our first ideaBOOST BOOSTer day held at the amazing Spoke Club. A special congratulations goes out to all the participants and lead guides who spent the day chatting with BOOSTers about their project’s progress to date. We also want to thank all of the amazing BOOSTers who came and shared their thoughts and opinions on the progress of the projects. Want to see more?  Watch this video:

Be sure to check out the flickr page to see some great photos of the event: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cfcmedialab/sets/72157632649172035/

As always follow along with the conversation: @cfcmedialab #ideaBOOST

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When he first discovered YouTube, Shay Butler was nothing more than a granite countertop salesman from Idaho. Now, four years later, he is more than 100 pounds lighter, a successful creator with more than one million subscribers and a founding member of one of the largest multi-channel networks on the internet.

Butler wants to tell his remarkable story. He has completed a successful Indiegogo campaign for I’m Vlogging Here, a documentary that will bring viewers into the world of vloggers. “This documentary will delve into what vlogging is, the rise of YouTube creators, and how vlogging has forever changed the lives of the vloggers, the viewers, and the industry itself,” explained Butler on the Indiegogo page. “We want to tell the story of how being a ‘YouTuber has changed the lives of thousands through the eyes of one family that has realized a dream come true of a dream they never knew they even had.”

Butler’s story could be an entire story in itself, but he plans to expand I’m Vlogging Here to include a host of notable YouTubers. Shay has confirmed PrankVsPrank, CTFxC, the Vlogbrothers, and CharlieIsSoCoolLike will be among the creators in his documentary. In addition, he’s offered an invitation to any enterprising creator: make a two-minute response to his Indiegogo launch video, and it could be featured in the documentary. “This is a documentary about vloggers,” he said, “and we want as many YouTube vloggers to be in this documentary as we can get!”

Unsurprisingly, the funding campaign had no trouble raising more than $200,000. With enough money secured, Butler is now set to begin filming, with director Corey Vidal and production team ApprenticeA in support.

When Butler’s film is completed, it will be available for free on YouTube. With its impressive collection of subjects, I’m Vlogging Here has a chance to be the most interesting YouTube documentary this side of Life in a Day. 

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The documentary “I’m Vlogging Here” tells the personal stories of some of YouTube’s top vloggers, including Wheezy Waiter, CharlieIsSoCoolLike, Prank vs. Prank, Chris Pirillo, Hank and John Green and others. The filmmakers – Shay Carl and Corey Vidal – stopped by What’s Trending to talk about their goals for the project and the ongoing Indiegogo funding campaign. They also make some special exclusive announcements on the show, including fascinating news for anyone who has already invested or plans to invest in the project as well as insight into some of the crew coming on board to work on the film.

Jackson Harris, What’s Trending co-host for the week and Associate Producer of “I’m Vlogging Here,” is also on hand taking fan questions for Shay and Corey. And YouTuber Ava (Halt! I Am Ava) joins us over Google+ Hangout to share her take on the project as an up-and-coming vlogger.

Last year, after vlogging every day on YouTube for a full three years, ShayCarl felt that it was time to shake things up with a new project – a documentary about the hard work that goes into making a career on YouTube. “This is a new viable option for a lot of people that are going to school right now to come up and to be in the new media space,” he says. “I wanted to tell that stories.”

And Shay would know – as he was a key part of the creation of Maker Studios, which now employs over 350 people and recently announced the acquisition of a huge $36 million from Time Warner.

“This documentary is the story of how this became not only our life, but the lives of others,” YouTube’s most famous dad – the patriarch of The Shaytards – says. “There’s so much good that’s happening,” citing the VlogBrothers having raised over $500,000 dollars for charity.

In that vein, Corey says that he makes YouTube videos “to influence positive change,” and that’s also what this documentary hopes to inspire.

Even though ShayCarl’s received criticism over trying to raise money for the project instead of funding it based on his own means, he explains that he didn’t want to  ”I wanted this to be a personal project. I want this to be something that I have 100% control over,” he notes. By collaborating with a studio, he’d be letter an upper hand have creative control. “This is an idea that I am passionate about and a story that I want to tell more than anything, so I need to make sure as few hands are in the decision pot as possible.”

Of course it would be cheaper to have all of the YouTubers come to L.A., but Shay and Corey decided it would be more powerful if they filmed these creators in their natural environments.

Despite having vlogged every day for over three years, there’s still a lot for Shay to open up and be honest about, and he knows his fellow YouTubers have similar stories to expose. “There’s this fear that if you say the wrong thing or if you come across the wrong way, that suddenly you fear that you’re going to lose this dream,” he says. It’s a brutal jungle, that YouTube comments section. But the truth is, a ton of work goes into all of these videos that real people take the risk to share with the world.

Shay quips that RockTard, his son, is “like the real life Truman baby.” He was on YouTube when he was still in Katilette’s stomach!

Now, for the EXCLUSIVE announcement! ShayCarl reveals that if the movie does make money, they will refund all of their donors at double the amount that they donated!

One of the immediate perks will be weekly news updates about the progress of the film, with the teaser set to fully be unveiled at VidCon. By the end of the year, the team plans to tour the documentary in theaters throughout the country, with the end goal being for the movie to be free on YouTube for everyone to see. After all, Shay says, “It has to go back to where all this originated.”

[apprenticepress]

Last week, the Canadian Film Centre's CFC Media Lab launched a fantastic new program calledideaBOOST, designed to assist artists and companies exploring the frontier in digital entertainment.

For those that aren't familiar with the term, "digital entertainment" refers to entertainment that takes place in or around an online community and on mobile devices. It's gaming-, web television-, tablet-, app- and smartphone-based multi-platform entertainment that will soon include augmented reality and other new technologies.

IdeaBOOST is a "business development lab" but it's much more exciting than that. It's a very cool career-accelerator program for Canadian innovation companies working in the digital sphere.

I'm a big supporter of programs that help Canadian artists, but I'm a bit wary of government grants that can be overly relied upon, and don't necessarily foster excellence. IdeaBOOST brings industry into the equation, and I think that's what makes it such an impressive concept.

Developed by CFC MediaLab founder and CFC Chief Digital Officer Ana Serrano (who describes it as a "four month intensive boot camp for digital content entrepreneurs") and sponsored by Shaw, Corus and Google, the program will help teams raise financing, but just as importantly, it pairs winning applicants with Executive Mentors offering advice on everything from product development to business strategy and audience engagement.

"We believe that audiences play an integral role in digital entertainment strategy development," says Serrano. "So it's important that the companies that come through the program understand that the...products that they're building are an 'engaged' form of entertainment. We think that 'engaged entertainment' is the future of our business."

Thirty-nine projects were submitted to a kind of Kickstarter-style social media campaign, 332,000 votes were cast, 850,000 likes, 89,000 tweets and 15 companies were shortlisted. The projects were then judged by a group of industry experts and eight companies were selected as the winners.

Here are several that sounded particularly exciting:

The Buffer Film Festival will be a Canadian-based, internationally recognized annual online video film festival that will "launch, promote and advance videomakers in the online community," according to founder (and full-time YouTuber) Corey Vidal.

The Ghost Town Project is a trans-media project by Intuitive Pictures that will bring the world's abandoned towns back to life, starting with one landmark building in each location. Led by producer Ina Fichman, it will uncover the hows and whys of abandoned sites with a restoration team including historians, architects and conservationists.

The Path, presented by Smokebomb Entertainment, is an eight-part digital fantasy series about a highschool girl who accidentally opens a door into a world of dark, sexy, 21st century fairies. The series is available online, on tablets and phones and allows fans to interact with content, join social groups that compete against each other. What's intriguing is that the community can also participate in scripting, casting, design and story creation. They want to bring the fans and the community right into the show itself.

Loud on Planet X is a platform of rhythm tap games to be incorporated into mobile gaming. Starting with a silent premise where your band is transported onto a strange, silent planet, you must defend yourself by creating your own sounds, including playlists of your own music or newly discovered bands. Team leader is Alex Jansen, owner of Pop Sandbox a production and publishing company that released KENK: A Graphic Portrait.

Ramen Party is an interactive storybook app that introduces children aged 0 - 4 about food, by making each element in a Japanese ramen a fun character who is invited to a party. The child learns about each separate ingredient, and when they finally all come together, you have the complete dish.

[apprenticepress]

Across the GTA, a new breed of entertainer is making a living and playing to audiences in the tens of millions. Welcome to the era of the professional amateur

Blame it on the Biebs. As everyone knows by now, Justin was just a poor tween from Stratford when he uploaded his first homemade videos to YouTube. The clips went viral, and soon Usher and Justin Timberlake were fighting to sign him to their labels. International superstardom, of course, soon followed.

It’s the classic talent discovery story, upgraded for millennials. Forget music lessons, forget auditions—forget even leaving your bedroom. Just upload your god-given talent and wait for the fame. YouTube is rife with baby-faced crooners, convinced perhaps that Timberlake, still sore about losing Bieber to Usher, spends his days clicking around for the Next Big Thing.

For a growing number of Canadian talents, posting videos to YouTube is not merely a way to get discovered, promote CD sales or get booked on professional stages. YouTube is their stage. They are registered YouTube “partners” who get a share of the advertising revenue their content generates. When the Partner Program launched in 2007, YouTube cherry-picked a handful of Toronto participants, basing their invitations on existing online popularity. This past spring, the doors opened to anyone, and there are now hundreds of YouTube partners in Canada. When you click play, they get paid.

They don’t get paid much—not much per view, anyhow. YouTube won’t disclose the average amount partners receive, and there are complex algorithms involved in determining fees, but sources estimate it’s about a seventh of a penny every time someone watches their video. For someone like Corey Vidal, a 25-year-old performer from Oakville who has made his living posting dance instruction videos, lip-sync videos, comedy sketch videos and video diaries to YouTube, it would take approximately 700 views to earn $1. That means Vidal would need about a million views to earn a couple thousand dollars. Since he began posting six years ago, his videos have been viewed over 64 million times, bringing in revenues of

around $130,000.

But Vidal isn’t making money from the partnership program alone. Once his videos started taking off, major brands began approaching him, offering decent money if he’d feature their products in his videos, and serious money if he’d custom-make videos specifically to spotlight their wares. Today Vidal lives in a house he bought in Burlington, where he and 10 full-time employees make their livings solely by making YouTube videos.

There are others. Vidal can count 11 or so YouTubers in the GTA who make a living exclusively through the partnership program, but dozens have built hybrid careers around their popular YouTube channels. There’s D-Pryde, an 18-year-old rapper from Brampton with 53 million views. There’s Walk off the Earth, a rootsy pop band from Burlington with 248 million views. There’s Shimmy, a funny Korean guy from Waterloo who just sort of talks, and who has 26 million views. And there’s BodyRock, a massively popular YouTube channel of hardcore fitness videos created by a former soft-core porn model in Kingston, Ontario, and her videographer husband (Zuzana and Freddy split up sometime after they hit 400 million views, but their lucrative BodyRock brand lives on). These Internet celebrities are outliers who live on the fringe of Canada’s media capital. Had they approached success through the front door of Toronto’s established channels, it’s difficult to imagine any of them achieving the same level of fame. In the U.S., no matter how big you get on the Internet, Hollywood could get you so much bigger. The opposite is true here. If you’ve made it on YouTube, your audience is almost certainly larger than if you were on Canadian TV or signed with a Canadian label.

Professionalism and YouTube might seem mutually exclusive. Despite hosting bits of Hollywood content from all the major TV networks and movie studios, the site still struggles to shake its image as the home of randomness—a massive trove of frenetic, ever-changing non-sequiturs and geek memes, most of them asinine, forgettable, amateurish, cat-related and unrepeatable. Sure, that kid in the car who was high on dental anaesthetic was a riot, but would anyone tune in to see him get stoned again? Making steady money off YouTube videos means somehow creating viral video after viral video, which is like trying to generate regular electricity on the expectation of multiple lighting bolts striking the same rod. And yet, it is done.

Google executive Jeremy Butteriss, who directs the YouTube Partner Program in Canada, assures me that “there is a recipe for creating a viral video.” He goes on to lay down a three-point strategy. First, aspiring stars must borrow some fame. Nothing launches a YouTuber better than an endorsement or cameo appearance from a celebrity. (Many people break through by simply covering or remixing a famous piece of pop culture. This can get views, but it won’t make m0ney, because ad revenue generated from cover songs goes to the copyright holder.) Butteriss’s second step is to “tent-pole” videos to hot topics. Partners’ content must always be topical, forever related to news events or pop culture. YouTube is the Internet’s second-biggest search engine (its parent company, Google, being the first). So when people search for a trending topic, You­Tubers want their clips to come up in the results. That means a lot of songs and skits about elections and Kardashians. Finally, Butteriss tells me, a professional YouTuber must interact with the audience. They must chat with their fans, they must take on their haters. A Hollywood star’s image relies on being unreachable and inaccessible, but Internet celebrities are expected to have a common touch.

Talent, you may have noticed, is not an ingredient in Butteriss’s recipe. It’s true: none of the GTA’s highest-earning YouTube partners could be described as extraordinarily gifted musicians, dancers or comics. Yet most of them are capable at two out of three of the above. Additionally, they all have video production skills, pop culture acumen, tech savvy and a touch of charisma. They are whatever they need to be in order to get views, and that which gets views is forever changing. The extended list of money­making Toronto YouTubers includes instructional hairstylists, Caucasian aficionados of Korean pop who are big in Japan, and a “Machinima” creator who turns video game footage into short narrative films. Internet fame can seem unpredictable, idiosyncratic and just plain weird. But really, it’s nothing new.

All of the randomness hearkens back to a bygone era of novelty entertainment. The YouTubers are vaudeville variety acts, digital buskers performing for spare change on the busiest corner of the Internet, where millions of pennies rapidly add up to thousands of dollars. To get noticed, they must be loud and tacky. Nobody would confuse what they do with art. Like comic books and music videos in their early days, the form they are pioneering is brazenly commercial, completely unpretentious and beneath any serious cultural consideration. It’s all terribly exciting.

[apprenticepress]

It was in the middle of a tour in South America last November that Contiki's global marketing director first realised the celebrity power of YouTube stars.

For the first time ever the travel company had invited two YouTube celebrities, Corey Vidal and Nadine Sykora, to experience one of their tours — something previously only offered to journalists and travel writers.

"You don’t realise until you get involved in the community how many passionate fans there are," says Alexis Sitaropoulos.

"They're not TV stars or Hollywood stars but they have the same sort of passionate following."

When Mr Sitaropoulos saw Mr Vidal, a 25-year-old Canadian, talking to his South American fans on Twitter he quickly realised how large his fan base was.

Now just one year later Contiki is taking YouTube celebrities seriously — launching a new marketing initiative called "The RoadTrip" that will see 13 of the world's most famous "YouTubers" go on a 10-day journey across Europe, starting on October 5.

The stars — Corey Vidal, Charles and Alli Trippy, Charlie McDonnell, Kate Elliott, Jesse & Jeana, Nadine Sykora, Jack Douglass, Jimmy Wong, Meghan Camarena, Michael Aranda and Bryarly Bishop — will produce YouTube videos as they take in the sights tourist-style in Germany, Austria, Italy, Paris and London.

"We're not asking them to produce specific content or giving them ground rules, we want to keep it real and organic — we don't want to turn it into some slick, produced marketing video, that's not what their audience want," Mr Sitaropoulos said.

The celebrities will also compete to make videos as part of challenges set throughout the tour and participate in fan meet-and-greet sessions — Contiki is using a Canadian production company ApprenticeA to make its own behind-the-scenes videos to document their antics.

Asked what the fan gatherings will be like, Mr Sitaropoulos admits: "We're not quite sure what to expect."

"There are a handful of YouTube events in the US, like Videocon, but there's nothing like that anywhere else in the world.

"We really wanted to get a lot of these guys who are big stars out so they can meet their audiences worldwide — we want to build something with longevity, do this year-on-year."

YouTube is an 'untapped' market

According to Mr Sitrapoulos, YouTube — which first launched as a video content sharing website in 2005 — is still "surprisingly" underutilised by marketers.

"Every time they post a video they get two, three, four million [views]— those are television numbers but with nowhere near the same level of commerialisation. It's a really untapped market.

"There are no travel companies and not a huge lot of other companies that are very deeply involved [in YouTube]," he said.

Publicis Mojo social media manager Carl Burgmann agrees, saying companies are only just starting to turn to YouTube "influencers" for marketing and promotion.

"It's underutilised because there is a lower understanding and knowledge from marketers about how to take advantage of the different opportunities," Mr Burgmann says.

"Brands will throw out a two minute or three minute video but there's no continuous story being told.”

Mr Burgmann said YouTube celebrities had niche audiences that enabled marketers to target the specific group they wanted.

"These celebrity bloggers have quite a lot of influence over their followers.

"And because it's coming from an independent voice that they trust, they wouldn’t be expecting this to be a marketing message."

But Mr Sitrapoulos said Contiki had to be careful in how it tried to tap into the YouTube audience.

"It can't just be viewed as commercial," he said.

"The guys are very protective of their integrity — they have audiences that buy into them because they are real and genuine."

[apprenticepress]

Larry Fedoruk talks with Corey Vidal of Niagara Falls on his YouTube successes.

[apprenticepress]

I grew up in a family with ten kids and one TV. We couldn’t have imagined the entertainment choices young people have today, thanks to the Internet. Now, on any given night, there are movies-on-demand, online rentals in full HD, and a wide array of videos on YouTube. But the Internet has also meant more choices when it comes to a career.

Corey Vidal from Burlington, Ontario has used his talents to create a job for himself, and about 18 others. They spend their days producing original content for Corey’s popular YouTube channel, ApprenticeA Productions. You may know him from his first viral success, “Star Wars A Cappella.” Since that 2008 video, Lucasfilm, Intel, Skittles, Pepsi and Coke have all hired Corey and ApprenticeA’s services.

Corey’s business is part of our successful film, TV and digital media production sector. Did you know, since 2003, employment in Ontario’s entertainment and creative industries has grown faster than employment in the broader economy? The sector employed approximately 30,000 Ontarians last year.

Watch more of Corey’s story below. With Ontario college and university attainment rates among the highest anywhere, more young people than ever can turn their passion into a career.

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Corey Vidal appears in the 2012 edition of Ripley's Believe It Or Not entitled, "Download The Weird" by Geoff Tibballs.

[apprenticepress]

Viral videos can make dreams come true: Witness Justin Bieber’s meteoric rise to super stardom from Stratford, Ont. But it’s not just performers who are using YouTube to create careers. Increasingly, entrepreneurs are launching successful businesses because of well-timed, well-designed videos that are helping them gain followers, subscribers and ultimately customers.

Corey Vidal of Niagara Falls, Ont., has been creating content for YouTube since 2007. He started accidentally, in his parent’s basement, where he filmed himself dancing. This led to a series of instructional dance videos that gained huge traction.

He hit it big with an a cappella parody of the Star Wars theme song and has gone on to use his YouTube appeal to launch ApprenticeA Productions, a business with a staff of 15, which now has about 206,000 subscribers and more than 63 million video views.

Mr. Vidal describes himself as a full-time YouTube video maker and Jedi Knight.

But YouTube isn’t just for video makers, either. It can be a powerful branding tool.

YouTube is the second largest search engine. Its videos are amassing audiences in the hundreds of millions and changing the face of marketing and brand-building in the process.

“Almost one billion people visit YouTube each month,” says Andres Palmiter, the company’s New York-based audience development strategist. “Everyone is on YouTube.”

He notes he is seeing more entrepreneurs creating YouTube channels as part of their social media strategy to showcase products and services. Think how-to videos, for example. “It’s a cost-effective marketing tool.”

Of course, going viral is always the goal — the question is how?

Having wrapped up his first season as an angel investor on CBC’s Dragons’ Den, David Chilton says where many pitchers fall short is with their marketing strategy. “When we asked about how they were going to raise awareness, 20 times we must have heard, we’re going to get it to go viral. That’s not much of a plan.”

It’s a reality not lost on the powers that be at YouTube. This year the social media giant launched the Canadian partner program, which allows YouTube content creators to monetize viral videos with advertising. It followed this up by hosting a YouTube Partner workshop in Toronto where Mr. Palmiter shared best practices on how to attract eyeballs to content with the prime marketing goal of building loyalty.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

Give your audience what they want Create content that is concise, relevant and compelling for your target audience. The first 15 seconds are critical. You want people to play and stay. You also want them to subscribe and come back. The tone, feel and look should be consistent. Think of your content as programming. Consider building a series and set a schedule to ensure you are uploading fresh content regularly.

Don’t oversell Branding should be minimal. Or, make the branding the compelling content, in which case the focus should be on entertaining the viewer.

Create a rapport with viewers Talk to them, ask a question. You want to hook them early and at the same time create a personality they want to connect to.

“Make your audience a core part of your content,” Mr. Palmiter says. “Involve them. Give them a call to action. And thank them. Acknowledge your subscribers.” “The first 1,000 subscribers are the hardest,” Mr. Vidal says. “You have to get them to care.”

Take a page from Discovery Channel Create an event and people will come. Think Shark Week. Tent-pole programming can lead to advertising campaigns and build a buzz. Promo it, talk about it, tie it to what’s trending. It’s another way to stay fresh and keep your audience coming back.

Collaborate and crosspromote This takes time and is about building relationships but it can help drive people to your channel. Pair up with channels that share an audience match. Start the conversation, give each other “shout outs” and cross-promote content across channels. You never know who’s watching.

Befriend bloggers They are always looking for content and can help drive traffic to your channel. Create a comprehensive blog roll and reach out. Business is all about relationship building and these relationships can help get you noticed. Track where your content is being embedded. What gets measured gets managed.

For more detailed information, go to YouTube Playbook.

For Mr. Vidal, success on YouTube has been nothing short of life changing. He went from being homeless in 2008 to YouTube star (a status he maintains), a title that directly led to his working with Lucasfilm, which sponsors his channels.

“While no video I’ve created since the Star Wars parody has done as well, I have been able to build a business doing what I love.”

[apprenticepress]

CityNews reporter Peter Kim explains how the once-homeless 25 year-old became an internet sensation.

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At Third Tuesday in late June, I was standing in front of my social media friend Eric Buchegger and (of course) looking at Twitter on my phone when I saw him tweet out something about a YouTube workshop the next night. I turned around, pointed to the tweet and asked him about it when he mentioned that our mutual friend in social media, Roberto Faria was involved with organizing it. A few tweets the next day and thanks to Roberto I was on my way to OCAD University to attend this invite-only workshop, presentation and networking cocktails. I didn’t know at the time, that the event was being organized as part of a cross-Canada tour through Achilles Media...

[apprenticepress]

For a company that vowed one year ago to reinvent the wheel of social networking, Google has generally remained an abstract force to even the most loyal users, who cooled on the idea of using G+ to share with their circles — even if enhancements suggest that the courtship is still in progress.

So, it was a surprise to learn of a YouTube Workshop being held in Toronto on Tuesday at OCAD — just one stop on a cross-Canada tour — with the promise of insights on how to go viral, reach the right audience and profit from the creation of original online videos. Could this be the beginning of more outreach in the city where its presence — at least outside of advertising sales — has been a long-distance shadow cast from Silicon Valley?

"I don't have all the answers," cautioned audience development strategist Andres Palmiter — who is neither a YouTube creator nor engineer but an erstwhile employee of producer Next New Networks, which Google bought last year. "I'm just giving you the ingredients and you make the recipe yourself."

The examples of potential inspiration are not hard to find, including from within Canada. Epic Meal Time was proudly cited as among the stories of recent fame and fortune by figuring out how to feed subscribers what they wanted to watch. "Shit Girls Say" was noted as the kind of phenomenon that spawned any number of niche knock-offs and a book deal and overall fortune-booster for the two guys behind it.

"If you don't have that first great idea," said Palmiter, "being the second person to the party is still pretty good."

The presentation of details that help a video go viral would be illuminating to any broadcast executive — even if the event was specifically geared to a crowd without corporate media ties. For example, having the right kind of thumbnail showing up in the sidebar can be more important than the title or content.

And despite all the anecdotes about people who now make an independent living from a YouTube channel there is a repeated insinuation that success if not validated without the approval of one of the legacy Hollywood players.

Certainly, corporate recognition helped vault Corey Vidal from being homeless in Hamilton four years ago after he did a one-man multi-part lip-synch to an a cappella Star Wars tribute songon a webcam. Vidal had previously dabbled in a series of How to Dance videos, in response to serendipitous attention for showing off his own footwork, although it was Lucasfilm's recognition of a product endorsement that helped him reach 15 million views, a red carpet appearance and a TV commercial in Italy that paid an easy $50,000.

The evangelism espoused by Vidal comes off as refreshingly uncynical, as he has now transcended all the trappings of Canadian media to reach a supportive audience via YouTube, while admitting that he still has no idea of what kind of concept will click: "Yes, you can throw money at something," he said, "but to this day the most popular video I made I made when I was homeless."

Perhaps he is just being humble, though. Palmiter sloughed off a question about demographics by saying that the platform reaches everyone. While this might be technically true, animated personalities in their 20s who can speak to the teenage demographic remains the closest thing to a viewership slam dunk, as reflected in the type of YouTubers that have broken through. Better still if it is the kind of young guy that younger girls want to watch. (No wonder a former MuchMusicVJ, Tim Deegan, is now apparently part of Vidal's 15-person crew — which says something about the current Canadian industry pecking order.)

While not everything about YouTube could be covered in two hours, it provided a reminder of how many more details about YouTube remain elusive, whether it is for producers, consumers or those who regard themselves as a little bit of both. Companies based in Canada seem to be excluded from theoriginal channels being unveiled over the course of the year with financial backing from Google. And, while attendees were encouraged to sign up with the partner program, no detail was provided about what needed to be done to benefit from other proactive efforts designed to encourage mediamakers to quit their day jobs.

The cultural impact of these initiatives was discussed during the first half of the year over the course of our first 10 sessions ofYouTube School at the Academy of the Impossible. Many of the ways in which YouTube has evolved, even just for the sake of curating videos uploaded by other people, remain strangely elusive.

Still, it will be interesting to see if Google is interested in expanding these outreach efforts, rather than assuming that the dominance of its platform absolves it from being nurtured. YouTube will no doubt keep supplying material to talk about. Yet this workshop suggested that the discussion benefits from a personal catalyst, too.

[apprenticepress]

1. Star Wars Kid

In 2002, Ghyslain Raza of Trois-Rivières, Que., made Internet history by leaping around with a makeshift light saber. He needed psychiatric care for all the subsequent bullying, and his parents sued the families of the classmates who leaked the video. It’s been viewed an estimated one billion times.

2. Walk off the Earth

The indie band from Burlington, Ont., who covered Gotye’s Somebody That I Used to Know—with all five band members playing one guitar—earned a record deal, and inspired a parody song during the Vancouver Canucks brief 2012 playoff run. YouTube views: 113 million.

3. Ultimate Dog Tease

Halifax comedian Andrew Grantham gave voice to a German shepherd being teased with meat, and it became Canada’s second-most-watched YouTube video of 2011 (Rebecca Black’s Friday was No. 1). YouTube views: 108 million.

4. Lady Gaga Girl

With just a piano and her powerful voice, 10-year-old Maria Aragon recorded herself singing Lady Gaga’s Born this Way last year and got a flood of online attention, including from Gaga herself. A chain of Philippine malls later hired Aragon as their holiday season spokesperson. YouTube views: 51 million.

5. Emerson Baby

Under the title “Emerson—Mommy’s nose is scary!” five-month-old Baby Emerson from London, Ont., is both endlessly terrified and delighted by the sound of his mother blowing her nose. YouTube views: 36 million.

6. S–t Girls Say

When Toronto-based artists Kyle Humphrey and Graydon Sheppard spliced together stereotypical girl-talk banalities, it was the meme that launched a thousand social analyses—and a book deal with Harlequin. YouTube views: 29 million.

7. Corey Vidal

In 2008, Corey Vidal made a video of himself singing a four-part harmony for Star Wars (John Williams is the Man), a compilation of Star Wars-inspired lyrics sung to the composer’s most famous film scores. YouTube views: 17 million.

8. United Breaks Guitars

After a flight aboard United Airways in 2008, Dave Carroll of the band Sons of Maxwell discovered his $3,500 guitar had been broken. When the airline refused compensation, he wrote a song about his ordeal that drew worldwide attention and a book deal. YouTube views: 12 million.

9. Hélène Campbell

When 21-year-old Campbell found out she was ill, she created @alungstory while awaiting a double lung transplant, garnering thousands of followers, including Justin Bieber and a surprise video call from Ellen DeGeneres. She received her transplant in April.

10. Arrested Drunk Guy

In November 2011, Robert Wilkinson of Edson, Alta., was arrested by RCMP for allegedly driving drunk. Proclaiming himself sober from the back seat of a squad car, he launched into a passionate, and remarkably accurate, a cappella rendition of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody—all six minutes of it. YouTube views: 8 million.

[apprenticepress]

Today’s session on “How to win on YouTube” at #NXNEi 2012, was moderated by entrepreneurial @GuyGal -  one of the classiest video know-it-alls, with a kicking panel including @CoreyVidal – the guy that Guy describes as a video know-it-all, @epicmealtime‘s @Harleyplays [who can cook up a mean turkducken filled with bacon as sampled from 2011 1MM subscriber party] [I'm the invitee that brought the TUMs] and @AlexIkonn – who has designed a life of 4 hr work weeks with luxyhair.com.

Below are my really, really quick highlights:

Chance – I think this was Harley who recognized that part of his success was chance.

Get over not liking twitter. All the social media platforms are connected and help you share your content. @harleyplays #nxnei #ljp #youtube *

“It’s your job as a creator to create what’s next.” @coreyvidal at the youtube @nxnei panel #ljp *

@nxnefest:  “Figure out who you are as a person and how you want to be portrayed.” -@coreyvidal #nxnei #ljp #youtube

@nxnefest: Get over not liking twitter. All the social media platforms are connected and help you share your content. @harleyplays #nxnei #ljp #youtube

@sarahbalta:  Do what’s authentic to your brand. “There is nothing epic about a mini.” Response from @HarleyPlays when asked to sponsor Mini Cooper #NXNEi  [this authencity and consistency message was also discussed by @alexikonn]

Also noted:

this idea that everything is connected and that the use of other social networks aids the distribution of videos. e.g.  @epicmealtime used their personal networks to vote up their digg, buzzfeed and other submissions.

that consistency is key in the delivery & development of a youtube channel.  E.g. epicmealtime is out every Tuesday – reliably.

that critical to the success of a channel is maintaining content focus that suits the audience you’ve built.

that the first video posts done by those who have had tremendous success – were sticklers for the details – the title, the description, tags chosen, etc.

Post session, I asked a panelist, @alexikonn of luxyhair.com fame,about the value of YouTube comments.  I often find the commentary on YouTube rather garbage-y given the often anonymous nature of users.  He said – you have to direct a question to the audience at the tail end of the video.  With no direction, the commentary will be useless but once directed, you will have valuable comments.  Great pointer there.  (the same can be said for adding context sensitive URLs ) (a.k.a. clickable URL links).  This made me think of all the brands that slap up a 30s spot on YouTube with absolutely no catering to the channel experience..

A few more thoughts on YouTube success ideas: - if you use music, give attribution to the artist.  You will see this well done by fan made movie stories.

*Note:  its not always clear who the tweet originator is by the tool I am using.  apologies.

[apprenticepress]

"Star Wars" Day is here.

For the uninitiated, "Star Wars" Day -- an unofficial and fan-created "holiday" -- occurs every year on May 4, because "Star Wars" fans love their puns: "May the Fourth be with you." (Get it? Instead of "May the Force be with you.")

"Star Wars" Day isn't sanctioned by Lucasfilm (though the company is all for it) or the U.S. government, but that doesn't stop millions of "Star Wars" fans from celebrating the holiday by -- well, by at least remembering its existence and perhaps sending an earnest e-mail to their "Star Wars" buddy about why the original trilogy is so great. (Just me?)

Ironically, there actually is a "Star Wars" Day on the official record: the Los Angeles City Council declared May 25 to be "Star Wars" Day because that was the day "Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope" was released in 1977. The George Lucas classic has its 35th anniversary later this month.

So! To enjoy "Star Wars" Day, you have a few options: you can watch "Star Wars" (just the O.G. trilogy; we're not monsters); you can make a few bad "Star Wars" jokes at work ("These are not the memos you're looking for..."); you can check out Casey Pugh's "Star Wars" Uncut (highly recommended), a fan crowdsourced recreation of "Star Wars"; or, you can watch 14 funny "Star Wars" videos below.

Insert pithy "Star Wars" reference here and happy viewing! OK, and fine: May the Force be with you.

[apprenticepress]

I sit cross-legged on a dark-coloured couch in a well-lit living room in Burlington, Ontario. Burlington is your average suburban town, with classic suburban accoutrements: large plazas are filled with Boston Pizzas, First Choice Hair Cutters, Curves Gyms. That's it, really. If someone were trying to divulge my momentary setting at first glance, they would assume I was in the living room of a pack of average nerds in their early-twenties: Star Wars and Google paraphernalia lines the walls; a group of six or so young people play Rock Band raucously in front of me; dirty plates with scraps of chicken nuggets and ketchup remnants sit, forgotten, upon the coffee table.

But then there are clues that point towards the atypical. Someone is filming the Rock Band action on an expensive-looking HD camera, and from my perch on the couch I can see a mounted flatscreen in the kitchen that flashes as Twitter interactions are constantly refreshed. I’m in a YouTube house, a house comprising of 17 or so talented, coming-and-going individuals who specialize in everything from graphic design to SEO to music, dedicated to the production of videos that they graciously share with their 200,000+ subscribers on their YouTube channel,ApprenticeA. They're a production team who've let a bit of Big Brother-style voyeurism into their lives; ApprenticeA's fans not only like the original videos they make (such as Zelda: The Musical), but their daily vlogs, an edited compilation of, well, things they did that day, offers a glimpse into the lives of a group of young and eager, but utterly normal, if slightly unusually charming, people. 

ApprenticeA was spearheaded almost two years ago by Corey Vidal, a tall, boyishly handsome young Star Wars nerd with a vivacious personality and infectious enthusiasm. Vidal is the face of his company--if you Google his name, "corey vidal girlfriend" comes up as the first hit (but maybe that's only on my crush-y computer). Vidal’s most popular video, the one that inspired his YouTube mindedness, he posted in late-October, 2008, and is a lip-synced four-part a cappella Star Wars medley song. It has well-over 16.5 million views. For those with no concept of YouTube popularity, M.I.A’s “Paper Planes” video (which was posted in June, 2009) has just over 25 million views, while Justin Bieber’s “U Smile” video has over 62 million.

So why all this hulaballoo about some guy and his friends who live in a house in Burlington and tape their lives to put out as daily vlogs? Vidal himself even said to me when I suggested that their lives were surprisingly insular-seeming, despite immense YouTube popularity that they were kind of like a "cult." But it seems that by allowing the open-ended YouTube community a look into his and his friends lives, he is using a tactic that reaches an audience whose lives are comprised much more fully of time spent on the internet: the dreaded 13-18 year old demographic. The demographic that attempts to explain vlogging to their parents and are met with blank stares. The demographic who, armed with unlimited empirical resources, consume to find their individuality, and find community in virtual spaces. 

Vidal and co.'s story is not uncommon. These invisible odysseys of success exist in abundance in the hour of video that is uploaded to YouTube every second. Toronto's GregoryGORGEOUS is another good example of this. Offering his fans one of YouTube's most popular video types, beauty and fashion advice, he, realizing the importance of voyeurism to the interests of young fans, also produced a YouTube-based reality show called The Avenue about his move from a Toronto suburb to Yorkville. When I spoke to him on the phone from New York, he was refreshingly modest, and well-mannered, a trans kid with a good head on his shoulders. But does he live off of his YouTube fame? "I do quite well," he responded, meekly. His manager interjects when I ask him the question later: "Gregory makes more than his Dad." I am baffled. So if I start regularly uploading videos of myself doing things that I'm naturally inclined towards, whether makeup or Star Wars, will I become famous?

The future only will tell. YouTube is a viable business endeavour, it seems, monetizing more than 3 billion video views per week, with 98 of AdAge’s Top 100 advertisers having connected with the service for advertising opportunities. Having been purchased by Google in 2006 (for $1.65 billion, no less), they’re clearly in good hands, with no real threats from other services (like Vimeo), and vosiferous support from one of the biggest tech companies ever created. There are 800 million unique visitors per month on the site, and with the more popular channels, YouTube offers partnership opportunities. The top 500 on YouTube earn over $100,000 per year. 

In the end, it seems that if you're young and willing to be a smart investor and open your world up a bit with a camera, good things can happen.