The IWCC-CIWC interim board.

The IWCC seeks to promote, support and develop the new breed of storytelling entrepreneurs who make web series. Web series are narrative series, like TV shows or films, but distributed entirely online. IWCC members are creating a new branch of the entertainment industry. Their series are created independently of the traditional media gatekeepers. The creators develop one-on-one relationships with fans, building communities around their series. They frequently serve niche audiences whose stories are not being told in “old” media.

We took over the ground floor of the Monarch Tavern, gave a few speeches, signed up new members, drank a lot of beer and just generally drove another stake into the alleged heart of the dying old media.

We’ve been getting good coverage from online industry rags like Filmmaker Magazine and Snobby Robot – and from the reactions we’ve been receiving leading up to last night’s launch and the response which has been continuing since, it is pretty obvious that such an organization has been eagerly anticipated by this community.

It’s time for this shit to get into high gear.

Our interim board is, from right to left, Ash Catherwood, Rodney V. Smith, Jill Golick, me, Regan Latimer, Carrie Cutforth-Young, Elize Morgan, Scott Albert, Jonathan Robbins, Jason Leaver and Mike Evask.

I’ve been active with the board for more than a year now to get the IWCC set up as a non-profit and to lay the foundations for what will prove to be a fairly potent force in how web series creators are going to be able to not just continue but thrive in their endeavours. It’s important work and now with the launch of the IWCC we have in place an apparatus this community can use to get their voice heard, learn more, share their experience & resources and continue to grow as an industry.

I really can’t express how proud I am to have been a part of such a smart and committed group of artists. If you have even a marginal interest in web series creation – please visit the IWCC web site and join us.

The event was a great success and was LiveStreamed so you can view the archive of that on the IWCC-CIWC Launch page – including a bunch of great interviews conducted by the amazing Jess Morton of Press Pass.

Onward!

P. S. – The video of the speeches cuts in and out here and there so I’m attaching a full transcript of my own remarks, not so much for posterity but because the message contained in those words (so skillfully written for me by Scott Albert – thanks, Scott!) really convey what the IWCC is all about.

Hello folks! isn’t this awesome? Look how far we’ve come, this is amazing, from sitting around drinking in the pubs. This is terrific. And now – we get to change the world.

I’d like to take a moment and have everyone take a look around the room. A lot of us already know each other but at the same time – I’m sorry, I’m going to be reading here: we’re a crazy bunch of web series creators, web series watchers, actors, writing, directors, artists of all stripes, industry bigwigs – you are, you’re bigwigs. And we’re all here for the same reason. We believe that the future is web series. And we’re all here to celebrate the launch of the Independent Web Series Creators of Canada!

I’m Rob Mills, I’m the acting president of the interim board of directors. I’m a puppeteer, web series creator, writer, director. Jason just talked about how mind blowing it is to be a part of this group of people at this particular time in history, we got this fancy new organization, but there’s one big question still to be answered: What the heck does it do? What does the IWCC do?

Right now, everyone’s looking at us. Not just here in the room and online. The world is looking at Canada and wondering how we’ve been able to make such a mark in this new way of telling stories. To be honest, we were able to do it because no one cared. We didn’t ask anyone if we could do it, we didn’t wait for someone to give us the resources to do it, we just did it, quietly for ourselves and for the people watching. Well, all of a sudden, now everyone seems to care. Hollywood studios, broadcasters around the world, online portals professional organizations, movies stars; everyone wants to be doing what we’re doing.

And once people start caring, they start deciding things. They can’t help themselves, it’s just how their minds work. They start trying to decide how things SHOULD work. Those established larger players I just mentioned, the old media, can’t seem to process the one thing we already know to be true – you can’t stop anyone from making the web series they want to make. But they can try – and some of them are. Which brings us to tonight. Everyone in this room or watching online has a choice to make. Let the old guard decide things for us – or join together and say, “No. That’s not how it works anymore.” That’s one of the things we’ll be doing. We’ll get your voice heard. The voice of the independent, audience focused, creator driven web series.

We’re all living now in a world without gatekeepers – we’re not looking to set ourselves up as new gatekeepers. We’re all part of an industry of creative entrepreneurs and artists who aren’t waiting for anyone to let them do their thing. The IWCC is looking to do things that will help all of our members. Big budgets, micro-budgets, IPF series, shows from Halifax or Vancouver or Yellowknife or even Los Angeles. We’re holding “Watch and Learn” online workshops so that people can share their knowledge. We’re hosting screenings and events so you can share your passion. We’re going to put on a web series convention that brings in creators, fans, stakeholders and suppliers in one big celebration of what we do. We’re going to have a website that connects creators with collaborators, cast and crew. We’re going to promote a vision of web series creators as owners of their work. As entrepreneurs. Independent. Creator Driven. Audience Focused.

Those are all good reasons to join, but there’s one big reason, and it’s a simple one. You are this organization. Not us, not them, you. You get to decide what this organization does next. How? By joining. See – you get a nifty membership card!

In a minute, Ash and the interim board of directors are going to tell you what we’re doing and how you can contribute. Just before that happens, I’d like to say how proud I am of this board, and how hard they have worked for the past year to get us here. Now, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Ash Catherwood.

Adam Brandejs and Drew Cox are artists, programmers, hackers & more and they have devoted themselves to this project because they knew 3D scanning was going to become a vital tool for the masses and needed to be transformed into a technology that was both affordable and easy to use.

The Photon allows anyone to take a physical object, and turn it into a digital 3D model on your computer. From there, you can print your file on any 3D printer, or online printing service. Or use the model you created in an animation or video game.

We’ve visited various makerspaces and we were surprised to find a lot of people that had bought 3D printers didn’t really know what to do with them. We understand that 3D modelling software can be harder to learn than one might think and we want to help change that. The power of 3D printing comes in the ability to make personalized items, not simply printing off what other people have created. We really want to give people the tools to see their creativity come to life.

The software was designed from the ground up, and works seamlessly with the hardware. Free to use and download, the software is available for PC, Mac and Linux. Whether you’ve used 3D software before or if you’re just getting into it now you’ll find the Photon software was designed to be as easy as possible. After a one time setup, scanning becomes as easy as one click. We know you want to spend your time creating things and being creative, not calibrating, tweaking hardware or figuring out yet another tool.

So they launched the Photon on IndieGoGo seeking to raise $81,000 to scale up from proto-type to production. They reached that goal within 3 days and now (as of this writing) still have 22 days left in their campaign and have raised more than $200,000. Freakin’ awesome. I contributed and can’t wait to get my hands on the snazzy gizmo.

You can see more recent images of the scanner (which has such an elegant design) and the kind of images & models it can create in the gallery pages of their IndieGoGo site.

There will be more coming from this dynamic duo and the rest of the Matterform team, so stay tuned. It was a pleasure to be invited to visit their workshop/lab and ogle the nifty toys – and drink their beer, thanks guys.

Cheers.

We recorded this while sitting at the back of my house where the kitchen windows look out across our yard. Thankfully there were no scabrous squirrels to distract us. No, seriously, we have some bad ass meth addicted squirrels here in Parkdale – with scraped off hair, open wounds and the shakes – sometimes the spectacle that greets us in the morning is like a cross between Snow White, Breaking Bad and Walking Dead. But for this little section of time at least, the sun shone and the conversation was pleasant.

In my babblings I may have mis-represented the LA web series community and the fine work of the folks at Movie Seals who produce Heroes Of The North. It was not intentional – it’s just the kind of nonsense that always happens whenever I drink too much coffee and then open my mouth – which is why I hate using the phone. I am a moron on the phone.

Hopefully David and I will get a chance to talk together again and I might then be able to pry my foot from my mouth and actually explain what Net Neutrality is all about, why copyright and the DMCA are an abomination, more about the leading figures who are striving to make change and push back against the rapacious corporate tide that is currently seeking to wrest control of the greatest technology the human race has ever used since the invention of the written word.

So there.

Cheers.

If SOPA had been passed I could go to jail for posting this video. It is copyrighted – even though it is a record of a public speech and an historic moment. Legislation like SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, TPP and a myriad of other crocks of shit that are likely to come down the line from the egregious bastard spawn of corporate control and political corruption must always be met with reasoned rage and relentless defiance. Even a small act, like posting this video, has an effect and makes a difference and plods us ever further toward constructive change.

Share this video. Stand up for freedom.

Then read the painfully sad words of Lawrence Lessig as he speaks out about the death and legacy of Aaron Swartz. My heart goes out to him.

After that, if you can spare the time, have a listen to the hour-long tribute to Swartz on 2600′s “Off The Hook” podcast. It’s a difficult but necessary thing to hear.

It’s good to dream. It’s important to act.

Go hug those you love.

From the WIRED article:

Their new online show will teach the essentials of electronics and circuitry to children through kid-friendly dolls with names like Cappy the Capacitor and Hans the 555 Timer Chip. Limor “Ladyada” Fried, Adafruit’s founder and chief engineer (and 2012 Entrepreneur of the Year), will host the episodes, with her team assisting with onscreen and puppeteering duties.

“We’ll have each component have a story, a song and something to do,” Fried says. “We’ll have live feeds in our factory on how things are made. It’s a little Elmo for engineering, a little Mr. Rogers for resistors and a little Sesame Street for Circuits.”

Adafruit is familiar with online broadcasts, hosting weekly “Show-and-Tell” and “Ask an Engineer” shows on Google+ and Ustream for over three years. Circuit Playground was a natural extension for them. “We saw the audience and the participants getting younger with more advanced projects, so we figured there was something there,” Fried says.

Limor Fried was just named Entrepreneur of 2012 and we think her and everyone at Adafruit rocks. We buy kits and gizmos from Adafruit all the time – my son built himself a Pong Clock, I made an Ice Tube Clock, we bought a pantload of Raspberry Pi stuff and we both have way too much troublesome fun with our lockpicks and TV-Be-Gones. It is awesome fun.

Now, I don’t want to be a snarky curmudgeonly puppet snob about any of this – I wish them well and know the show will, in its own way, be very successful – but I really hope their puppets and puppetry skills don’t suck. That would be a sad. There’s enough bad puppetry suckage out in the world. The art deserves more craft. Fingers crossed.

Cheers.

You can find out more about how the show was put together from this old blog post.

I’ve just finished authoring the DVD of the show which has some interesting behind the scenes stuff in it – (yeah, it took me a year to finish that too, leave me alone) – and next year we’ll be releasing an illustrated storybook to go along with it.

In the meantime, make some popcorn, sit back and enjoy the show:

P.P.S. And here’s the poster:

Thank you, Charlie.

And thank you, Melody Sheep – aka John Boswell, the guy behind Symphony Of Science – the creators of this amazing and inspiring video. Well done.

Jerry Nelson was a good friend of mine. He was well known and loved by a great many people and deservedly so. His work as a performer, an actor, a musician, singer and puppeteer touched the lives of countless people around the world. He was known more for the roles he assayed with the Muppets: the Count, Pa Gorg, Gobo Fraggle, Robin The Frog, Emmet Otter, and so many more. To me he was my friend, my colleague, my mentor, my sensei.

I was never a fanboy of the Muppets, their characters or the performers who brought them to life. Oh sure, I ate up their work from back in the days of appearances on Ed Sullivan through the musical specials like The Frog Prince, Hey Cinderella and into the Muppet Show, the Muppet movies and larger and stranger fare like Dark Crystal. Everyone did. They were a fixture in popular culture; and the characters portrayed by Jerry always stood out amongst the others. Even whilst adoring them from afar for their craft it never occurred to me I’d find myself amongst them when production on Fraggle Rock began in 1982.

My first window to the world of the Muppets was Richard Hunt, who was in charge of the audition process and to whom I owe my entire career as a puppeteer and subsequent work in other roles creating productions in television. Richard and I worked closely together to create the character of Junior Gorg, finding our way through the odd and oft times inexplicable mesh of technical and intuitive performance that left both of us shaking our heads and always wondering: “How the hell did we just do that?” and always answering ourselves: “Don’t ask. Just accept it. And strive to do more.” Except we didn’t use the word “strive”, or any of those words actually, we just huddled in a corner and whispered: “Let’s not fuck with it.”

I learned a lot from Richard, about work, the business of the Muppets, life itself and perhaps the greatest thing he ever taught me was: “See that guy? That’s Jerry. Jerry is wise. Listen to him. You really can’t trust anybody in the world – including me, I’ll always be messing with you – but you can trust Jerry. Listen to Jerry.”

And so I listened.

And so I learned.

Jerry became a fast friend both on set and outside of the studio. I hung close to his elbow and savoured his words. The sight of him, perched on set, with the always present paperback SF novel plucked from his back pocket, face buried between the pages between takes, inspired me to feed the brain at every opportunity. His ability to step into any performance situation and make it work made me realize there was less need for extensive preparation and more need to be confident in your skills and always remain open to inspiration. He also, along with Richard, taught me that puppetry was not merely a technical performance – it was acting.

He inspired me and invoked the desire to inspire others.

Jerry’s wife, Jan, shared a studio with my wife, Karen, while Jerry worked in Toronto. We drank at the Pilot Tavern or at bar in the Four Seasons Hotel or at a small dark joint (gone now) called The Village Idiot. We savoured Japanese food in numerous locations and I always enjoyed when he could visit me at home. Trips to Toronto weren’t always work related and we reveled in Jan and Jerry’s holiday or impromptu visits.

The last time I saw Jerry was at his Cape Cod home when we stayed with him and Jan for a few days in August of last year. He was thin and frail and leashed to an oxygen tube that ran through the house like an umbilical cord. We sat together in the late hours, sharing a drink of scotch with a fond memory chaser, and he would play some music he’d been working on. He confessed to being wary of his impending fate, comparing his tubular attachment to the oxygen pump to regressing to a baby in the womb of his house. When we made an excursion into town to pick up the mail and have lunch he strapped on a portable oxygen bottle, commenting: “Outah the womb now. Major Tom.”

And while the tube he trailed behind him through the house seemed less like it was feeding him air and instead sucking the physical life out of him, he continued to be vibrantly alive and creative through every moment. One afternoon we were eating from a bowl of cherries in the kitchen and he started arranging the pits and stems on a plate, pausing now and then to take a picture of his emerging and evolving creation. I loved seeing him like that. Always observing. Always questing. Always expressing. And I knew at that moment just how much I loved him, how much he meant to me across the years and how much I would miss his presence.

Life is a bowl of cherries.

The universe is a vast thing. We are all a part of it, always have been and always will. We arrive here, upon this Earth and experience across the span of our lives what it’s like in this small corner of it all – and then we return. Like Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim we shall all, eventually, become unstuck in time.

When we left Cape Cod, I gave Jerry a big hug and we looked into each other’s eyes, knowing it was for the last time. We both just whispered with a sigh: “Yeah.”

My thoughts are less with Jerry now and more with Jan, wishing her strength and comfort in heart and family.

Jerry’s time here has ended and we are the poorer for it. Personal loss and sadness overwhelms any knowledge in my heart or mind that we are endlessly rich for having known him and for being able to share our time with him. Death and dying sucks but it’s a package deal with this thing we call life. The universe itself, which doesn’t care one way or the other, is a richer place for having made a Jerry.

Words fail me now, except to say: Thank you, sensei.

This is Jerry and Louise Gold singing “When The River Meets The Sea” at Jim’s memorial. We’ll be singing it for Jerry at his.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duduX1MqQ1k&sns=em

DECLARATION

We stand for a free and open Internet.

We support transparent and participatory processes for making Internet policy and the establishment of five basic principles:

Expression: Don’t censor the Internet.

Access: Promote universal access to fast and affordable networks.

Openness: Keep the Internet an open network where everyone is free to connect, communicate, write, read, watch, speak, listen, learn, create and innovate.

Innovation: Protect the freedom to innovate and create without permission. Don’t block new technologies, and don’t punish innovators for their users’ actions.

Privacy: Protect privacy and defend everyone’s ability to control how their data and devices are used.

Pretty basic and to the point, isn’t it?

As corporations continue to corrupt governments via unfettered lobbying and attempt to bypass democratic process with secret trade treaties like ACTA, SOPA, PIPA and TPP it is essential that citizens stand up and proclaim these freedoms to be inviolate. Add your name, as an individual or an organization, and tell those who would seek to control the internet to fuck off.

Cheers.

Enjoy.

Cheers.

My first encounter with his work was through a serialized radio play based on his Dandelion Wine stories which aired from somewhere across the Canada/US border in 1969. I had a small cheap transistor radio but the earplug for it was broken so I would stash the radio under my pillow and listen to the muted voices weave stories in my mind before falling asleep. I can still clearly hear the sounds and emotions of those tales.

I eagerly sought out more of whatever came from this guy named Bradbury. As I grew older and became enamoured of monster movies and the stop motion art of Ray Harryhausen. I didn’t know then that Bradbury and Hausen were life long friends. When I finally found that out it, of course, made perfect sense – how could it have been otherwise?

From all the ghosts, goblins, aliens, demons, monsters, behemoths, tricksters, astronauts and just plain folk Bradbury conjured up he most certainly entertained us but he also gave us a legacy of mindfulness best summed up in this quote from The Martian Chronicles:

“The meaning of life – is life itself.”

Thank you, Mr. Bradbury. Thank you very much.

UPDATE:

And then I find this from Cory Doctorow and this from Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing:

UPDATE PART DEUX:

And how could I forget the lovely and talented Rachel Bloom: