Forest Key's Blog

Caetano has been making a lot of videos for his youtube channel and wanted to create something with his brother that would stand-out from the relatively mediocre stuff that his comparative peers have been producing.  So we got out the big guns (a GoPro camera for slow-mo footage, and my Canon 5d Mark III for the main action) and did a full shoot, edit, post-production+viz-effects, in a 4hr intensive session at buuteeq’s office.  The kids wrote the script and storyboarded the action using post-it notes.  I shot and did the editing + effects, but i had them watch closely so that I could begin the transfer of knowledge to turn them into Adobe Creative Suite master-users.  This summer we are planning to do a digital film boot-camp with a few other parents helping out with the curriculum.  We’ll cover storyboarding, editing, 2d compositing, and some basic web development for posting.

Here’s the results, of what will surely become a series of videos:

Oh, and while i’m at it, here’s the first video we made way back in 2008, when mom was in the USA for thanksgiving and we boys did a little film shooting at Lane Bridge on our way to school one morning.  Kids were so cute… funny to see the two videos together and how some of their core acting/persona is the same 6 years later!

20 years ago I lived in Madrid for my junior year in college.  It was a lovely time of life.  I was very fortunate to make several new great friends while living in Spain, but i also brought with me several close friends from Palo Alto High School which coincidentally also ended up in Spain that same year (none attended UCLA with me, or had any coordination in planning their own year abroad to coincide with my choice of Spain/Madrid).  At one point a motley crew of us ended up attending a bull-fight (under the auspices of one of our parents who was visiting and hosted both the bull outing and a epic memorable meal at Casa del Botin (one of the oldest restaurants in Spain / the world).

Clark, Tobin, Steve, Dan, Adam, Adam, me, and a local Madrid friend who’s name I can’t remember any longer!

As my year in Madrid was winding down in the summer of 1992, Tobin and I went backpacking together in the southern Cordillera Nevada region which is in Andalusia near Granada.  A magical string of small “white villages” dot the steep slopes of the mountain and are connected by small wandering foot-paths and a precarious mountain road with infrequent bus service.  During a 3 day hike/camping excursion (and by “camping”, i mean we slept on the dirt ground by the side of the road) we had a bunch of laughs and celebrated Tobin’s 21st birthday.

Tobin and I trekking in the Alpujarras, Andalusia Spain 1992

At some point on the last day of our camping one of us proposed that we “should return 20 years from now and re-trace our trek” which stuck in both of our minds and was a looming 2012 date with destiny which I am happy to say we executed to great success last week.  We started by meeting in Madrid where we were joined by 3 friends who are married to europeans and have taken up home on the old-world.  Matt, Mike, and Clark joined us in Madrid for 48hrs of intensive and seemingly perpetual tapas hoping (with beverages of course).  While my liver suffered a bit it was my gut that really hurt (from so much laughing)–amazing how so many things can change yet be the same… the ridiculous antics and reminiscing were together an amazing time travel potion which I drank with great thirst (but let’s be honest, 48hrs was about the right amount of it!)

20 years later, in front of the classic Madrid bar, Beguim de Beguet

As the europeans made their ways back to their families, Tobin and I headed south to Andalusia and through bullet train and rental car transport (neither of which existed (train) or where available to us (as 20 year olds) last time we were here), found ourselves back in our old stomping ground in the Alpujarras.  We couldn’t quite find the same brick wall to sit on and take our “20 years later” photo, but we were definitely in the hunt and amongst the same villages and fields.  Everything seemed the same yet different–lots of internet cafes, more tourism, better roads… and of course, things just seemed smaller and less foreign in general (instead of quaint villagers, we were surrounded by german tourists).  But hey, we did it–we made good on our “let’s do this in 20 years” pledge, and the 3 hour late lunch capped with yet another cafe-con-leche sealed the deal.

Tobin and Forest back in the Alpujarras, Andalusia Spain 2012

As a bonus we hit Granada for some tapas and photo-taking, as well as Ronda which finally gave us some good weather and some ridiculously blue skies.  We also had a chance to visit two of buuteeq’s customers in the region, the Hacienda de San Rafael (farmhouse turned luxury retreat, about 45 minutes from Seville) and Corral del Rey (boutique luxury in the center of the Santa Cruz old city center of Seville, walking distance from everything).

So, what did I learn 20 years later (if anything)?  There were some really great and accessible insights that both Tobin and I rallied around in realtime, as well as some parting thoughts that came together on the long-haul flight back to Seattle:

• 20 years old is a great age!  Before the trip i often spoke of Spain and my time in Spain 20 years ago as equal parts of a wonderful recipe.  Without taking anything away from Spain, i would now say with great clarity that being 20 is a great age and a great time of life and the fact that we were in Spain was a very big secondary dynamic.  The “right of passage” concept played out elegantly for us 20 years ago, in europe and having access to so many inspirations (the art, food, architecture, and distinct culture of spain)–but really, the magic was inside us directly, and it hadn’t have been Spain our muse may have come in many forms.  I am glad that I was “overseas” at that time, it was perfect for me and what I needed to really thrive and grow at that moment in my life… and I will recommend to my own kids when they reach the age.
• Some things don’t change.  Early in the week amongst the larger group dynamic of the 5 of us in Madrid, I shared with the boys how excruciatingly embarrassing i often found their public behavior when we were in highschool.  Matt and Clark and Mike together often involved a public theater of improvisation and one-upmanship in which the three tried to perform in the most outrageous and obnoxious ways, the better to prove themselves the greatest fool of the group.  Upon hearing some of my anecdotal examples of this behavior (such as mock-chasing down and beating each other in public to the horror of casual bystanders) Clark pointed out, emphatically, that “we were in high school!” as if that behavior was (a) excusable and (b) far, far behind us.  Within 15 minutes the same dynamic kicked in, as if prophetically, and the boys did their best to up-the-ante throughout the weekend… fortunately nobody landed in prison, and my gentle reminder to them that (sarcastically) “we we’re in high school!” was great fodder for laughter to us all (albeit I genuinely was horrified by a few of the antics and kept my distance and made sure to not photograph some of the offending stuff so that there would be no public record!)
• Looking -20/+20.  Over a round of monster caipirinhas at the Beguim de Beguet (a favorite bar from 20 years ago, still operating, in dilapidated but charming disrepair) we did the group show and tell exercise of “where did you think you would be in 20 years, 20 years ago… and where do you think you’ll be 20 years from now” and for myself i feel very accomplished and connected on behalf of my 20 year old self–i’ve traveled broadly, experienced great happiness in my marriage and family, and accomplished more than i could have hoped for professionally (in terms of satisfaction), albeit not in the field that at the time I wanted to pursue (film industry).  Looking forward 20 years, i had very little ambition in my answer–basically i just want to see the things that are already in motion play out (my kids, my marriage, healthy and happy, not as much travel, etc.)… and in this regard I really felt like i was looking into a mirror at my younger and older self, over a 40 year narrative arc, and giving a thumbs-up back at the mirror… i loved all three images I saw (20 year old, today, and 60 year old) versions of me.
• Travel is like getting into a teleportation machine.  I’m so happy to be working in the travel industry (buuteeq, hotel marketing services company).  Getting on a plane from Seattle and getting off in Madrid a day later was like rising into the sky and having the planet rotate beneath our boeing jet… when I got off in madrid I was surrounded by life-long-friends, transported back in time to 20 years ago where we retraced steps and experiences.  Just a few days later to get back on the plane and just as quickly to find myself back in Seattle with my current day joys of family and work–it was a lovely trip.

Yes, i know, the Canon 5d mark ii is not news (more than 3+ years old), and all you serious pros or enthusiasts with $3,500 USD to burn are now into the mark iii and its amazing low-light capabilities and improved whatever.  But for me, the 5d mark ii is the new thing, as the used market for these has brought the price down to the range of mere mortals like me (never mind that after I added the fine piece of 16-35mm 2.8 glass, the price was back up into the ridiculous range)… so, in celebration of my late arrival to the awesome party of full size sensor DSLR video, here’s a few recent videos including some low light interior stuff at the buuteeq office in ballard, where we pump out great hotel internet marketing SaaS love!

And by the way, when you hear the cow-bell ring in the last of these, that’s the sound of a buuteeq customer signing up… music to my ears even when I hear it on youtube (kind of the pavlov dog magic tone for all of us at the buuteeq office)

Stop calling it SEO.  What we really mean to say when we say SEO is “Google Organic Search Optimization”–so i’m going to start calling it that, GOSO.

I studied history in college and remember (perhaps incorrectly?) that the 13th century philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas characterized people as having various tiers of spiritual and intellectual access to god: some experiencing the church teachings as literal narrative, others as parable, and at the purest/highest echelon, altogether different divine connection.  GOSO similarly has different levels of access and understanding, divided into 2 major groups.

GOSO Group 1: Folks that know
There are only 2 tiers of folks that really know how things work, current and former employees of Google, and people you will never meet, as follows:

• Secret Society GOSOites (insiders).  These are the several 1000 Google employees that work on the actual algorithms and on any given day, as a collective consciousness, could tell us all *exactly* how the system works and how to create content and what tactics to take on the web to *guarantee* success.  (note that any single member of this tribe actually does not have full consciousness… it really requires a hive mind to grok at this point!)  Members of this group have never, and will never, speak about specifics on the subject of GOSO’s true inner workings.  Spokespeople for Google such as the excellent Matt Cutts (his blog here) talk about GOSO and give guidelines, but these become the least-common-denominator best practices that everyone (who is competent) follows, thereby creating a series of hoops that we all must jump through just to get back to the starting line, and thus largely removing any real positive impact from following them.  I call this the GOSO Tax–it is web development, copy writing, and significant time and energy that must be invested just for table-stakes… to actually get ahead, you need to go further, and will have to look elsewhere.  Unfortunately every business owner I know has to deal with this hidden but significant tax, or suffer the consequences of *really* tanking and getting NO organic traffic.
• GOSO Ninjas.  Just like a real Ninja, you’ve never heard of, seen, or talked to a GOSO Ninja.  By their very definition, these people are unknowable.  Here’s why.  These are the folks that have reverse engineered or otherwise figured out (albeit sometimes just for a window of time, before google employees track down and close the loophole) how to *print money* with GOSO.  Just like a alchemist that has discovered how to synthesize solid gold by mixing water and sand, a GOSO Ninja has access to the arbitrage that comes with knowing how to really manipulate SEO rankings and by extension, to drive meaningful volumes of clicks/traffic which is a commodity that can be turned into ready cash.  GOSO Ninjas work for *themselves*… printing money for *themselves*… and they keep all knowledge about GOSO strictly for *themselves*.  If you discovered a limitless well of solid gold, would you charge $150 USD an hour to teach other people how to extract gold from the well, knowing that in doing so it would only take a few extra folks tapping into your well before the well would be sealed off by Google?  Or would you be greedy, and just pull gold from the well for as long as you could… maybe take several trips a year to exotic luxury islands and enjoy your Ninja-ness?  Oh, and anyone that claims to be a GOSO Ninja is a fool, because they don’t even know what they don’t know, which is that they are NOT.  1st rule of GOSO ninjadom, you don’t talk about GOSO ninjadom!!

GOSO Group 2: The unwashed angst ridden masses
Everyone else, including myself and all of my friends that work in tech (especially those that work at google but not in the search algorithm group, because they know what they don’t know!) and every vendor i’ve spoken to who is a “GOSO specialist”, and every competitor i’ve competed against–all of us, without exception–are members of a collectively “in the dark” group of folks that don’t know how GOSO really works!  What separates us is to what extent we portray ourselves as something other than what we are, divided approximately in these sub-tribes:

• GOSO Coaches.  These are the benevolent and generally well meaning folks that know what they don’t know, and limit their GOSO services to “coaching” and providing guidance and best practice advice, largely if not entirely by repeating what they have learned from staying very current with Google spokesperson guidance for best practice.  The information that GOSO Coaches peddle is public domain knowledge, but requires a lot of attention to detail to track (as Google is making changes all the time), and requires a lot of content management and technical maintenance:  keeping web pages up to date with different metadata and HTML & CSS code syntax, recommendations on keyword sets to focus on for success within your specific geography and business sector, writing good copy that is both structured for human beings and also for Google robots that will index the page, and most importantly, good old-fashioned marketing which encompasses visually appealing and subject-compelling content that human beings will actually click on, blog-about, refer to their friends, tweet, and otherwise celebrate.  This last piece is the stuff that dreams are made of (good content) and if a GOSO Coach can be in your corner helping you to be better at these tasks, then they can be an invaluable partner towards your business’ success in organic traffic.  The best GOSO Coaches are the ones that tell you in so many words “hey, i’m just a coach–i’ll work with you, we’ll do some good stuff together, i’ll tell you what i’m doing and bill you for those hours with a clear statement of work, and together we’ll carefully monitor the results in meaningful terms (money you are making selling your product is the best!) and evaluate this investment as we go along together, because there are many ways you can spend your hard-earned money, and GOSO may not be appropriate at all for your business.”
• GOSO Charlatans.  These are folks that charge by the hour and suggest that through their efforts they will be able to “make you a first page result”, or suggest vague goals such as “improve” or “gain traffic” without any hard numbers or metrics.  They will never actually tell you what they are going to do, how they are going to do it, and most importantly, what the cost/benefit analysis is of actually succeeding.  They instead suggest that GOSO is a dark art that involves secret skills that they command.  What GOSO traffic/benefits are even possible within your particular business category/geography?  Would success achieving those ranking and traffic results warrant the investment, and how does that ROI (return on investment) calculation compare to OTHER investments that could be made that might be more easily tracked, measured, and perform better?  These considerations rarely enter the discussion with these folks–because for them GOSO work for GOSO sake is the real agenda… and there is always work to be done when there is no clear metric for success, and no transparency into the work!  Here are some tell-tell signs that you are talking to one of these folks:
  • they claim to be a GOSO Ninja (remember, if they are talking about being a Ninja, then they aren’t–why would they waste time talking to you?)
  • “i’m an expert and will improve your results”–highly suspect because if they were really self-aware they would say “I will try to improve your results but can’t guarantee anything because GOSO is an unknowable black art!”
  • “I can’t tell you what i do, when i do it, or how i do it–because xxxx”–where xxxx is any excuse of any kind–there is NO legitimate reason why a vendor doing hourly labor work as a service would not be able to fully document their activities.
  • They report on their success/progress with statements like “we are making great progress, we have moved from position X to position Y in google results”–(one possible exception is where Y is the number 1, 2, or 3.)  Even if you are getting ranked in the top 3 positions, reporting the “ranking on the page” as the primary measure of success is disingenuous, because SOOO many factors are involved and the direct activities of your vendor are probably only one small part of that success.  It is more likely that the New York Times wrote an article about you or your customers are raving about you on Facebook or Twitter, and that is what drove your breakthrough–and any social media driven SEO vendor would be characterizing your success because of their work for you in social metrics, not in page rank slots!  ”Page rank slot up/down movement” is the stuff of charlatans and fools.
• GOSO Factories.  These vendors provide a laundry list of “things we will do for you” that are easily done automatically by computers, or that can be outsourced to low-skilled technical labor in a far away exotic land.  Here you are getting what you pay for (i’ll give them that), but what you are paying for is a whole bunch of meaningless stuff that Google has already completely negated and made pointless.  Anything, and i mean *anything*, that can be done systematically to improve your GOSO performance is something that Google must ignore, because it gives too much leverage to someone to go build a systematic GOSO distortion engine.  ”we’ll submit articles with great links to your site to 1000s of blogs”, or “we’ll register your business with 100s of online directories of businesses”–these are two classic “we will do something measurable” offers that are 100% worthless, worse, they can degrade your performance because Google can identify the massive scale/automation at play and Google doesn’t like to be manipulated in this way (it’s too easy, they’d rather leave that to Ninja’s who work much harder at it!)
• GOSO Fools.  These are vendors that don’t know what they don’t know but have no sinister intent.  They often will refer to online experts as sources to credit their activities and tactics, but unlike coaches who go straight to the source (Google is the only source!), they will quote 2nd and 3rd degree references much like when we were in high school and used Encyclopedias for a quick fix of “expertise”.  The heresy of “such and such SEO expert” (usually a GOSO Charlatan or other Fool) is foolish testament, unless they are preaching the one true faith–the inherent *futility* of GOSO expertise to begin with!  Again, if it was knowable and scalable, Google has already closed the gap–so fools are simply trading in the lowest-common-denominator of best practices, but representing this information as something special and valuable, when it is not.
• GOSO Laypeople.  This is the majority of the online community, of both creative and technical web professionals as well of the business owners and marketing professionals that they serve.  They are either angst ridden about the subject of SEO, and in search of a Coach… or they are at peace, comfortable in their bliss of unknowingness and spending their karma points on other things (SEM perhaps!).

Epitaph

Nobody reading this  post (which should have been interpreted as intentionally faux-serious-silly) should feel offended by my segmentation except for the Ninjas (who don’t like their existence to even be mentioned).

My favorite reading from others on this subject

One of my guiding lights on this subject has been the phenomenal journalism on this subject that the New York Times has published over the past 18 months.  While SEO-beat journalist David Segal doesn’t use my terminology–the characterizations are here; some of my favorites:

• The Ninja’s favorite monetization strategy, “lead generation”: Picking the Lock of Google’s Search Jul 2011
• Google’s penchant for shutting down any loopholes that have real impact in SEO scores, in this case for a Ninja who spoke out about his skills and was cast-out of the club: A Bully Finds a Pulpit on the Web in Nov, 2010 and then later Online Seller Who Bullied Customers Pleads Guilty in May 2011
• The Dirty Little Secrets of Search (in which JC Penny’s SEO Charlatan agency turns out to be pretty effective, landing JC Penny in trouble with Google) Feb 2011
• And this is a recent goodie I just read this AM, by Jill Whalen

With the announcements this week at Microsoft’s Build event (which I only fleetingly caught news of via twitter reposts), and the apparent complete end/unwind of Silverlight… i was nostalgic for my time working on it and associated initiatives at micrsoft for 6 years; i had a recollection of having written a email to friends talking about the profound experience of presenting on the strategy to the sr. leadership, and thanks to google mail search, was able to uncover the email and thought i would share it here. To the 1000 or so fellow employees and additional 10s of thousands of customers that worked on the initiative, it was fun while it lasted… here’s my thoughts from late 2004:

Hi. It’s 4ish on a Friday afternoon. The weather is foggy, but mild in temperature. I’m parked in my car, sitting in the passenger side front seat, typing on my laptop. Out the front window I have an expansive view of Greenlake, which directly in front of our house (although I’m parked down the block by the aquatic center). The reflection on the glass flat surface of the lake creates a beautiful image of gray hues that blend sky and lake into one smeared image that evokes my idea of what having poor eyesight must be like—everything is somewhat blurry, yet the impression is clear, just as in a water lily painting from the French school.

I pulled over while on my way home so that I could type these thoughts to you. I had two very important revelations today that I wanted to share, on this, the eve of the end of the year. This has been a very big year for our family—the move to seattle, the new job for me, the changes for cristina as she explores her role as mother and possible return to work in the coming year, the boys growing and changing each and everyday…. Today was my last work day at the office for the year as we will be taking the next two weeks off to visit family in california. As many of you know, today I had a big meeting with the senior folks at work, to review the strategy around the products that I have been working on; the preparations for the meeting involved several weeks of non-stop meetings and preparations amongst a core team of about 10 folks in my general organization; for the big event today, three of us were included in the meeting, where 60 slides, comprised of all of our best thinking and multiple iterations of analysis and investigation, were condensed down into 5 slides (and the fourth slide had only 20 words on it, so really it was 4 slides). For those of you that don’t know, “slides” is late 20th century parlance for a Powerpoint unit; powepoint is the corporate software tool used by everyone to make presentations… I suppose the word slide refers to some distant long lost process of creating images on transparency paper which could then by light projected onto a screen (way before my time!)? So, needless to say the meeting was quite interesting… actually for me, it turned out to be very very interesting, in a totally unexpected way! But, before I get to that thought (one of two I want to share), I want to tell you about something else first:

On my way home, immediately after having left the big meeting, while trying to grapple with the strange feelings of bewilderment and awe still swirling through my system from the events experienced on the top floor of the biggest building, I was listening to Caetano Veloso on the CD player. The song playing is probably called “Maria Brethania”, although I can’t be sure and can’t find the cd case to confirm. Caetano is singing about his sister (of the title), who is an equally famous Brazilian singer. I’ve been reading a biography of Caetano Veloso that my Aunt/Uncle Howard & Elaine gave me over the summer, and in its pages I’ve been learning about the relationship between caetano & maria. How curious that two very close in age siblings would both emerge, with their own completely unique styles and poetic voices, as among the most important musical artists of Brazil? In this song Caetano sings beautifully in English, about a desire that Maria would “write him a letter to tell him some things”; but “she has given her soul to the devil, who has given it to god, but she has bought a flat by the sea”. I was puzzled by these words, and was meditating on their possible meaning. Are they estranged, and he is reaching out to her to reconnect, through song? Is he speaking of his love and admiration for her, and what an inspiration she has been to his artistic voice? (she had commercial success before he early in their careers, in spite of being the younger sibling). Fascinating stuff… at least to me! Caetano is such a beautiful person, I recently saw him in Paris performing at the Chatellete theater in center of town—he sang interpretations of English songs that he admires, in English, such as Michael Jackson’s “Billy Jean”, and Nirvanas “Team Spirit”… not exactly the material you expect from the “bob dylan of brazil”, but it really showed me the depth of his artistic capability—the man is truly a gorgeous ball of conglomerated high density beauty! Cristina and I (and Joaquin & Lisa) saw his sister Maria perform in Rio de Janeiro a few years back… wasn’t the best show, we arrived 20 minutes before the end after getting lost several times on the way there… so I can’t say too much about my awe for her; but Caetano absolutely worships her and in his book speaks of her constantly as a parallel spirit in his life, a mirror that constantly reveals to him his own essence.

So I wanted to tell you this—Caetano is beautiful. His music is beautiful. Listening to his music makes me very happy. Through his lyrics just now in the car I had an entire introspective moment, drowning in the thoughts of the relationships, the literal and emotional significance layered in the song to his sister. These thoughts, this joy, while in bumper to bumper traffic on the evil bridge known to us Seattleites as “the floating bridge” or “520” (may she be dammed, it takes me 60 minutes to travel 4 miles each day over her treacherous surface). And I was wondering… does the“escape” offered by this song, which is “taking me away” from the traffic jam… is it really an escape? Or is it more of an “entrance”… something that is taking back to the real, to the fundamental, to the shared experience of human existence? At this moment it seems to me the later. And this brings us to my second thought of the moment:

The Big Meeting. Wow. It happened in a flash, took only 25 minutes, but in some ways felt like 2 hours, like it was in slow motion… like everything that was said had been scripted meticulously and was super loaded with double and triple meaning. As I said earlier, we prepared for 100s of hours, we wrote 100s of slides, and we condensed everything, every ounce of it, into a reduction of crytalized thought made up of a few 100 words on just 5 slides. For you to understand what I experienced, I have to tell you about a movie I watched the week before when Tata was visiting—Elizabeth (1999). I think you’ve all seen it; 1500s, England, Elizabeth is queen, but there is treachery and intrigue all around her as the protestant/catholic contingencies vie for power, she considers marriage to various suitors including the Duke of ‘Orange (“voila, I am oh-ranje…”) and the King of Spain… anyways, if you haven’t seen it rent it, very good. There are numerous scenes at the palace where the queen is surrounded by dozens of hanger-ons… her maidens, her advisors, the lords, etc. etc. She gets conflicting advice constantly, is not sure whom to trust, and in the end learns that she must become a “virgin” and trust only herself, goes on to be a damn good monarch and leaves England rich and supreme ruler of the world by the time of her death 40 years later. Picture the court, full of various senior advisors at all time of day; the handlers, the guards, the food preparers, the jesters, the generals, the suitors, the lawyers from parliament, the bishops from the churches, etc. etc. Rooms meant to hold 20 people comfortably, stuffed to the brim with randoms jockeying for position and favor. Ok, with that image in mind, you are now with me as I enter the room for the meeting. I’m on the top floor of the castle.. I’ve made it past burley looking guards (plain-clothed, but clearly members of the elite secret society that protects the emperor at all times… always watching, anyone who comes near him), and I enter into “the room” (I’ve been invoked via email from the lieutenants, “come in now”). At the war room table, the wise old men—the lords and earls who have divided the empire and constantly fight amongst themselves for position. Around the central arena, the second tier gathers in clusters, looking for lines of sight to the center of the discussion… the King & Queen. I take my seat in a back row, about 10 feet from the royals. My lord reads through our slides. The royals ask some questions; some of the questions are directly relevant and show a shrewd ability to cut immediately to the critical issues, a legendary and evidently true (as witnessed by myself) power, evidence of the divine relationship of the royals to god himself. There are other distractions, about what’s on the menu for dinner for example, or how the peasants are doing in a certain district… not really relevant, but for some reason of interest to the king on this particular day. Might the king know something that others in the room do not about those particular peasants? When I hear mention of a certain vassal, I smile knowing I have gained important strategic favor with an ally in the room, for it is I who suggested that certain vassal should be mentioned in light of a certain strategic anecdote—I’ve curried favor! I introspect—might every single thing said in this meeting have similar political/relational relevance… is the entire discourse just a series of very tightly networked impulses? The events continues to unfold, the results are very favorable. Prior to the meeting my team and I gathered a list of 3 key issues that might become sinkholes during the discussion… turns out none of the three, nor any others, are raised. We are finished early, with only one suggestion for additional thought regarding whether or not our plan of action might not actually destroy the state of Monrovia. Says the king, “what about Monrovia… might it be better to ask Monrovia for help in raising an army, as opposed to destroying Monrovia and taking its women and children?” There is silence in the room… glances are exchanged, knowingly, amongst those who covet Monrovian brides… ahh, we shall have them, indeed…

I’m in the parking lot. Dazed. What has happened? Why this feeling of confusion. I listen to Caetano, I have my introspection on music and traffic… and then, I understand. The big meeting makes sense to me, I know why I feel like I do.

Very few people know about my deep spiritual convictions… turns out, I am quite spiritual (at least I consider myself so). A principle tenet of my faith goes something like this: the human experience, normalized across small variations in color and intensity, is essentially universal. I believe that whether you live today and are rich, or whether you lived in 500 BC and were poor… you essentially are watching the same movie. Happiness, pleasure, fear, pain, angst, loss, acceptance, and ultimately death… these are and other such words describe the essence of what we all experience in life. But life is better today than it was 100 years ago, some might say? Women are better off! People live longer! There is less war and disease, more justice, better quality of life!! Well, in my opinion these are misguided and poorly-informed assertions. When history is taken into account in full spectrum, these variations blend into the background, much as greenlake and the horizon blend together in the misty watercolor before. Just within my short lifetime we’ve seen the oscillations that can occur in areas such as civil rights, sexual moirés, religious influence in civil life, disease, racism, and dozens of other indicators of what we think defines the human condition. When you average these out, across hundreds or thousands of years, the resulting value is a constant! I’ve had a few personal experiences that have re-enforced for me this constant. Seeing my children born, especially cristina’s birth of Caetano, out of hospital in a completely raw/natural form. The death of my beloved friend Goodwin, and the ensuing feelings of loss. Watching the sunrise over the dunes of morocco, the intense contrast of colors provoking a natural high that I still remember. The pure bliss of looking at the stars and feeling directly connected to the entire material universe, from the vantage point of the back of an open top truck, at 10k feet of elevation in the andes mountains, after having literally walked across a deserted border crossing from Bolivia into Chile..

Being in the present of the king today connected me to the times of Queen Elizabeth; to the experience of being in the presence of the most powerful, wealthiest person on the planet, in the company of her entourage and advisors, and witnessing the curious machinations of men. Politics, power, influence, favor… these were all peddled, on a grand stage unlike none other I have personally experienced, but not in the least unlike the scene that has been played out across human existence, in front of Caesars and Pharaohs, Monarchs and Presidents, and yes, the most powerful corporate business leaders and Popes (did I mention how much I dislike organized religion?). Today I was touched by one of those special threads that hold the ball of wax together…that connect the dots.

So, I wanted to tell you this. Today I enjoyed the moment, I saw meaning in the world, and I witnessed the interconnectedness of the human experience. I spent some time with God.

For those that want the less allegorical account, I’m happy to recount offline.

I just went through a very stressful experience that I thought I’d share for the benefit of others that will surely run into the same issues. I made the mistake of signing up for Vimeo and started using the service for my business’ marketing needs, and then was made aware after the fact by a friend that the Vimeo service is strictly for non-commercial purposes and that I was running the risk of being shut-off at any moment by the vimeo team. (they do indicate this on the sign up page, but it was below the fold so to speak, and I did not see it while i was reading their materials–when i saw a for $fee$ “pro” package, i just assumed that was for someone like me, who was willing to pay a fee to host videos on the web–a wrong assumption in this case).

This excellent blog post speaks to the less than stellar notification in the vimeo sign up screen.   I won’t get into the vimeo bashing debate which you can read about elsewhere (particularly in their own forums), where folks express displeasure at vimeo’s lack of a commercial terms service for customers like me–i’ll just say that i was *super* happy with vimeo, loved their service, and really wanted to stay with them and would have paid market prices to stick with them (that is, i saw tremendous value in their service and wanted to pay them for the service). What i do want to elaborate on is the painful process i then went through to find a alternative, which had a happy resolution when I switched all of my videos to Brightcove.

First, some context:  I’m the founder of a SaaS software company called buuteeq, and like all SaaS software companies, we use video as a primary marketing communication medium to show how our product works and to create training and sales materials. When we launched in January of 2011 we had over 50 videos, and a month later that number ballooned to over 100 (separate videos for each language we market/support, so English & Spanish as separate videos so that both V.O (voice over) and on screen graphics/UI are correctly presented to viewers). As we add French, Mandarin Chinese, and other target markets, we will very quickly end up with 100s of videos to manage.  Here are core features we need as part of a video hosting/delivery solution:

• Deliver to both PC and mobile browsers (so we need HTML5/iOS compatible video as well as Flash), with the associated multiple encoding bitrates/codecs that make for a good experience depending of available bandwidth.  We want to produce one video at 720p resolution (1280*720), upload that master video to a service, and have all the variations encoded for us automatically and then presented correctly to our viewers as needed.
• Our customers are all over the world, so we want our videos delivered from a content delivery network (CDN) that places the videos closer to the customer so that they load faster.  China is a big target market for us, so we want a service that is not blocked in china by the chinese firewall (so that eliminates social video sites like youtube and vimeo).
• We want great analytics info on the videos so we can see how they are being loaded, played, and shared.  We track a lot of our marketing materials use with Google Analytics, but for the videos itself, you really need a dedicated analytics module that is tied to the servers that are delivering the videos, and not to the pages where they are being seen.  Many of the SaaS services for hosting video even provide analytics within the video, so you can see what part of the video was watched (they can do this because the video is being streamed, not progressively downloaded, and therefore know what bits were actually on screen as opposed to only knowing that a bit was downloaded but perhaps never displayed).
• We update our videos often, since our videos are largely screen recordings of our own software product which is changing all the time–so we need a quick way to replace the videos with new versions, and don’t want to have to then update the HTML pages that invoke that video (imagine uploading a new version of a video called “QuickStart Overview” and having to then go and change the code on all of our html source to point to a new video–that would *suck* and be very error prone).  Most of the services call this ability “replace video”, where a new video (and all encodings of that video) replace the old files on the server but use the exact same ID codes so that all HTML loading of that video instance uses the same code.  This essentially gives us a great CMS (content management system) where we can replace/change videos on the server/service, and never have to muck with the code on HTML pages that load the video.  Also, this gives us continuity on statistics for the video, so we can see how that video is being watched even as the version of the video changes.
• Those are the biggies, but some additional point features that are also important include: adding a still image at the head of each video that loads in the page and looks better than just some frame from within the video itself (like a title-card), specifying post-play behavior so that when a video ends we can specify what happens next, and having a good looking/simple/clean player skin that we can just deploy (we don’t want to do any flash programming to create our own).
• We currently host our blog on wordpress.com, which does NOT allow several forms of otherwise standard video embedding (they strip out javascript, iframes, and other common embed techniques).  wordpress.com has a special tag format that they only support for a handful of services, and in the end this was a critical factor because some of the services just didn’t support wordpress.com and would have required us moving our blog to our own server (running wordpress on our own servers, but not managed by the for-profit wordpress.com variant).

Some features that were NOT important to us, that are important to other customers and are a big emphasis for many of these services, include:

• we do NOT care about advertising and monetization of our videos–our videos are exclusively about telling our story, through video, and in no way are we building revenue around the videos themselves.
• we are NOT a media company, so a lot of the capabilities related to “building television channels online”, or “taking our important IP/content and protecting it while also allowing it to be distributed” are irrelevant to us.
• we are NOT looking to create social buzz around our videos–sure, we’d love for people to be fans of the videos and comment and tag and share them, but let’s not kid ourselves, our videos are product demos and training materials that will only be relevant to our target customers–so while sharing the video itself is important, having a bunch of random consumers seeing and talking about our videos is not in the cards and therefore not a priority from the service. If we do a marketing video that we hope will go viral, Youtube beckons.

So, with those requirements (and those lack of requirements), i went about looking for an alternative.  Here’s a brief summary of each service I looked at, and why it wasn’t an option for me.  I found many of the services on a website that the vimeo help forum recommended using to identify an alternative to their own service, http://www.vidcompare.com/.  I looked at 20 or so, signed up and tested about 10, and here are my notes on the more interesting options:

First, the 2 most popular communities that come to mind immediately:

• Vimeo: way cooler than youtube, and better looking!  All the features I want, particularly great looking video quality and player skin, awesome minimalist/efficient interface on their website, good enough analytics, and did I say already, I loved their service and wanted to stay on it!!  Bad: blocked in china, only progressive download so no streaming (leads to great quality but slow start times), and fatally, not interested in me as a customer (they actually prohibit my use case in their TOS and would have likely shut me off at some point with little warning, as they have many others who have a bone to pick with them on their own blog posts).  Hope they someday open up a “commercial use service”, but until that day, they are just not an option.  And vimeo, thanks for not having shut me off–i loved you while i was with you!
• Youtube: no replace video feature, minimal analytics, no way to turn off their ugly corp logo on the video, and the possibility of them adding adds over/under/around my video at anytime without me being able to pay them for the right to not have ads.

There are many video services that are NOT intended for companies like mine (instead, they are focussed on serving “media” scenarios where the videos themselves are the monetizable content):  These companies i shied away from because they (a) tended to not have the features I needed, (b) definitely did not speak to my scenario as a customer and with that I would be facing an eventual problem along the lines of the already mentioned situation with vimeo.  These include all the companies with the word “tv” in their title, or “your own channel”, and a strong emphasis on monetization opportunities above all else (eg: “we’ll help you make money on your videos and build an audience”).   A sampling of these type of companies: blip.tv, streamingvideoprovider, eyeview digital,

And then there are the numerous video services that *are* intended for companies like mine (commercial, marketing and training oriented content):

• ooyala: this was a close 2nd to my choice of brightcove.  all the features i needed save 1–no support for wordpress.com (so we would have had to move our blog to a new service, or run our own wordpress instance).  They are much pricier than Brightcove (they start at $500 and up, as opposed to $99), only offer 2 encode streams (Brightcove gives more), and are not actively targeting my exact use case/customer segment.  The sales guys at ooyala were nice, but when i asked them to tell me why i should go with them over brightcove they really had no idea how to answer, and instead spoke in very broad terms about being “cutting edge” and “lots of really big media companies are choosing them”, as opposed to being able to speak to what really mattered to me.  This was what really scared me off–because after my issue of having to leave Vimeo because they weren’t interested in my customer scenario/segment, the last thing I wanted to do is end up with a service that doesn’t really care about me as a target customer.  With ooyala, i got the very clear signal that i was just below what they really care about in terms of price, and how my videos would be used.  Charging more, offering me fewer features, and on top of it telling me how great they were without being able to be specific about the difference between them and their main competitor that i was signaling i was considering–not confidence inspiring).

Wow, I wrote this blog entry like 45 days ago and just got really busy elsewhere (alas, we launched our business and have customers to attend to!), and I just came back across this unpublished blog entry and figured I should at least publish it and hopefully someday finish it.  These are the other systems I evaluated in detail:

• vzaar
• vpfactory
• Videopress.com
• kaltura
• sorenson360
• veeple

And then there is the service I switched to and now recommend to others: Brigthcove.  Here are the key highlights of their offering that make it the best choice for me: (drum-roll please… I never got around to writing this part, but intend to complete this blog entry at some point soon!!  Suffice to say, we are live with Brightcove, happy with their service and support, and working with them on some feature tweaks and requests that hopefully will make the service completely perfect for us!)