ENTERTAINMENT: Social Media & the Writers' Strike: How User-Generated Content Won the War of the Words

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Saturday, Sept. 20, 2008: 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM, 230

BlogWorldExpo 2008, Community Track

The use of user generated content during the Writers Strike to both inform and entertain further validated the importance of the Internet medium. This panel, the second of two about Social Media and the Writers Strike, will dive deeper into the impact of websites and videos written (and often performed) by the writers and distributed through YouTube, United Hollywood and other Internet sites. Why did they work so well, and how has user generated content changed the entertainment landscape? What lessons can we apply to our own endeavors, personal, professional and corporate?

Participants

Jeffrey Berman

Jeffrey Berman's first spec script was purchased by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard at Imagine Films. Since then he has written scripts for Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures and The Walt Disney Studio, as well as several independent film companies. In the television market, Berman has written and sold several MOWs including The J.K Rowling bio-pic for NBC television and The Last Rainmaker for Hallmark. Recently, Berman co-founded UnitedHollywood.com and was producer/co-host of UnitedHollywood Live. He also created and hosts, The Write Environment, a compelling series of one-on-one interview with some of today's most prolific writers. He ran the Pencils for Media Moguls campaign during the strike; read more here http://tvdecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/jeff-berman/

Michael Colton

Michael Colton writes for film and television, and is currently working on a new Fox animated show set to air next spring. He and partner John Aboud also appear regularly as panelists on VH1's "Best Week Ever," "I Love the 80s" and other shows. Before moving to L.A., they ran the Web magazine Modern Humorist, and prior to that, Colton was a staff writer for the Washington Post. During the writers strike, Colton & Aboud created the much-discussed parody website AMPTP.com (now housed at AMPTP.humortron.net). Joss Whedon praised them as "heroes," which is obviously an understatement.

Susan Getgood

Susan Getgood is a marketing & social media consultant who is also a huge science fiction and fantasy fan, especially of the Whedonverse and Battlestar Galactica. Sites related to those fandoms was where she got much of her initial information about the strike, and formed the initial inspiration for the Writers Strike panels. She has been involved in online marketing since the early 90s, and watched the web evolve from the first browsers to the interactive communities we participate in today. Since 2004, her firm GetGood Strategic Marketing has been advising organizations of all shapes and sizes on integrated social media and marketing strategies that will help them meet their customers online, build their brands and drive revenue. Prior to that, Susan was a senior marketing executive at an Internet software company. She writes two blogs, Marketing Roadmaps and Snapshot Chronicles and contributes to a number of group blogs. In 2008, Susan was named a Fellow of the Society for New Communications Research .