It is always interesting to see just who from our traditional forms of media grasp the ideals of social media and our new media world. Back in December of last year I wrote about musician Peter Himmelman and the interesting stuff that he was doing online. Since that time he has gone on to create Peter Himmelman’s Furious World which is where you will find him every Tuesday providing live music and conversation – with the community that has built itself around him.
Then yesterday I was hanging out on Friendfeed when a link to Kevin Pollak’s Chatroom was posted by Brooks Bishop in a thread about Paget Brewster (star of CBS Criminal Minds) who appeared on his show. Since I was curious about Paget and also because I like Kevin I thought I would check out this Chatroom show of his.
Now I will say that I’m not overly big about sitting and watching online videos of anything but something about Kevin’s show sucked me right in. For the next four hours I got caught up with with much of his past shows and didn’t even notice the time go by.
The thing that got me was during his conversation with Paget they got to talking about the community that creates itself organically around shows like his. It showed me that understanding the value of a community isn’t just limited to those of us within the tech blogosphere and social media but has managed to spread into areas that resistance would have been thought to be a given. However as either Kevin or Paget said during this part of the conversation artists ( musicians and actors : my take away ) who find themselves being crushed by the power of the industry will often seek out other ways to reach out and perform.
This is what I see happening with things like Himmelman’s Furious World and Pollak’s Chatroom – the artists are beginning to see that if done right; and with the right kind of openness and honesty, they can be empowered by their community. Whether or not we will see more things like what these two gentlemen are doing still remains to be seen but I sure hope so. The only fear is that the powerbrokers of the entertainment industry won’t like seeing their stranglehold being broken like this and as a result find ways to shutdown things like Furious World and Kevin Pollak’s Chatroom.
If they do it will be a sad day but until then you can watch Kevin Pollak’s Chatroom every Sunday and see how a community can bring new and interesting things to the web.
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