What a crazy, fun, intense, and exhausting week it turned out to be! There were parties, meetups, conferences, and endless meetings to be had, and it all concluded with the Webby Awards. I didn’t make it to the Webby Gala, but I did hit up the Webby Film & Video Awards, and had an amazing time with Tim Shey, Rachel Garcia, Erin Flood, Derek DeAngelis, Roy Weissman, and Vanessa Pappas!!

Vanessa Pappas, Kenyatta Cheese (Rocketboom), Erin Flood

The night started off with a cocktail reception, which I remarked felt like some sort of a high school reunion. Just about every person I adore from the Video 2.0 industry was there, and I felt at home.
We drank champagne, posed for pics (That’s Webby Award Winner Derek D and myself), and caught up with old friends as we readied ourselves for a three hour ceremony hosted by 30 Rock’s Judah Friedlander. As Derek D accepted the People’s Choice Award for Sports, we cheered him on from our seats (which happened to be next to where Lorne Michaels, Michel Gondry, Rosie Perez, and Seth Meyers were seated!!)

Derek D Accepts the FLD Webby Award from Michelle DeForest on Vimeo.

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I’m pumped for next week. Why? It’s Internet Week in NYC! Imagine SXSW Interactive, minus the panels, and set in the most lively city in the US. Sure it’s a bonus that I live here, and I have an excellent excuse to hit the parties at night and come in to the work late, but correct me if I’m wrong, NYC seems like a perfect setting for celebrating what we are all devoting our careers to try and make the most of.

*Brief History Lesson* It all started when the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting called up the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences (aka the Academy behind the Webby Awards), and asked them to help rally companies to throw parties and make their meetups and conferences a part of the festivities.

The events start this Tuesday, June 3, and run through Tuesday, June 10 concluding with the Webby Awards Gala. And in case you hadn’t heard, Fast Lane Daily picked up a Webby Award so we’re ready to celebrate BIG TIME!

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Jeaux Janovsky, our community manager for Channel Frederator and Pulp Secret and a wonderful artist as well, stopped by a talk by Giant Robot founder Eric Nakamura at the Korea Society earlier this week. Jeaux summed up the talk on the Channel Frederator blog, and posted his notes from the evening in the form of this awesome drawing:

Looks like it was a pretty inspiring event — and it’s obvious Eric dug the drawing, too.

It’s Earth Day, if you hadn’t heard. I thought I’d see a lot more web series tackling the subject, but a quick look around came up with nothing I could really link to that was Earth Day-specific, even over at The Green (If you know of any great Earth Day eps from the web, please add a comment or link below). Of course, on Viropop and ThreadBanger, Earth Day’s a big deal. For starters, we have this special Zaproot episode (though, oddly, it’s their Paris Hilton episode that’s featured on YouTube’s front page today), which includes things you can do on Earth Day.

ThreadBanger has an Earth Day special edition of Decor it Yourself, our newest popular series, featuring the very winning Meg Allen, who shows you how to compost and create your own indoor garden. (more…)

The latest from Next New Networks’ Jeaux Janovsky on the Channel Frederator Awards Blog:

I wanna go to the 2008 Channel Frederator Awards Site 2.0!!!

It’s Alive!!! Alive!!!
That’s right Fredheads. We’re rolling out the 2008 Channel Frederator Awards site fresh out the oven and onto the secret laboratory floor.

SPLAT!

It’s crawling around on it’s little stumps nicely for now, but soon our creature will be lumbering around terrorizing villagers in no time!

This is the site where you can keep tabs and be up to date on all our plans, nominees, categories, behind the scenes info right up until launch date!

Be one of the first to check out essays and art from our esteemed colleagues in Animation as they are delivered to us.

This is your chance to be the ultimate insider to the 2008 Channel Frederator Awards.

Yup. We’re proud parents.

I imagine the SXSW Interactive festival can look excessive, with all the blog posts, photos and videos of geeks out every night partying and having a little too much fun. But here’s an example of things that happen at SXSW which are why we all go: boarding the plane today, I ran into Pete Cashmore one last time, whose great blog Mashable had just run an insightful piece about our company a few hours before, and I was able to tell him in person I appreciated the story and let him know we’re fans.

This was just one of a hundred small but important interactions I had with people over the past week who are important to my life and work in some way, many of whom I only see once a year at gatherings like SXSW. It’s become the best opportunity to spend quality time with lots of people from across the interactive (and film and music) world in one place, and I’ve seen returns both personal and professional for every hour I’ve spent there.

The interactive conference was bookended for me by a couple of great NNN-related events that were part of both the Film and Interactive Festivals (which are separate, but feature a handful of joint panels and parties). (more…)

Congratulations to Steve and Zadi on the 100th Episode of EPIC FU (formerly JETSET). They started working with us at Next New Networks around episode 50, so that’s also getting close to a year of great episodes together. Marc Boxser from our team shot a tribute video featuring many of us from the New York office talking about our favorite EPIC FU moments of the past 100 episodes (with some great editing help from Justin and Ramon):

In the video are, in order: Marc Boxser, Jed Simmons, Steve Nelson, Liam Collins, Fred Seibert, Roy Weissman, Erik Beck and Gary, Patty DeArtega, Jared Roessler, Ramon DeSouza, Justin Johnson, Tim Shey, Corinne Leigh, Emil Rensing, Diane DeCordova, Herb Scannell, Scott Moschella, Dan Meth, Ben Ross, and Rob Czar.

You’ll notice some of the footage is messed up — maybe it’s something similar to what happened to EPIC FU’s latest episode, embedded here below. Can you figure out what’s going on? What exactly is FUnetics, and why are so many videos popping up on YouTube with the same mysterious pledge?

This year a number of us from Next New Networks will be at the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas, and if you’ll be there we’d love to meet you and hang out at the event.

Three of our networks will be covering the Film, Music, and Interactive portions of the Festival — Indy Mogul, ThreadBanger, and Epic Fu — with episodes both during and after the event. If you see anyone you recognize from the networks walking around, please say hi!

In addition, we’re joining with our friends at Tumblr to sponsor the most epic Rock Band party the world has ever known on Monday night. Party attendees can play Rock Band onstage (first come, first serve for signups), and SXSW Showcase bands Brenn and The Vettes will be playing to close out the night. More details on our SXSW party page, and you can RSVP on Upcoming or Facebook to make sure you get in the door.

For those of you attending the Film or Interactive portions of the festival, I’ll be moderating a Joint Film/Interactive Panel on Saturday morning at 10am called “Quit Your Day Job and Vlog,” with Lindsay Campbell from Wallstrip and the upcoming Mob Logic, Zadi Diaz from EPIC-FU, LisaNova’s Lisa Donovan and Bre Pettis of Make / Etsy fame. Please come on out and join us, and hope to see you there.

Back in May a former Turner Broadcasting colleague, Patrick de Bokay, stopped by to kindly ask me to judge the shorts competition at the Miami Film Festival. I don’t really like to travel, even to nice places, but when the date’s so far away I always say ‘yes’ since I figure 2 million things will get in the way and something will force me to not go.

I’ll be there next week, seeing some great films.

Along with what looked like a couple thousand other curious people from the online video, advertising, and marketing worlds, a group of us attended YouTube’s “Videocracy” advertiser upfront here in New York City Wednesday afternoon. A pretty massive production at NYC’s Terminal 5, it was also YouTube’s first real event of notice since the Google acquisition. YouTube pulled out all the stops, including an introduction from founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, testimonials from Tom Brady and Anderson Cooper (who showed up in person to talk about the YouTube-CNN debates), and a number of presentations about YouTube’s advertising initiatives, from their internal ad targeting and campaign creation system (called “Ginzu” — it slices, it dices…) to case studies from advertisers like HP, General Mills, and New Line, to their work with the IAB and sites like MySpace and Facebook to develop standards for video advertising. There’s a good recap on Ian Shafer’s blog. And of course — an eclectic mix of entertainment from some of YouTube’s biggest stars, including the Blendtec guy, singer Esmee Denters and Soulja Boy, who performed his ‘Crank that‘ song onstage that inspired tons of YouTube dance videos this year, which played in the background on a big screen.

YouTube set up a nice area for Rob and Corinne from ThreadBanger to meet advertisers and give demonstrations in the How-To pavilion of the event (near our friends from Make Magazine) - and incidentally, ThreadBanger’s featured on the front page of YouTube today for their special Valentine’s Day episode, so we’re appreciating two days of love.

While Rob and Corinne worked their magic (with Soulja Boy, I kid you not, crashed out on a nearby couch), we spent a good amount of time catching up with other people at the event, which included lots of agency and consumer brand contacts, execs from companies like Revision 3, Vuguru, and 60 Frames, and innovators of online video like Andrew Baron and Orrin Zucker. There was a moment when I looked around and realized the group of people standing together off to the side of the stage near me included Tay Zonday, Ian from Smosh, Lisa Nova, Michael Buckley and William Sledd — many of the individuals with the most subscribers on YouTube, standing for the moment incognito chatting together on the main floor, despite the millions who have watched their videos on the site. I thought of other upfronts I’ve attended, where the network stars would be carefully brought in and out of the crowd, and realized I’ll probably be looking back on that moment a few years from now as either the beginning, or the end, of something. Exactly which? Ask me next year.

update: Media Kitchen’s Darren Herman — whose advertising work I’m a big fan of — was at the event as well, and has posted some smart thoughts.