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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It was two years ago, this June, that Next New Networks actually started in the apartment of Fred Seibert, who had been incubating the idea with Emil Rensing (they had Channel Frederator and VOD Cars up and running when we met). In Fred’s apartment that day, a partnership was born as Tim, Jed, Fred, Emil and I all agreed that a company super-serving communities or targeted niches with “networks” on the internet (we later called them “micro-networks”) was a worthwhile pursuit, and worth raising VC money to do so. It wasn’t much later that our lead VC, Spark Capital, led by Dennis Miller, got on board, and then others, and by the end of the fall we were up and running.

During the time we’ve been operating we’ve accomplished a lot. We championed a new distribution method, “super-distribution” (as Fred said when we first used the phrase, “Who doesn’t want to be super?”), and that meant that our networks’ shows would be seen not just on their own URLs but on as many as twenty other partner platforms from YouTube to Veoh to Tivo where people were going to watch new kinds of video, and breaking the hegemony of the TV networks. And now many others, including the big networks, are on the super-distribution bandwagon.

While we were championing new distribution models, we were evangelizing to ad agencies and clients that they too should get “super” and embrace the idea of having their ads go to where the audiences are and innovate with us in distribution and ad integration. Movie studios like Lionsgate and Paramount were the first in, as well as car endemics and then non-traditional advertisers like the sewing machine company Janome, who saw loyal communities like Threadbangers DIY fashionistas as smart investments and came on board as sponsors. We’ve got more to do but we’ve put a lot of time into moving advertisers from “huh?” when we first started talking super-distribution to “uh-huh!”

And we identified key talent, next generation filmmakers, who can do some combo of directing, producing, writing, hosting and marketing — or simply do it all. People like Erik Beck at Indy Mogul, Rob Czar and Corinne Leigh at Threadbanger, Ben Relles at Barely Political and Mike Spinelli at Fast Lane Daily. Passionate folks who love what they do, and it shows. It’s these kinds of people who helped us launch 16 networks, some of which thrived and continue, and others that didn’t and wilted away. But that’s ok — that’s entertainment — and we’re happy where we are today with close to a dozen strong and more to come.

All of which leads me to reflect on our needs for the future. This spring we closed our second round of funding, bringing in great investors like Goldman Sachs and Velocity Interactive, to join Spark Capital and Saban Capital who participated in both rounds. With a newly bolstered board, I was named Chairman to go with my CEO title, and that’s given me an opportunity to think even bigger about our company. And to that end, I decided, with the board and my partners’ approval, to look to bring in a CEO to run the day to day of Next New Networks.

Thus far, we’ve been video-centric, built our network model, and got distribution and advertising up and running. Now, I want to see us go beyond video by building up our web capabilities in key categories, and move the company to make our sites and new offerings even more robust for communities to gather and interact. Hence, I plan on bringing in someone as CEO who has “been there, done that” in building a web business, and who will work with me as Executive Chairman.

More to come. I’ll keep you posted.

You may have noticed that Epic-Fu’s been on a break lately, as we and the show’s producers, Steve and Zadi at Smashface, have both been thinking about what path we want to take into the future.

In the past year, we saw real growth in viewership of the show over the course of the partnership; we worked together to execute innovative advertising campaigns for clients including Lionsgate, Sony Pictures, XBox Live and Mobivox; and we supported Smashface in the rebranding and successful relaunch of the show in their new incarnation as EPIC-FU. All the while, Steve and Zadi entertained their loyal audience every week and, as the pioneers of videoblogging and inspired, creative people that they are, were great people for us to work with.

With that said, after careful consideration of each company’s goals, we’ve made the decision to move our separate ways. Next New Networks is focused for the coming year on a strategy anchored around our building up our own networks in key categories like autos, entertainment, humor and style, and establishing some new partnerships in those areas. Similarly, Smashface is going to pursue their creative vision in a way that can be most effective for them.

I’m of course disappointed we won’t be working day to day with Steve and Zadi on Epic Fu, as it’s no secret that we’re good friends and enjoy working together. But it’s a great thing to know that we’ve come out of a year with some real success, and a strong vision for what’s next for our companies. We wish them a lot of luck in their next phase, and as always, we’ll be watching.

Amazing illustration made by Kiichi for this month from the New Jenny-San Calendar english site. XJ5 icon created by gashi-gashi. Via the Teenage Roblog.

Four years ago, my partner Emil Rensing suggested I start a blog when I asked him what we should do online for our (Oh Yeah! Cartoons spin off) series My Life as a Teenage Robot. “You’ll learn something,” he said.

Boy was he right. All the Frederator blogs, Channel Frederator, and Next New Networks are all the direct result of the learning, and of course, that’s been in addition to all the great series, movies, and shorts, the great talents have been working on with us during those years.

A particular shout out and thanks should go out to a few folks:

Rob Renzetti created MLaaTR in the first place, inspiring us to create the first blog.

Eric Homan took my challenge to get the thing going, and keep it going.

Scott Peterson, MLaaTR’s story editor, wrote the blog for a couple of years when the rest of us were too scared to try.

Wichobot is the loyal and talented fan who took over the Roblog when the series was over, and has kept it going with our great fans over the last couple of years. It’s better now than we ran it, and proves the complete value of community in the modern, interconnected world.

And, of course, most of all, our loyal fans and readers who have read, suggested, commented, contributed, complained, and supported all of our efforts during the last four years. Without you we would literally be nothing.

Working at Next New Networks has its perks. Two weeks ago I received a random email invite to a screening of the new Indiana Jones movie, The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull. At first I was wondering what PR list I had managed to get myself on, but what I didn’t know it at the time was that it was actually a Next New Networks field trip set up by Tim Shey and our awesome contact at Paramount, Casey. With permission slip in hand, I hopped in a cab to the premiere with Tim, Rachel, Justin, Erik, Steve, Scott, Vanessa, and a few others.

When we arrived there were a TON of lines set up outside with fans, photographers, and Dr. Jones look-a-likes! Of course, being the cool kids that we are (well, that and Casey being the bomb), we didn’t have to wait in line and we walked right in to grab our seats, and then predictably made a mad dash to the concession stand. Hot dogs, popcorn, and nachos in hand, we returned to our seats on the balcony (which were sweet!) to relish in the delight and excitement brewing within the theater. As we relaxed into our seats we were serenaded into anticipation by the Indiana Jones theme music. Right before the film got started there was a ruckus at the balcony entrance, and low and behold, it was Shia LeBeouf hanging out! Next walked in Karen Allen and Harrison Ford! With all the stars in place, the lights dimmed, and the adventure began continued.While I won’t spoil ending for you, I will leave you with a few online features to warm up with before you go see what many of us have been waiting almost 20 years for! (more…)

The advertising business has been increasingly taking notice of Next New Networks. Logical, since our networks have kept launching, kept growing, and gathering up more loyal viewers every day. The latest is Mediaweek, the media buyer’s bible, and Mike Shields’ astute profile of our partner Herb Scannell, and his leadership of our motley crew of nerds and misfits building a media company.

Check it out. How can you resist any article that begins, “To build a proper chain saw arm, start drinking a lot of OJ”?

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While our founder/partner Jed Simmons always is the first to give credit where credit is due for the recent Series B round of funding that allows us to stay in business a bit longer, and of course, we have our great, faithful investors to thank, I wanted to push a little love his way.

Jed’s one of the best partners someone could have (I should know, this is my second partnership with him; we first got together at Turner Broadcasting and Hanna-Barbera Cartoons in the 90s), someone who’s takes his mission incredibly thoughtfully without taking himself too seriously at all. He’s smart, focused, and tenacious (you’ve gotta be to survive a start up), and he’s the first one to recognize the value of every one of the colleagues we’ve got at our place. An amazing amount of personal sacrifice is at the heart of any entrepreneurial venture, and this year we’d also have to infinite hours of gratitude to Jed’s family for helping us too.

Thanks Jed. I told you when all this started I wouldn’t take it on without you, and I’m glad we decided the ride would be fun.

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.