We’re all really happy that Felicia Williams has come to join us as Next New Networks’ new Director of Community Programming, charged with developing new models for programming and entertainment for the communities we serve, and new ways of working with independent and emerging talent. We’ve gotten to know and admire Felicia during her groundbreaking work at The Daily Reel and YouTube, and she’s long been one of the people in the business that we really felt a kinship with in terms of our hopes and vision for online video, so it’s great to have her join our team.

A lot of people who read this blog might already know Felicia from her great work in the space, but here’s some more about her:

Born in the same dusty mill town as Jack Kerouac, Felicia has mirrored the travels of the famous writer for the past decade. Having lived in Lowell, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, she has become rather accustomed to life on the road and holds great pride in the ablity to live out of a single suitcase.

A writer by nature, Felicia’s passion for film and media began in high school, where she volunteered as a news anchor for her local TV station. Reporting on such hard-hitting stories as the local clothing drive and that new diner that just opened outside of town, Felicia realized that alternative media was a lot more fun then stuffy old network news. Continuing on her newfound media path, Felicia attended NYU to study Journalism and Cinema Studies.

After college, Felicia dove right into the world of film and television. Working as a production assistant for film (The Departed, The Gardener of Eden, Pride and Glory) and television (Law and Order: SVU, The Bedford Diaries), she had the opportunity to work at every dirty street corner and abandoned warehouse that New York City had to offer. Bored of the scenery, she moved to LA where she worked on her last major motion picture before finding her home on the Internet.

In 2006, Felicia signed on as the second employee and Assistant Editor of The Daily Reel, an online magazine about online video. Returning to her writing roots, she interviewed such popular web producers as Renetto, Smosh, LisaNova, and Nalts. While writing reviews on undiscovered talent and videos online, Felicia also developed and produced a web show that she scripted and hosted with the help of NNN’s own Michelle Deforest (who was also at The Daily Reel).

Falling more and more in love with online video, Felicia left The Daily Reel in 2007 to work on the Editorial/Content team for YouTube. Specializing in a broad range of topics that included pets, travel, video games, web series, and celebrity news, Felicia programmed the Featured Videos for several YouTube category pages and the homepages of both US and Canada.

Welcome, Felicia — it means great things ahead for everyone who works with us.

This week we’ve been running a video billboard in Times Square, every 13 minutes, to coincide with the Web 2.0 Expo NY and the New York TV Festival. Clear Channel has been giving us a free slot every couple months or so, which is awesome — you might remember the last time, when we used it to Rick Roll Times Square.

Here’s some video, shot by Ian and Alan. Big props to Justin for creating our hugest promo ever (Watch it in HD on Vimeo).

Michelle sent around a great email today that I’m adapting here, reminding everyone that quite a few people from the Next New Networks team have panels up for voting in the SXSW ‘09 panel picker. We’d love if you’d take a minute to vote and help get their panels chosen for next year’s show.

It only takes a moment to register, and then you can click the little stars to rate the panels you like. You can also comment on each panel, which also makes a difference. Direct links to ours below:

BEN RELLES
When Online Video Crosses Over to Mainstream Media

TIM SHEY
The Seven Habits of Highly Successful Web Video
Soapbox Spielbergs: Making Hollywood FX on Indie Budgets (featuring Erik Beck, and Rudy from Pulp Secret/Galacticast!)

SARAH SZALAVITZ
Narcissism or Necessity? (The New Economics of Storytelling)
Collabotition: Can Companies Work With Their Competitors?

Finally, FELICIA WILLIAMS (Our favorite editor at YouTube) teamed up with me to propose this panel:
Advertising is Entertaining - Who’s Selling Out?

If you look around, there are a lot more sweet panels being offered by friends of NNN who rock (like Zadi Diaz and Tantek Çelik), so be sure to vote for them too.

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.

Photo by Jared.

I first met the brilliant Ben Ross (of Channel Frederator, Ultra Kawaii, and more) on Channel Frederator RAW, our Ning-powered social network for animators and animation fans. He had posted the first episode of Inside Ben’s Head, his own original series, and there were so many crazy, great ideas, like “Nolte-Busey-Busey-Nolte” and “Italian Techno,” that I wrote him a fanmail right away. Here’s the episode in question:

Find more videos like this on Channel Frederator RAW

Ben wrote back and said he’d actually had a cartoon way back in the second episode of Channel Frederator (unknown to me, Fred had a similar experience, meeting Ben at an event and never making the connection that he was the same guy who sent that great cartoon in to Channel Frederator). Such was the pace of those early days at Next New Networks that about a week later, I walked over to meet a new intern who was sitting over with the Frederator team, and it turned out to be Ben. He’d already been hired before I’d gotten the chance to tell anyone about him. (more…)

I mentioned before that Erik Beck was up for the title of Hottest Male Web Host and though you and I both secretly know there’s no competition, we have to let the others know too. He’s made it to the finals and he’s up against 8 other male web hosts.

The male Web hosts left standing are: Leo Laporte (This Week in Tech), Gary Vaynerchuk (WineLibraryTV), Jeff MacPherson (Tiki Bar TV), Erik Beck (Indy Mogul), Michael Somerville (Love, Somerville), Kevin Rose (Diggnation), Martin Sargent (Internet Superstar), Chris Leavins (Cute with Chris) and David Price (The Middle Show).

So if you haven’t voted, VOTE NOW is your time to vote - you have until THIS FRIDAY, May 2 at 2pm PST. Be sure to tell all your friend because time is running out!

Have you ever watched Indy Mogul and thought to yourself, “Hey, this Erik guy is one sharp looking dude”? Well, you’re not the only one. Daisy Whitney from TV Week thinks so too. She’s compiled a list of The Hottest Male Web Hosts, and our very own Erik Beck is up against Eric Gunnar Rochow from Greenhouse. So if you’ve ever entertained those thoughts, now is the time to let those feelings rush forth. Vote Now! Polling ends Friday, May 2nd.

GO ERIK!

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.