Image via WikipediaA few weeks ago I began working on a little side project that I hope can get some legs at some point.

The site: Video Marketing Moxie

The premise: It takes guts to be on the forefront of anything. Particularly marketing. Your brand is at risk. The costs are not standardized. ROI is a giant question mark. The techniques are not tried and true. What works for one may not work for you (or ever again for that matter.) It’s risky business. But, like anything, where there’s risk — there’s opportunity.

My hope? To put together a community of fellow video marketing pros (and social media folks too, there’s much overlap) to help business owners and marketers understand what’s worked, what’s available, and what might work for them.

To be honest, it’s an experiment. And it’s fallen on the back burner for me for the moment (gotta pay the bills first). But check it out for now. Slap it into your RSS reader. Feel free to comment. And, most importantly, feel free to contribute ideas or content!

More stuff soon!

Yesterday the folks at Impromptu Studio graciously allowed me to interrupt them for a few minutes so I could put together a little test project.

My goal was to create an interesting virtual view of the space so people who haven’t seen it can visualize what it’s like.

Although a video tour would accomplish my goals, I decided to take a more creative approach. I wanted to “freeze time” a bit, to capture the space without the distraction of movement — and this way we get to pan back and forth through the space to take a closer look.

What do you think?

You probably didn’t even think about this possibility, but it was inevitable. I mean, people are finding new and unique ways to use video online every day.

It seems Viddler community evangelist, Colin Devroe has been putting together a WordPress plugin to allow the comments section of WordPress blogs to contain video.

Here’s a sample of what he’s put together on his own blog — with some folks already eagerly posting video comments. Interesting for sure!

Are you ready to adopt the idea? Are your readers ready to reply with video?

Well… I’m messing with Ustream.tv and CamTwist (a Mac application) to do a live broadcast today. Nothing too special, mostly just testing the limits of the system.

You might see me in action. You might see my desktop whilst I work away. Or you might just see a bunch of clips I’ve loaded up for playback.

Tune in… Today only! Too late. You missed the fun.

UPDATE: After a full afternoon of broadcasting nothing important, I have to say I’m impressed. I really liked the simplicity of Ustream, especially coupled with two Mac applications: CamTwist (which lets me pick different media sources like my web cam, my DV cam, my desktop, saved movies, or slide shows, and lets me add effects, images, text, etc… all on the fly) and Sound Flower. With Sound Flower I was able to jack my audio out, directly to my audio in so that pre-recorded movies could stream with sound over Ustream. The only bad part with Sound Flower is no “monitor” to actually hear what’s streaming. Guess I need another computer to listen in.

All in all, I had a couple dozen people pop in and out, and a few positive comments from folks who see the potential of this.

In the future, I do plan to stream some other things (and give people plenty of warning that I will be broadcasting). Today was just an experiment. Kind of fun too.

Interested? Try it out for yourself: Ustream.tv

I got to fiddling around with live streaming video today. (In this case I was messing with Ustream.tv.) Some things are very long, and videos of them might not be watched due to length. But if live, one could tune in and tune out at any point during the event.

Anyway, it really got me thinking, and wondering…

What events, activities, information, or other stuff would YOU watch if it were offered live?

Would you watch the Central Iowa Bloggers meetup at PaneraU every first Friday, if you couldn’t make it? I would probably tune in if I couldn’t make it.

Would you watch the Big Dream Gathering? I didn’t know about the first one and couldn’t make the last one, but was very curious about it. I might have watched, at least part of it.

How about the IowaBiz.com Breakfast held every month? It’s early in the A.M. and might be tough for some people to attend. Would you tune in live?

What about McLellan Marketing’s Branding Breakfast? I’ve (shamefully) never been and would at least like to see what I’m missing.

What about your church service if you’re sick. Or a seminar if you couldn’t get away from work? How about events at the Iowa State Fair? Maybe your city council meeting?

What about daycare, would you tune in to see what your kids were doing? What about classrooms?

What else (or who else) would you watch live online?

If you’re a business, how could you leverage live web-based video broadcasting?

Don’t be shy. Post below… we’d all benefit from your ramblings.