Its eWeek, but I think the week was March 2, 1973
The video above is from a website called Eweek.com
I was drawn to the site by a twitter reference to an article called “5 Ways To Build Video Communities at Work”
Well, this kind of stuff is always interesting to me, so I went to the site and I watched the video.
I would embed it here, but apparently at eWeek you are not allowed to embed videos, so strike one against eWeek, who clearly , despite professing to dispense invaluable information about video online, don’t seem to understand that the essence of online video is so that you can share it.
You can’t here, so I will simply to a frame grab. If you want to see the video, you can like to it above.
As you can see this is not really video.
This is a kind of bad local news from 1973 or so.
A ‘reporter’ with a box over their shoulder.
I think CBS News pioneered this around 1952.
The whole point of video is that you have a small camera and as such you can take your viewers to places they cannot go on their own and show them stuff they can’t see.
Let’s go back to the truly appalling video at the top – eWeek’s ‘newsfeed’, live (as if this matters) from CES in Las Vegas.
When Ashley gets done blathering banalities to the camera she throws to ‘our very own Eric Lundquist’ (or whatever his name is).
Eric, of course, is INÂ Las Vegas AT CES. He HAS a camera!
But he spends al his time ‘on air’ talking to Ashley about all the great stuff he has seen.
Hey Eric! Take the camera, go walk around CES and SHOWÂ US THEÂ STUFF!
Yes.
Amazing thing this video.
Then Eric, sit down at your laptop (there must be thousands of them out there at CES and edit (!!) a piece for us.
Really.
Then SHOW us what you have SEEN at CES.
I give this advice for free. (And while I am at it, Ashley, lose the giant pearl necklace).
I have spent most of my life looking at bad video, and a fair percentage of it from really terrible TV news operations in fact.
They have an excuse for being trapped in the 1970s. But a website that professes to offer advice on how to use video to build a business and enhance internal communcations! For this there is no excuse.
The use of video for internal business communications is a good idea – but not the way it is done here.
If you have a plant in Thailand, for example, that is having problems (or is working well) and you want to share that information with the rest of the company, video is a great way to do it. Take a camera and walk around the plant and show me.
A really bad way to do it is to fly Ashley to Thailand and have her do a bunch of stand-ups.
Or have our own Eric talk about it on camera.
Seriously eWeek which is owned by Ziff Davis, a big company.
I think it’s time for a letter to the CEO of Ziff Davis.
