Artistes Du Globe

Perception! The Situation -

Nathalie — Thu, 20 May 2010 14:40:00 GMT

In Washington , DC , at a Metro Station, on a cold January morning in 2007, a man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, approximately 2,000 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After about 3 minutes, a middle-aged man noticed that there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds, and then he hurried on to meet his schedule.

About 4 minutes later:

The violinist received his first dollar. A woman threw money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

At 6 minutes:

A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

At 10 minutes:

A 3-year old boy stopped, but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head the whole time. This action was repeated by several other children, but every parent - without exception - forced their children to move on quickly.

At 45 minutes:

The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.

After 1 hour:

He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed and no one applauded. There was no recognition at all.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before, Joshua Bell sold-out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $200 each to sit and listen to him play the same music.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell, playing incognito in the D.C. Metro Station, was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people's priorities.

This experiment raised several questions:

In a common-place environment, at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty?

If so, do we stop to appreciate it?

Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made . . .

How many other things are we missing as we rush through life?

And, I will add; this is part why the arts and their artists are having a hard time, society has neither time nor extra money to better support the arts. I'd love to hear your comments...anecdotes & stories...suggestions and how we can remedy and help each other succeed in the arts through this social network.

Adobe FLASH gaining momentum. FOX, TiVo and ABC latest adopters.

Jackson Ball — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 13:20:00 GMT

Good day friends,

Last week we saw that TiVo is moving to the FLASH HD variable streaming technology for their latest Pandora offerings. Today we see that both FOX and ABC are following suit. Of course this is thrilling news to Artistes du Globe, not only by giving us some degree of validation in our own 100% adoption of FLASH Interactive technology. This promises to assure the rapid development of the advanced server technologies and new implementation of Adobe AIR, which is destined to run as a lightweight client directly on many OEM devices including TVs and mobile devices. According to Adobe, the FLASH platform is found on 97% of all computers around the world and an increasing number of media players. "TiVo appears to be proud of producing the first settop box with an HD Flash interface. Some of the external sources that will be accessible from these new TiVo boxes include Pandora, Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand and Blockbuster On Demand" See the Blog: http://blogs.zdnet.com/gadgetreviews/?p=12856

Fox Switches from Move to Flash; ABC Plans Transition Too,

________________________________________,

Wednesday, January 20, 2010, 10:29 PM ET

posted by: Will Richmond

Fox.com has quietly switched from Move Networks' player to Flash for its online video, with Brightcove powering content management and publishing. Separately, a Disney-ABC spokesperson told me that ABC.com will also be transitioning from Move to Flash in the coming weeks, though both will be used temporarily.

Neither of the changes will surprise Move. Earlier this week I spoke with Move's Marcus Liassides, who explained that the company is continuing its own transition, evolving from a technology provider to content owners to an end-to-end broadband delivery platform for powering next-generation multichannel video services. Marcus said that Move has been working closely with its content customers to support their respective swap-outs. ,
Move was an early leader in adaptive bit rate streaming and gained a ton of visibility for raising close to $70 million, including a whopping $46 million round in April '08. Move gained notice for showing people that the Internet could indeed delivery crystal-clear, high-quality video that could credibly compete with TV viewing. For many, Move's player was very tangible evidence of how far the online video experience had changed since the pioneering days of RealNetworks' RealPlayer just 10+ years earlier.

Unfortunately the company encountered a perfect storm. First, as CDN prices fell, content providers considered Move an increasingly expensive-looking solution. Then, since Move's customers used a free, ad-supported model, as the recession crimped ad spending their ability to afford a luxury video player deteriorated. Meanwhile, both Microsoft (with Smooth Streaming) and Adobe (with FMS 3.5) both launched their own adaptive bit rate alternatives. Between their ultra-competitive pricing and large embedded customer bases, Move was squeezed from all sides. Compounding matters, Move also conveyed mixed messages about its strategy and rumors about its disjointed product development process were widespread.

Last June, Marcus provided me with an extensive overview of Move's revamped game plan, which blends Move's underlying delivery system with "virtual set-top box" technology acquired from Inuk Networks. The goal is to provide telcos, broadband ISPs and others with a platform to deliver an end-to-end multichannel linear, live, on-demand and DVR service, all through broadband.

More recently, Move hired Roxanne Austin, a former DirecTV president and COO as its new CEO, who in turn has brought in new executives to run operations, strategy and business affairs. Last September, Move announced that Cable & Wireless has partnered with it to roll out IP-based TV services. Marcus said that additional customer announcements are forthcoming soon. ,

Move has been on a roller-coaster ride since its inception. It is now in the delicate process of shedding existing customers as it migrates to its new model. With innumerable companies vying for a piece of the video market, Move finds itself in the middle the action once again. It will be interesting to see how the company's second act plays out.,

With more and more TVs are coming with broadband capabilities, infrastructuure vendors like NETGEAR recently unveiled their newest line of low cost Powerline adaptors to support high speed network to these new generation TV.s using the electrical wiring already existing in the home or office.. See the Blog: http://blogs.zdnet.com/home-theater/?p=2802&tag=rbxccnbzd1,
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Times are good!

Why this project is so important for the Arts

Jackson Ball — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 22:12:00 GMT

I think that Nathalie and I are coming to a shocking revelation, maybe a convergence of concepts exposed by this technology suite, ideas once connected, once loosely defined, but coming together in all of its profundity. It has been more than two years since Nathalie and I conceived, dissected and documented over an inspiring few days at the highest level beautiful and pure vision for what this approach would mean, could mean to the arts industry, the reason we gave up so much of our time and every dime of resources to codify. To make it real, the rest depending on divine providence, timing and word of mouth.

Well, we dug so hard into the details of making industry contacts, Nathalie is the connection queen in the Arts because she is such a pure artist, programming 800 plus functions across seven portals representing the inter-ralated business types in one grand data model and economy. Add in the customized Telligent CS social nettwork, and a secure video streaming server. People thought we were nuts. Well the point is that all of the details and nuances of such an endeavor took us away from those days of almost emotional intensity of the vision, like at the beginning. And, we needed to remain low key, below the radar in a way, so we could not shout it from the mountaintops, but we wanted to. Especially hard on Nathalie, who had to walk a fine line in the public while I stared at a computer.

Now the phase one development phase is nearing its end. We have a WORKING system that creates the interactions and monetary business functions neccessary to power great improvement, fluidity and revenue from digital HD content. We have successfully codified what we envisioned, and the right contacts and industry support are starting to fall into place. Our focus NOW can start in earnest as we approach launch, start the buzz. Buzz about what? The vision that inspired this whole project is now is returning to us, but now the means is here with it, reality has come home.. It's a whole new world and now that we just might reach that grand vision, we are humbled by its enormity, honored to have this possibility for the good of many arts professionals, and it does scare the ... out of us a bit, as rightfully it should.

Ultimate success is less about the money and more about getting the word out, en-mass, for the good of the arts and humanity. It's going to take alot of good people, fellow believers, participants and benefactors, friends we have yet to meet. Our world of performing and visual arts is suffering, companies are cutting back or closing down, travel budgets have been slashed, many performing artists can barely tweek a living and dare I say there is an apathy in the public domain about the arts, possibly worsened by few choices and high cost, and with the demise, a piece of beauty and culture goes with it. Add the entanglement of copy rights that hamstring performers and lock great performances away from public enjoyment because ownership is so convoluted and no legal or technical royalty generating mechanism existed. There has to be a better way - and there is very very soon - at least a start - in Artistes du Globe. We have a higher vision, one that leverages technology and gets great art and our public together as only possible in the digital domain. Doing it right will greatly widen the audience, enhance sales at the box office and into the living room.

I reached out today to a respected professional in the Arts as it pertains to Technology. My cold-call reach out to Rebecca at AudienceWorks caused me to reflect on why Artistes du Globe is so important to the wellbeing of the struggling arts industry and art lovers. We simply have to assure artistic expression enriches our culture and that of our offspring, and theirs. The problems of who gets paid and how is the content secured has been solved, in a big way. It is because it is a bridge between all us art lovers and consumers in the emerging broadband, interactive entertainment and learning world. That was and is the vision - that of consumers, artists, producers, art schools and teachers using these new secure interactive media technologies, connecting as a community and around their content with the public and paying everyone their royalties in real time. Reduce the cost and provide on-demand high quality diversity for art consumers to enjoy great performances and images, benefiting the arts in a direct way, and humanity thought our humanitarian support and Foundation.

I want to share what I sent to Rebecca today, as it is my best attempt so far to put this vision/technology into a quick compelling read. The rest, the core vision is beyond the description. I leave for us all to discover some of the nuances as it all begins to come together.

We can make a difference together. I can't wait to say "We ARE making a difference together"

My best....

_____________

Rebecca,

I recently learned about your company and your work in social network consulting in the Arts. It appears that there may be some synergies we should explore.

I am Jackson Ball, the President and CTO of Artistes du Globe, Inc. My partner is Nathalie Grosshenny, the CEO of the company. We have built and are very soon to launch what we believe is a first of its kind and dedicated to the Arts. We bring together dance, opera, symphony, modern arts and other artistic expressions under one powerful platform. We have a full featured Social Network combined with an HD streaming video network with strong content protection combined with a real time payment system allowing art producers to monetize digitized shows and pay all the supporting artists in real time. Not like UTube, this is a solid business model and the latest HD streaming technologies.

The community is based on Telligent CS Enterprise, the same core technology that powers MySpace, Microsoft, Dell, and Electronic Arts social networks, among others. Not cheap for us to buy, but it has a huge feature set that we needed, including unlimited Blogs, Forums, Wikis, Media Galleries, Groups, deep art-oriented Profiles, private conversations, RSS feeds, mass email-gateway, live links to Facebook, Twitter, etc. We have customized the Community with a Calendar of events with Google Map links to the venue and to ticket sales outlets. It also supports the ability of users anywhere to drill down and see what events in what genre are available in their selected geographic area. We have a multi-directional ecommerce system allowing commerce members to do business online for props, instruments, tickets, costumes, etc. (Think about that a moment - an multi-store ecommerce system within a Community environment for the Arts) We have a Jobs and Auditions function and a very powerful nested Group capability which allows Producers or groups to have their own mini-community (public or private) within the overall global arts community. This gives smaller groups all the power of an enterprise class platform with public/private tools, while being integrated within the context of the total Arts community. This essentially de-fragments the efforts and cohesion and brings greater awareness, and more utility than any isolated social network approach - and keeps it focused on the Arts world. How many times have we heard about low "attendance" with these isolated social network approaches. How many times have we heard about being lost in a sea of non arts members in a horizontal approach like Facebook, UTube and others. They have their place. Artistes du Globe is a great compliment to these needed platforms and connects them, but gives the vertical appeal that the horizontals cannot.

The Art-Serve system is a full blown content delivery system for premium quality videos and images streamed to TV's computers and mobile devices. In encompasses consumers, producers, artists, art schools, teachers, galleries and humanitarians. Producers can have us host the content for outbound streaming, or can host LIVE events that can be both upload and outbound streamed. They can decide how many views over what time period and in what country the show can be viewed. We have developed a synthetic currency called Acorns. Producers can easily designate all of the various artists, stage hands, musicians, etc, that should earn a royalty, and how many royalty Acorns they earn with each Subscriber purchase. The system calculates everyone's proper earnings which can then be credited to their credit card or by check. End users (we call them Subscribers) will be able to select from an unprecedented array of art styles to watch on virtually any device from TVs to computers to mobile devices, all streamed as FLASH and AIR content - the same technology that TiVo and others in the OpenScreen council just announced they are moving to. Since content is streamed and dumped, not downloaded, there is much tighter control and without the need for traditional provisioned networks, everyones costs are lower. All of the content streams in an encrypted state to prevent network piracy. The Adobe FMIS Server we purchased is 100% interactive and monitors the actual connection to the end user and delivers the right bit rate for maximum user experience. It seamlessly switches bit rate versions in real time based on changing network conditions. The interactive functions support e-learning and "virtual studios" so art teachers/choreographers and students/artists can connect and collaborate in real time using their TVs, computers and web cams. Teachers can even be paid in Acorns according to student enrollment.

There is more to discuss, but at this point I wanted to give you the 1000 foot view of what we are launching this Spring. We need the help of people like you to help us do the public launch correctly and successfully. We have been purposely below the radar, but the launch sequence needs to start soon. We are not VC funded, we did this out of pocket and are debt free. My development team in Dallas, Toronto and Burlington are at the final stage and the final $20K. HOORAY!

Please take a look at our web site and review these documents linked below. Please get back with me at your convenience to discuss how you might help us in approaching the world that you live and breathe in every day and the world that Nathalie and I love and want to help so much.

http://www.artistesduglobe.com/Docs/ArtistesDuGlobe_InterviewArticle.pdf

http://www.artistesduglobe.com/Docs/HowDoYouThrive.pdf

http://staging.artistesduglobe.com/blogs/default.aspx?GroupID=8

Feel free to send this email over to others that might have a hand in this opportunity. My mobile phone is 678-234-2821 and is often the best way to reach me.

FLASH PLAYER COMPLETED!

Jackson Ball — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:11:00 GMT
Today, March 17, 2010 - I just spoke with the developers in Dallas for the custom, secured FLASH HD Video player for the Artistes du Globe Network. They are installing it to the main Server tonight! The team around North America and Europe will be testing all the advanced functions and stream quality as we tweak the settings. I will post a link to it in my blog soon - maybe this weekend. This milestone connects the Art-Serve network of Artists, Producers and their Content to the Adobe FMIS Interactive FLASH server, the payment system, and loosely to the Community. Upcoming milestones include finalizing our PayPay and Credit Card Payment and Credit Gateways and doing some web-videos of all the applicfation portals - how to use the system videos. Over a year of development - reduced down to videos a few minutes long - what a paradox life can be - should be fun! This weekend! Jackson - mobile - 678-234-2821

Defragmenting the art industry, attracting the masses...

Nathalie — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:16:00 GMT
Artistes du Globe wants to be the convergence of artistic expression and digital content delivery combined on a social network built for the performing and visual arts. I believe that the art industry is fragmented and if artists from all genres were meeting and representing themselves through one main platform, they have a much bigger chance to attract traffic on their sites and sell, rent their art through a system built for them. Opera, Symphony, Dance organizations need a boost, funding is scarce and digital content delivery is available but we, in the performing arts, need to get our acts together. Diversity, quality of content is attracting and I would love to hear from you on this concept.

Direct payment and digital content

Nathalie — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:42:00 GMT
We have structured an approach that brings the critical elements of easy consumer access, security of the content, and mechanism to perform the royalty generating powers of the Artistes du Globe service. All stakeholders are paid in real time when content is streamed by the consumer and viewed on their computer, TV or LCD screens in homes, offices, spas, airports, etc. Artistes du Globe is first of all by the arts and for the arts. Combining a social media community platform with the Art-Serve platform is the first meaningful step towards solving a genuine pain point in the arts in both production and consumption. How do you thrive safely in the digital economy?

Combining the Power of Community with Rights Managed Digital Delivery

Jackson Ball — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 15:26:00 GMT

Hi all,

It starts with a love for the arts, for artists, my belief in community and some amazing emerging technologies that combined in a fresh new way. First, I am a strategic kind of guy with a digital mind. An analog lover stuck with an analyical digital reference to things. I tend to be have this ability (gift or curse, Im not sure sometimes) to look ahead, to piece together raw ingredients and business models and wind up with something that is transformative. I have been building web applications for business re-engineering for about 20 years. I saw the arts world, and financial success of some great artists eroding. The current business model was no longer working the way it was, and because of digital rights, was all tangled up with lawyers and unions and old contracts that prevented the arts from embracing the new digital world.

I had this idea some years ago about allowing people like me to go to a web site, browse thousands of great images, scanned and stored at extraordinary resolution, and have it display within large digital picture frames in a way that secures the images from piracy. I wanted to be able to change them at any time, select favorites and moods, and most importantly, build the system to pay for the art in real time as consumers enjoy it. If I choose to display "Country-Charm" by Mary Smith on my wall, then Mary could be paid accoring to the hours I have her art work adorning my wall or tabletop. And what if the art was all digitally rights managed so I could not rip Mary off and post it to the web. And what if the artist I selected is a signed artist and any local gallery that has Mary Smith signed for my county or province could also get a piece of the action. Well, the gallery might me inclined to become a reseller of digital art frames, and even have some in the gallery to show their customers and patrons. I know a large number of artists and have interviewed some about this concept. Every one said not only Yes, but H... YES. So the concept of Art-Serve.com was born.

Then I met Nathalie Grosshenny, the CEO of Artistes du Globe in Montreal. We talked, shared, dissected the ideas, fell in love with it and each other, and discovered that the same basic needs and business rules apply to performing arts as well as the visual arts, but with the added complexity of having Producers who in turn have many Artists to be paid. We also understood that the arts world is fragmented and many artists are trying unsuccessfully to spread themelves and grow their personal "brand" using mass sites like My Space, Face Book, U-Tube, Linked-In, etc. What was lacking in the world was a community focused on the Arts. We also saw that the Art-Serve Network business concepts could really be leveraged within the power of a global focused community to drive the concepts of change to the arts world, and that one system could support the other and deliver greater results and sense of belonging and down-right accomplishment to catapult successful art oriented careers.

So, we scraped up everything we could muster, in money (over $200k - ouch) and connections and programming talent, and partnered with Telligent to launch the Artistes du Globe Community using their VERY advanced Community Server Enterprise platform. It was ten times the price of some other choices we had, but after understanding the features available and the compelling road map of features coming at a blistering pace, there was no other choice. The same core technology that powers My Space, Microsoft, Dell, Electronics Arts and other huge communities is now here - dedicated to the arts and to actually accomplish this great vision together.

For the video streaming technology, we selected the Adobe FLASH Server platform - yes FLASH! Why? Because it is HD quality, can handle encrypted streaming from server to screen, connects right to our database, prevents bogus players from getting at premium content and here is the kicker - is totally interactive - which means we will support free or paid e-learning, virtual class rooms and studios, real time LIVE content across the internet, live video and audio chat, and so much more.

Our directors and contributors are forming up now and we hope to launch formally in Spring of 2010. The Art-Serve Network and business model is in construction and will be ready for beta testing about the same time frame.

Please join us in the great endeavor. We need your participation, friends participation, viral word-of-mouth, moral and financial support as we change the world a little bit to greatly benefit artists and the arts - which we all need in our lives.

If you want to climb on and help us win big, or have some ideas or concepts to discuss, feel free to contact me. My private email is jackson@jacksonball.com Mobile is 678-234-2821.

This is our dream together
PS. Check out the interview article recently completed... See the attachment below.

Welcome to Community Server Blogs!

admin — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:13:48 GMT

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