Combining the Power of Community with Rights Managed Digital Delivery
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.