The Sound of Young America host Jesse Thorn commanded a stellar panel at the recent IMA Public Media Conference in Atlanta:

Merlin Mann of 43Folders, Homestar Runner creators Mike and Matt Chapman (aka The Bros. Chaps), and Jeff Olsen, creative director of adultswim.com.

The Sound of Young America

The panelists talked about how to do something on the Internet that people will actually care about, to paraphrase Thorn. Merlin Mann fans might recognize that this was a kind of John the Baptist for a panel that Merlin and John Gruber led at SXSW.

Keith Hopper developed the concept for this session. (I may have contributed the session title “Blow up your Brand” for which I apologize profusely.)

This is probably one of my favorite TED talks; I’ve watched it three times so far. Liz Diller (DS+R) talks about architecture, design and how it weaves itself into the surrounding environment, and sometimes creates its own environment.

Her talk is fascinating, but the pictures are even better – her renovation of Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, and the breathtaking Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, among others. This is a 20-minute tour inside the mind of a brilliant architect, who solves complex problems of space, materials, gravity, clients. This is a real winner from the large and ever-growing library of intelligence curated by TED.

A great presentation and interview with Brad Anderson, the CEO of Best Buy, about the company’s use of tools like wikis to speed up learning inside the company and improve customer service. There’s some pretty innovative stuff here, like the use of prediction markets to monitor progress on projects.

Peter Hishberg chats with Anderson at Google Zeitgeist about how traditional management structures mesh with these tools that promote the origination of (and follow-through on) initiatives at the frontlines.

Harvard Business Review has explored this in a few articles, but here’s a real life dude on stage who is doing it, you know?

I think the core piece here, for me, is the harnessing of the intelligence of employees at all levels of the enterprise, and the ways in which Best Buy is reaching out to incorporate the intelligence of its audience, like American Public Media and others are doing with Public Insight Journalism, to use just one example from our industry.

Good stuff.

If you want a good, 20 minute explanation of the concept of Flow, here’s Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to provide it. It’s great if you’ve not been exposed to this idea about states of intense, sustained creativity. But even if you have a basic working knowledge of Flow, there are still nice tidbits here.

One of my takeaways is a kind of mashup: where flow meets Gary Vaynerchuk’s impressive and arresting talk about personal branding and pursuing the vocation you truly love and desire, at the Web 2.0 Expo.

Watch them back to back and see what you think.

But a number of public television stations have broadcast the documentary and it’s available online for viewing anytime. Without getting too cliche-heavy, this is something you should see.

Lest I get too prickly about PBS, let me know note how they continue to advance their public service mission by pushing some of their best stuff to other places where people can discover and view it. Frontline’s latest installment of “The Choice” is on YouTube and Hulu, and probably other places. (Hulu directs you back to PBS.org to watch the video, as it does with CBS programs, etc.). And WGBH pushed a few gigabytes of the American Experience presidential profiles to iTunesU, where you can download them, free.

This is the kind of stuff (the content AND the strategy) that makes me proud to be in the business of serving the American people.

The coming couple of years will see an increase in the availability, and the demand for, more long-form video. If your video strategy involves uploading the 90-second promo for your 60-minute TV series, you’ll need to revisit that strategy.

Back to Chow: these episodes have been around for a little while, but I ran into them only a week ago, and watched all of them in one sitting. (More, please.) I don’t mind the short length because I leave with something substantive, not meaningless promotion for something I have to watch in another context.

1. The new self-sorting security lines at airports.
Louisville and about 50 other airports currently have them, allowing passengers to choose Expert, Casual or Family security lanes. Security has always been a relatively painless process at SDF, but getting through the Expert line in about 90 seconds this morning made me almost giddy.

2. Art:21
If I was a billionaire and someone showed me an episode of PBS’s “Art in the 21st Century,” I would immediately give PBS a billion dollars. We’ve been watching old episodes from Netflix and I’m continually amazed by how important this series is now, and will be in the future, after great artists like Richard Serra and Sally Mann, and controversial artists like Matthew Barney are no longer with us. The series itself has a core, a vision, an aesthetic that doesn’t get in the way of the artist’s work; it’s a joy to watch, and I’m so glad the old episodes are available. It also has the longest funding credits of any public television series in history. Which is why if I was a billionaire, I’d give a billion dollars to PBS… plus another billion for Art:21.

There’s nothing wrong with that – it’s expected and it’s an important part of developing effective content when platforms or technologies evolve. But it’s a temporary state of affairs.

As Walt Mossberg notes in this talk, we don’t say, “I’m going to go on the electrical grid now with my toaster.” We say, “I’m going to make toast.” That’s because the electrical grid is ubiquitous and invisible (until the power goes out). Mossberg says the Internet will eventually be the invisible utility that connects all of our devices to our tasks, and “paying my bills online” will once again become “paying my bills.”

This talk is about an hour, and it’s pretty good. Mossberg also spends a chunk of time on cellphones and why they’re so important, and also why the iPhone is such an important bellwether for phones to come (hint: it ain’t the pretty browser; it’s what’s inside).

Worth your time, if you want to understand these developments better.

An amazing mind, and wonderful good humor, captured in 20 short minutes.

Many of these moments from the annual TED Conference are unforgettable. TED generously shares them free online, which is a considerable discount from the $6,000 fee to attend the conference. There are audio, video and HD video podcasts, too.

If you’re afflicted with the disease which has no name – the periodic, intense craving for documentary films – then you’ll love SnagFilms. I just discovered this site and after spending some time checking it out, I’m impressed.

SnagFilms currently features about 250 films, from the relatively unknown (to me) to major releases like SuperSize Me. The docs are streamed to you, with minimal advertising at the open; you have the standard full-screen viewing option. The site has a widget you can snag (get it?) to showcase favorite docs on your blog or web site, and here’s an interesting twist: apparently, the filmmakers have chosen specific charities and causes they care about, and the site gives you the option to support those charities on each film’s page.

SnagFilms has some big AOL names behind it, including Ted Leonsis (who has financed a couple of documentaries himself) and Steve Case. From the press materials:

In sessions convened by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Paley Center for New Media, the SnagFilms team listened to foundations that fund films, filmmakers and others. A common theme stated by all of the participants was that the bottlenecks in traditional distribution were threatening the economics of the medium and diminishing its impact. Alberto Ibargüen, Knight’s President and CEO, other foundation leaders, and Paley Center President and CEO Pat Mitchell will provide input to SnagFilms to make it an effective platform for the greatest possible number of filmmakers, and increase its community and charitable connections. Knight Foundation is also providing a multi-year grant to assist these activities.

So far, it looks pretty good. The small amount of advertising I’ve encountered isn’t intrusive, the stream looks great on my computer and my TV, and browsing through the list, I found all kinds of docs that piqued my interest.

It’s quality content, and it’s another example of how the term “public media” is expanding to include new entrants.

PBS is a content partner; I count 27 PBS episodes there, including a few NOVA episodes and the Medici series from a few years back. I’d love to see even more PBS content appear here. Frontline and Frontline World are probably the two shows on the top of my wishlist. In particular, Frontline’s absence is a big gaping hole that’s inexplicable (well, not inexplicable, but you know what I mean).

PBS has made a few moves like this – each of them smart. I’m watching less over-the-air public TV than ever, despite having four multicast channels on my TV, but I’m watching more PBS than in years, on other platforms that I use a lot – from Netflix (“Napoleon” was this week’s home viewing) to iTunesU and now SnagFilms.

I don’t actively avoid OTA public TV, but my viewing habits have trended away from traditional TV viewing, and some of my viewing interests are less mainstream (docs, speeches) and therefore not served by any single traditional channel. By partnering with other platforms that fit the mission, PBS ensures that, even as I wander off, its content is still placed where I can discover and enjoy it.

The video is courtesy of Fora.tv, which is a treasure trove of quality public media content. Fora.tv also has a video podcast, so you can sample the best of the new content added to the library each week.

Why would you charge people $6,000 a head to attend and then give away most of the conference free, afterward? Easy – the fee is for the privilege of being there in person and networking with some of the smartest people in the world. The presentations of those smart people – that’s something you can share with everyone, and because of the wealth of ideas at TED, this is stuff people need to see.

TED offers weekly audio, video and HD video podcasts, highlighting speakers from its annual conferences. The latest episode features a talk by photographer Rick Smolan – a powerful story of a photgraph, an Amerasian girl, and her adoption.

Andy Baio, Simon Willison and Jesse Legg have tracked down and digitized all five parts of the documentary, and you can find them on Viddler or on BitTorrent (not that I have any idea what BitTorrent is )

Baio has included detailed notes for each episode, along with the promise to remove all of it immediately, should the content owners “reach out” to him, or if the documentary comes back in print again.

I vaguely remember catching one or two of these episodes, long ago on WTTW. So this is my first chance to see the entire series. This kind of stuff is what the Internets are for, people.

This is a guy who has been teaching Marx for 40 years, so we can safely assume that he has it down by now. Two episodes are online as I write this. I’ve been watching the first episode, and it’s good stuff. Reminds me of my days minoring in Econ in college, except that this is interesting.

Thanks to Open Culture for serving up this tasty platter of Communism. BTW, if you’re in the market for smart content, you should chain yourself to this web site; they’re always finding something interesting.

“Media that’s targeted at you but doesn’t include you, may not be worth sitting still for.”

I’ve been meaning to post this for a long time. Clay Shirky gets at the impact of the architecture of participation and (sometimes) traditional media’s lack of understanding of the change we’re now experiencing. It’s less than 20 minutes, it’s informative, it’s fun… and it’s a better use of my cognitive surplus than sitting in front of a screen without a mouse.

UPDATE: Check out Jay Rosen’s excellent, related essay.