All Things Digital

Over the next week, I will be posting the most popular videos on BoomTown from 2007.

Here’s the interview Walt Mossberg and I did at D5 with George Lucas.

In it, he describes Internet video-sharing sites like YouTube as a circus (and not in a good way) and compares the quality of its content to throwing “puppies on a highway.” And there are also some very cool demos from Lucasfilm and his video game unit.

The discussion took place the afternoon of May 30, 2007 at the fifth D: All Things Digital, the annual tech and media conference that Walt and I host. The next conference takes place in late May 2008.

Here is the interview in its entirety:

I will refrain from making may-the-force-be-with- you puns here, except to say famed film director George Lucas has some pretty powerful things to say, as you will see in the video below.

D: All Things Digital, the annual tech and media conference Walt Mossberg and I host, has been sold out with a long wait list every year we have put it on.

That has meant only a few hundred people can see the interviews we do live onstage with some of the tech and media industry’s most interesting and important players.

The lineups have included Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs, as well as Eric Schmidt of Google, IAC’s Barry Diller, Meg Whitman of eBay, Cisco’s John Chambers and many others.

We usually post the photos and videos of the interviews six or more months after they take place on a separate conference site. This year, our Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski liveblogged D5 and also posted video highlights from all of the sessions immediately on our newly launched site here.

Now, we are posting videos of every session of the 2007 conference here, in full, and we have made all our photo galleries, hosted by SmugMug and mostly shot by our fabulous Asa Mathat, public too. You can also access our videos via the site’s master player here.

Everyday, I am going to highlight a different interview from the conference. And, today, we bring you George Lucas, who describes Internet sites like YouTube as a circus (and not in a good way) and compared its content to throwing a puppy on a highway.

(Better still, Lucas had spent the night before at the opening party slapping around YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, which they seemed to enjoy coming from their icon.)

We also liked his advice to hedge-fund guys investing in Hollywood: “The last thing you want to do is invest in the film business. The hedge-fund guys want to, but they just want the producer credits and the girls. And there are cheaper ways of getting both.”

And there are also some very cool demos from Lucasfilm and his video game unit.

Here it is:

Starting Monday, we’ll be posting all of the interviews from D5 in their entirety. I will be posting and commenting on each interview here in this blog, but the videos will also reside in our video player.

While we have already posted the joint interview of Microsoft’s Bill Gates-Apple’s Steve Jobs, as well as a solo turn by Jobs and also one with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, now you can watch lively discussions with film legend George Lucas, YouTube’s Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, CBS CEO Les Moonves, Viacom chief Philippe Dauman and many more, as well as seeing our demos and other special video.

And you had no idea what you were going to watch in the midst of the summer doldrums. Now, let Cisco’s John Chambers liven up your day!

The Wall Street Journal has a special “D: All Things Digital” tab today, with excerpts from several of the interviews that took place onstage a few weeks ago at our fifth conference. I did a video for it, embedded below.

The interviews featured are with famed filmmaker George Lucas, CBS CEO Les Moonves, Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman and a solo interview with Apple legend Steve Jobs.

Here’s the video I did for the tab on the conference, focusing on the strides made by traditional media in dealing with the Web and its impact.

In related D news, our official conference page has now been relocated to this site from its old one, and you can now access it here. You can get all sorts of information, as well as pictures and videos from the first through the fourth D conferences.

We will not be opening registration for D6, which will take place May 27 to 29, 2008, until the fall, although Walt and I are already thinking about next year’s program.

Full pictures and video for D5 will be up on this site soon, first for conference attendees and then for everyone. Until then, check out our highlights of the conference with blogs, video and pictures here.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our show. Walt and I certainly did, and I think we both felt it was our best D thus far.

And that’s without what was clearly the blockbuster joint interview with Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of Apple, which got a mountain of attention, as it deserves for both its historic implications (the two icons of tech in a rare analog appearance together) and its sheer drama (PC guy meets Mac guy, except in real life!).

While it was not the WrestleMania some would have preferred, I thought it was riveting to see two people with very little left to prove about anything in their professional careers and who will be in the history books willing to go out on a bit of a limb and talk from a more personal place.

In addition, watching these longtime rivals and also collaborators kibitz about their tech-war stories, each correcting the other’s memories, was really interesting. Here is a great comic strip from the Joy of Tech Web site about the interview that says it all.

But outside of the glare of the pairing, there were a lot of highlights and insights I gleaned from the other onstage interviews.

Read more »

We’re all in Carlsbad, Calif., now, getting ready for our fifth D: All Things Digital conference, which will begin tomorrow night.

So here’s one of my movies to show you how we prepare for the annual conference, which is highlighted this year by a joint interview with Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs, the twin icons of the tech industry.

We’ll kick off the conference tomorrow night with an interview with Sen. John McCain, who is in the race to become the Republican nominee for president of the United States. We will talk to him about that, as well as the war in Iraq, but also hope to discuss a plethora of digital issues with him. McCain is one of the few politicians who knows a thing or two about the media, telecom and Web sectors.

Other interviewees on Wednesday and Thursday include: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer; CBS CEO Les Moonves; News Corp. President Peter Chernin; Cisco CEO John Chambers; former AOL CEO Steve Case, who will talk about his new company, Revolution; famed director and producer George Lucas; Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore; Google CEO Eric Schmidt; YouTube founders Steve Chen and Chad Hurley; Philippe Dauman, CEO of Viacom; and space tourist (and former Microsoft exec) Charles Simonyi.

We’ll also have demos from tech players like Palm legend Jeff Hawkins and others. And we are also excited to have singer/songwriter Jill Sobule, who will perform several times throughout.

We’ll have full coverage of D5 on our site, starting tomorrow night, including liveblogging by Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski, pictures, video excerpts and more.

One step forward, several leaps back–at least for consumers when it comes to big entertainment conglomerates.

At the cable show in Las Vegas last week, I was actually somewhat surprised when Comcast COO Stephen Burke said the cable giant was talking to interested studios with the aim of showing movies on cable premium-priced ($30 to $50), on-demand service on the same day as they were released in theaters.

Oh joyous day–a nod to the changing trends related to audience viewing habits, which include the hypergrowth of big home-theater setups, part of a general desire to consume their entertainment any way they like.

A few big theater chains freaked, naturally, saying they would not play films that appeared at the same time as they were released to homes. An empty threat, of course, because like everyone, they need a flow of product to their theaters and would fold at the first blockbuster they did not feature.

In any case, I don’t pay that much attention to the complaints of companies that have for years abused their customers with sticky and filthy theaters, surly staff, increasingly poor viewing experiences and ever higher prices.

So it was hard not to be disheartened when Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman agreed with this antiquated practice yesterday, declaring at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in New York that such an offering was a long time coming.

Read more »