I’ve written a lot here about the rapid change in technology our industry is experiencing right now. I’ve also written a lot about how smaller to midsized advertising agencies are finding it hard to staff with enough talented people. And how marketing departments struggle just to keep up with their workload in their downsized departments. Everyone is stressed these days just to keep up with the work while business leaders are looking for strategies to stay profitable in the new economy.

Fortunately social technology has enabled new ways of working, connecting, and collaborating that, when leveraged correctly, can have real benefits to the cost and effectiveness of providing services to clients. How so?

One example is Basecamp that enables project management and collaboration with no regard for proximity or even brick and mortar. The cloud has freed us from the need for large and narrowly structured organizations to complete complex projects.

This means my business and even a group of freelancers can function within your project just as if we’re an integrated part or your organization. Suddenly, collaboration isn’t pain in the butt for a project manager but a chance to bring in expertise and fresh thinking from anywhere on the globe.

It also allows business to add expertise and services without having to take on the significant costs of moving to a bigger space and hiring more people. Because collaboration is so much easier these days, my business can integrate with your business in the cloud on a project by project basis. Imagine the flexibility and the cost advantages you suddenly have.

Collaboration make you competitive. It can turn men into giants. And give small businesses the reach of mega corporations. Now each project you touch can be so much more effective and drive more ROI. Truly, collaboration is the new competition. How will you use collaboration to become more effective?

What’s a marketer, an agency, or a content producer do? Discuss maximizing the production before the cameras roll or even the script is finished. A small investment in a longer shoot day or an extra shoot day can yield a campaign that works on four screens instead of one. On a television, YouTube, iPad, mobile device. One that works on a homepage and not just as a 30 second spot.

Making great content for an iPad isn’t just encoding an mp4 of your TV spot. Consideration should be given to the media in the creative process.

Things to keep in mind:

Wide shots feel epic on a 50 inch plasma but just small on a mobile screen. Get lots of footage at various focal lengths and consider using multiple cameras to maximize your production time.

You often have longer to tell a story online, so make sure you get longer takes and give your actors time to breathe. It’s often more convincing in the end too.

Your brand’s engagement most likely isn’t an interruption if it’s on YouTube or your home page. Treat your audience with respect and make sure the content is actually entertaining.

The online environment has so many different platforms it can confuse even the oldest hats. Make sure you work with people who know a codec for a file container.

But what does it really mean to those in the creative industry facing more and more challenging budgets, timelines and clients? Does this mean everything can now be shot on a Canon Digital Rebel in your brother-in-law’s basement? Not even close.

What it does mean is in the hands of a professional director of photography, with solid crew and on the right project, amazing results can be achieved from a camera system that costs less than your house. It also means that your workflow can be quicker and more responsive. Saving you time and adding creative freedom for your team.

10 years ago it was popular to shoot reversal film and process it for negative. Five years ago it was popular to shoot tungsten film outside and then desaturate it in transfer. Film stocks gave us an extra tool to express our creativity. Now this new wave of digital cameras is giving us a similar toolbox but this time with cameras that have different strengths and weaknesses.

Here’s my oversimplified cheat sheet:

DSLRs are like 16mm was, nimble less expensive to produce with. But they are not the pinnacle of image quality. Right now, compression is still an issue for some applications.

Panasonic AF100 is like shooting super 16, many people won’t be able to tell the difference between it’s image and 35 mm film but it’s smaller sensor size means less options for lenses, greater depth of field, and its compression, thus image quality, isn’t as good as the big guns.

Arri Alexa is like shooting a 35mm negative, it preserves the most highlights, giving you amazing image quality on par with 35 mm film.

Red Epic 5k is like shooting super 35. This camera provides a larger image that give even greater room for cropping, plus Red Raw preserves more color information and latitude for manipulation in post.

These are just a few of the more popular cameras often discussed with commercial shooters. When your bidding your next job, ask the director why they want to use a particular camera over another. It’s not just a budgeting choice, it’s a creative one too.

Like when Gale Tattersall chose to shoot House with Canon DSLRs because it was the best way to shoot in confined spaces. He then worked within the systems limitations to achieve great television.

Or maybe if you’re shooting on a set, you don’t need the same depth of field so the workflow of the AF100 could save you money to use in post or the art department.

Unfortunately this is often the world where the best talent operates. One where the client is stuck in video village, isolated from the process by a 200-foot video cable, multiple layers of producers and an elitist attitude.

For those that have been trying to ignore the stock market, whose pagers keep buzzing with calls to work as 4th assistant to the assistant on a beer commercial, it’s time to wake up. Clients don’t need to put up with the old model anymore. I suggest you stop making fun of the kid with the 7D and consider buying one yourself.

Thirty years ago we were here in print technology. Every major city had specialized type houses, photo labs, and pre-press shops. There were teams of people who perfected the building and delivery of print ads to newspapers and magazine ads. They were staffed by talented professionals with a high degree of skill. Most of these places don’t exist anymore.

Today we have digital presses and software that enables one person to do it all on the same desktop. But we also have digital cameras that shoot cinematic images at native 800 ISO and products like Adobe CS Production, Apple FCP Suite, and Autodesk Smoke that can potentially complete post production from a single desktop.

This means leaner and meaner crews, no film developing and transfers, and a more integrated production process. It also means that it’s feasible for a single organization to possess the ability to script, produce, direct and complete post production without being a massively expensive company to operate and hire. This is where Fluid Films comes in. Welcome to the future.

This is probably one of the more shocking numbers on the rise of video on the Web but maybe not the only one that will amaze you:

Did you know that Netflix accounts for 30% of internet traffic.

Or that iPad users watch three times more video?

Or that video traffic will exceed 50% of mobile traffic this year?

I don’t need to flog the newspapers. We know that printed word has lost its dominance. Video content has established itself as the primary form of mass communication. And web distribution is quickly becoming the best way to reach diverse audiences on their own terms. And as connected devices including tablets, smartphones and set top boxes become more important that computer desktops, Web video will not only be important but essential to a brand’s success.

Your audience no longer just has a lean in, “interactive”, work relationship with the web. Today it’s also social, relaxed, playful and fluid. It goes where she goes. And you have to too. That’s where Fluid Films comes in.

I also believed in what I was doing. It was the right thing for the clients.

This passion birthed a business plan. One that I feel very strongly about and that I had hoped to execute with my former employer. But that didn’t happen.

When others don’t act you can sit around and complain or you can harness your passion, work with others that feel the same way, and do something creative. The world today is a tough place but it’s up to creative people to make the most of it and create opportunity for us and others.

So today, my business partner, Jason Gorbett and I are officially announcing the founding of Fluid Films. Over the next several days, I’ll be sharing our vision for a transmedia company and how what we’re doing is the right thing for companies and institutions. Please stay tuned.

Fortunately Bill Bernbach and the creative revolution came along and showed us a better way in where the consumer was treated as an intelligent human being who appreciated entertaining and thoughtful communication.

Not only have we seen a rise of technology in the marketing industry, there’s been serious discussion whether technology is now more important than creative. In fact, I’ve have read columns and articles positing that ad agencies should be run more like software companies.

The idea probably comes from a belief is that technology is now king  in our industry like it already is in many others. That today the real ideas in advertising are technological.

Trouble is people don’t really interact with technology. They interact with each other and maybe sometimes the media in which the interact is considered tech.

Understanding technology is crucial to success these days.  And it’s unbelievable how many senior executives still don’t understand how many social technologies work. But the only thing that’s going to make the tech compelling to an individual is creativity employed in making it compelling. Example of this would be the Old Spice campaign that uses social technology including YouTube.

OK. You still don’t believe me. Let’s look at popular technology. One could argue that iPhone and iPad were technological breakthroughs. Wrong. They were creative breakthroughs. The difference between them and what was developed elsewhere is that at Apple the designers are in charge.

The designers took mostly existing technology, even bought parts from other manufacturers,  assembled them together, created a great user interface to made something beautiful, compelling, and even groundbreaking. That’s what creative people do – not technologists.

And that’s also exactly what your advertising should do.

Just a week earlier, the top spot (says USA Today) in the Super Bowl also went to an upstart. A web designer and former film school student who wasn’t able to break into the film business the traditional way. Now he’s done what so many of us in the industry still hope to do one day.

We’ve all been hearing for years about the collapse of the record business. As a consumer of music, it’s been a great time for diversity talent. There’s a lot of great music out there for people who are actively looking for it. And of course, there’s a lot of mainstream crap for people who are looking for that too. But for the industry, times are tough. Apple is making a fist-full of money, but there’s certainly less to go around at the labels and for the artists.

The same thing is happening in advertising. There are a lot fewer creatives supported by the agency structure with more pressure for the creative to  generate ROI while clients are getting limited, but some really good results with user generated content.

This means more than no more drinks at lunch, no more cappuccinos at edit session and no sushi on your expense report. It means your job could be crowd sourced and that you may be a end up working as permanent freelancer with no prospect of a 401k or health benefits.

Don’t believe me? Then why is this place thriving? Why are people lining up to use and be used by CrowdSpring? Why are so many really talented professionals finding it so hard to find permanent gigs? And why do you have twice the workload you did ten years ago?

This article isn’t about bashing do-it-yourselfers or the wisdom of crowds. As a teenage punk (and still one at heart) “DIY” and “down with the corporate structure” are ideas I can get behind. Rather, the point I’m attempting to make is the good old days of having the time, and the opportunity to do something really creative may not happen that often anymore on the clients dime. Rather now is the time to make it happen for yourself.

DIY may not just be a punk motto anymore.

Well, what do I have to say for myself? Some of the predictions were wrong, some were right, and some were easy.

Let’s start with the easy. “The kids will still text at an alarming rate.” Duh. But I guess I had to give myself a couple easy ones.

The right? I’ll stand by most of this list as pretty solid. I think I could tweak this list slightly and make it a 2011 list. In fact, number 13 on the list has been what I’ve been living underneath for the past four months and the reason why my blogging has dropped off to a trickle.

The wrong? I don’t think social media has made as much progress in B2B as I had hoped. I think there is opportunity for B2B marketers that hasn’t been fully realized.

I think big agencies are doing even better than I thought they would. They’ve done a good job of consolidating resources and delivering on client expectations. However, this doesn’t mean I think it’s a bed of roses out there. Tough times are still ahead for everyone.

Although I didn’t state it outright, I believed that interactive agencies would be doing even better. Still, I have seen anecdotal cases of quite a bit of organic growth. But I thought we’d see more cases of interactive shops taking the lead.

Stay tuned for my 2011 predictions. And, hey, happy new year. Fingers crossed.

If content could be delivered at high-speed, (this was back when everyone had dial-up at home) via the internet, people would no longer be content to watch Baywatch in their living room.  Heck, they could watch it on their desktop. This was mainly perceived as a technical problem at the time. Everyone thought people really wanted TV on the world wide web delivered to the personal computer. And also that TV viewing would be better if it were more interactive.

We now  have Hulu, YouTube, and even smart phones that can stream content. Yet the vast majority of video is still consumed in the living room passively. Especially entertainment media.

Conversely, the internet has been making inroads into our family room. Google TV, officially launched today, Apple TV, Boxee, set-top boxes, and even some televisions now deliver the web to our TV.

Only most people don’t want to actually look at the Web on their TV or really want to “lean in” to their PC to watch their favorite sit-com. The computer is work. The TV is passive relaxation.

However there is software that’s started to change this work/play separation. You guessed it, iOS (and Android). The iPhone brings our work email and our entertainment together. The iPad has our reading material and our spreadsheets on the same device and also provides a wonderful screen for watching that sit-com. But they don’t do it at the same time.

iOS and Android don’t require you to watch TV on a computer. They morph  a Droid, iPhone or iPad into a video playback device and then later morph it into a book and then into a calender to schedule a business meeting.

There are no windows, mice, keyboards reminding you to you’re on a computer — it’s a seamless transformation from one device to another. The operating system truly changes the entire function of the device from one app to the next. Apple and Google have put their amazing software  into Apple TV and now Google TV.

In the end, the Web hasn’t converged with TV, rather the TV now has the power to be transformed into countless devices that leverages the internet.

While at first Steve’s “hobby” and Google’s low-profile launch don’t look all that earth shattering, consider the tiny computing power of a Droid, an iPhone or iPad and consider how profoundly they’ve changed the way we look at what a phone or a tablet computer can and should be.

While the pundits are arguing that Steve Jobs is just trying to sell more from his iTunes store and Google is just trying to sell more ad space, Apple TV and Google TV, through the power of their app driven software, will transform your TV, in the near future, into whatever open-source community thinks it should be. That might mean a giant cook book, a weather monitoring station, a spreadsheet, a giant drawing tablet, a virtual conference room, or musical instrument. And get ready for touch-screen TVs.

This presents some amazing opportunities for advertisers and some scary times for media outlets. Yes, TV man, Google wants more of your advertising dollars.