With no relief from the recession coming anytime soon, plus Monday's news that L.A.'s own Tsavo Media founder Mike Jones will now take over as COO of MySpace, it's high time Los Angeles and Silicon Valley broke out the peace pipe. The opportunity presented itself at this week's AlwaysOn OnHollywood conference where leaders in the global technology industry gathered at the Sofitel in Beverly Hills to engage in high-level smack-downs (i.e. debates) on current state of digital media. If Palo Alto is considered the "Athens of the Information Age" then Hollywood is Rome. Tinseltown excess and focus on celebrity bacchanals do nothing for our reputation of being "more style than substance." Worse, we're at risk of being outpaced by the innovation coming out of the tech sector.
Velocity Interactive Partner Ross Levinson isn't worried."Hollywood will not die," he told the AlwaysOn audience, "there are too many smart people here."
The task of getting the people to whom IP means Internet Protocol to jive with the people to whom it means Intellectual Property fell to Silicon Valley media baron Tony Perkins, formerly of the Red Herring -- the groundbreaking original business mag, not the name-stealing remake of recent years.
Perkins optimistically began AlwaysOn by declaring, "Hollywood's best years are ahead." The crux of the three-day long discussions was basically how to accomplish the "M-word" (monetize) and bridge Levinsohn's 29-8 gap -- 29% being the amount of time people spend online and 8% being the amount of total advertising dollars spent in the online space. While the economy seems to be stabilizing on one level, conservative estimates say that we won't begin to see improvements until the first quarter of 2010. Until then it is problem-solving and re-positioning in an attempt to stay afloat and be ready to catch the next incoming tide of cash.
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