[Reported on April 17, 1997 by Jerry Witt]

It was back to school week for me. With the LAIFF [Los Angeles Independent Film Festival] in town, I had the opportunity to check out a few seminars. On Saturday I checked out "Creating Content for the Internet" and Monday was a rather long "Producers Caucus." The Internet seminar emphasized "community." That means that you and I should be communicating and interacting more. Thus far I have received precious little feedback. So how about it? Should there be a chat board here on which people could post their opinions and discuss issue relating to indie film? Anybody have a great idea for building community here?

"Creating Content for the Internet" wasn't so much a nuts and bolts workshop on how to prepare media and write HTML [thank God]. It was more a philosophical discussion about what makes a site interesting; what attracts and retains participants. The panelists had used diverse methods. Allison Hunter Joseph posts cheesecake photos of herself to attract viewers to her sports site, Adrenaline Alli on America Online. Karol Martesko is consulting FILMMAKER magazine to use the daily e-mail news feed indieWIRE to cross promote the web site and the print publication. By the way, I've been getting indieWIRE for about a month now and can attest to the quality and timeliness of the information. I tend to read it more closely than the Hollywood reporter these days and the price is right [free].You can subscribe by clicking here.

I think you'll all be relieved to hear that we've decided we WON'T be pursuing the "Adrenaline Alli" method. You will not be downloading photo's of me with a camera obscuring my privates or David wrapped in Academy Leader anytime soon.

I'll discuss my take on the "Producers Caucus" seminar next week.