Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth

At a meeting with Ted Leonsis. It's supposed to be about digital strategy but everyone's talking hockey (he owns the Washington Capitals)

Ted Leonsis was mayor of Orchid, FL? Didn't know that.

NPR COO Mitch Praver is talking about everything NPR and the Caps have in common. LOL

Praver: Caps coach looks like @haarsager (our interim CEO) - Ha! LMAO

Leonsis: quoting Wayne Gretsky, "You always miss 100% of the shots you never take."

Clearspring's now at 120 mil monthly views with no marketing staff.

To go from a good company to a great company is scary. Reinvention isn't pretty.

My son's in college but has probably never read the WashPost.

Your name has National in it but the growth areas are global and local.

Redefine National Public Radio around "Public" rather than "National."

You're a bit old (pointing to people in the room) yet youth rules when it comes to the Net.

Slingbox is "breathtaking.... Absolute magic."

Google and Yahoo offered everything AOL did, but for free, faster and better.

Content and services: Faster and better until it's free.

Consumers now expect things to be free, on demand, mashed up, shareable, raw and authentic.

Allowing people to grab and mashup your content is important.

Talking about redesigning NHL website as a lesson to NPR: Break up this big monolithic site into widgets.

Broadcast networks now get 9 mil viewers in primetime for news. That's puny. Youtube gets 110k new videos a day.

200k people saw my last film. Compare that to the millions who saw the Fast Times at Ridgemont High mashup.

Rentals of Fast Time at Ridgemont High skyrocket due to Spicolli mashup on Youtube. Dude!

Leonsis is talking about Paramount using viral promotion and contests for Cloverfield.

I could only get one theatre in DC to show Nanking.

NPR should open a million stations with widgets. Let the public broadcast you.

Authenticity is what works online.

Users can smell BS. If you're too manufactured and handled it won't work.

I glaze over when people tell me about "their site." Having just a site is so Web 1.0.

If the WashPost went out of biz it wouldn't affect the Caps because the Caps are such a digital-friendly entity now.

Mitch Kapor once said "memory will be free."

global market is incredibly important. More Chinese online than Americans now. Half a bil Google users.

I watch BET and wonder if they really know their audience.

Your brand does well with older folks. the only prob is that those folks die.

Free bin of WashPosts at Georgetown ignored by students, but the Mac lab is total chaos of young people.

Leonsis just made a joke about using a wats line. Some folks laughed. Too young to get it, I guess.

Leonsis is talking about the good ole days when the MSM actually mattered.

Leonsis just mentioned Twitter. Why is everyone looking at me?

Buzznet's the no 1 site for college kids re lifestyle. This generation's Rolling Stone.

The Net enhances relationships, community, self expression, giving back, pursuing a higher calling.

Leonsis once owned an Apple II.

Leonsis sold his first company for 60 mil at 24. Then he got on a plane and it crashed.

experience made him become "a student of happiness. We're in the happiness business."

key to happiness is being an active participant in multiple communities of interest.

I don't really want to win the Stanley Cup - I want to bring this community together.

We - aol - used to be a subscription biz with ad biz on the side, but now it's reversed.

WashPost's circulation down from 850k to 590k just since I bought the Caps.

Someday the print version of the Post will just be a way to promote what they're doing on their website.

I bet you have a lot of English majors. I was an English major. Marketers need to be math majors.

If u don't appear in google search results til page 4, you don't exist.

Leonsis decided to produce the film Nanking because of an Amazon book recommendation.

Firefox is now the best browser because 2 mil people contribute code.

Embrace users. Listen. Be open. Create products with virtue. Make sharing easy. Mirror the community. Be authentic and humble.

Voice-of-God broadcasting just doesn't cut it anymore.

I didn't think we could win the Stanley Cup with the team we had.

I said I'm blowing the team up, even if u hate me. But generational teams are built thru the draft.

To get really good we need to get really bad first.

The British Empire lost 1 pct market share for a year til one day they realized it was gone.

Radio is really the launch pad for radio 2.0: user content, Mashups, widgets, self expression. that's your future.

Question from audience: wouldn't opening our API cause us to lose control? Leonsis laughs: Like you're in control anyway! lol

Opening up google maps didn't kill google's map biz. It accelerated it.

Don't use words like control any more. You need to be relevant.

The net's become like a power grid, it's like oxygen, like water. It should be open and free.

Your content should be playable in a billion places.