Most Downloaded Programs in 2007

On the home page we're currently featuring four of the most downloaded programs in 2007, so here on the blog we thought we'd give you the full top 10 (with a nod to David Letterman):

10. The Audacity of Hope with Barack Obama
The Senator talks with New York Times columnist Bob Herbert about his book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. C-SPAN, October 20, 2006;

9. Hillary Rodham Clinton
Senator Clinton discusses foreign policy challenges facing the U.S. at the Council on Foreign Relations on October 31, 2006;

Does anyone else think it's interesting that these first two are basically neck and neck, with Clinton leading Obama slightly in total downloads? Anyway:

8. Will Wright and Brian Eno
Legendary game developer Will Wright and musician Brian Eno giveNot to be missed! Long Now Foundation, June 26, 2006;

7. The Silent Ninth Amendment
Legal scholar Daniel Farber says the express purpose of the Ninth Amendment was to recognize "unenumerated" rights like the right to privacy or the right to marry. Yet this amendment has never been the basis for a Supreme Court decision. Cody's Books, May 1, 2007;

6. Vincent Bugliosi in New York City
Vincent Bugliosi, prosecutor of the Manson family and best-selling author of Helter Skelter, reexamines the assassination of President Kennedy in his newest book Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The Cooper Union, May 15, 2007;

5. Taming Gaming in Your Home
A panel of gaming experts covers issues of content rating systems, parental controls in consoles and PCs, advice for checking in and better understanding your family's gaming habits, and how to participate. Commonwealth Club, April 19, 2007;

4. Christopher Hitchens at Politics & Prose
The always colorful commentator Christopher Hitchens discusses his book, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Politics & Prose, May 10, 2007;

3. Neil Gaiman
Critically-acclaimed author Neil Gaiman reads from his collection Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders. Cody's Books, October 2, 2006;

2. Philip Rosedale
For this talk the founder and CEO of "Second Life" tried something new: a simultaneous demo and talk. His online avatar, "Philip Linden," was on the screen showing things while the in-theater Philip Rosedale was conjecturing about what it all means. Long Now Foundation, November 30, 2006;

And, the most downloaded FORA.tv program of 2007:

1. Al Sharpton and Christopher Hitchens
A smackdown between Christopher Hitchens and the Rev. Al Sharpton. New York Public Library, May 7, 2007.

Happy Holidays

Speech!, originally uploaded by FORA.tv.

We cut the workday a few hours short yesterday to celebrate another year with FORA.tv. Food, drink and discussion highlighted the event. Hot topics of the evening included cell phone providers, new and classic films and the usual dose of politics – a dangerous topic to engage in with this group!

In the past year our staff has grown significantly, our product has matured and the team has grown tighter. We thank you all for the support and wish you the happiest of holidays - and a great 2008.

Check out the rest of the photos on the FORA.tv Flickr page.

Cheers.

A few of my recent favorites...

Being that I haven't posted in a while, here are a few programs I've really enjoyed as of late.

The first features Daniel Lyons, the man behind The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. This program will gratify your inner geek:



The second features Anthony Bourdain, the bad boy of the Travel Channel and Bravo’s Top Chef. Chapter 4 is definitely worth a watch. Bourdain breaks down which popular chefs are good – and which are evil.

Rachel Ray…good or evil?

Tune in to find out:

YouTube folks!

I was just told that we will go over 1,000,000 views on our YouTube content this weekend. Way to go team. Nick Ryan, our syndication producer, is the one who deserves the credit for reaching this great milestone. The real amazing thing is we are actually using YouTube to post intellectually worthwhile video. Now, I am not saying I don't enjoy a good South Park excerpt every now and again.

Anyway, it is cool to be able to use the YouTube UGC thing to get FORA out there.

Why debate is the best form of public discourse

Real debate (as opposed to presidential clown shows with eight people on a stage offering 15-second sound bytes in responding to the most complicated problems of the day) serves the public better than any other form of public discourse, here's why: when there are two or more intelligent advocates of differing positions, each in command of the relevant data, it becomes impossible for one side to reduce the other to a caricature.

Lectures can be great - but when a speaker addresses a contentious issue without knowing he/she is faced with an informed opponent the temptation to dumb down the opposing argument is strong. Having an opponent standing ready to drop the hammer on factual inaccuracies, distortions and simplifications imposes a rigor that delivers far greater value to an audience that wants to do more than just affirm the opinions it came with.

Trevar and I saw a lot of this at the Battle of Ideas, and partners like the Institute of Ideas are helping make FORA.tv the destination for people who want to explore ideas, challenge their own assumptions and get informed in the process.

Vlog Update from Day 2 at the Battle of Ideas in London

I'm slightly exhausted, but have been extremely inspired by this wonderful series of debates. I really can't wait to get this content live on FORA. Stay tuned.

Live from the Battle of Ideas

Trevar and I both made it London this week and are now present with cameras running at the Battle of Ideas hosted by the Institute of Ideas at the Royal College of Art at Hyde Park. There's a massive buzz of energy about the place and the event- a series of seventy debates running across two days.

It's a convergence of three of FORA's favorite partnerships with The Times of London (another sponsor), Pfizer, and the Institute of Ideas. I've sat in on two great sessions dealing with music and society and one sizzling discussion on UK foreign policy after Blair.

On Trevar's inaugural visit to London we took a bit of time yesterday to move around- the Tate, the Millenium Bridge, the new Globe, Waterloo Bridge, past Trafalgar and up to Westminster via St James Park, (sat through an evensong and there and had a moment at Newton's final resting place), Picadilly Circus then up Regent Street before wrapping up with great Indian food and horrible service (dude stood over Trevar and asked "do you want to give a tip?" w/o telling him that gratuity was included in the bill).

Day ended back at the hotel just off of Gloucester Road in South Kensington with Trev talking to his dog (extremely confused and looking mildly disturbed by Trevar being trapped on the computer screen) and girlfriend on Skype video.

You have to love Trevar's money shot (below) of the double decker blurring in front of the Parliament buildings. Classic London stuff.

FORA.tv Battles London

Big Ben and a Double Decker, originally uploaded by FORA.tv.

Stuart and I are currently in London for Battle of Ideas: Shaping the Future Through Debate. The conference is hosted by the Institute of Ideas. The line-up is fantastic, so be on the look-out for the debates on FORA in the very near future. In the meantime, you can check out our Flickr page for a few photos I snap while out and about in London.

The FORA.tv portable studio!

The FORA.tv portable studio!, originally uploaded by FORA.tv.

You know you're a tech geek when a shot like this brings a tear to your eye! What can I say...we love what we do!

In route from San Francisco to London for Battle of Ideas

Norman J. Ornstein's Favorite FORA.tv Programs

One of the features we've added on our new home page is Guest Favorites, where we ask a Friend of FORA (a FOF?) to tell us which FORA programs they find particularly interesting or thought-provoking.

This week, we are fortunate to have a list of favorites submitted by Norman J. Ornstein, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, who studies politics, Congress and elections. Here's Mr. Ornstein's list:

• Karl Rove in conversation with Walter Isaacson at the Aspen Institute, July 8, 2007;
• Restoring America's Standing in the World, a talk by Ambassador Dennis Ross at the Commonwealth Club on June 27, 2007;
• Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Stephen Breyer in conversation at the Aspen Institute on July 6, 2006;
• How Republicans Broke the Bank, a talk by Stephen Slivinski at the Cato Institute on August 15, 2006.

Previous FOFs have included Gerard Baker, U.S. Editor for the Times of London (top pick: Books That Changed the World, with P.J. O'Rourke) and William Randolph Hearst, a director of the Hearst Corporation and a partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield and Byers (top pick: Al Sharpton and Christopher Hitchens).

1,000 Subscribers on FORA.tv's YouTube Channel!

To commemorate the milestone, Nick Ryan and I assembled FORA's first vlog post on YouTube:



We will attempt to post at least one new vlog per week, so tune in!

The FORA.tv Family

group_photo, originally uploaded by FORA.tv.

Last night the FORA.tv crew assembled at MoMo’s in San Francisco to celebrate our bootstrap beginnings, our current successes, and the wide-open path ahead…

We ate, we drank and we conversed.

There was a lot of reminiscing about our modest early days - a crowded and noisy bedroom in a townhouse near San Francisco State University. On occasion I still hear the phantom whine of the servers we kept stored in the closet (they frequently overheated, so we had to load them up with the most powerful cooling fans we could afford).

There was also a lot of chatter about the recent additions to the FORA family and the countless opportunities that lay ahead for our young company.

All in all, it was a fantastic evening.

If you want to check out the rest of the photos from the party, then head over to the FORA.tv flickr page.

Thanks for your continued support, and be on the lookout for some exciting new features in the coming months.

Enjoy the weekend!
Trevar

Brian 'The Grube' Gruber and Bob 'Boba' Appel

brian_bob, originally uploaded by FORA.tv.

Founder & CEO of FORA.tv Brian Gruber and SVP of Operations Bob Appel pose for a picture during a FORA.tv celebration at MoMo's in San Francisco.

Enjoy the New FORA.tv Home Page

Welcome to the new FORA.tv blog. Our redesigned home page showcases some important new features:

• We are now featuring three new programs along the top of the page to give you quick access to what's new and hot.


• We now give you a choice between watching a several minute 'clip' right on the home page or watching the entire program.


• We've also introduced guest favorites: FORA.tv thinkers and other personalities who will contribute playlists of FORA programs that they find particularly interesting.


• Some navigation has changed. The podcast link at the top of the page takes you to our new daily podcast, which previews what's new on FORA.tv each day. You can also roll back in time and see what was recently featured on the home page by clicking on one of the "Posted" links on top.


• We are continually adding new content to our Presidency 2008 area, both from the candidates themselves and from policy experts featured in FORA.tv programs. See where the candidates stand and gain an in-depth understanding of the issues as the race heats up.


• We hope you'll find our new features useful and engaging. Please post any feedback on our forums - we're very interested to know what you think. Or click on Contact Us and tell us what you think. Thanks for visiting FORA.tv.

Allow myself to introduce myself

I'm Stuart Schulzke FORA's Director of Content Development, and I don't mind a bit of blogging so you're certain to see me hanging round here.

We at FORA.tv are convinced that we have the best jobs on the entire planet and probably even in San Francisco. It is, quite literally, our work to find the most interesting conversations anywhere, capture them, package them, and center them in a global conversation on this platform. Our growing list of partners are based in Sydney, London, Berlin, Hong Kong, New York, Brussels, Jerusalem and dozens of other cities and the FORA promise is that if it matters, if it's compelling and if it needs to be heard you will find it here.

At the end of this month Trevar Mazza and myself will be traveling to London for 'The Battle of Ideas' (hosted by 'The Institute of Ideas'). We'll be able to film about half of the approximately twenty-five programs they'll be hosting in a weekend of intoxicating dialog on some of the world's most pressing issues (and a few that are not so pressing but still very interesting). You should check out battleofideas.org.uk and let Trev and I know which of those might most prefer to see on FORA.

More coming from me soon.

Greetings and salutations!

Welcome to the new FORA.tv blog!

I’m Trevar Mazza, the Director of Video Productions here at FORA.tv. Basically, all FORA programming comes to me before going live on the site. I monitor and assign the daily flow of programming, and typically post between 6 and 8 full-length programs every day. That’s the short version. Being a young bootstrap start-up, we all wear a lot of hats. I know…sounds like a cliché.

I’ll be periodically posting about hot new programs coming through the pipes, as well as some of my old favorites. From time-to-time, I’ll also post on the general happenings around the office – which is usually just our small crew staring into the abyss of our LCD monitors all day long. ☺

But hey, that’s what we love to do!

Again welcome to the FORA community. We have a lot of sweet features in the works to make FORA a one stop destination for staying current on what’s going on around the globe, while also connecting individuals – with similar or differing views – around a vast variety of topics. This is a place to fuel your knowledge and to openly debate with other curious folk.

the world is thinking…

How Do We Choose Featured Programs?

Most days, FORA.tv posts about six new programs, but we can only feature three of them at the top of the new home page. Usually Trevar knows by 10 or 11 a.m. which programs will be ready for posting that evening, so that's when I look at the list and make decisions.

First, I look for programs featuring a well-known newsmaker or a hot topic in the news. Then, I try to select a "mix" of programs so that the top of the page isn't all international issues or all policy. If we've featured a lot of Iraq programs recently, I might not feature another one unless it really adds something new to our understanding of the issue.

Last night we had the interview with James Watson, who won the Nobel Prize as part of the team that identified the double helix structure of DNA. Since he's an engaging speaker and a well-known person you don't hear from all the time, I put him in the first, and most visible spot.

Then we had an interesting discussion about China's competition with other countries for energy resources: that program won the number two spot.

Finally, we had Dave Barry, who's always fun. He went in spot number three.

Unfortunately, that meant that NPR Producer Dave Gediman, talking about his work on NPR's regular "This I Believe" segment, moved down to the "Recent Programs" list, as did the incredibly inspiring Women Who Light The Dark, stories of women around the globe, many of them impoverished, who are changing the world nonetheless.

More Programs Coming

It seems as if Americans have jumped on the bandwagon in regard to taking extended holidays during the Summer. So along with our content partners in other territories, many of FORA's U.S. based providers scheduled very few events during the Summer months. Well, they are back with a vengeance. The good news is an accelerated number of program offerings on the site.

Recently, we announced our milestone 1000th program, we are fast approaching 1500 and beyond. This is very exciting for the staff here and hopefully for all the FORA.tv die hards.

As we forge more relationships and streamline the production processes, the library will continue to grow at an increased rate.

FORA.tv on Adobe Media Player

Exciting announcement from Adobe yesterday. They announced their new internet TV viewing platform called the Adobe Media Player (AMP). I suppose is a bad name for what it really is because when I think media player, I think Windows Media Player, Quicktime, VLC, MPC, Real Player, etc. That's not what AMP is.

AMP lets you browse online programming 'networks,' like FORA.tv, subscribe to a channel, like the FORAcasts, and get notified when a new program gets posted. If the video is progressive, it'll download it for you. It's pretty cool!

The reason I'm here talking about it, is because FORA.tv is one of the 6 featured networks in Adobe's catalog. It's a really good way to get a lean back experience while viewing FORA content. Here's a cool screenshot:

My Introduction

"Helo World!"

So I'm the developer/IT Admin/customer support/office help desk/tech nerd guy at FORA. You got to hand it to Trevar. When he asks for something, sooner or later he gets it, and that's why this blog exists and why I'm here letting you know I exist.

I hope you enjoy the blog. I hope to spend a few minutes a week letting you know what I'm working on, what's new, and generally how things are going in the FORA.tv development.

Welcome to the FORA.tv Blog

The day of our 1,000th posted program was actually a bi-coastal event.

Our first complete program at City Arts & Lectures at the fabulous Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, featuring Will Hearst interviewing Tina Brown is a big milestone. The discussion focused much on the state of modern media, a subject of great interest to the FORA team. Same night, we recorded Gunter Grass and Norman Mailer at the New York Public Library.

The heart of FORA's promise. Every day, in cities around the world, great leaders, thinkers and writers present brilliant ideas in public places, and you can't be there. Until now.

Special thanks to the visionary event producers at each venue. The irrepressible Sydney Goldstein at City Arts and the impresario Paul Holdengraber at the NYPL. Great venues, great people, great events. Enjoy them on FORA.