Montreal Tech Watch

ca.intruders.tv has an excellent interview of Casey McKinnon and Rudy Jahchan, who make the Galacticast show. They were at BarCampMontreal3, but I missed their presentation, which was about Canadian content regulations on the Internet.

As independent content producers, they oppose any law or organization which would make sure that there is a majority of Canadian content viewed by Canadians. The nature of the Internet allowed them to have an international audience, but most importanly, they enjoy a true freedom of creation, as opposed to current CanCon regulations on broadcast media which produces mediocre shows on many occasions.

Casey and Rudy are producing a video show which gets 250.000 views each month, have received awards, have created “sub-products” and merchandise items, and might just be a model for any artist which wishes to free himself/herself from traditional models and leverage the Internet to get some visibility and a direct dialogue with fans. Here is a list of some of their presence on the Internet:

• the galacticast website, where they publish their latest videos. Viewers can leave comments and get a code to embed videos on other web pages. Viewers can also send a video to a bookmarking website, like digg, del.icio.us, furl, stumbleupon
• their content is also syndicated on iTunes, and other major video portals
• Casey McKinnon writes on her separate blog while Rudy JahChan manages a myspace profile
• They also publish on flickr, twitter
• They are also proactive on facebook (which is an understatement)

This is a proof that the Internet can be an extraordinary and productive tool for artists and creatives, and get a quarter million of viewers monthly even if you have full-time jobs. Of course, Casey and Rudy are technology geeks and early adopters, and not every other artist in Québec or in Canada have the same ability to understand technology. This is where I believe a startup should step up and offer local artists a “package” that somehow shows them the path on how to use the Internet and bypass traditional producers. iTunes Music Store has shown the way that it’s possible to distribute music and video on the Internet; but the fact that its content and publication mechanism is controlled entirely by Apple makes it a very limited platform. Artists and content producers should be somehow able to have a (limited) degree of control and push/pull their own content. The fact that industry leaders are panicking should also hint entrepreneurs that it’s NOW the key moment to launch this platform.