I spoke last week at the IAB Conference, together with Steve Rubel on the topic of Web 2.0, Social Media etc. That was fun, and I was happy to help Jordan and the IAB out of a bind when Jordan had to pull out last minute.

But *man* was being there a blast back to 2002.

Our slot was immediately following a panel of broadcasters, who were represented at this event for the first time ever. Usual suspects, head Senior Execs of this and that network, da da da. Holy snappin' are those kids out of touch.

Listening to them sit there and say that nothing seemed likely to change etc. reminded me of being at travel industry conferences around 2000 when the great leaders of that world would sit there and tell each other pretty much the same thing, while I stared at my hands. You know, the whole "nothing is happening online" chestnut. In fact, I often think of the vice-chairman of a large travel industry supplier who all but laughed at me when I suggested that they might want to think about doing something serious online. He was happy with his offline channel partners, thank you very much.

I bet you can imagine how that turned out. Not exceptionally well. And he's not there anymore.

Go figure.

The fact is that in very short order the world of video is going to be turned upside down, the surrounding economic conventional wisdom is going to be seriously challenged and the "shotgun" ad model is going to be under enormous pressure.

Those broadcast kids seem violently ill prepared.

(Posted via blackberry)