Core77

Last night's program at The New School in NYC, put on by The Producers Guild of America New Media Council, featured a standing-room-only crowd and the promise of intriguing dialogue. Entitled, "Death of the Producer? The Rise of User Generated Content and Community," here was the pitch: "With the proliferation of user generated content on the Internet and big media networks such as Google, Yahoo, AOL and MySpace encouraging video files to be uploaded and shared, will the traditional producer have a role in the future of media? If so, what will the profile of media producer look like in the years to come?"

The evening was moderated lively by Shelly Palmer--with panelists Shawn Gold (SVP of Entertainment, MySpace), Scott Heiferman (CEO and Co-Founder, Meetup), Murray Hidary (Co-Founder, iAmplify), and Jeremy Allaire (Founder and CEO, Brightcove)--but ultimately disappointed. Ridiculous technical mess-ups (one of the panelists couldn't exit out of his Flash movie), and paint-by-numbers promo movies (chatter on the street afterwards was brutally critical) were the low-points, but one had the feeling that the packed house was waiting-for-the-thing-to-start, even when the moderater was wrapping it up. Still, there were some great pull-quotes: "Me and my friends used to hang out in the woods, and then in front of 7-11; for kids now it's MySpace" (MySpace's Gold); "We are America Offline" (Meetup's Heiferman); "We are the last people on earth who will know the difference between [content delivered on] a TV, a computer monitor, and a phone" (Heiferman), and the best: "People talk about 'content is king'; I say 'contact is king' (Palmer). Podcast for this and other events here.