On June 3, at Videoday, we launched the redesign of www.23video.com and we have been really happy about how it turned out. However, that is not the only website we launched.

Since we introduced 23 Video a year ago, we have helped launch more than 130 sites and that number keeps growing. We believe that over 90% off all video sites launched in Denmark in that period are running 23 Video, and we want to show them off to the world.

Having a showcase with 130 sites on our own website would be a bit excessive, so we gathered ’round the good old whiteboard and tried to figure out how we could approach this in the best way.

We came to the conclusion that we are not the only video platform provider out there, and what matters immediately is not whether organizations use a free or paid service to reinvent their communications strategy visually. What matters is that in most situations, those on the verge of getting started with video have no idea where to get started and how to approach the task.

This is where Act Visually comes into play.

We wanted to have a place where we could show the world how we help organizations act visually, but also make it a community-driven collection of cases that share a common trait of being visually oriented.

The site already has a number of cases that we have put in to get it off the ground—both some of those running on our platform, but more importantly, also a range of sites that we think are inspiring.

If you are interested in how you can get started, you should go to www.actvisually.com and have a look. If you already have a case you want to show to the world, you can easily add it by creating an account and filling out the submission form. It should show up on the site right away.

You can already make your 23 Video site run on iPhone, Android and a whole bunch of other mobile phones that support H.264 encoded video, but we’ve just got our hands on a rather promising device…

We present to you: Obligatory Blurry Pic Of Beta Service Running On Cool Hardware:

We don’t have a timeframe on when this will be wider available, but watch this space, and you’ll be the first to know.

Congratulations to Normann-Copenhagen who was awarded for their use of social media last night at the Danish e-business award. We are of course very proud of the fact that the danish design company is using 23 Video as part of their online presence.

But 23 Video is only one of many platforms where you’ll be able to meet Normann-Copenhagen. I had a short chat with online sales & brand manager Michael Rying about why they have embraced social media.

“A lot of companies are talking about getting on facebook, using twitter or getting a videosite. What sets us apart is the fact the we’re doing something about it instead of talking. We’re not waiting for a great master plan or social media strategy. Our approach is to try things out and learn from the experience. We had no idea what it would lead to when we started to blog, got a twitter account and a facebook page. So if we have a strategy it’s the fact that we allow ourselves to fail and learn from our failures. That wont give you a perfect result to begin with, but you’ll end up with a practice and most importantly you’ll actually get something done,” he says.

Behind the “just do it” attitude there’s also a great belief in the fact that social media will bring the company closer to both customers and retailers. That motive has recently led to a videosite where people can get a glimpse of the work in the workshop and meet the designers behind their great products.

“Video is really close to my heart. No matter how good you are with words or how great your photographer is, you simply can’t communicate how a great craftsman is going about is daily business in his workshop in the southern part of Sealand. But with video you can capture the experience and pass it on to your customers. We also use it to communicate to our retailers in Tokyo, Sydney, Italien, Finland. US and the rest of the 80 countries we’re exporting to. And we have videos running in a loop from a couple of mac’s when we’re exhibiting. So to us video has become essential.”

So, I’m sitting in Chicago O’Hare airport, trying to think about what has happened at SXSW the last few days.

SXSW is a web conference in Austin, Texas, and has bumped the number of attendants this year with 50% so now there is 15,000 people in the Convention Center. It is an amazing combination of thinkers, doers and makers with strong focus on interaction and development of all kinds.

The best part of it all, was how smoothly it went. The WiFi worked perfectly 95% of the time, and the remaining time it was just a bit flaky – nothing major. AT&T even managed to set up a network that did not break down (as it did last year), but most important; every single session went as planned. No delays, no cancellations (not for me at least – a lot of people were bummed when Quentin Tarantino cancelled his appearance at a panel).

It just runs smoothly – and that might be the biggest problem as well. Unlike Reboot and other smaller conferences, there is not much of the action that happens when 600 people or less are gathered. It is not a big problem in any way – it is just the difference that is bound to be there when so many people are at the same place.

For Austin, I must say that I was really impressed with the vibe of the city. It must be a pain to live there when so many geeks get out and get in party mode simultaneously, with the lines that follow (the line for every major party counted several hundred people).

Because of the party hubs that are pre-planned, a lot of people choose to make their own as well. I had a lot of fun at several other venues that were not part of any major, official parties. Austin is known as the live music capital of the world, and everywhere you go, there is a band playing. From Dirty Dog to Headhunter and Emo’s – there’s rock’n'roll everywhere.

I will definitely be going again, but the experiences from this year will come in handy next time around.

- Live as close to the Convention Center as possible (preferrably Hilton or Marriot – both right across the road)
- Bring more sandwiches for eating during the day – there’s no lunch break, so you tend to forget to eat for a lot of hours.
- Bring better shoes. Doesn’t matter what they look like – they just have to be fantastically comfortable.
- Plan less. Everything goes havoc anyway.

Over the next week, I’ll post video post cards and a few write-ups of what I attended during the conference – this post is just to grab a bit of the feeling from the interactive festival and share it with you guys.

(And yes, I know this blog post is very non-visually oriented, but check back soon…)

In less than two weeks more than 200 bands have entered the Royal Beer rock competition by uploading videos and music on RoyalBeer.tv. The campaign is crafted and designed by online agency Stupid Studio and features are beautifully integrated 23 Video solution. The agency were given free hands as to which platform to use as long as the final site could support a competition centered around Kashmir and work as a future brand channel for brewery.

“So we started looking for a video solution that we could integrate on our own terms to avoid being forced into a youtube environment. We needed complete freedom and control in order to integrate videos with related content, so when we encountered 23 Video, we were like, this is it” says project manager Matthias Flugge Hansen.

WordPress Integration

The greatest challenge for Stupid Studio was to make a seamless sign-up flow for the participating bands. Allowing them to upload both music, video and images and being able to control it all in a wordpress setup afterwards. Thus this project is also one of the first to take advantage of the fact that you can use 23 Video to handle audio.

“We have created a wordpress plugin, to make the wordpress integration as smooth as possible, and I must say that we’re pretty happy with the way it turned out. The users of the site can now login to wordpress and control their videos and sound files from there. Apart from that we’ve also worked on customizing the design, we’ve added color coding to the channels and worked on how to trigger related videos, when they get embedded,” says Matthias Flugge Hansen.

During the proces the development team at Stupid Studio have been in close contact with their 100 % human contact from 23. 100% Human is our service program which gives you your personal contact person. We don’t usually talk about it since it’s a regular part of our daily work, but I can’t help to finish this post with the following quote from Matthias Flugge Hansen.

“Its been great working with 23 on this project. The support level is awesome, so the 100 % human concept makes 100 % sense to us.”

We’re very happy to let you all know that our two partners, Plant and Eyeworks, has teamed up to create 3 inspirational seminars on how to get an online video project to take off.

The two agencies has several years of experience with online video projects and will share their experiences from a joint project they did for Novozymes. Novozymes will also be present to let you in on their thoughts on adding online video to their communcation.

Co-founder of 23, Thomas Madsen-Mygdal, will also be present at the event to a bit of 23 spice.

The seminars will take place on, April 8th, April 22nd and May 12th. The Location is Eyeworks Denmark, Sølvgade 32, 1307 Copenhagen and event will unfold from 2 pm to 4 pm.

It’s free to sign up. Just send an email to Anne Stein – anne.h.stein [a] eyeworks.tv or call her at +45 3344 7400.

The international sport fashion brand hummel recently launched Playstadil.com. Here they challenge their customers to compete with videos for sneakers and a spot in their international spring fashion campaign.

The campaign is a great example of the flexibility you get with 23 Video. First thing you’ll notice is the custom background and header, followed by the link colors. But it’s the details that really made us excited. Notice how the player has been redesigned to include elements from the background graphics as well as the hummel-inspired player button. This is exactly what 23 Video is all about. To help out with the technical parts of the site hummel turned to 23 Video partner Re:, so we called Asbjørn Poulsen to get some more insights on how they customized 23 Video to fit hummels needs and give them a visual online presence.

Control related videos

“The Open Upload function was essential since they wanted to make a video competition for their customers and followers. Next was the rating and comment possibilities as they are very interested in feedback and interactions from the viewers. Distribution through Facebook and Twitter was also very important as they’ve build a great presence there,” says Asbjørn Poulsen and adds that the embedding provided an easy way for hummel partners to be part of the project.

However, those features are all out of the box and easy to implement, so the real challenges for Re: was to include more pages and figure out a way to control the related videos in the player.

“It was important for us to control the related videos in the player, so we worked on the categorization a lot and made a tagging system that hummel can use to control how the videos relate to each other,” says Asbjørn Poulsen.

The possibility to get your fingers deep into the code and control even the smallest details is exactly the reasons why Re: keeps recommending 23 Video to their customers.

“23 Video is great to work with. Most clients require features that 23 Video have out of the box, and the possibility to customize everything makes it easy for us meet specific needs. This means we can get a project up and running in no time. On top of that the extensive analytics adds important value and feedback, which is really important when you are experimenting with video online. I simply can’t point to another platform that includes all those features and possibilities at such a low price level,” says Asbjørn Poulsen

The spring winner has just been announced on Playstadil.com and are now playing in theaters, but the competition continues online with the possibility to win sneakers and a fall cinema spot for the next winner.

I recently read an interview with the “punk rock mathematician”, Tom Henderson, and found myself thinking a lot more than I regularly do when reading articles about teachers.

His teaching methods are weird and crazy, but highly enjoyable for those who attend them. Usually, teaching methods described as “cool” and “hip” make me cringe and feel sorry for everybody unlucky enough to attend that lecture.

But to understand how Tom Henderson teaches, he makes three points:

1. Punk rock is founded upon not knowing how to play your instrument
2. He has no idea what the problem with math education in the US is.
3. Math knowledge also exists as a performative concept

First things first. In an argument with his high school girlfriend – who was very much into punk music – he made the claim that punk is founded upon people not knowing how to play their instrument.

Which is true, but not the point. Being in a punk band, and being terrible at playing your instrument, is all about performing on a stage. Instead of pointing fingers at those who can’t play, one should focus on acknowledging the courage they have for getting up there and living the dream.

This changed his worldview completely, and what his teaching style is now founded upon.

When asked what the problem with math education in the US is, he has no idea. But what he knows is that many students’ approach to math is wrong. It’s all about showing the steps, getting an A for answering correctly and knowing the books inside out.

Essentially, it’s about not knowing anything, but still being able to answer the questions posed in the tests. What if math was more about the path towards the solution, and not just handing in an answering sheet? What if math was more like punk?

Math must also be about the performance – just as punk music is. If he has to climb the chair and desk to show the progression of a graph – he climbs and climbs and climbs. The visual element of math becomes real and the ridiculous bunch of letters and graphs becomes an interesting problem that should be solved.

Why do we blog this?

Besides talking about teaching, Tom Henderson actually touches upon a point that’s essential in the fundamentals of 23. It’s always been about building tools for people who want to express themselves, without the need to learn to operate the instruments usually needed to do so.

It shouldn’t be a hassle to set up a website that you can upload pictures to – it should be accessible to everyone looking for a way to show off what they stumble upon every day. That’s where 23 Photo Sharing comes in.

If we take it even further, we find the purpose behind making 23 video. Five years ago, a couple of guys started something called YouTube (you might have heard of it) that kicked off a video revolution. Every minute, 20 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube. Every single minute. It’s an unbelievable resource of education material, music, humor and cultural artifacts.

Yet, if you were an organisation looking for a possibility to have your own site, own domain and own relation to users you’d pay a premium price. It’s not unheard of that you pay €30,000 just to get started, and you never really knew the end price if you want extra modules and features.

We figured that if you take the best of both worlds – the ease of publishing a video to YouTube with the options of customisation from the premium retailers – interesting stuff could happen.

Now we’re seeing all kinds of creative uses for video; campaign sites, intranets built around video, video archives in municipalities being activated, kids talking about their schools etc.

It doesn’t take you months and months of preparation to start a video site, and it certainly won’t cost you tens of thousands of Euros.

To us, it’s all about taking the punk approach to video – it doesn’t matter if all you have is a Flip or Kodak Zi8 or whatever. What matters is that you have something to say and start performing!

Yes, the inevitable iPad post has hit the 23 blog.

Obviously we’re very excited about the iPad – not only because Apple introduced a new product (we are dedicated, naïve fanboys here at the office), but because the shape of the device itself is interesting for us. After it was introduced, our internal “digital watercooler” – Yammer – was red hot with posts from 23-employees discussing which version of the iPad would be the best purchase. Not if we should buy it, but which one.

The “tagline” of 23 is “The Visual Sharing Company”. We like things that are communicated visually and our products reflect that. We already have tight integration between 23 Video and other platforms such as podcasting through iTunes and RSS, directory listing in Boxee and an iPhone/Android-optimized site (try accessing http://video.reboot.dk on your iPhone/Android). The integration with other platforms is essential for sharing video with customers who want to access the content in their own way.

With the introduction of the iPad on Wednesday, we saw a new potential for our customers to reach out and create compelling experiences for their customers. After all, video already looks good on the iPhone, but it will look absolute stunning on the iPad with a screen size four times larger than the iPhone.

So tell us, what are some of the things you look forward to seeing the most on the iPad?