The IAWTV is currently preparing to elect five new members to the board of directors and someone nominated me. Last week I accepted the nomination and submitted the following candidate’s statement. Regardless of whether I win or lose, I will continue to advocate the contents of this statement which I hold very highly.

Thanks to the person(s) who nominated me, I appreciate your vote of confidence!

Thank you for nominating me to run for a seat on the board of directors. I am very passionate about our industry and driven to uplift our achievements and professionalism. Here is an outline of my thoughts on where I feel we should take the academy in the coming months. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

International- Though the IAWTV has held meetings in Los Angeles and New York, the web series industry is not restricted to these cities and we should be mindful not to exclude our international membership. As an international member (Canadian), I proposed the live-stream for the last meeting in Los Angeles and I feel it’s important to continue this inclusive way of thinking, and to encourage the international community, with the help of the Membership Committee, to join the academy and help educate and build the communities in their area. All this can be simple with some basic equipment and guidance from the Technologies Committee.

Education- Education is a wonderful tool to build exposure and community in our organization. I’d like to help the Events Committee oversee regional (local) member-organized workshops, public live-streamed peer-group panels, and blog posts on the IAWTV web site to help build our community involvement, knowledge and industry as a whole.

Advocacy- It’s time to get back on track to advocate our professionalism and devotion to this field by following up on the many issues that have recently plagued our community (e.g. Net Neutrality, IMDb excluding web series, etc.). I would like to work together with the Communications Committee to prepare statements on the issues, help the Industry Standards Committee create standards and best practices, and assist the Events Committee in facilitating protests.

Awards- I feel it’s important to celebrate our community and its’ achievements by giving it the awards show it deserves. Like many of you, I was dismayed by this year’s Streamy Awards and would like to work together with the Awards Committee to oversee the script, content, security and guest treatment guidelines for next year. Our show needs to represent the spirit and hard work of our industry and its’ stars (whether they be from the web or the mainstream) in a respectful tone.

About me: I have been working in the web TV industry since 2005 and have appeared in over a dozen web series. I have written about the industry for The Guardian, spoken on numerous panels across Canada and the US, and coordinated open community-based meetings to share knowledge with those interested in the field. Aside from being a member of the IAWTV, I am also a judge of the Canadian New Media Awards and have organized meetings with SAG and AFTRA on behalf of New Media West to discuss the details of their new media contracts. I have a Diploma in Communications, a Bachelor’s degree in East Asian Studies and worked as a diplomatic assistant before pursuing my career in new media full time. I speak English, French and Korean. (For more, see my biography and resume.)

Casey McKinnon
New Media Producer/Actress

All candidate statements should be emailed to the IAWTV membership and posted on the forum today. May the best candidates win.

The struggle to get web series listed on IMDb is a long and epic one. Although our production company has 2/3 of our major web series titles already listed on the database as TV series (A Comicbook Orange and Galacticast), my own profile is still so barren that it makes me look like a n00b because I haven’t submitted other minor titles like work for hire hosting gigs, the miniseries we made for Next New Networks, guest starring roles I’ve done for other web series and video interviews people have done with me online.

At South by Southwest this past March, IMDb founder Col Needham said that a web series category will be added to the directory in the second or third quarter of this year (ie. anytime between April 1 – September 31). Unfortunately, I realized in early October that they still hadn’t made the change and I contacted Needham for a comment. On October 5, 2009 I wrote:

Hi Col!

Last time we spoke (SXSW last March) you said that labels for web series on IMDb should be pushed out in the 2nd or 3rd quarter. I just wanted to touch base and see if that’s gone through since I haven’t seen any changes to existing listings. Any updates on the subject that you can share?

Best,
Casey

I hadn’t heard back from him for a while and was starting to think the company was avoiding the issue, but on November 27, 2009 he replied as follows:

Hi Casey,

Sorry for the delayed reply … we’ve been finalizing our plans for 2010. Unfortunately circumstances changed following March and we have not yet been able to complete the work required to support web series. Much of the delay is because this area is incredibly complicated and affects a large number of IMDb software systems. We want to do this work properly to ensure that new title types of all kinds can be added more easily in future. The work has been rescheduled for 2010, but learning from past experience, we cannot be more specific on a launch date, sorry. In the meantime web series can continued to be added as if they were TV-series and will be converted over once they are properly supported.

Cheers,
Col

So, for the time being, I encourage all web series creators to go ahead and submit their show as a TV series. Let’s take over the site with our awesomeness… seriously. Here are a few pointers I’ve written down to help you get your show listed:

• Provide detailed credits of all the people who’ve worked on your series
• Include links to all of your show’s online profiles, especially fan pages and Twitter profile if you have a large audience of followers
• Link to all your major video upload sites, making sure to include sites that display high viewcounts
• Be sure to mention any public screenings or film festivals your videos have appeared in
• If you’ve received any mainstream press (newspapers, magazines, TV), provide a link to the article/segment online

No matter what you do, your title will probably not be accepted the first time. When they send you an email explaining why, wrack your brain, add more information and re-submit the title. Once the title has been added (and you may not get an email notification that it’s up), go ahead and add information on specific episodes… I’m planning to do this over the holidays ;)

Hope this helps you. I also hope that IMDb follows through with their plan to add a web series category… this is a popular industry we’re in, and it ain’t “new” media anymore.