UndoTV: Actual talent delivering thought leadership?

What a delight it’s been seeing the growth of everything touched by that one-man media machine (Leo Laporte) as well as the acceptance and embrace of the value Chris Pirillo is bringing to techdom (e.g., Gnomedex). Reading Chris’s blog this morning led me to an update post about UndoTV where he asked readers NOT to slam the site until the DNS was propagated. I waited awhile and headed on over to check it out.

Imagine my surprise to see this under the “About UndoTV” link:

The blogger Steve Borsch commented in a previous thread: “So, who decides what gets ‘on’ UndoTV? Who the talent is? What emerges?” The UndoTV talent base is starting with the former ZDTV / TechTV staff, previous show guests, and vetted friends. Without a base of quality content, we’d be nothing more than a video portal clone.

This pleased me due to my respect for Leo and Chris as well as I’m highly interested in what they’re apparently focused on delivering — much of which is confirmed by the note on the site — which is talent who “get it” and can deliver what the audience expects. I’m glad that they’re not taking a “Digg or YouTube-like” approach where everything is thrown up against the wall and having everyone weigh in on what they think is important. I want to consume content that is delivered by people that either know more than me or are plugged-in more so than I am — and connected with big thinkers.

Thanks for having your initial vision NOT being a “me too” video portal. The wisdom of the crowd seems too often to be a collective, mass viewpoint with little strategic or critical thinking behind it. My wife (the home furnishings trend forecaster) said it best: “I don’t really care what everyone thinks.” We’re not being elitist, but when she and I talk deeply about social promotion of news, community forums, YouTube “Most Viewed” or other crowd-wisdom-must-see-content and developments on the internet, both of us realize that it’s most often baseline stuff on these sites and what we REALLY gravitate toward is thought leadership.

If I could hope for one thing out of UndoTV, it’s that: thought leadership. In the TechTV days, ScreenSavers, Big Thinkers and other shows were ones that BROADENED my knowledge and horizons and made me think and become more aware. That’s what I so enjoy with many of the TWiT shows now, Chris’ adventures and DLTV. Though I often am already far beyond what’s discussed I yet still learn something from virtually everything offered.

The last piece of my hope for UndoTV is the answer to this question (when you’re looking at what content to offer and the talent to deliver it): is it interesting vision or is it actionable? Can I use something now to enable myself, inform what I’m doing now (or will be doing soon) or take action on what I care about? Or is it stuff that a guy like me would think, “Oh that was cool” but then go on about my day? (If it’s the latter…I submit that I’d quickly lose interest and will turn away after the novelty wears off).

Thought leadership will be sustainable for UndoTV since every nanosecond we’re pushing against the membrane of the future and none of us know for certain what’s just up ahead. For that matter, most of us don’t know what’s already here as evidenced by the gignormous number of Web 2.0 hosted offerings that most people have never heard about let alone used!

Let me end with one more thing about thought leadership and a suggestion about what could be a guiding principle for UndoTV.

• It’s NOT just the latest flipper, flapper or dweebezaarb technology I want to hear, see or learn about (and PLEEZ don’t dumb down the content “for the masses”) though technologies are important since they’re the manifestations and creations of thought leadership. Without talking tech UndoTV would be a bunch of pontificators blowing into their bags of wind.

• What IS leading thought is a focus on the trends, the shifts in socioeconomics and culture, the acceleration in global connectivity and global innovation. In short, the stuff BEHIND the technologies and innovation driving much of it so all of us can deepen our understanding the catalysts of the future.