PRESENT AT VON 2006

The art of being presence is that beauty of human being when someone knows how to walk in a room, speaks with the right emotion and proper diction and creates an environment where others want to interact with you. You want to come closer, lean forward. It is also called character and personality. At the Video on the Net (VON) conference this September 2006 in Boston, I met for the first time, bloggers, net ip producers, theorists. But one presence made me think a bit more about what talent you need to be a new Internet media mogul.

Leaning Forward

VON is a rendevous of the experienced traders and the new scouts who share stories about the new frontier. On the overlook and in the real you are exposed not only to ideas but the art of manifesting the idea. One could easily overlook the room moderator Peggy Mills (Intervox ?) . Her voice and her good natured manners injected audience members to perform from their chairs questions to the panels. If you are a potential vlog and blogger, she makes you aware that voice skills and manners in dialog are essential to propel a discussion. In the downtime a mid set changes, I asked Peggy how she acquired her skills. For her radio voice, she did not go to broadcast school, she was simply a radio DJ for quite a long period. To see her in action is a lesson to learn, she has an alarmingly sense of awareness, that state of what appears to be two steps ahead of a conversation. Also worth noting is how to speak respectfully with a stranger.

Leaning Back in High School

• Grow your voice. Metaphorically and actually. Do this in spite of your official education. You have to make up for this as school no longer teaches rhetoric. Take speech as elective. I am serious about this. If you are going to waste time in high school do two things. Take typing and speech. Typing is obvious - developing your reflexes for the keyboard. With your coach, participate in any speech competitions. In fact develop your presence arts. It will pay off in the new digital media, where presences is king (or is it queen?)
• Media arts in schools are as a important as all the Internet technology, all the media theory and practise may be disguised as art or communications - but it is really technology.
• The action of one generation is based on the thinking of the prior generation. So learn philosophy.
• What are the vlog and blog arts?There is no class and even if there was. Don't substitute learning about for doing a thing.

Studying Presence

Presence is unique character. All we know of Socrates (or even Jesus) is that they were present, for these people never wrote anything and left no artifact behind. For all we know Socrates was a figment of Plato's imagination. How it is that some have lived and are remembered and rethought and their lifestyle codified as a religious model. Does each of us have a unique moral struggle worthy of its own religion? But Buddha was no family man. He ran out on his wife and kids. What kind of moral model is that? But going back to the beginning. To the moment of presence.

Presence is that in the moment awareness that you present emotions in your face so others can read that. Walking into a room a person's energy radiates something - some people have it - others don't care to cultivate it. A meaningful presence, is beeing. As a bee fertilizes as it feeds. This is the essentially right presence. To produce as you consume. All presences, put in the past tense are acts. Acting upon rather than communicating is a moral art. On to morality, a part of philosphy. Philosopy is metaphysics, epistomology, morality, aesthetics, and politcs - what is the nature of the universe, how do we know it, what actions are proper for a person, how to value and create value, what actions are proper and effective for groups of people. On to the next.