SoMedia has invested over five years and $12 million dollars turning video production into something that is scalable and re-sellable.

It's a whole new approach to video. Where video has traditionally been a complex and expensive creative process SoMedia has turned it into a business product. A product that is standardized, reliable, repeatable, available in unlimited volume and at the lowest price points.

From a technology prospective our advanced cloud-based video production platforms manages: production formats & templates, professional video production recruitment and team management, client screening rooms, reseller platforms, communications, streaming, encoding – the list goes on. With dozens of points of management and client oversight the entire production process is not only easy – it’s seamless.

Our cloud-based process control platforms turn a video production into over 60 individual actions that are organized, controlled, measured and tracked. This allows us to utilize a crowdcourced workforce management platform that provides reach to any location in North America.

From a crowdsourcing perspective – our advanced workforce management platform is a game changer. Unlike traditional crowdsourcing where your workforce is made up of a nameless, faceless mass – our management platform has allowed us to create a pre-qualified network of stringently trained, profiled and rated video professionals.

In addition, the crowdsourced workforce management platform was built to remove concerns over quality. Errors are eliminated before they happen through streamlined process management and quality control check points built into the production process.

Two points:

1. Big problems create big opportunities and video was one of the last big unsolved problems for internet businesses.
2. Timing is everything

Video production was really the last hands on creative driven aspect of the internet that had not been reinvented. Building web sites was once a complicated and expensive process too and so was managing a sales force and communicating with clients. But over time scalable and low cost solutions were developed and they changed the way businesses used the internet. I saw an opportunity to do the same thing to video production back in 2007 as the demand for video started to take off after everyone figured out that user generated video couldn't be used for business. The key was turning video production into a controlled, almost manufacturing process. We've done that and we're the only company who offers scalable and re-sellable video production services across North America.

Actually, we already do. Every video we create can be delivered in multiple formats.

We do not restrict clients with a designated player. Our ScalableVideo Service delivers MP4 video files and smart embed codes directly to clients. This allows our clients to embed their video in any number of browsers and utilizes HTML5’s playback capabilities. Our videos stream seamlessly on multiple screens – desktop, mobile phones and tablets using the correct format, bit rate and codec for the device.

We are unique. We have evolved the concept of crowdsourcing to something we call Crowdsource Workforce Management. We source a niche workforce "crowd" of video production professionals and manage their actions through defined requirements and tasks - turning them into a temporary workforce pulled together on a project by project basis. We have over 3400 videographers, editors and producers in our North American network today. Using our cloud based platforms we create on the fly production teams that can be based anywhere - the videographer is always local but the producer and editor and quality control oversight can be located anywhere in the world. The team is pulled together on a job by job basis. Today most of our producers and editors are based in Canada and the US but we intend to begin using editors based in the Philippines within the next year to reduce production costs further.

While some of our video professionals live in other countries, many live here in Canada and all are managed through the proprietary cloud-based platform.

Mandy.com is a market place for film and television production professionals. There are other market places for business video that follow the same model such as Poptent and Smartshoot and there are literally hundreds of other sites that use the same model for content, design, photography etc.

The difference between a market place of freelance professionals and SoMedia is our control over the project. Freelance professionals provide creative input and have much more control over the outcome of the project. In our model the system controls every aspect of the production at all levels and video production professionals are hired on a contract basis to complete specific pre determined tasks for an individual project.

We also provide a unique reseller platform that manages the whole production process from ordering, to creative development, review and approval of content, to content management and download. It's a turnkey system designed to remove risk and standardize the process and outcome of video production - its video as a business product instead of a creative process.

The most important part of building a successful internet business is to focus on where the market is going to be instead of where it is today. That's also the toughest part because it requires development of a vision that you have to be able to defend. Funnily enough the process of defending an idea helps you think it through in great detail which leads to the second most important point - be methodical and do your homework. We always relate building a product or the company itself to a concept from psychology called Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs - which is basically a theory that humans prioritize needs from the bottom up - so that food is more important than clothes and clothes are more important than sports cars. Without food clothes don't matter and without clothes sports cars don't either. We look at building a business as making sure we've taken care of food first before we move on to clothes or sports cars. It's human nature to focus on the shiny sports car first but if you do you could end up starving and naked.

Over the next few years the internet will be dominated by mobile, social and business networks - and video as the primary form of communication. Why video? Because it's easier to consume information found in a video than it is to read, particularly on mobile devices. As the price of video production falls businesses will use it to drive their interactions with consumers who will come to expect that all businesses provide information in video format. Most small businesses today are thinking about adding the first video to their website but within a few years they'll need a wide range of video content to compete.