But even before they stepped on the stage, there was buzz around the presentation, thanks to Keith Shaw of NETWORK WORLD, who, in his popular “Cool Tools Happy Blog,” named Stroome one of the 15 most intriguing pitches from DEMO Fall 2011.

The excitment continued post presentation, thanks to Matt Marshall, executive producer, DEMO, who said, “Stroome goes beyond video sharing websites such as YouTube and Vimeo by bringing online video editing to the browser. Stroome meshes what we think are the three most compelling concepts contributing to the future of the web— video creation, cloud-based computing and social media.”

Stroome co-founders, Nonny de la Pena and Tom Grasty, used the DEMO 2011 stage to announce for the first time that Mozilla — the industry leader in the promotion of openness, innovation and opportunity on the web — has agreed to advise Stroome on open source and open web technologies.

The room was filled with over 200 potential investors, leading industry entrepreneurs and press luminaries, and came on the heels of last week’s piece the BBC did on Stroome.

Watch Kate Russell’s full report here:

TEDxUSC | April 12, 2011

Stroome, the world’s most collaborative online video site, will preview our new look with a video scavenger hunt at the third annual TEDxUSC today on the campus of the University of Southern California.

The event involves not only the 1200 TEDxUSC conference participants, but will engage another highly creative, wildly innovative set of folks — the Stroome community. TEDxUSC participants will have all day to shoot their video for the contest, and 10 days to edit it together on Stroome. Final submissions will be due Thursday, May 16, at 5:00 PM PST, and emailed to TEDxUSC@stroome.com.

So how’s this whole this  work? We’re glad you asked:

The Stroome/TEDxUSC 2011 Scavenger Hunt

The USC Stevens Institute for Innovation’s goal for TEDxUSC 2011 is to encourage creativity and collaboration before, during, and after the event.

New look unveiled at TEDxUSC

Stroome, the world’s most collaborative online video editing platform, provides aspiring content creators with an online editing community where users can mix and match their video content with each other.

Add a smart phone, Flip, or digital camera and you’ve got everything you need to mix it up and mash it up at the first ever TEDxUSC video scavenger hunt.

At TEDxUSC
Participants will work by themselves or as a team. However they decide to put their piece together, films need to include at least 8 elements from the official scavenger hunt ‘get it list’ here:

Footage of at least 8 of the following suggestions must be included in each final mash up film:

1. Music from TEDxUSC (as uploaded post event by USC Stevens)
2. A clip of a TEDxUSC speaker (as uploaded post event by USC Stevens)
3. Your favorite innovation
4. Interview with a TEDxUSC attendee
5. Something emotional
6. Something cardinal & gold (excluding articles of clothing)
7. Something fast
8. Something funny
9. You and Tommy Trojan
10. You or someone else answering the question: “How will you use Stroome?”
11. You or someone else calling out, “TEDxUSC 2011, Actions Speak Louder!”
12. You or someone else playing a demo or game at the Interactive Game & Demo Lounge
13. You or someone else saying what their favorite part of TEDxUSC 2011 was
14. Someone dancing
15. Someone telling a joke

After TEDxUSC
Participants  will have 10 days to upload, mix, and mash their own video, their team’s video, and/or other video shot by attendees at the event (that’s the collaboration part). Final films will be reviewed by the USC Stevens Institute, and the prizes listed below will be awarded for: 1) Best Video 2) Master Uploader – the person or team that uploads the most videos and 3) Master Collaborator – the person or team that includes the greatest number of videos shot by someone NOT on your team.

Each Winning team will receive…

• 2 Free tickets to TEDxUSC 2012 (up to 3 invites for other team members)
• Your film featured on the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation website
• USC Stevens branded innovation skateboard

The winner of Best Video will also receive bragging rights and (wait for it)…$1000!!!

Enjoy the new look and be on the lookout for some exciting new features coming very soon!

NCMR | Boston, April 8-10, 2011

Taking a simple observation — anyone who has tried to work on a video project knows the problems inherent in online collaboration — the 90-minute panel took a deep dive into how organizations are collaborating on the organizational level, and what collaborative tools are making news gathering and reporting both expeditious and cost effective.

But just how far will news organizations be willing to travel down the path of open distribution/open licensing? How reliant should organizations be on stories generated by autonomous citizen journalists? How will news organizations maintain a competitive edge as multiple organizations draw from the same content pool? What role does video have to play in keeping news organizations relevant, profitable and credible? These were just a few of the questions the esteemed panel of experts explored.

Despite being the first panel on the first day of NCMR, “Getting out of the Silo: Editing Video as a Community” attracted close to a hundred extremely passionate (and presumably heavily-caffeinated) conference attendees. The room was filled to capacity with conference participants lining the aisles and filling the hallway. As was noted both from the dais and from those in attendance, the popularity of the panel only underscored the importance of collaboration and collaborative tools in journalism and advocate media.

Joining Stroome on the panel were Mara Abrams of the Tiziano Project, Jason Barnett of TheUpTake, and Eric Galatas of Free Speech TV. The panel was moderated by Erin Polgreen of The Media Consortium.

For more on all the NCMR panels, presenters, plenaries, participants and post-event parties, click here.

For more information on NCMR’s presenting sponsor, Free Press, click here.

Do you want to WIN $300?

Are you and your friends remix artists?

Maybe you like to share video with colleagues and friends?

Or are you a journalist who wants to collaborate?

Stroome wants to put your best collaborative 3 minute video on our front page!

HURRY – THE CONTEST ENDS APRIL 10TH!!

Here’s the rules:

Get a group together of three or four people and have everyone upload their different clips to Stroome. Copy & remix each other’s video using our browser based editor. Add a piece of video from everyone in the group and produce the best three minute remix that highlights your collaboration with your Stroomates. We’ll not only put the video on the home page of our website and our blog but we’re giving out a $300 dollar award. Runners‐up may also be featured on the site and/or our blog.

Here’s how to use Stroome for the contest:
1. Login or start a new account

2. Create a group and name it what you want

3. Set permissions on the group – either keep it open or invite your friends to join

4. Upload video

5. After its finished uploading, and you’ve saved your work, click on “settings and permissions” and go to bottom of the page to click on the box that puts the video into the group you’ve just made. Save.

6. Click on “edit” to begin working

7. To add your friends’ clips, click on the title of any project they have started. Underneath the video player are the all the clips that make up the project

8. Click on the “add to my clip bin” link on the thumbnail of any of the clips you like. It will now load into your clip bin.

9. Start working with these clips by first clicking on the title of your original
project so the project’s page loads. Then, click on the “add to this project”
link noted on the thumbnails in your clip bin.

10. Hit the “edit” link and you can start working with the new material.

11. When you’re done, be certain to let us know at info@stroome.com that
you’ve completed your entry. Tell us the title and the producers and make
sure to include contact details such as email or a phone number.

Schmoozd 3 was held 7/29/10 at Wokcano in Santa Monica

Stroome co-founder, Tom Grasty, demoed the Stroome platform at Schmoozd 3 at the Wokcano this past Thursday, and is pleased to report the event was a smashing success!

For those of you not yet familiar with the event (soon you will be; I understand there is a Schmoozd 4 in the works), Schmoozd is an exclusive social mixer bringing together professionals in marketing, advertising, technology, social media and startups. The event is designed to facilitate knowledge sharing, relationship building and deal making.

Co-founder Tom Grasty chats up a potential Stroomer!

According to organizer, John Diep, this year’s event had over 300 people from a variety of fields: entertainment, tech, medical, marketing, venture capitalists, and the press. So a big ‘shout out’ to John for pulling it together.

And on behalf of the Stroome team, were very pleased to have been included. John is doing a wonderful job bringing together so many creative and intellectually curious folks from across so many seemingly disparate disciplines.

Boy… that was a mouthful. Speak of which, props to the people at Wokcano— the food was great!

For more information on Schmoozd, visit www.schmoozd.com.

Tom Grasty is a novelist, screenwriter and 15-year veteran of the entertainment, advertising and internet industries. He is also a co-founder of Stroome.

The entire review is on their site, but here’s a little bit to whet your appetite:

Stroome – An online video and editing community

People who join the site can share videos that they have edited and ask others for an honest opinion on the work that they have done.

In practice, this means that you can be working on a picture, and when you feel like knowing what others think you simply mail them the pertinent link. They will be able to see the image you are working on, exactly like you are seeing it, and suggest changes right as if they were there with you.

Of course, as in any other networking site you will be capable of befriending new people and start receiving their updates. In this way, extending your professional network becomes something quicker and also more engaging – it is sure a big improvement over exchanging emails back and forth.

Why Stroome.com might be a killer

Collaborating with others around video files and clips becomes something instant when placed in such a context.

Some questions about Stroome.com

Is the editor compatible with all browsers?

Of course, we all know the answer to that: Yes (IE)! Yes (Firefox)! Yes (Safari)! Yes (Chrome)!

To read the full review, click here.

Tom Grasty is a novelist, screenwriter and 15-year veteran of the entertainment, advertising and internet industries. He is also a co-founder of Stroome.

Guardian Cites Stroome

Okay, we’ll admit it. Perhaps the UK’s Guardian was being a little cheeky when they said to ‘forget Facebook’ in lieu if our fair start up (“Forget Facebook: here’s five social networks you’ve probably missed,” 6/21/10). But who wouldn’t love the vote of support when they named Stroome a “top 5 social network worth a browse.”

Then, just when we thought it couldn’t get any better, it did.

Less than a week later, WaveMetrix, a leading internet research company, announced that Stroome was the most rapidly growing and the most discussed social network cited in the Guardian article.

According to WaveMetrix’s research:

The new social networks are not competing with mass networks such as Facebook or Twitter, but offer a specialist service or target a more niche community. Such networks offer marketers the opportunity to market online in a more targeted way.

Creating financial value by enticing people to hang out longer on your site? Advertisers are you listening?

Our users certainly are– in the aftermath of winning the Knight News Challenge, the Stroome community has more than doubled.

What will you do with Stroome?

Tom Grasty is a novelist, screenwriter and 15-year veteran of the entertainment, advertising and internet industries. He is also a co-founder of Stroome.

#SinLugar's Twitter page

Less than 48 hours after the announcement that Stroome won the 2010 Knight News Challenge, #Sin Lugar has issued what appears to be Stroome’s first collaborative challenge.

In the past, # Sin Lugar (roughly translated “without borders”), a group of activist authors based in and around Mexico, has used Twitter and Slideshare to enable their community to  collectively participate in “the presentation and discussion of important issues without geographic location as an obstacle.”

Now, it seems, they are using Stroome:

“# SinLugar already has a profile and a group [on] Stroome. If you wish to join the group to help, check us out on Stroome. It’s easy to register, it takes no more than a couple of minutes and the platform is fairly intuitive.”

The collaboration revolves around remixing a # Sin Lugar trailer created to promote an upcoming June 28 call that will focus on issues evolving out of the current dire political situation in Mexico.

Here’s what’s up on Stroome:

If you want to participate in the remix:

• Create an account at stroome.com
• Search for “Tráiler #SinLugar No. 2″
• Hit ‘copy & remix’
• Start collaborating

For more on # Sin Lugar, visit the # Sin Lugar blog.

Tom Grasty is a novelist, screenwriter and 15-year veteran of the entertainment, advertising and internet industries. He is also a co-founder of Stroome.

And the 2010 KNC winners are...

For those of you who haven’t ever been exposed to the rarefied air that fellow co-founder Nonny de la Pena and I have been breathing for the last 4 days (the announcement was held at MIT, generally accepted as the technological epicenter of the universe), then let me explain: The Knight News Challenge is a milestone for any aspiring start-up; but if you’re in the field of journalism, it’s the mother-load.

So what will we do with the $200,000? What any self-respecting entrepreneurs would do: reinvest. And while we will plow most of the money back into the platform, we don’t plan to just build a more robust feature set and more intuitive user flow. A lot of that money is going back to the Stroome community.

Contests (who wants a Flip!!), collaborations (come on everybody, let’s make a movie!) and an aggressive outreach to the community that’s already shaping up to be one of the most diverse and devoted in the online video space (500 members, 40 countries, a singular passion for producing great work). Put another way, we’re paying it forward.

So if you like what you’ve found at Stroome since we went into open beta last April, keep collaborating. If you’ve just discovered Stroome, give it a try and then get the word out. If you have an idea on how to improve the site, drop us a line. Or better yet, put it on Stroome.

To read what Nieman Journalism Lab had to say: CLICK HERE.

To read the Knight News Challenge announcement: CLICK HERE.

Tom Grasty is a novelist, screenwriter and 15-year veteran of the entertainment, advertising and internet industries. He is also a co-founder of Stroome.