Those who have been following the recent is-the-sky-falling-on-independent-film debate might be interested in The Conversation “a two-day conversation — definitely not a conference — about the future of cinema, video, games, and telling stories with new media” coming up in Berkeley, CA later this year and bought to you by Ken Goldberg, Scott Kirsner, Tiffany Shlain and Lance Weiler. Here’s more info about some of the speakers and subject areas to be covered:

• Reed Hastings / Founder & CEO, Netflix
  How is the home viewing experience evolving?
• Phil Tippett / Founder, Tippett Studio
  Jonathan Rothbart / Co-founder, The Orphanage
  The future of visual effects
• Sara Pollack, Film Manager, YouTube
  Alex Afterman, Founder, Heretic Films
  Tiffany Shlain, Director, “The Tribe” & “Connected: A Declaration of Interdependence”
  Jonathan Marlow, Director of Content Development, Vudu
  The new landscape of distribution
• Mike Curtis, HD for Indies
  Jeremiah Birnbaum, Founder, San Francisco School of Digital Filmmaking
  Insights from the edge of digital cinematography and post-production
• M dot Strange, Animator and Filmmaker, “We Are the Strange”
  Building a fan base online
• Gregg Spiridellis, Co-founder, JibJab Media
  Michael Ferris Gibson, Director, “24 Hours on Craigslist” & Producer, “Truth in Numbers: The Wikipedia Story”
  New avenues for creativity and storytelling
• Michaelene Risley, Independent filmmaker
  New approaches to fundraising
• Alex Lindsay, Founder, Pixel Corps
  Producing high-end series for the Web
• Lance Weiler, Director, “Head Trauma” and Game Developer, “Hope is Missing”
  Peggy Weil, Artist & Game Developer, “Gone Gitmo” and “The Redistricting Game”
  Opportunities at the Convergence of Games and Cinema

Finding useful tools for downloading video from the web can be very confusing.

Check out Liz Gannes’ article on newteevee.com about the different options, their perks and their pitfalls.

The Participatory Culture Foundation are the forward-thinking people behind Miro (formerly Democracy), a great open-source internet TV platform. In the spirit of openness they have also created a very handy website called makeinternettv.org (does what it says on the tin!). The site covers everything from the equipment you should use to licensing issues to how to promote your work through RSS feeds. It’s not exhaustive but it’s a really good starting point if you’re dipping your feet into the water for the first time. There’s also lots more information on the Make Internet TV wiki page - which you can contribute to if you have resources to share.