I hope you all had a great and enjoyable summer. Mine was full of travel having great adventures and meeting new people.

I wanted to tell you about a few initiatives that I am working on this fall.

The first concerns the Producer of Marketing and Distribution or PMD, which is a new crew position that I proposed in TOTBO. There has been a fair amount of excitement and discussion around this concept on the Internet of late. My intention is for my blog and the TOTBO Facebook page to be a repository of information, clarification and best practices for PMDs.

I am going to start with a PMD FAQ which will consist of a series of posts over the next few weeks. I am going to post them individually so as to engage a conversation around the concepts – the first post is included at the end of this email as well as a link to comment. (I will eventually combine all of the posts into one larger FAQ that will be permanently housed on my blog and TOTBO Facebook page).

The second initiative is an expansion of TOTBO to encompass all art forms. In researching case studies for the TOTBO workshops and meeting people while traveling for the workshops, I have come across a variety of artists, musicians, journalists, book authors and even doctors (the healing arts) who are utilizing some (or all) of the methodologies I wrote about in TOTBO. I am convinced that the form of content does not matter. We are all content creators, we are all faced with a rapidly changing distribution and marketing landscape, we all need to engage audiences in new and exciting ways, and we can all learn from the pioneers among us. I will be interviewing a wide variety of artists and the PMDs who help get their work into the world in the coming months and posting these interviews in various media.

Finally, I am continuing to travel. Next week, I head to NY to continue my involvement in the IFP Filmmaker Labs in which we transformed their Rough Cut labs into year-long completion, marketing and distribution labs.

As part of Independent Film Week, I am also scheduled for a “Cage Match: Am I Filmmaker or Brand?” on Thursday September 23rd at 4:30pm at Haft Auditorium.

My other fall appearances include:

Sept 25th: Photo Cine Expo Los Angeles 11:30-1pm An Introduction to TOTBO Concepts.

October 1st: Open Video Conference, NYC “The Future of Exhibition” 2:15pm – 3pm.

October 3rd: Raindance NYC “Real World Survival Skills for Filmmakers” 6pm-8pm

November 13&14th: TOTBO Workshop in Atlanta, GA in conjunction with PushPush Theater and the Atlanta International Film Festival with Sheri Candler.

December 8, 9, 10th IFP, NY Conclusion of the 2010 IFP Filmmaker Labs.

I hope to see some of you on my upcoming travels.

Jon