Yesterday was a banner day for Spout.com. On the day Harriet Miers was nominated to be a Supreme Court Justice, she had a moment to take a break and check an email or two then (obviously) zip over to check if there were any posts on the SpoutBlog. And there was. Mine. And although in her comment she spelled her name “Myers” I think it probably had to do with a really hectic day. The kind of day only a Supreme Court Justice nominee can relate to.

What’s on ol’ Harriet’s mind? She wants to know about Spout. Where’s our application? Halls of Justice around the world are buzzing with that very question. Spout.com, an online community for film lovers and filmmakers, is currently under construction. Before Fall is over we plan on having the site up and running where anybody can get messy with it. For film geeks like me, it’s a sandbox to play and play and play. For the not-so-geeky it’s a place to find out about film from a real human being with a brain and emotions and all of the nuance humans can bring to a film recommendation. For filmmakers it is a place they can connect directly to their audience.

My last post was all about nuance and the decline of the Age of Manufacturing. One way of describing an example of a Manufacturing Age company is the widget concept (not Dashboard Widgets). A company builds a widget, produces 10,000 of them, buys a time slot for a 60 second commercial during the Super Bowl and starts selling.

We believe that film is not a widget. A hit is not reproduced again and again with the same effect as Dove soap because film appeals to our higher senses. It serves a deeper function of the soul than a bar of soap. So the same story recycled again and again assuming that audiences will keep digesting it is a wrong assumption.

The beautiful thing is I don’t have to sit here and ask the thousands and thousands of filmmakers out there to start making films. They already are. We’re here to help those thousands of personal and nuanced films find an audience.

So to answer the question of how our application applies to building a business after the Age of Manufacturing, we are building a place where a film can find it’s audience without buying a 60 second time slot during the Super Bowl. It’s a community that makes room for the little details that make us different, and does not depend on a formula for filmmaking that assumes we’re all the same.

If anyone wants to congratulate Harriet on her recent nomination, you can email her at harriet@supremecourt.us