Yesterday I had the opportunity to be on a panel at the Digital Media Conference West conference about the interaction between Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

Maybe I’ve been out of the digital media conference circuit for too many months, but I was pleasantly surprised how much the market conversation around social entertainment and digital media has evolved from earlier this year.

Instead of vague “social” conversations about throwing sheep and Axe body wash, people were talking about real, tangible solutions (not just the problems) that media companies are experimenting with to leverage technology and the rise of the empowered consumer.

A couple of themes that I was happy to hear from the conference:

1)  The Human Editor has Value:  In a world of overwhelming content, knowledgeable experts can be helpful in helping you find relevant content <<GASP>>.  Less than 12 months ago, I got the death stare from a room full of algorithm gurus for suggesting that “the machine” will never be the only answer for content discovery.  I still maintain that there is no single silver bullet in discovery – social entertainment experiences will have to leverage the machine, human editors and crowdsourcing to help people find content they like.

2)  Multiple Revenue Streams is the Answer:  There were some holdouts suggesting that content in the future will only be monetized by advertising or subscription, etc, but most folks seem to be acknowledge that media companies will need to pursue multiple revenue/business models to replace the revenue that used to be available from a single monetization window in the analog world.

3)  We Need to Focus on the Audience / Consumer:  There were multiple variations of this theme, but people are trending toward acknowledging that the future of entertainment is about quality Content + Distribution + a differentiated User Experience.  What’s different than 12 months ago is the acknowledgement that the value lies in the Gestalt – the holistic system – and not JUST in an individual piece.  The takeaway?  All of us in the entertainment space have to get back to basics and focus on the customer/audience to deliver content/experiences that they see as valuable.

4)  Trust/Reputation Means Something: this was a subtext to many conversations, but people are starting to think about the issues of trust and reputation in the context of entertainment content.  This is really no different than the trust cycle we went through in the rise of ecommerce, it’s just interesting to see people coming back to the idea that brands have long-term value online.

Anything I missed from the conference?  What other shifts have you started seeing in the conversation about how media and entertainment is evolving in the digital age.  LMK; would love to hear your thoughts.