(Note: Brad Howarth is the popular commentator and consultant behind LaGrange Point blog, found at www.lagrangepoint.typepad.com. He has some very useful and amusing observations about the X Media Lab, a series of very cool events that have been held throughout Asia this year. Does the location of these events mean that North America and Europe are truly becoming irrelevant?)

Media Lab - Final Sessions

The first of the final three speakers for X Media Lab for Melbourne this year was Scott-Bradley Pearce, from CBS Interactive and adikted.tv. He talked about the adikted.tv site and its focus on doing one thing - online video - well. Scott-Bradley talked about the fun of being about to create a start-up within a larger established organisation.

He also talked about his keenness for developing new content from new sources, rather than just repeating what is already being run on TV. He also highlighted the fact that the failure for adikted.tv and other sources to be ranked alongside Nielsen ratings tends to render them invisible.

"We're about finding partners that work in the same mindset as us." And that means partners who are passionate about with they do, such as Portable Content and uBERgroover. While adikted.tv is only 10 weeks old it has already picked up its first advertiser.

The next speaker was Gary Wisniewski from the Second Life Cable Network (SLCN.TV), an online news and information service based around Second Life, and has gained the attention of Intel and Cisco who have both used the network to reach and audience. He spoke at length about the service, what it covers and the economics of running it. My question now is, seeing the hype around Second Life has worn off, what the future will be? It's unfortunate that we in the press tend to lose interest in topics at the time when they are actually at their most interesting - ie, when they are established. Definitely need to follow this one up further ...

The final speaker between the audience and the bar was Chris Adams, co-founder (alongside Jeff Skoll) of Participant Productions, which was founded to push social issues into the media. The goal is empower people to make socially-conscious movies by taking the financial risk. In recent years it has been involved in numerous well-known productions such as Charlie Wilson's War, The Kite Runner, and An Inconvenient Truth, and has since set up takepart - inspire, connect, act - to push its productions and provide information and advice. He left in 2006 and then popped up again at Facebook, where he was asked to figure out its video strategy and created The Facebook Diaries. He subsequently worked on Glam.com, and most recently has been involved in View2gether, an online video search tool.

His final word - online video is the new black.