Marc Scarpa

Marc Scarpa (born September 25, 1969 in New York City) is an American entrepreneur, producer and director specializing in live participatory media. The success of his Web 1.0 company, JumpCut, enabled Scarpa to be at the forefront of participatory video, unifying web-based, mobile and televised broadcasting collectively to enable story-telling in real time. He is an executive board member and the founding New York Chair of the Producers Guild of America New Media Council and a recipient of the Marc A. Levey distinguished service award. For his contributions in emerging media, he won a Webby Award in 2010 for Best Event / Live Webcast for his work on the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards.

His works are noted for their use of social media, streaming video, music-photo-video sharing, conversation, data visualization, tags and links whose value and power derives from the active participation of many people in real time in which the boundaries between audiences and creators become blurred and often invisible.

Scarpa is a firm advocate that the term “audience” is obsolete in the new world of participatory media and that “audience” or “viewer” should be renamed “participant”. As a Director, he views his role as providing context to the flow of contributions by the participants and to creatively connect online and onsite groups to stimulate conversation and engagement around a particular live event or program. Milestone projects include the Tibetan Freedom Concerts, Woodstock 99, Grammy Live! and politically driven programs such as Townhall with President Bill Clinton. Scarpa’s current venture Simplynew, incorporates his natural talent for producing participatory content with a focus on the creation of 24/7 real time (media) networks.