In case you don't spend as much time reading tech blogs as I do (your significant other thanks you) you may not be aware that 2011 has been deemed the "Year of the Tablet" -- as in the iPad and it's ilk. Apple has sold about 10 million of these things since creating the product category from scratch just eight months ago. Today the Consumer Electronics Show opened in Las Vegas and pretty much every electronics maker now has an iPad-like device ready for launch.

By the middle of the year you'll see Blackberry tablets, Toshiba tablets, Sony tablets among others. They'll run on either Android or Windows and they'll probably sorta suck compared to both the original iPad and the next generation which will be unveiled later this month by Steve Jobs. Whatever. Soon everyone you know will have a tablet.

So what? Well if you are trying to get the word out about your business or organization and a fairly static website along with a Facebook page is pretty much the sum total of your internet outreach you are being left far far behind. The tabs are changing the way everyone accesses the internet. Forget about people at their desks surfing through websites after searching Google. That model is dying. No wonder Google (which earns nearly every penny of profit from web search advertising) is giving away the Android operating system to anyone who will put it in a smartphone or tablet. The bosses there aren't dumb. They see what's coming and they are not about to have their legs cut out from under them.

The transformation is not about devices -- it's about lifestyle and habits. People with smartphones and tablets have moved beyond the paradigm of computer-based internet use. Sure those portable slabs in their pockets or bags are computers but that's not how anyone thinks of them. They are media players and information appliances. People don't use smartphones and tabs to go to the internet -- they use them to extract exactly the information they want from the internet without ever having to open a browser window.

What does that mean to you? If you aren't using video purposely created for this new user you better get on it. Video for the small portable screen needs to be created in a very different way from that which is intended for viewing on a television. Repurposing = FAIL.

Time to rethink your strategy and begin building a video plan that engages your customers and clients where they live now. That's what we do at DeDapper Media so give us a holler. We've got some surprises for you.

As we always do, we workshopped pitch meetings for videos and then walked through production. One group against another. What struck me was two things

1. People love making movies and telling stories. These were great brainstorming and team-building exercises that were directly related to their jobs and what their departments were tasked with doing for the organization. And they still had a riot!
2. People think in video. What I mean by this is, everyone in that room -- including people who did not work in any creative capacity -- totally got what would make an effective video to support their organization's goals. In fact the two groups in one exercise came up with almost identical video pitches and we ended up melding them into one.

What these two things have to do with one another is this: Incorporating video into your marketing and p.r. -- no matter what your size -- isn't just necessary for all the reasons we talk about at DeDapper Media, it's also really easy. Your people want to do video and probably have some amazing ideas for creating them. They just need some education and direction. A few great examples, some guidance on what equipment they need and how to use it, and some ideas about how it can work for your organization.

Video isn't some avant garde not-for-us medium. It's a must to include every day and that's what we do. We show you how.