All posts by brian_condon

Media140 – a gathering of friends

I made a few notes in realtime of the #media140 gathering on 8 October.  Ande says he brought together the UK press and media in May to talk about the impact of Twitter on the media and to raise money for Mencap.  He seems to have hit on a big theme and is surprised by how it’s taken off.

Photo of Ande courtesy @paul_clarke
Photo of Ande courtesy @paul_clarke

“It’s grown organically and it’s bigger than I ever thought it would be”

“We’ve got  a globe that rotates and this thing drops in![cheers]”

Looking at about 10,000 uniques in 37 days.  Ande is going through the Media140 team and talking about the way he’s working with the team and how the blog is working.

Ande says we want to bring together people from across different industries to look at the impact of the social web especially realtime media – and Twitter is very important.

Ande is talking about how rapidly the idea has developed and it’s spread internationally – to Bangalore and Sidney; not what he expected he started it up in May.

Mark Rock from Audioboo gets a mention.  Stuart from Sun – a generally good egg (www.sun.com/startups).

Audioboo – Mark Rock

Mark and Stuart photo courtesy @paul_clarke
Mark and Stuart photo courtesy @paul_clarke

Sees Audioboo as a re-invention of radio news designed for a world enabled by Twitter.  It’s about trust.  Audioboo is a tool to promote trust and authenticity.

“We’re not going to allow editing – it’s not about that”

Creative industries and recovery – the Red Banners look dull

Immediately after the Nesta event, I made an Audioboo. Here it is. It’s an account of a well-chaired, well paced meeting. But ‘more of the same’ really from the panel. A bit of a worry when the Government sees the creative industries as a way out of the current economic difficulties and as a source of new growth.

Listen!

Liveblog – NESTA at the Labour Party Fringe

Creative Licence – how the creative industries are reshaping the economy

nestalab1I’m Liveblogging this fringe event, one of a series of meetings being hosted in the Fringe of all the party conferences.  Please refresh the page to see the updates.
12:34 The Creative Industries are a ‘key’ sector at the heart of the recovery.

12:36 Peter Bazalgette

Opens with remarks about RAI and Berlusconi.  Involving the BBC in too much politics is a mistake.  Parties all have  a policy on the BBC.  PB Supports Bradshaw on top-slicing of the BBC.  But top-slicing needs to go into quality, not tired regional news.

“There is no digital dividend”  – most media companies don’t see what theor business model is anymore.  This is a big problem.

“We need as much ‘nudge’ as ‘fudge'” on the management of digital rights.

12:40 Needs better balance between ‘pay’ and ‘free’.  ITV is commercially challenged.  Product placement is marginal but does improve the position for advertisers.  Medium term prospects for TV uncertain.  Bur longer term it will work.

Professional content will always be attractive to advertisers – this won’t change.  Training is a major issue, he says and it’s getting worse.

12:43 Richard Wilson – TIGA

Games sector makes an important contribution to the economy and is very export focused.  Important role to play.

In the games sector qualifications are higher (80% at degree level) and average salaries are higher than other sectors at £30k.
Sector is growing globally but contracting in the UK.  Poor supply of staff is the issue.  Need incentives.

12:50 Miranda Sawyer

Public Money is often a hindrance to progress.  But there is a role for public investment in the arts.  We tend to under value our capabilities in this.  Example of Liverpool as the Capital of Culture – drove investment in the city.  Public money is needed in education and in big projects.  Public money can be used to attract private investment and stimulate the economy.  But it’s also about stimulating well-being.

12:53 Ben Bradshaw

The assumption is that the creative industries are re-shaping the economy.  He thinks this is true.  Every fringe event at this conference on creative industries has been ‘packed out’.  Hears the pleas for support from people like Richard Wilson.

12:56 Creative industries are ‘not a luxury’, they are central to the economy and to our heritage.  Museums very important also.

But how do we defend our creative value in a global economy?  How can we make sure artists get compensated for – £180m a year ‘lost’ through illegal file-sharing.  Digital Britain bill will reflect the unity of the musicians who made announcements last week.  It’s an important issue.  Bill will be brought forward in this Parliament.

Universal broadband access is an important aspect of the bill  – this is something that the market will not provide – he says 40% of the country can’t get it.  Needs to go further than 2 MBbps – need universal NGA through fixed-line levy.  We need to understand what support there may be for local news – re-use of digital switchover money – BBC won’t get it anyway.

13:02 Training opportunities are key to the Government’s approach to Digital Britain – society wins and so do individuals who will be trained.

Culture is not a ‘luxury add-on’ – they contribute to the economy £1 spent of culture comes back as £5 in economic contribution

Now moving over to Q&A

Colin Tweedie – Governor of University of the Creative Arts.  Vitality of the creative universities – they are worried by the potential cuts.
Q re product development and merging the Film Council and Games Council.
Q from Gary Townsend from Skillset.  Future jobs in creative industries; need to think of supply of new talent but what about CPD for the existing workforce?

Sawyer says that the more ‘modern’ universities will demonstrate their value over time.  A law degree from Oxford is one thing but it’s a bit of a stereotype – so dpn’t worry.  Quality will out.
Bradshaw says that Universities will continue to be funded and they are capable of identifying the courses needed.  New skills will come through – media studies not as ‘airy fairy’ as they used to be.
13:12 PB says training of ‘high-level’ graduates (not apprentices).  HEFCE’s in meltdown and meanwhile Skillset is being cut.

Q re ‘cutting off’ illegal file-sharing from a woman from Ofcom – hierarchy of sanctions
Q from a writer and producer (Carol Haymann?)  re rights deals on digital broadcasts

13:15 Bradshaw – hierarchy of sanctions will come into force needs to be funded by rights holders.  PB says “it will never work unless we do a ‘nudge’ at the same time”.

Bradshaw says it’s an education job as well.  Wilson says pirated games are running at 3 pirate copies per 1 gane sold in some cases.

Broadcasters need to be held accountable says Carol Haymann (radio producer and writer).  We generate little money from repeats on BBC7 for example.
13:20 Sophie Jones from Channel 4.  About C4’s role – Digital Britain is ‘bang-on’ about the importance of C4 public ownership to preserve support of new digital companies.
Nick Hull from 118118 – we’ve spent years trying to offer services at a reasonable price over mobile and have failed.  How can creative producers do that?
Wilson asked to comment on 118118 question.  A lot of games businesses would like to ‘self-publish’; broadly optimistic about business models for content suppliers.
PB mentions Moor’s Law.  But there’s “Less’ Law” – which is that as content proliferates lower revenues result.
Sawyer says ‘free model’ will kill newspapers.
Bradshaw sums up – the market cannot guarantee all – BBC is a good thing but it needs to be more sensitive and recognise its effect on the whole media landscape.  BBC governance structure doesn’t work.  Much private sector activity benefits from the economies of scale of the BBC.  But we need to re-assert the legitimacy of the BBC ‘with every generation’.

[13:30]

Metaphor and Strategy in Digital Britain

metaphorsThe use of metaphor in strategy and business and in the media is widespread and often annoying.  Narrative is used to illustrate choices and “It’s been a long journey” is regularly heard from both reality TV participants and news media people who ought to know better.  But there are many more forms of narrative than the journey story – and richer archetypes we could think about.

But maybe we could recast or re-interpret some of these metaphors to help see problems in a ‘new light’.  There, you see; I’m doing it now.  What if we could ‘think our way off the Pendulum’ of boom and bust?  How about ‘painting ourselves Out of the Box’?  And how about making the ‘Playing Field’ more mountainous for players with too much market power?  What if we could harness our knowledge of systems dynamics so that things spiral into control.

And then we come to the Patchwork Quilt analogy I came up with as one of the scenarios for Digital Britain.  The industry seems to want to interpret the Patchwork Quilt as a ‘bad thing’.  Actually it’s a good thing because it’s a manifestation of the coming wave of localism.  Design your own patch of Digital Britain to respond to local conditions and make sure, though, at the edges it joins up with the other patches.

So, the next time you hear a metaphor being used to describe strategy or choices; generate the anti-metaphor in your mind and see where it takes you.

An Audioboo asynchronous conversation (almost)

For some time, I’ve been thinking about how to use Audioboo in a non-broadcast sort of way.  Think about it.  It’s like radio but with an audience of one or not many.  Most of us use Audioboo in ‘broadcast mode’ meaning that we are making a piece of what used to be callled ‘sound radio’.  We make it, they listen to it [eof].  But it doesn’t need to be like that.

The Audioboo site recognises this in that once you’ve listened to a Boo; you are encouraged to comment in text.  But you could BooBack (hah) which is what I did with Rory.  Here is his Audioboo:

And here is mine in response:

Now, it’s not a conversation yet – but it could be.  Rory tweeted this:

A conversational element
A conversational element

The following day, I made another Audioboo

Which is relevant.  But there it stops.  A conversation that never developed.  But it could.  It still might.  ‘Think on Lad” as my Yorkshire Grandma used to say.

b.tween09 global collaboration – how it felt

A real collaborative project.
We started something yesterday.

Peolpe talk on different levels
People talk on different levels

Feeling about it – a very odd feeling seeing how the work came back where somebody, I don’t know who or where, has worked on it adding ideas and their own thinking.  If the work  had changed dramatically, then we might have had a problem.  As it was, it had changed a fair bit from our original idea but it hadn’t gone a long way; not much time.  If there had been a bifurcation and they’d gone off in a totally different direction.  If we’d got it  back and thought “That’s absolutely not what we were thinking.”  then there might have been the potential for conflict.  They couldn’t know our pattern of thinking and we had no communication with them; all they got from us were a few slides.

We’ve actually come up with quite a good idea.  But the issue emerges – how do we continue it?  What mechanisms do we have for sustaining that type of collaborative work.  I’m hoping that other people around the world will be thinking about how we implement.

Here is one version of our reworked material (others here):

b.tween09 Collaboration interspersed with shopping

colllabInsights from collaboration experience

Really good discussion with interesting ‘play’ between arty publishing people on the platform and ‘geek-ridden’ audience.

A lot of the geekier people want to use lots of wizzy social media tools.  Speakers suggested it might be a good idea to sit round a table and talk to people before haring off doing systems development.  One thing I do agree with is the need and importance of chemistry – between the people  – in making collaboration work.  Session a bit on the ‘rose tinted’ glasses side of things.

b.tween09 – big ideas

btween09
10-12 June 2009

A fabulous event in Liverpool that still has me thinking about the issues and means that I have to blog about it.  This event really does try to ‘boundary cross’ – between the arts and technology, social media, music, geeks, non-geeks (not many!) and businesses (could be more).  Overall a great event and I learnt a lot.

Here is some stuff on the opening and on the importance of narrative. The importance of stories keeps coming up in events.  Especially events that have someting to do with social media.  We neglect stories at our peril!

Can the Internet win the next election?

Bloggers think ‘No, but it can probably lose it’

Last week’s elections and the political fallout have placed in context, for me, the event I went to at the Frontline Club on 28 May about how the Internet might play a part in the next election.  The participants were:

  • Iain Dale, Conservative blogger at Iain Dale’s Diary
  • Alex Smith, recently appointed Editor of the LabourList.org
  • Adam Boulton, Political Editor, Sky News (Chair)
  • Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes)
  • Matthew Macgregor of Blue State Digital (the company that worked for the Obama campaign
(l-r) Iain Dale, Alex Smith, Adam Boulton, Paul Staines, Matthew Macgregor
(l-r) Iain Dale, Alex Smith, Adam Boulton, Paul Staines, Matthew Macgregor

I made contemporaneous notes and also some Audioboo content which is available here.  A bit of background to the event here:

Everyone in ‘Broadcast Mode’ needs to ‘get with the program’

iain-dale
Iain Dale - political blogger

Iain Dale  (pictured left) believes that the internet will impact individual MPs (mostly through revealing things they don’t want revealed I suspect) but that the overall ‘systemic’ effect of the internet will be small.

He agrees that the next General Election will be the first where mobile phones and social media will really begin to play a part and where bloggers will cause changes in the news cycle:

“We get more hits every day than all the 3 main parties put together”

He said referring to the traffic generated by his blog and by Guido Fawkes’.

The problem is the main parties are in ‘Broadcast Mode’ and that given British politics is driven by ‘controlling the message’ the level of interactivity of social media is a challenge.  As Matthew Macgregor said “The internet is a tactic not a strategy” and that it lowers the barriers to communication (especially inbound to the Party) but how real is the commitment to ‘openness and transparency’.  The reaction of the media to policy discussions driven by social media will, Matthew believes, be instructive; will the shutters come down once the media starts talking about ‘splits’.

“There’s nothing to click on other than ‘Unsubscribe'” – Matthew Macgregor

Alex Smith believes that “The Internet will play a crucial role in the next election” – he mentions viral video and the possibility of debate being shaped by the internet.  He argues that the internet has “already effectively removed one of the Prime Minister’s closest political aides” and that the next election will to some extent be driven by stories that will “break on the web”.  Alex believes that Paul and Iain have a huge impact on the media cycle and thinks that this will be an important factor.  All the panelists agreed that the Internet strategies of the main parties were poor at best.

Boulton’s shock hashtag confession

At one point when talking about social media and the internet Adam Boulton said he didn’t know what a hashtag was (and I don’t think he was joking!) and references to the internet seemed to feel like references to some kind of monolithic bloc.  Alex picked up the point that realtime interaction driven by things like Twitter might be important.  Adam seemed to think that a Sky news team would always be faster on the ground.

The next Boo starts with the voices of Alex Smith (interesting references to Alan Johnson) and then Iain Dale.  I round off with a few thoughts.

The next Boo has ‘reportage’ – skip it if you feel you have enough of a flavour from the text above.

Reflections and implications

The format worked well with a fairly formal panel session followed by various panelists joining tables and moving between courses.  The informal part of the event was really good – we had Iain Dale and Alex Smith and the comments and discussion were very engaging.

The event would have been improved by a more discursive (and less ‘Question Time’) approach by the chair.  Also, having a chair who seemed quite cheerful to admit that he didn’t ‘get’ the internet seems odd – but then presumably Adam ‘Hashtag’ Boulton was a draw for the ‘punters’ (especially the non-geeks)!  All in all though a minor criticism.

There were two main things I took away to think about:

  • The importance of internet aggregation in realtime and increasing symmetry of communication,
  • The potential for independent candidates to harness the power of the internet to disintermediate the major parties.

More thoughts in the next Audioboo: