‘Creating a new blueprint for media businesses.’

The goal of the unconference was for the participants to set the agenda to find the cross industry business and collaboration opportunities that mattered to them, to increase their revenue and develop their business model.

Participants came from film, TV, games, mobile, web, software, interactive media, arts and design to see how they could collaborate and share. Each participant had the opportunity to suggest a session that they would like to run. Notes were taken and then collated together to create a book.
Over 30 sessions were created and run. Each session was written-up in the participants’ own words and is the start of a longer conversation. Sometimes after much debate, a session finished with more questions, sometimes a solution or further action planning was suggested.

Narrative and Storytelling

In an increasingly complex and media-saturated world, we need to help people connect with information/content in ways that are meaningful for them.

Not everything is a ‘story’ but we need to invest more time/effort in getting both content producers and consumers to develop their storytelling and narrative skills.

As an example, we could use story archetypes as a filter/ to explore/evaluate/distill the value of content and its connection with multiple audiences.

We need to go back to basics and think about how what we are doing could be changed/improved by re-visiting the fundamentals of narrative storytelling.

Here is one write-up of a session I was involved in.

Action plan: / Narrative and Storytelling Convener; Henry Playfoot, White Loop

Not everything is a story but do we need to invest more time/effort in getting people to develop their storytelling and narrative skills? If you started with the (say) twelve story archetypes use them as a filter/ explore/evaluate/distilling for discussing the efficacy/value of media content.

This could include collaborative experiments that marry ‘traditional’ storytellers with technologists or cutting edge digital service developers and projects that investigate the application of storytelling across all sectors.

Storytelling and Narrative

In an increasingly complex and media-saturated world, we need to help people connect with information/content in ways that are meaningful for them.

Not everything is a ‘story’ but we need to invest more time/effort in getting both content producers and consumers to develop their storytelling and narrative skills.

As an example, we could use story archetypes as a filter/ to explore/evaluate/distill the value of content and its connection with multiple audiences.

We need to go back to basics and think about how what we are doing could be changed/improved by re-visiting the fundamentals of narrative storytelling.

Related Issues:

Whilst we didn’t get very far in the discussion of this theme during the day it was noticeable that this session was so popular when people came to vote at the end of the day. Why was that? What is about ‘The Story’ that resonates and is so important to people?

What is the story now?

Stories still connect with people – it goes to the root of people’s emotions and there is a groundswell of interest in how storytelling/narrative can be used across every sphere – from politics/policy through to business and communities. Within this we should explore the impact and opportunities afforded by digital technology/platforms. With online gaming, for example, there is no longer one storyteller- there are multiple storytellers. Who is the protagonist/ who is the narrator and how do these shifts influence our experiences? There are strong arguments to suggest we need stories now more than ever. We need authorative voices that can help us navigate the often overwhelming amount of information that bombards us. In the emerging Web 3.0 world, we need authoritative and AUTHENTIC voices to help make sense of the world and the vast amount of noise/content. Business communities are beginning to talk about storytelling. We all know that great business leaders and educators are great storytellers. Their skills do not lie in spouting statistics or presenting data, rather than in distilling disparate threads into a coherent story.

Next Steps

In the creative industries – especially those under the One Media banner – we have unrivalled storytelling capacity. It is what we do, from conception of a game through to delivery of complex, cross-platform content and services.

Keeping an eye on some of the excellent work being undertaken in the UK eg Mike Wilson, University of Glamorgan, DEMOS the role of blogging/self narrating to support literacy (see recent report) and research in the US and Canada into the power of storytelling, NESTA should help ensure we formally embed storytelling skills into our offer.

This could include collaborative experiments that marry ‘traditional’ storytellers with technologists or cutting edge digital service developers and projects that investigate the application of storytelling across all sectors. We are convinced that we would get some real insights and that there would be hard economic benefits in terms of generating revenue for One Media businesses through providing expertise and creative consultancy. Additionally, we have identified that formalising and sharing these skills would support the integration of new people into our sector – especially powerful when thinking of equipping graduates/entry level staff with the requisite skills/attributes to succeed.

Co-Conspirators: Henry Playfoot, Brian Condon, Tim Furby, Paul Dorman, George Stamkoski