At b.tween, one of the most interesting sessions for me is happening on the Thursday. The session puts comissioners from the BBC and Channel 4 together on stage with the intention of (hopefully) demistifying the commissioning process a little. Over the years I have gone and pitched ideas at major broadcasters but have often come away feeling that actually what happened was that it was no more than an ideas gathering session for the broadcasters themselves… I know that this isnt the case (usually) but commissioning is such an opaque process that anything that opens it up to scrutiny should be welcomed…

However there is increasingly no need to go to commissioners. The inexorable rise of the broadband internet has begun to shift the sand. Why for instance should I make content and just hope that someone shows it for me? Why do I need to be commissioned at all?

New technologies have become so cheap that content can be made to a very high standard on home equipment, we all know that, but increasingly distribution itself is now opening up to content creators. Apple announced recently they will be allowing paid for podcasts to be put on iTunes…that will empower small producers to make and distribute to a worldwide audience at very low cost. Similarly sites such as MySpace are enabling the self distribution of audio and video and are combining this wil reputation engines to enable truly democratic navigational hierarchies to emerge where content people love automatically bubbles to the top of the pile.

What I want the commissioners to answer is how they are going to change now that TV audiences are falling and insular, are moving to other media and producers have cheap direct access to a worldwide audience?

There are usually too many questions to fit into sessions at events such as this so why not post your questions in advance? Just reply to this post and state who the question is for and we’ll make sure its asked. Click here to see the sepakers.

The last 100 years has seen an ever increasing acceleration in forms of media technology. Communication is now possible in a multiplicity of forms using multiple technologies and in an ever increasingly smart context. One of the most interesting things for me is to speculate on what the nature of 21st century media will be.

We have seen the emergence of omnipresent, smart media technology and it seems that one major concern is about how we interface with the content. In hard UI terms new interfaces are appearing that include shared use, spatial, temporal and conceptual, tags, tangible, physical and hybrid UIs as base design concepts. New UI metaphors for bridging the physical and virtual world are being developed that use spatial and temporal mappings between real and virtual world, dynamic sets of devices, shared devices, public displays and dynamic adaptation among several dimensions: devices, users, services, not to mention tracking and modelling social behaviour and protocols, all of which are giving us Ubiquitous Interfaces.

This begs the question what effects will these new forms of interface have on the content? For example, how do gameplay mechanisms which are being used across media in order to attract and keep consumer relationships active affect content on TV?

How will advertising change? The imminent death of the 30 second TV ad slot is the birth of a whole new landscape. New forms of branded content have emerged but yet more is needed to fully exploit the emergent media landscape. Intelligence, profiling, smartness and new forms of relationship with consumers are driving new forms of advertising and may see the death of the big ad agency.

Mobile technology has created a whole new dimension to media technology and content. Full TV to mobile services have launched and consumers seem to like them BUT the content is having to change in form and also in the way it is delivered leading to a world where the most extreme personalisation is just around the corner on a mass scale.

Artists and the emergence of AI – art that ‘thinks’. Even artists locked in their Arts Council funded faux-ivory towers are being affected. If smartness and intelligence underpin other media technologies then why should artists be any different? For some years artists at the cutting edge have been exploring the cutting edge of computation and aesthetics but it is clear that with the new explosion of smartness, intelligence computational power and media channels available that this is an area that is set to explode in vitality and finally mass acceptance to maybe become the dominant aesthetic of the 21st century.

The emergence of behaviour and intelligence as interface design paradigms suggests that smart, always-on, on-demand, contextualized content will have to be created to suit the different needs of the consumer and examines the new opportunities for storytellers.

P2P, podcasting and other user generated content and distribution networks, in combination with ratings and reputation engines, could open the gates to truly democratic content…what do the public actually want, do they want what is fed them by media organisations? If media becomes truly democratised then we will find out.

These are just a few of the things that give us so much to think about over the next few years.

Looking at the blog of the BBC’s Paul Mason it seems that the BBC has announced that it’s future direction will be to offer media content in any format, at any time, at any place and in any way that the consumer wants it. By the time of the next license fee round the BBC will be a radically different organisation with broadcast becoming a small part of it’s raison d’etre.

According to the BBC they will enable personalise media consumption in order to make BBC output truly directed by the individual audiences. Further, Ashley Highfield went on to say that the BBC’s digital output would be based on “share”, “find” and “play”…

laudable…

Mark Rogers from Market Sentinel phoned yesterday to kindly mention that, though our site looks great, we have a lot to learn about making our information search engine friendly! He mentioned that if we wanted to make our information search engine friendly, I need to treat the site proper as a shop window but make sure that all the roast and tatties is copied into the blog. Bear with me, I’m a blogging novice. Here is the programme in an internet friendly format:

Interactive Media Forum
Programme: Thursday 25th May
www.just-b.com/btween

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09:30 Registration and coffee
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10.00 Welcome and Introduction
Colin Philpott (NMPFT)
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10.10 Setting the Scene
Katz Kiely (Just-b. Productions)
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10.20 Opening Keynote
Lord David Puttnam CBE
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10.40 Whose Television is it Anyway?
Gary Carter (FremantleMedia)
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11.10 Coffee
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11.40 Working with Commissioners
Jem Stone (BBC)
Adam Gee (Channel 4)
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12.25 What do VCs Want? Creative Pioneers 1
Chair: Tony Marchington Chair: Jo Morrison (Futurelab)
(Prodigy Ventures) Steve Benford (Mixed Reality Lab)
Neil Ordish (Total Entertainment) Adrian Hon (Mind Candy)
Grant Gazdig (Access Capital)
Craig Packer (Fourcast Media)
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13.15 Lunch
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14.15 The Creative and Commercial
Potential of Podcasting
Chair: Richard Adams
(Perfectly Normal Productions)
Sarah Prag (BBC)
Will Simons (Clickwheel.net)
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14.55 Case Studies: Creative Entrepreneurs
Chair: Steve Manthorp (NESTA Fellow)
Fiddian Warman (Soda Creative)
Andy Pickles (The Music Factory)
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15.40 Coffee
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16.00 Creative Collaboration Workshop 1
Frank Boyd (Unexpected Media)
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17.30 Q&A Session with the day’s speakers
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18.00 Close
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Interactive Media Forum
Programme: Friday 26th May
www.just-b.com/btween

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09:15 Registration and coffee
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09.45 Welcome and Overview
Katz Kiely (Just-b. Productions)
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09.50 Introduction to Day 2
Stuart McFarlane (Yorkshire Forward)
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10.10 Keynote: Extending Brands across
Multiple Platforms
Robbie Stamp
(Stamp Bros. Productions)
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10.45 Opportunities for New Media
Producers in the TV World
Chair: Claire Scally (Pact)
Patrick Crowe (Xenophile Media)
Andy Bell (Mint Digital)
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11.30 Coffee
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12.00 Creative Collaboration Workshop 2
Frank Boyd (Unexpected Media)
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13.30 Lunch
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14.30 Opportunities for Creative Pioneers 2
International Collaboration Chair: Liz Rosenthal (Earthly Delights)
Jeff Jones (ACID) Michela Ledwidge (thequality.com)
Plus reps from the Korean marketplace Kieran McMillan (Raw Nerve)
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15.15 Emerging Trends
Chair: Steve Manthorp (NESTA Fellow)
John Booth (Sony)
Mark Rogers (Market Sentinel)
John Sanborn (Ebay)
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16.00 Get Paid to Innovate & Collaborate
Chair: Matt Locke (BBC)
Lucy Wurstlin (Melt)
Saul Cozens (TechnoPhobia)
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16.45 Feedback and Prizes
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17.30 Close and Fizzy
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b.TWEEN 06 is a Just-b. Production supported by NESTA, NMPFT, Lightwave Partnership, Visiting Arts, the DCMS, Screen Yorkshire, Yorkshire Forward, Arts Council England, Invest in Bradford, City of Bradford MDC, Velocity, Melt and ERDF
Programme is subject to change. Please check www.just-b.com/btween for latest updates

A 12 mile journey took me 3 hours because of this barren, blank, clear, dead, deflated, depleted, desolate, despoiled, destitute, devoid, dry, evacuated, exhausted, forsaken, godforsaken, hollow, lacking, stark, vacant, vacuous, void attempt at art.

Anyway it got me thinking about the emptiness and lack of depth in contemporary art, at least in terms of the artefact (if there is one). I hate being part of the in crowd (even if I am in it) and i hate smug self-satisfied art of the type produced by 95% of ’serious artists’ which is only validated by its existence inside its own ‘in crowd’. It seems that the main exhibition circuit is populated by largely lower middle class, middlebrow ‘artists’ with inflated opinions about themsleves, who are reduced to producing empty gesture creations. The equivalent of simple billboards that display a slogan. Nothing more, nothing less, no real meaning, either concepetually or in terms of craft. I am not someone who believes in craft or technical skills as the validation of art, by the way, having being taught by, among others, some of the Art and Language guys.
I began to think about digital art (something i attempted myself some years ago) and how this sits within this largely media fuelled symbolic cultural framework. What has struck me as interesting is that digital technologies are encouraging people to really think about the meaning of their work. This is partly down to the fact that newer forms of production and interaction are open to artists in this field. For instance an artist exploring ‘Play’ has many more ways of meaningfully studying Play through their work in the era of the digital as this is one area of application that has exploded in use. That was one of the beautiful things about SodaPlay. The aesthetic of Play was so deeply and elegantly explored. The whole experience gave the user a sense of satisfaction that is so lacking in more standard contenporary art.

I like Play. I like the fact that there seems to be an emerging aesthetic that is based on biological and behavioural imperatives. Something that is both new and has real meaning for users/consumers/fans.
This is a subject i will return to.

You may all know about We Media -find out more at www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/wemedia - but did you know that Robin Hamman is setting up a fringe/alternative version at a yet to be announced venue….click here to find out more.

The venue is not announced yet but if you would like to be put forweard as a guest then email him or you can email me (richard (at) perfectlynormal (dot) net) and I can ask him to put you on the list.

This is a great piece about YouTube and Google Video by Paul Boutin called “A Grand Unified Theory of YouTube and MySpace -Point-and-click sites that don’t tell you what to do.”

I see that the BBC’s rivals have criticised the BBC’s new strategy…here  Not suprising really as they now have 10 more years to get their strategy right before losing some or all of the license fee (which will happen next time). It si costing a fortune for companies to go properly digital into the new on-demand world. The BBC does have it easy in that respect but let’s not forget that their competitors have more reasons than fairness on their minds. The article quotes a director of News International as saying “Why should public money be used to create competition to a successful commercial venture such as MySpace?”… a bit cheeky maybe as news Int own MySpace.

The biggest issue for me is how much they plan to work with the independent sector. Why cant they divert most of the money towards commissioning  form small indies in order to promote competition and growth?

Just reading this post on Word of Mouth (WOM) on the WeMedia blog I broadly agree but it does seem utopian to think that WOM could have such an impact. The sheer laziness of the majority in making active choices is one barrier. Nonetheless it is an impressively powerful way of communicating and one that does need much more effort than “creating thinly veiled marketing ploys in the form or a wikis [sic]” but the difficulty lies not with the marketing agencies but within the brands themselves. Most marketing agencies are acutely aware of the issues outlined in the post but their clients are often very very conservative people who will only sanction something if the numbers are clearly adding up. They are not gamblers by nature and getting the correct approach in this area IS partly a gamble despite all the prevailing research. Remember also that it also only takes one badly executed idea such as the Cillit Bang/Barry Scott debacle, to scare conservative people into rejection of new ways of doing things.