One of the things that we are committed to doing is putting b.TWEEN at the intersection between commercial creativity and the experimental creativity happening on the blurred edges of commercial world. After all , most of the companies that this event is aimed at hail more from arts backgroud than a business one. As such, though all things business are doubtlessly crucial if small companies are to stay afloat in an increasingly competitive marketplace, it is creative inspiration that separates our products from those of our competitors. To get your creative juices flowing, we like to add plenty garnish to our bread and butter, and this year some of this inspiration will come to you in the form of a public facing interactive showcase

Two works will take pride of place in this showcase, the first two b.TWEEN commissions
The first of these is b.TWEEN 2 cultures, a collaboration between internationally renowned creative technologists Soda Creative and Chinese media artist Yang Lei. Provoked by fragments of text, b.TWEEN2cultures juxtaposes tagged culturally relevant images from Chinese and UK cultures that suggest shared meaning

You can contribute to the project by uploading images at Flickr.com. If you have photographs relating to Chinese culture then simply add the tag btweenchina, if you have photographs relating to UK culture then tag them with btweenuk. Continue to identify any of these images with additional tags that express their specific meaning to you. Tag your images at Flickr.com to join the conversation and explore the results at b.tween2cultures.net. Get uploading!

The second is by Someth;ng, a talented, emerging and ambitious creative technology collective based in the North of London. They develop innovative concepts that exploit the potential of interactive media; generating new experiences and engaging audiences in unique ways.

Their work, b.TWEEN Timelines is a world first interactive application and will equip each delegate with a smart RFID tag, allowing tracking of movements and interactions between delegates. It will invite ‘temporal bookmarking’ and providing data to create an online visualisation. It will allow delegates to locate other attendees with shared interests and provide a searchable archive of the two-day event. Something have been on a steep learning curve working with this pioneering technology, and have successfully managed to stretch their commission budget through attracting sponsors left right and centre. They will beta test the application at Cybersonica this weekend - can’t wait to see how the visual interface has panned out.
we’ll also be showing a SCAN commission by Igloo: Summerbranch- fab dance technology company that we have known and loved for some time - their work has continuted to push boundaries over the years

Last but definitely not least, two of the cybersonica commissions will feature at the event, Fijuu by Julian Oliver and Steven Pickles and Freq 2 by Squidsoup

Ok, just over a week to go to the b.tween conference. We would really like to get you start submitting comments, themes, questions or asking me (katz) on here, about the conference content. Each session will be very interactive; we will be blogging the event and using chat systems to enable all visitors and interested parties outside to take part.

Any contributions via this blog or diect to me would be welcome.

We feel that interaction between different sectors is important, but that it’s notoriously difficult to lure various industry groups away from their established forums and that the strongest way of moving forward is to focus clearly on the new media industries.

b.TWEEN is therefore designed for a specific core audience; digital media SMEs. Once b.TWEEN defines itself as the digital media event, other sectors that want to build connections with new media will come (e.g. TV producers are starting to realise they need to talk to new media producers and film makers are beginning to realise how powerful new distribution channels can be for profile raising activity).

Time is precious in small companies. If a key member of staff is going to pay to take a whole day (let alone two) and pay for the honour, we need to get something more than an excuse for a bash. How can we provide the information that small companies need to survive and achieve success, but also avoid making it unpalatable to our market make the event inspiring and memorable

This is the challenge that my advisory board and I have tried to meet during our meetings. We started with last year as a starting point, considering what worked and what didn’t

We decided that the following elements are the most important things to offer at b.TWEEN 06

o An opportunity for SMEs to meet commissioners/publishers, find out what their needs are and gain clear insight into the internal processes of major players like the BBC. By demystifying the commissioning process, a lot of wasted development time can be avoided
o A space to catch up and be inspired by the most creative projects happening the current market
o A space where small companies can share experiences with peers and meet potential collaborators through structured business networking opportunities
o A concise overview of emerging business opportunities (an overview of opportunities that became apparent b.TWEEN 05 or during the course of b.TWEEN 06)
Solid and practical business opportunities are crucial, but due to the nature of creative companies, the gritty business bread and butter is more palatable when garnished with creative interactive experiences and well structured networking. After all, the companies we are dealing with are founded on the creative aspirations of their leaders. There are very few companies in our sector that are only about money. Our industry is all about the crossover between creativity and commerce. It makes sense that b.TWEEN is designed to reflect this crossover. The event has to add up to more than the individual sum of their parts.

We have tried to learn lessons from the many other conferences we have attended. The usual programme of activity is as follows: we go to event after event, meeting old colleagues and friends, catching up on gossip, drinking too much at the networking bash, spending the next day half listening to the speakers on stage and half concentrating on the never ending to do list and keeping up with incoming texts and emails. We fully intend to meet new people, and sometimes even manage to target the one or two contacts we intend to meet, but business networking (five minutes max followed by writing notes on their business card and scooting onto the next new contact) is just not part of out culture. Networking makes me (and most of those I work with on a daily basis) uncomfortable. However, in my experience at least it is often the conversations that happen outside the comfort zone that prove most challenging and therefore most useful.

The feedback from our delegates last year was crystal clear. The event overall was a major success but some bits worked better than others. This year’s event will build on these successes. The creative collaboration workshops (run by Frank Boyd) were one of the aspects that worked well and we have built them into the programme again this year. We treat everyone, speaker and delegate, with the same respect. In this rapidly changing world, no one really knows for sure what the next big thing will be. We are all learners and can learn a lot from listening to the experiences of peers. Chances are that the people who have made it along to b.TWEEN are pretty clued up about their own space in the market. Each delegate has his or her own valuable opinions, experience and skillsets and they are given the chance to share their knowledge at these workshops.

Each speaker and delegate will be assigned a random number. The number will denote which brainstorming group to join. The groups will be made up of 8 to 10 individuals with often very different expertise and who are unlikely to have met. From experience, there is no better way to break the ice and facilitate useful networking than to give a group a brief and invite them to answer it by a process of creative collaboration.