It’s easy to sit here and talk about the benefits of open source business (of which there are many), but what happens when it goes wrong or someone operates counter to the spirit? Read the rest of this entry »

INteresting talk about the life of the Hitchikers brand form Robbie Stamp. Very very passionate about being passionate about the thing you do. In short his message was start with what you have and then dont be afraid to let your brand grow, change and evolve…great Hollywood and Douglas anecdotes too!

More location based mobile immersive game examples can be found here

I think that there’s so much more yet to happen in this field now that smart systems that are actually smart are emerging.

I have signed up for the RFID tracking installation at b.tween and urge you to do it….

You should also read the AllPointsBlog for up to date location stuff.

Also found this article on the location based mobile game “Phone Tag” created by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s company.

I, like millions of others, got a vPod for Christmas. I remember, not so very long ago, wondering who on earth would want to watch piccies or moving content on a square little bigger than a postage stamp. Then I got the vPod. Soon I was an evangelical convert. The image is clear and the viewing experience intimate. Unfortunately, there seems to be a dearth of content made specifically for them. I want heaps of engaging episodic stories please… and if I want them I can only imagine there will be many others like me wanting them too.

Two of our speakers are building very similar businesses around exactly this user need and will talk about them at 2.15 on Thursday. Richard is hoping to deliver audio books in episodes, Will is running a portal site called Clickwheel delivering much covetted content to comic book addicts. Comics are quick. They are easy to absorb on the go. Comics are easy. Easy to read and also easy to make. Easy, quick and addictive. He is delivering comic book as podcast – seems like an obvious way to distribute content !! So why aren’t more people doing it? It’s only a matter of time until more people catch on to this and develop ever more sophisticated models based around aggregation and content delivery.

Just thinking how much the mediascape has changed since we started throwing the b.TWEEN bashes. Technology has changed, expectations have changed, business models have changed. The web is pretty much as mainstream as TV: broadband is ubiquitous. Internet advertising has finally jumped the hurdle and become big business, there is at last such a thing as a successful online media company

VCs are actively investing in content and content distribution models. The creative aggregation of disorganised markets has got to be one of the most interesting emerging opportunities. Podcasters themselves are unlikely to make cash from their toils, but the aggregator who can offer and easy to use interface to access them can. I’m looking forward to seeing what Richard and his panel have to say on this..
Whichever way we look at it, the web and the way we interact with it is still in it’s early infancy and creative and business opportunities will carry  on growing apace. The citizen journalist can get to the breaking news quicker than professionals. Commissioning processes will have to change with the changing tide of consumption. Closed gates have swung wide open. If people can’t see something when they want to see it, they will find a way to download it to watch at their leisure, and if it isn’t available legally, they’ll find another way around it. While the older generations may continue to watch programmed, passive TV, the younger generations will drive models forward by insisting on content when and where they want it. Channels are becoming less important, broadcasters are less important, individual platforms and their owners are becoming less important. Audiences have choice and expect control. Broadcasters could, if they wanted to, develop new, more intimate relationships with their viewer, exploring two way conversations rather than one way monologues.

What interesting times we’re living in

I was talking with someone about the impacts of web 2.0 and related trends on the marketing world and got to talking about radio and how sponsorship in that field should move. given that a huge ammount of brands now run their own radio stations (and successfully so - look at the radio channels on Sky). It seems that radio took hold of the idea of owning the channel and distribution in a way that brands haven’t yet on TV (I know theres the Audi channel). I was driven to think though that with the advent of social radio such as Last FM and mercora’s Radio 2.0 that this brief jump into taking control could actually be a dead end. How do brands begin to look at radio when it’s entirely driven by listeners exploiting a purely technical platform? Are we back to sticking banners on things? I am not saying radio is going away by the way… If music is distributed by the listeners for the listeners then what price a branded channel? Will brands have to start developing talent themeselves? Could Cillit Bang develop the loudest band in the world or might Microsft start developing bands who’s instrunments regularly crash during gigs?

I was at a BIMA event on Thursday night (”iMode is big in Japan…. will it make it over here?” ). One of the speakers quite rightly pointed out that no one talks about TV in terms of content and technology, we refer to channels and programmes. The average user has no interest in how they access the content of their choice, only that they can access it, and painlessly. No one cares if the mobile website they use is delivered and designed for WAP or iMode, or quite frankly if it appears by magic. They only care that it is easy to get to, easy to use and that the user interface and interaction is enjoyable. The technology is only a means to an end and is only truly successful if it is invisible. Furthermore the user only buys into something when there is a clear jump in ease of use and quality.

Steve Benford will talk about his locative and pervasive work at Mixed Reality Lab. He has collaborated with artists and practitioners for years in projects that explore links between the virtual and the real. They take day-to-day experience of city streets and overlay them with a virtual layer of information, augmenting reality, layering the ordinary with the extraordinary. One of the first pioneering projects to come out of this academic/ practitioner collaboration was the impressive and memorable Can U see Me Now by Blast Theory (www.canyouseemenow.co.uk ), which we are proud to have supported through the first round of Shooting Live Artist funding (www.bbc.co.uk/shootinglive) and was first showcased at one of our earlier events, b.tv 01

Can You See Me Now? is a game that happens simultaneously online and on the streets. Tracked by satellites, Blast Theory’s runners appear as avatars on a map of the host city. Each player has an avatar and the task is to avoid the Blast Theory runners for as long as possible. 20 people can play online at a time, exchanging tactics and sending messages to Blast Theory. An audio stream allows online players to eavesdrop on their pursuers, getting lost, cold, breathless and narrowly avoiding traffic on the city streets.

Their next project, Uncle Roy All Around You, took the original concept one step further by allowing players onto the streets themselves, interfacing with performers and collaborating with online helpers to find Uncle Roy’s office.

Since then, they have been invited to present their work in across the world. Their work combines virtual environments, live interventions, interactivity, and risk to explore and challenge what we perceive our increasing dependence on technology, social implications and political realities.

Though their work cannot be seen entirely as an ARG, there are obvious relationships and lessons to be learned.

Steve will be joined by Adrian Hon is Europe’s foremost Alternate Reality Game ( ARG) designer and the Director of Play at Mind Candy. Simlarly, their best known project Perpex City, involves a cross over between the vitual (dozens of websites with thousands of pages) and the real ( puzzle cards and live events involving hundreds of players, skywriting over Manchester, black helicopters in London). Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) are beginning to explore the web as not just another way of watching content made for other media ( TV programme, films) but as an intergral part of new forms of cross-media entertainment. They intend to infiltrate all sectors of the media offer, including traditional medias TV and radio.

At our last advisory meeting, we discussed that although the major broadcasters are still an important part in the shifting media landscape, their commissioning funds are essentially limited. Creative companies should explore other routes to get their ideas into production. How does the mobile industry interface with independents for example? An urban myth tells us that the operators are desperate for innovative content and services, so how, if at all, do they work with independent talent to ensure that this content gets to market. And how about the new major players, the ISPs. What is the relationship between them and the small creative player?

I hope that this panel will be chaired by Imran Ali from Wannadoo ( or Orange as they are now)– I expect to be able to confirm him by the end of play today – and that he’ll tell us about some of the interesting work he has been responsible for at Wannadoo R & D.

Adam Gee is responsible for adult (informal) learning/factual interactive initiatives. Recent projects range from Lost Generation (Not Forgotten) to Germ, from Jamie’s School Dinners to Breaking the News. He is also responsible for IDEASFACTORY, a major creative industries talent development initiative from Channel 4 and is a specialist in multiplatform interactive projects around TV. He is a strong advocate of disguised/informal learning and creative blends of on-line/off-line activity. He will talk about Channel 4’s new media strategy and what kind of projects they intend to commission over the coming year.

Jem Stone, lovely man and Executive Commissioner BBCi will be covering how the BBC new media commissioning process works and some of the BBC New Media’s newest attempts to support independents and third party innovation. This will include the Innovation Labs, backstage.bbc.co.uk and the BBC’s API strategy. He’ll provide some tips on cold pitching, how to raise your profile to BBC commissioners and what bbc.co.uk is really looking for.

I am also still trying to track someone form the mobile industries who is willing and able to talk about how the mobile operators interface with independent talent and how they are intending to answer the growing need for innovative mobile content. It occurs that they are all so desperately busy trying to make an effective business model around paying back the phenomenal amount they had to fork out for the 3G license fees.

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.