Monthly Archives: March 2006

Mar 15

The Church of Content

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There’s a new religion, or at least a revamped version of an old one. Content and creative and art and music and all that stuff used to belong only to the individual or to the group. Then we got patronage and wealthy individuals could commission stuff, could pay to make things and see things and own things. Business models were invented and the content was owned and monetised and distributed through official channels. The church of content was centralised, controlled, there was only one way and the big business owned it.

Well, not just the one way, there was still individualism going on, but it was quiet, local. Without the big business model, the support, it had few ways of getting out there, of reaching a larger audience. The missionaries were drowned out by the larger church and few people know there was anything else but the one way.

But the internet came along. The world wide web. The multitude of ways to distribute content in its purest form, as data, as a stream of 1’s and 0’s. And there was a schism in the church. Content could not be controlled by the big boys, but was out there, could be taken, could be changed and remixed. The new religion was born – the content is ours, all of ours. We want it when and how we want it – don’t dictate the ways, let it find its way. give us different models, not just the one way, the one scripture.

Like any religious split, the two sides cannot be reconciled. They share a single tenet of faith – content is king. But who controls, how it is controlled is the question. And both sides absolutely, immovably believe they will win the war and that the world will shift, or rebound back, to their point of view. And until a resolution is reached, or a compromise, and the paradigm shifts again, conferences and blogs and tradepapers and all that other sources of conversation will continue to host argument after argument.

Mar 15

Ted Cohen Interview

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Deidre and Ted

Originally uploaded by RachelC.

The first session of the day was an interview with Ted Cohen, SVP Digital Dev & Distribution, EMI Music,(pictured here with Deidre at a party the other night). Peter Kafka from Forbes carried out the interview; I’m not sure of his background, but to me he certainly started off his questioning very agressively, seemlingly holding something against the big record companies as repesented by EMI and Ted. There were challenges about declining record sales, increase of single track downloads, old business models, impact in indi lables and working with online models. Throughout, Ted held his ground and ensured he got the mesage across that he thinks things were changing.

Update: Peter has updated me on this:”i covered entertainment and other topics for forbes mag for 8 years; now i edit forbes.com’s media and tech coverage. if i seemed aggressive it’s just because i knowthat ted is an articulate speaker who can get his point across and wanted to provoke him into doing so; hopefully that worked.” I agree here – he did get his point across well and the questions asked did provoke good responses

Key points I took out of it were:

  • EMI believes it has got better at understanding the users and offering them alternatives. It’s not just the record sale anymore.
  • the digital market allows far more artists shelf space than could happen in meatspace alone.
  • EMi is in a transition – the change to digital cannot happen overnight
  • they may be selling smaller quantities of more artists (like an indi label) but still have more to offer in their expertise and experience in developing the artist. They are getting better at spending moeny inteligently to support this.
  • he thinks the digital music could be improved by intereoperability in itunes. There are better devices than the ipod, it’s just that itunes has 80% of the market.
  • he’s optimistic in hoping that this is the year that subscription takes off, that the systems will work together, that you can have cross platform playlists etc.
  • they are always examining opportunties to increase avaialability for things like podcasts. There are a new set of ground rules and he is keen to ensure there is an appropriate compensation. Good for things like music discovery and new artists.
  • he’s excited about the opportunities with over the air music, mobile development etc

A very switched on guy, working to make the most of the digital space. halfway through he pulled out a bag of gadgets, all new offerings in portable devices that will let you play music and video.

Mar 15

SXSW on Tuesday

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My first panel today was on VIdeo Blog Business Models. From the beginning this panel was far more of a conversation than a presentation. Well moderated, it explored the various business models that could be used. These ranged from in video advertisements, adsense, through to subscription. No common best model emerged; the key thigs wre knowing your audience. The challenge appears to be selling these type of ads, as there is a lack of understanding within the companies and agencies approached to provide ads. Even with high numbers (rocketboom gets between 2-300k downloads) the opportunity was difficult to explain. For large scale video, the business has not yet solidified its model. A single site may be able to support hosting with Adsense or local sponsorship, larger providers of hosting need to have a far more robust model to ensure they can provide the infrastructure needed.

There was a vigrous discussion about ads and their placement. Rocketboom, where they have creative control over the ads, have placed them at the end. There was some challenge from the audience that maybe the ads should be at the beginning as well, otherwise people may just not watch them. As people are used to watching ads throughout TV programmes, then the audience would accept it. Here I disagree – I’d rather pay subscription (eg licence fee) with no ads or watch via tivo and skip them.

A final discussion related to building brands. An important aspect of video blogs or any element that is looking for advertising, is to build credibility and a brand. The panel were asked how they are doing it. The answers ranged from offer a specific type of content, always give a great user experience, know the audience and listen to them and participate and converse with the audience.

Next up was a geek lunch. Here, Brian Oberkirch, Jon Lebkowsky and Evelyn Rodriguez talked about their experiences with Hurricane Katrina and the Asian tsunmi and how they used blogs, wikis and online communities to assist in the locating of missing people, supporting survivors and getting the story out. Less of a discussion than the previous one, it was a fascinatiing insight into the challenges faced.

A quick diversion into the Secret Sex lives of video games gave me far more information than I ever needed to know about the various online games that support sexual activity. The last session with Bruce Sterling ended up being standing room only as he gave a monologue about globalisation, spimes and poetry.

So that was the last day of the SXSW Interactive. The conference and the evening activities made for a an exhausting time. I’m staying for the music festival now, which is just as packed, if not more so. The music regstration started today and it looks like a far different crowd – the clothes are far cooler for a start. And I think the wireless will be slightly less temperamental as the number of laptops may reduce.

I picked up the swag bag for the music. Still lots of paper, but more CDs and a few more goodies. As the photo shows, the expectation of the sponsors is different for the music festival. As well as the tape (for which I have no tape player) you get a lighter with an inbuilt bottle opener, a condom and an hangover survival pack.

Mar 14

SXSW On Monday

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Monday was another quiet day when it came to panels – I keep leaving early. The key one I wanted to watch I got pulle dout of due to a call, but it sounded entertaining from later reports – the Future of Darknets. The position on the panels were entrenched – there’ll never be agreement, these sessions are made for the arguments. I crept in at the end to hear the MPAA rep (Kori Bernards) state the industry position that DRM was there to help the consumer and prevent piracy. Which of course it blatently does nothing of the sort. And whilst arguments are framed in these words, working towards a common solution becomes impossible. DRM does nothing to help the consumer – it reduces the value of the content I own, it means it does less than it did before. And the pirates have the time, money and incentive to break DRM with ease, so nothing happening there.

Maybe some of the panellists should have been listening to the keynote chat between Craig Newmark and Jimmy Wales. There was a lot of talk about communities of trust and how most people want and will do the right thing. Studies have indicated that people who download buy the products in greater volumes; give people something that is easy to do, that is felt to be priced right, they want to do the right thing. But remove the trust, push the price, then that will drive people away.

I appreciate Newmark’s philosophy – set up and infranstructure and get out of the way. This came out loud and clear when it came to questions. A number of people wanted to step up and thank Craig for the support post Katrina. His response – they did a couple of things (like set up a Baton Rouge site) but in general, all they did was keep the servers running and get out of the way – the site is user run.

There was some talk about the policing and service methods on both Craigslist and Wikipedia. There are always bad apples, but the number them have not necessarily increased as the sites have become more popular, despite the number of journalists ringing up to wanting to build that story. The percentage has decreased as more ‘good’ people come on board. Working closely with ISPs help, which is one of the few impacts the eBay share buy has had – access to a team of people who do nothing but talk and work with ISPs to police the sites.

And the source of arguments and flame wars between groups is similar on both sites. It’s not necessarily driven by politics, but is between reasonable people and jerks, which exist in all parts of the spectrum. However, the pet fanatics seem to take up a lot of customer service time on both sites!

Inthe afternoon I went along to the ‘selling big ideas t big clients’, at least for a while. It was more like a run through of the agency successes instead of insights into the process – and I’ve been to far too many agency pitches. The last session of the day was packed – on what people are doing onthe web, and it had good potential, but turned more into a run down of numbers(difficult to do in 10 mins) and questions about techniques. Hopefully the presenations will be put up somewhere on the web as there appears to be soem good comparisons between the SXSW audience and the general population which display the gap between the people who talk about the web and what people generally do.

One more day of interactive to go!

Mar 13

Womens; Visibility, Value Add and Tagging

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A few random things learnt today…that you have to blag your way into every bar when they ask for ID. I have a reluctance to carry around my passport, but so far the line “I’m English, I don’t have picture ID” seems to work as managed to get into the bars OK so far.

Another observation is the decline of the wristwatch. Only a minority of people seem to wear them. So far reasons dicussed are the every present mobile phone, the use of the laptop to tell the time or the fact that typing whilst wearing one is a problem, But with this reduction, it means that my usual method of looking at everyone else’s watch to confirm the time does not work here very well.

Yesterday was a quiet day for me and panels. I ended up only going to one formal one, about women and visibility. This is a conversation that is not new ont he web or anywhere else, and it is not going to be sorted by any single panel, although their did seem to be a few questions in the mix aksing a strightforward ‘what is the secret’. The general consensus from the panel was that you need to work at being visible – there is no secret, you have to get out and make yourself visible, you have to put in time and effort and commit do following whatever strategy you desire.

At one point the audience was asked how many of them considered themselves visible? Very few hands were raised at this – but what does that question mean. A number of people in the room had not heard of any of the panel, who were, presumably, picked because they had visibility. I’ve got between 30-40 subscribers (one day I may switch to feedburner to get actual numbers…) – how visible does that make me? So what is the question? Are people looking for visibility within the general internet population, within their own specialist area, within their peer group whether that be split by expertise, gender or specialist subject. There’s no one question, just as their is no one answer. One solution proposed by Liz Henry was a more formalised method of identification, of classification , so it makes it easier to find people. Some apprehension was expressed at giving out such information, with some preferring the anomynity that the web gives. Should we more offline perceptions onto the web? It’s too late for that, they’re already there. If they weren’t, these questions would not be there. T

The web is the most equal of spaces – use follows population in general – 50% of users are women, 50% of bloggers are women. I don;t know if the question is just being asked in the tech/conference area, where there is a real offworld bias that reflects online – do other blogging communities as the same question?

At lunchtime, I went along to a geek lunch. Apparently a new departure for SXSW, there were focused lunch discussions, with this one being on ‘Who owns the creative’ The owners of the conversation (as much as it could be owned) were Jane Wells and Chris Messina. Eight of us had an interesting discussion about creative, IP and moving into open source discussion. There were some nightmare tales of companies who want to own you and everything you do 24*7. My previous company used to do this, but stopped about 10 years ago – i think it was partly tied into the job for life environment. But this does not happen any more, so the contractual clause was dropped. But it appears to be live and well in the IT companies.

This conversation finally chrystallised a thought that I’d been dwelling on following an interview I evesdropped on with Piers last week. He was asked how he could make money if all his thinking and trnedspotting is put on the blog for anyone to see. It is the same for open-source software – Simon Phillips definitely had a point about propietry software slowy dying except for specialised situations. ANd it is becoming the same for some content/creative in a way. My thoughts are that is not the information, the open source software of the raw creative elements that will necessary make people money going forward, but the value they can add to it. So for trend spotting and strategising – everyone has access to the same information, the expertise you pay for is what they do with it and what they turn it in to, not for some mysterious source of private info that you;re not sure before the fact whether it can be turned into something useful as all previous work is hidden and sioloed. For open-source, it’s not the software itself but the value that can be added from packaging up, supporting it, making it do something special for the client. For creative it can be making things that people drive poeple to want them and use them. There are examples of bands and artists that make their living solely from web based creative. But that won’t work for all, this is not a model that can be ubiquitous.

The final conversation of the day was all arounnd tagging. This late night natter ended up being podcast and videod by the side of the road (it was the quietest place that could be found) by Eric Skiff and Christopher St John..

We were talking about 3 kinds of tags – personal, group and fixed and how they can be applied both internal and external webs. .

The latter is the typical taxonomy, topdown fixed categories. FOund in document management systems, where documents or information have a metadata assigned to them based on the design principles. Little room for movement, they are fixed. Information canb only be sorted in certain ways, that are either agreed witht he community, or, more likely, imposed by the system owners. I see this only being useful when the information collected can be predicted and has a level of permanance. When you know waht you are going to get, there are unlikely to be excpetions and the data needs to be kept for a while – the community here needs to be closed with little dissent allowed. ANy changes would come through a process.

At the other end of the spectrum are the personal tags. the ones that are only applicable to one person, that mean something that would not easily be recognised by others. These can be extremely ephemeral, or permanent, but they are not really designed for more than one persons use. Blog and photo tags fall into this category, but it can also be how a person organises and names files (either physical or data).

In the middle are the emergent group tags. These often start off as individual tags, but through a process of being shared and examined, a group consensus can emerge (or can be suggested). An example is here at SXSW where there are a number of different tags being used on Flickr to record events. SXSW, SXSWi, SXSWi2006, SXSWi06 etc etc. My behaviour, and the behaviour of others I’ve spoken to, is to adjsut their tags to meet the group norm. Taking a look at the most popular tags on flickr allows you to adjust your own. But you don’t have to – what this is demonstrating is group behaviour where you want your stuff to be noticed. If you were only interested in tagging your own stuff for your own study, then you would stick to the ones that you would wnat. By looking at the group norm and adjusting to that, you are asking to be part of a group and, more inportantly, asking for attention as part of that group.

Into this middle category I see group mandated tags falling – things like barcampaustin, or interactiveplaypen which the group behind the lego pits here are asking people to use for pictures of the lego. These requests ask you to join the group, to share your work, to allow a multiple perspective of the event to evolve.

One otehr aspect I see from these level of tags is related to level of permanance of information. Exploring options for internal intranets, I can see blogs, wikis and document management systems falling a spectrum. Data and information becomes more fixed and loglived as you proceed through the spectrum of tools. A blog may be for the moment, to look at current events and discussions that are happening in the environmen – a personal perspective even though it invites conversationst. The information would always be there, but may onoy be relevant for a moment. Wikis are more of a resource for group knowledge; can be built on and flexed, change with time, but still a record of the group knowledge of the time. And DMS is for fixed stuff, that changes slowly, that is legal or policy driven, or needs to be mandated top down to be used by all the community at any one time (eg annual planning documents etc).

Both the information and the tags associated with the info can move up and down this ladder. On the web, much of this is emergent behaviour – it is self -policed (and then we hit standards bodies). In a business environment the same model can be applied – the lower levels are self policied and you only need officialdom as you het the fixed stuff. But having gardeners to direc the process, to help emergent tags and make sure the taxonomy can reflect such stuff is a critical role.

Enough of yesterday – need to go now and think of today.

Mar 13

After Party

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IMG_3540

Originally uploaded by RachelC.

Arriving at Club De Ville for the after party for the web awarrds, we all got given glowsticks …which break if you twist them too far. And then give great photo opportunities.

Mar 12

SXSW – First Day Review

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The first day is over and what have I learnt?

  • that I should stop goign to blogging panels as I’m not picking up anything new. The better converasations on that topic are one on one.
  • how the term AJAX was derived – and something that the coiner Jesse thought was a small concept rapidly took over his life.
  • that whilst AJAX may be cool, there are still a lot of problems with usability and accessibility – but the answers are being made up on the fly; there is never a master plan
  • that AJAX is the obvious next step but not the obvious last step in the evolution of the web as an application platform. There’s a lot more to come and quickly
  • if entrepeneurs want to become businesspeople, their key skill is to learn quickly
  • the curious will inherit the earth (Jim Coudal)
  • do things on the side, respect the constraints and believe that less is more. (Jason Fried)
  • One opinion of functional specs: “they are illusions of agreement. Everyone understands something different. They build the interfaces first and then drive reactions to it to get agreement and agree on real stuff. Little cost to add something to a func spec, but adding a new feature to a product gives you pain, so you assess and challenge. A func spec is a yes doc.”
  • the wisdom of crowds is difficult to achieve but there are three key things – you need aggregation of judgement, diversity of opinion and experience and independence of choice. (James Surowiecki)

    Interestingly, the best panel I saw all day was the Barcamp on on open source. Insights from such diverse compnaies such as Sun, WordPress and Flock.

    I’ve removed the notes taken from yesterday’s sessions and probably won’t put more up until the end when I can do some editing. Now onto Day 2

Mar 11

SXSW First Day

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The first day of the conference and things are starting to heat up. Well, at least the weather is. Temperatures are up in the 80s and the sun is out – meaning i got sunburnt in my wanders around the town yesterday. Loads of photos to put up when I get a decent connection. Meanwhile, the first set of panels have finished and the feelings are mixed – a number of panels did not appear to be what was expected.

The town is buzzing; walking around last night going around to a few of the parties, the definite feel was like the Edinburgh Festival (according to Ewan). If I get the opportunity (which means power) I’ll liveblog the sessions I attend.

Mar 10

Lucky

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Sometimes you get lucky. Somehow I managed to get an upgrade on the flight fron SFO to Austin, so got a nice seat with plenty of legroom and no-one next to me in Economy Plus. Then I arrived at the hotel at the perfect time and managed to get an upgrade to a suite for the week. Plenty of room. Now I’m sitting by the river, sipping a marguerita watching thousands of bats venture out for the night from under the bridge next to the hotel. (which is one of the stranger visitor attractions here)

Mar 09

CC Salon

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Last night I went along to a CC Salon event held at Shine. For someone more used to London events, the turnout was pretty impressive. There were brief presentations about Fireant, about Geek Entertainment TV and about Second Life before the chat and networking started. It was the first time I’d seen Second Life in action, so will be taking a closer look at it.

The location, Shine, has a great photobooth, done up fabulously in fake fur, where you go and get your photos done and 30 seconds later they appear on Flickr.

Mar 09

Blooker Prize

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The short list for the Blooker Prize has been announced. I’ve been reading hackoff.com over the last few months which I’ve really enjoyed; I used to read Belle de Jour a few years ago, not sure if the book is baased on the old stuff. So now I need to go take a look at the rest.

Mar 08

San Francisco sights

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IMG_3436

Originally uploaded by RachelC.

On the first leg of my trip, I’m spending a day or so in San Francisco, made easier my the kind hospitality of Tara . On a glorious spring day – sunny and warmish – I wandered round the nearby Golden Gate Park and visited the Japanese Tea Garden.

Mar 08

Wifi everywhere?

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The BBC ia running an article about the spread of wifi in the wild, with hotspots extending to form zones and more and more people getting wifi in their homes. What it doesn’t mention is the conflict between paid services and free wifi. Companies ever increasing their coverage is one thing, but without a single type of sign-on, having to run multiple accounts toget wifi can be a problem. There are small efforts to go down a municipal route, but these are not yet widespread. One move i see is similar to the way we use telephone wires. Almost all users are connected to the same physical network, but they can choose who provides the actual service and takes their money. I don’t see wifi becoming free and ubiquitous anytime soon in the UK, but the service model may be a way forward – I pay for my connection and I get the service whether from home or whist roaming.

Mar 08

It’s a Digital World?

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Why would a national paper (Daily Mail) offer a digital camera as a prize for a photography competition and demand that you send a print of the image? (you can tell I was bored yesterday – the few times I read papers is whilst waiting and travelling)

Mar 08

Localisation

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In one of those co-incidences, I arrived at the airport lounge yesterday and smiled and said hello to someone I recognised. Nothing unusual in that, I’m used to seeing people all the time on the NYC flight – there was usually at least one person from Diageo on the flight. This time though it turned out to be one of the people who catch the same train as me every morning – so he looked at me very weirdly as I greeted him as though I knew him.

But this post is not about that kind of localisation, where the world is getting smaller (or is that globalisation), it’s more about the kind of localisation that puts an independently owned motorway service station at the top of a Which Poll (I can’t find a decent link to the story this morning). Many services in the UK are owned by chains, they’re dull, plastic, too expensive for what you get but Westmorland has always provided something different. Started by the landowner when the motorway was built across his land, the services foucs on providing local produce and employment for locals. People go out of their way to visit the farm shop and restaurant, it does not jsut rely on passing trade.

So here you have an occasion where staying true to initial values and focusing on excellence provides a service that consistently comes out top in polls such as this.

Mar 07

Conference Fees

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Following this picture, with not a women in sight at a tech conference, Kasia proposes a solution. Reduce or remove registration and entry fees for women who go to tech conferences. A great idea to improve my cash flow – but it would not necessarily increase my attendance. But as the Girl Geek Dinner in London proves, there is a tech population out there, it’s just making sure there is some encouragement.

Mar 02

Priceless

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As an advertising campaign, Mastercard’s Priceless appears to strike chords and I’ve seen it replicated many times, such as the one that was circulated after London got the 2012 Olympics. Finally, Mastercard have cottoned on to this and are running a competition to get us to write the copy for the ad. Adrants have an interesting twist on it….”We have to wonder, though, how many industry creatives will anonymously go after this and then gleefully add the ad to their portfolio once it airs.”

Mar 01

Linked In Bloggers

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I belong to a newsgroup for bloggers on Linked In. Many of the members use blogging to drive and support their business, so there is a lot of great information passed around about what makes a good post, how to advertise, how to get traffic. One of the things suggested is the equivalent of of a Carnivale, where there is a flurry of posts and links about a specific subject. In this case, it’s suggested that we focus on a random members blog and comment about it. Well the first one is this week and it turns out to be Itzy.

One of the good things about this process is the encouragement to discover and read other group members blogs and this is one that I will descibe to. Work email is a nightmare at this moment, as it is coming in at a faster rate than I can ‘file’ and close down to be archived before I leave; in the meantime, the Gmail account is getting some massages as I work on labelling and filtering to ensure the right ones get read. There’s some great tips in this blog to work through. One other thing, it reminds me I really have to set up the other blog, the one that is related to the business and not the randomness (but fun) that appears here.