Monthly Archives: March 2007

Mar 10

SXSW – Production 2.0

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Production 2.0

looking at how to make money from video blogging. I was 15minutes late to this..again and did not catch all the names. Some are in parentheses when I grabbed them)

Q: there a re growing pains, and you need to take time to focus on things.

A: it is worth it to pay a lawyer to stop being screwed. you don’t want to lose your brand have someone to own your content.

A; when they are trying to define new media is so tricky….’anything transmitted electronically’ needs to have a good eye.

Q: david, what have you come across to look out for?

A: David. it depends on where you start from? there are certain things you can do when you don’t need an extensive amount of help. once you reach a certain level of success you do need to start taking care, trademarks etc. companies will do ad sales networks that can turn your productions into profit. there;s a lot of competition out there, we made the decision to build own network sales early. we sat down and did the take a break and look at everything, to see if really viable.

Q: when do have a good level of viewership?

A: diggnation is most popular – 2 guys sitting in a couch drinking beer.cost is low. time and beer cost money. it comes down to keeping it simple. have enough to have a property with enough viewers that people want to reach your audience.

Q: you don’t need an audience..you need a promised audience.

A: if you have an blog or own notoriety you can use that to break the deal….

A: (baron) by having an individual sponsor to fund show, it’s compared to advertising. that is the most advantageous for the content producer, the audience and the sponsor. you can split it to being happy with what you have, or seeing the potential of where you want to be. but as it starts, it gives scoble and his audience a chance to be effective for seagate. the amount of time with one sponsor allows you to be close to them and get ot know them and also pick one that suits your audience. it;s a really good model for people. le;s say you don;t have a production company and are ready to make the step. so instead of going to do vs etc, if you can start a relationship with a single sponsor then you can focus.

Q: are we taking about personality as scoble is well known,

A: there’s a blog about raw food, sustainability..they got real big, real quick cos they were doing something that other were not.

Q: did you guys think of your audience first or the idea first.

A: (Ninja) we thought of ourselves first; we were frustrated,wanted to have control. there is a scaleability in terms of sponsorship; each instant needs a little exploration. need to see what is out there before making the decision. you can explore models. Keep the dialogue open with peers and audience

Q: what format do you think will break out?

A: if you create a show and there is enough people who want to watch your video on their device – you’ll make it in the format. People have their favourites.

Q: how many views does your blog get and when does a advertiser starts paying attention. what numbers do you need to do?

A: depends on what you are making and who the sponsor is? and what the subject is.
A: if you have niche topic, then you can go after the companies. depends on your target.
Q: do sponsors care about length?
A: convergence continues, length increases beyond the current favourite 5 mins etc.
A: (Baron) best way to make it a success is to focus on the show and make it as best you can be. it will stick out in the audience. most conversations are about how to make it better. even with all the business we are doing, still thinking about how to make rocketboom better, my number 1 thought.

Q: anyone tried a subscription model?
A: Baron – another thing we are going to try. Kotke tried last year. this hots one where I think this is going. no one has yet demonstrated how to leverage it in micropayments. About to try for donations. and to channel them into areas when they pay want to pay monthly fees.
A: I think Ze is doing it successfully. It;s pretty non-offensive.
A: on diggnation, we asked for donations. for rev3, we offer shows early to those who subscribe. there is revenue but not sustainable.
A: Baron – its takes testing and experimentation.
A: it;s incentives – not preventing people watching show entirely, but about giving back if they give to you.

Q: starting a tv network, for college cause audience. so how do you reconcile creating art for yourself and something for an audience.

A: art is for yourself, for an audience, you have to do some compromise.
A: none of us is doing something we are not passionate about.
A: a lot of people come into this as they want to produce stuff; if it is just for the money, may not be interesting for long.
A: but don’t be afraid tyo try things and fail.

Q: you all produce hi qual lo cost. do you want to become the jerry bruckheimer?
A: secretly, yes.
Q: was this an ambition before you got to videoblogging.
A: most on panel were yes and yes – want to increase production values, and be the jb.
A: i slowly increase quality through getting better equipment. but still looks to do things cheap as well. I’m getting to point when i start seeing what I need.

Q: when creating content, and had to bring people in, how did you handle the business side of it.
A: (barron) still not got into visit where had to give up equity. you can look at value in different ways, eg licence for many years; there are many ways to structure it and that is all about being creative etc. answers are there, you have to discover them

Mar 10

Barcamp hanging

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instead of going to sessions this afternoon I’m hanging out at barcamp, listening to some great talks (even over the talking) and sipping iced drinks in the sun. lovely.

Mar 10

SXSW – Attack of the ARG

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Update: This panel was one of the ones I most wanted to see whilst I was here. I’m starting to get my head round the space that is alternate reality, but only dipped my toes in the water in the more ‘amateur’ games. The commercial side is not one I’ve had too much experience of, the ones that are tied into a brand. But thise are the ones that most people start with. I played the Prague files and am looking at Perplex City 2; I’m also working with a friend to see if their story can be turned into a game.

I really enjoyed hearing from the professionals, who turn out these games for big corporates. One of the brands I used to work for was in the consideration process for a 3 month ARG, but we never got full commitment. Everyone loved it, in the abstract, but putting money against it was a problem It was a bit more than 1% of the marketing budget mentioned in the talk though. It was also driven from the agency, not the client, so in hindsight that was a major issue. Many of the clients discussed below seem to drive the need themselves, so have the motivation.

When you look at the demo, with a high percentage of females, and the time spent with the brand, this model of marketing could be useful in so many ways, working to cut through the clutter of ads today.

Dan Hon (Mindcandy) Perplex city
Brian Clark (GMD Studios) Known for art of the heist for Audi.
Evan Jones (Stitch media) Known for regenesis
Brooke Thompson (Giant Mice) Known in community
Alice Taylor (BBC) (Chair)

About 25% in audience are story tellers. More were bloggers and journalists. A few even admitted to not knowing what an ARG was.

Brian – a lot of ARg have been in advertising, for big sponsors. treat as opportunity online. you have a different relationship online. it’s an opportunity to use feedback and change story of product in real time based on audience feedback.

Evan – working with TV production companies enhancing their stories into interactivity.

Brooke – came into ARG from a social degree, looking at the online communities. Working with unfiction, argn, and now taking it into more serious games. games that do something other than just entertainment.

Dan: main product is perplex city. in first city was about treasure hunt and story. into puzzles, codes, social engineering (against actors). Big on story and narrative. Audience is 50/50 male female.

Alice: ARGS about 5 or so years, came out of a number of gaming communities, a tthe same time. an emergent development. they can last for for variety of times, PC ran 2 years, others are shorter etc. started in marketing and gaming.

Q: are they promotional, games or what

Dan: so what are books for, websites for. we are experimenting at using a lot of media and using a new platform to tell stories. weaving it together to create a coherent experience

Alice: why have marketers picked up on it. it;s far more work than sticking an ad up?

Brian: budget shifts away from broadcast to interactive. quality of interaction has more impact than sheer number of reach in a tv ad. an arg can produce session lengths of 30mins or longer, high repeat visits. it;s still measurable. In the way you would measure PR and the web. look at community discussions. More immediately provable from an ROI, but not ness from a revenue generating for story telling.

Dan: continuous partial attention…Linda stone talks about how everyone in the room is acting..we are doing multiple things at same time.. you see this with tv and online etc. what arg offers is the potential to reach people across a number of different media.

Evan; arg take advantage of natural state of web- hunting for bits of data and assembling knowledge.

Alice: 50% of tv watching is about tv on in background (BBC research in UK), change from 10% in 50’s
So far, it sounds like we are talking about always connected people

Brooke :you have to computer literate for most ARGs. you have to have a functional understanding of how to find and assemble info from online (hence can make a good training tool). companies love it as have a huge number of women involved, in both playing and development. different games attract different demo

Dan: PC peaks at 26; people following the story were different form those doing the puzzle cards. Higher proportion of women following story. puzzles were from 10-80yo, huge range of ages.

Brooke: you can customise to audience by writing different story

Brian: it’s like asking who is watching tv

Evan: the interaction, the felling of being in the story is an empowerment thing that hits a certain need.

Alice: where do you see ARGS going?

Brian: last weekend there was an AGR festival in SanFran. the people behind lonelygirl were there..the people in the arg community thought it was an ARG, when they found it was not they launched one..which was asked to be the official one.

Evan: different levels. certain games at mainstream etc. different models,

Brooke: we are going to see them spread more into TV. they are going to spread into education, to help people learn how things work. it will spread out.

Brian: academia are interesting. in the infancy stage, just developing

Dan: it;s hard to get into games in the middle. been looking at tv etc and trying to learn how people get into the things, help you catch up. it may happen in more bitesize chunks to make it more accessible, to make it manageable, has a start and end date. you know you can play the episode etc

Evan: it’s too easy to get into a rabbit how and not knowing what signing uo for, this gives more control

Alice: size/money etc

Brooke: worked on matrix game. 125k players, had high production values. under 10k budget, 7 people, 4 of them fulltime.

Dan: everyone has a content problem. you create a passionate audience. the audience sucks up content. just in time content creation. keeping up with everything. this is really user centered design – watch what players are doing and constantly adapt.

Brian: have rewritten almost everything halfway through, in response to audience and their better ideas. so can change stories in the middle.

Evan: it’s about working with partners, bringing them along.

Alice: when does this go horribly wrong?

Brian – every time. because of the chaos of the real world, you have to adjust. you always have to figure out how to recover – quickly. take it as reality and adapt it.

Evan: exposing yourself to a committed audience…you have to stay in game sometimes it works, but it is a dangerous territory to walk through. but it can be used for entertainment but worse

Brooke: one of the biggest fears 5years ago…lessened now. you have to make sure people know it is a game and that they can trust you

Brian – people should not listen to people on the web telling them what to do!

Dan; you can get bad pr very quickly. these are very connected very passionate people. put one foot wrong it;s bad. when it goes well, you get all the passion, all the creativity. it’s great. the treasure hunt was hard for the PR company to get around..they lined up interviews before it was found..and could not understand that it was not done to order. we try and be safe but we do real world things. to work well you have to give up an element of control. it can get risky, the bad things can happen but this is where the fun stuff happens.

Audience Questions:

Q: user engagement and passionate user experiences etc; commercially applied – awesome, can see why a corporate client would want this. but when things go wrong, its bad. so how do you sell the high production values etc, don’t know how many people get involved.

Brian – you can plan, the amount into media can help predict audience. if you can’t afford to experiment with 1% of marketing budget you will fall behind. it’s the ones that are potentially behind who are willing to experiment.

Dan: on PC that is not a problem. the beast was skunkworks – not known about it. at MC the phone is ringing, everyone wants one. but there is a different set of people being approached who need to think about it.

Q: ARGS and public safety. are they the bridge btw the living and the street?

Evan: we always found it most useful to add an extra layer; before going into real fiction they need to take a moment and remind people that is is a game. have always pointed people that way. getting people to acknowledge that it is fiction.

Brian: we know the ARG genre has matured when the legal defense is an arg..people are looking for the influences, they say it for books, video games etc.

Q: games that matter and interact in a real way. for education etc. what is the budget…how can we do it

Brooke: keep your eye out in the next few weeks for something on climate change. See jane mcGonagle keynote last week. There is a game being developed called world without oil. get people to talk about things and explore it.

Dan: the things you can get people to do when they are in the story is amazing. characters put in peril…people try all sorts. gets people to do things they would not always do.

Brian: have to avoid edutainment trap. perception that serious games aren’t fun

Q: lg15 was interesting; a fundamental principle is about being in the know? how do you see it co-exisitng as more commercial

Brooke: the secret knowledge is one motivation
Brian; we are trying to give the audience something to do. the simplest is to take the narrative and break it into a 100 pieces and hide it. the audience has to assemble it. so it;s about sharing and collaboration etc, ie finding something out and bringing it to the rest of the community.

Dan: with PC there was a lot of sharing, even though a lot of money for grabs. it;s also about the discovery process, is it real etc..it’s at the start and we will start to evolve into entertainment more, it is fiction, it;s about the narrative.

Brian: for big games, they expect a sponsor. and people look to find out who it is.

Dan: the audience expects them to be tied into a brand. PC and Cathys book are the only ones that are not tied into the brand.

Q: work for major media community and we have problem of the opposite..people wanting them for their shows (ie lost experience). what costs and time do you take to build them. do you do it for new shows?

Brian: have done new stuff. took pilot money and turned into website. (freaky links). it was heavily trafficked before it was cancelled.

Q: so how do you get people to it?

A: have an interesting, episodic content. a year before hand.

Alice: is it difficult to set up quickly?

Evan: one game had a turn around of 2 months. but the caveat, it’s more successful from how early it gets into the creative team.

Dan: an example of how things can go wrong. things are separate. things are not linked. you have to have everything together at the early stages or a very disjointed experience.

Brian – costs depend on budget. you design the games around the budget. most is millions….

Q: how do you measure organic growth, WOM.

Brian: that is what happens

Brooke: there is a core group of people at unfiction that do get tagged.

Brian: recruting more players is one of the subgames

Dan: 2 elements – fun games want my friends to ow..plus you need to get people on board to do things.

Q: how do you build games to suit products etc, how do design the games

Evan: it can be more of branded entertainment. the story may not be directly related to a brand.

Dan: there are stories which are retrofitted, or a complete new experience where creatives are part of it.

Q: are the players of the games the direct target?

Brian – it’s broader than that. see American idol and the difference betw the audition peiple, those who vote and those who know it exists.

Mar 10

SXSW – Emerging Social and Technological trends

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As usual, I will be transcribing the talks and posting the notes. Analysis may follow later.

Unfortunately I did not make this panel in time for the introductions, so did not capture names of those speaking, and I was not close enough to read the name cards so quotes are not attributed, unless someone was called out by name.

Three points called out to me:

  • in a backlash to the current, open, anything goes on the web teens, one part of the next generation may be hyper private and wonder why we were all doing it.
  • Opening up of hardware will increase, mods will increase. even if it is only the early adopters, the fact that it can be done is likely to make the producer seen more user friendly
  • across the world, the mobile device is growing and this will be the main access point to the web. What are we doing about it.

Moderator: Laura Moorhead Sr Editor Culture, Wired
Laura Moorhead Sr Editor Culture, Wired
Andrew Blum Contributing Editor, Wired
Robert Fabricant Exec Creative Dir, Frog Design
Eliot Van Buskirk Columnist/Blogger, Wired News
Peter Rojas Engadget
Daniel Raffel Product Mgr, Yahoo!

Q: can you give an overview of where social and tech trends are going?

A: tech is driving culture. the intersection is having multiple effects, in how we live out lives and how we think about ourselves. always being connected, through a device n the pocket, changes thinking, tech is driving change and the people/culture are driving tech.

A: the extensions that are happening, the customisations, not in the original plan, make a more interesting place where people can find and make tools, relate to what interesting them

A: technologies don’t propagate until there is a social need for them peoples social identity is bound up more with the tech they use and people are trying harder to understand their place and it is harder to separate the two. their position in society is what people are checking on blackberry and email etc.

Q: what were the trends and disruptions over last 18 months that may have a ripple effect for us now.

A: widgets, that go across net. they are doing to the internet what the net dod to the world, taking away the sense of place. they connect people, wherever they are.

Q: subject of place..how is place changing

A: look at plazes, connects online identity based on where you are. you are starting to position yourself, through IM, blog etc and on neighbourhood sites. not clear how shaping up, but are powerful in how they connect online

A: ties into larger macro trend of people having a sense of privacy. NY magazine did a piece a few weeks ago, how younger people are comfortable with it all on the we. tech have driven a transformation of how we understand ourselves and people feel comfortable in having on online persona, put everything on their, but negotiate the public and private selfs. the public self is more amplified.

A: (Robert) there is the same trend in business, it;s the same changes, how they IM at work etc. when doing research, they see that clients think these changes are only affecting a certain small demo, but talking it is a larger effect and not just isolated to people like us

Q: Eliot, what are you seeing with the music people you are dealing with

A: (Eliot) when we are acquiring all this data/info from major companies, we are giving out more of ourselves..there is an interesting flow,

Q: Daniel, talking about pipes, how do you think about what is out there for grabs, what is there for consumption

A: (Daniel) we wanted to be on the yahoo domain, we needed to extend profiles etc. we need to be careful with data; innovation happens in all spheres, business, legal etc. We let people clone api links etc, we need to work across companies to come up with standards etc, with projects that are thinking differently about how we use this information

Q: do you think we are getting to the point of a backlash with transparency

A: (Daniel) freebase launched yesterday looks like google base. so interesting to watch these copies…and you don’t have a perception of how they will handle this data, think how google handles mail and search, you may go somewhere that does not have a conflict. may be going back to a niche service

Q: peter, what do you think about those whose whole life is online..will people go the opposite direction.

A: (Peter) so the next gen may think about how people blogging everything was so square. there is a chance, as youth culture often defines itself as the opposite of the one before, so would not be surprised if there was a rebellion against it. we won’t see a mass rejection, it will see something.

A: we could end up with more of a clicky type thing. we may reach a point where you see more private networks, you may have to have met someone in real life to get onto the network. there could be a segmentation of the all for one approach

A: lexicographers have a google test – if the word is not on google, it does not exist. is there a blur between what is real and unreal, if no online then not real.

Q: you can have a niche interest and then be in a community of 1000s. so how can you get people to break out of silos, see another influence?

A: (Robert)from a design, there is an amplification of influence. there’s a lot of companies trying to sift through this and working out what is going to have an impact. we try and sift through the trends; how to interpret the trends and put into a product strategy is a growing industry.

A: that used to be part of newspaper roles. we may be going back to this type of aggregators…so blogs can take this role, still having people in the mix

A: (Robert) we have a lot of people believing that the voice of the customer are going to show them the way; it changes the way they think; we can amp[lify a single voice and change the direction a company goes through. but a single voice is a great point of leverage but not just what you want to design to.

Q: collection and aggregation…so does this lead to customisation. What examples are there, from a design perspective how do you cope with this.

A: when it cones to hardware, manufactures tend to freak out a little to much. it’s not usually something that a huge number of consumers will adopt, just the early ones. but by allowing it you give the appearance of being more consumer friendly and gives better perceptions

A: still waiting for modification to lead to a better commitment to upgradeability. with many early adopters, this is not a strong belief. a lot of businesses are interested in the secondary economies…but others still look at making the stuff disposable and consumer needs to push back on.

A; the iphone was perfect as it was not perfect yet, it was an empty vessel for what you could put into it. raises questions about how it could be upgrading.

A: but the iphone is closed and is resistent. I think this is a mistake as the trend is for people to have more control about what they can do.

A: it may have been closed cos of carriers…offering hardware hackable devices onto the networks is an opportunities..t he carriers may be in the best position to monetise this.

A: but they are so resistant to this. cells need to more computers..but only hardware/carriers can change (RC – i think this is a US focused statement, given soem EU trends)

Q: we can drive innovations. what would you say are some of the demo/population trends that will influence

A; the babyboomers having grandchildren, the children having large screens and large pipes/ surprised that there is not more video conferencing in living room. the infrastructure is there but no one is doing it.

A: you have the combination of aging population and babyboomers thinking they had control and were steering country, combined with insecurity and financial issues, and this will drive, with their need for a sense of control. there’s premium security services, eg to speed your way through airports. this will drive political and technical trends, how they can control their home and life environment. there;s going to be a fortress built.

Open Questions:

Q: how do international trends affect the US? how long from UK/japan to here

A: one example would be europe’s focus on carbon emissions and how long until here. look at airline industry, talking about being carbon offset. in the next 6 months we may be talking about his

A: we are getting strange laws about webcasting etc, companies that are based in other companies are not beholden. we try and it does not always work. as they realise they can make money and innovate more than us than that can be a huge driver.

A: Who on your team impacts this; one person can only see so far out. the teams need to reflect the international look. we need to think bigger about who we use and how we apply the products.

A: I’m seeing a convergence of futurism and environmentalism. Being a futurist is becoming the same thing as being an environmentalist.

Q: so how about the global south (RC – a term, nor the panel, had heard before. Primarily Latam and Africa)

A: seeing in africa about building out networks, china investment is helping there, not fully there yet but getting there.

A: outside of NA and EU, most people access through a mobile device; we need to factor that in. what is the mobile experience?

A: we are seeing an explosion in client interest and expectation about how services can be adapted across markets, but they are focused on developed markets. the interest has increased dramatically over the last year but still at early stage. India is an interesting flash point, eg the letter and email convergence with the post office working across

A: seen a lot of subversive developments, to work round state controls.

Q: what are your opinions on education and how that may change with these trends.

A: increased in metrics, getting everyones grades centralised to access from state and parents. pushing education towards more testing base.

A: there is a growing need to connect together how people learn, such as games. Frog is looking at creating tools with a client that can help this.

A: there have been some interesting schools that have leveraged technology; every student is getting laptops, rooms have digital whiteboards. teaching digital musics etc.

Q: what’s the future for email? will it be replaced by im and sms?

A: not going anywhere. it’s asynch, no one needs to be on the other end
A; video conference will increase; able ‘facetoface’ in a single virtual place.
A: telepresence has potential to change and amplify social interaction..

Mar 10

PSFK Conference – Inspiration from commercial art

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Interview: Inspiration From Commercial Art – Wendy Dembo
How do artists use their inspiration to develop commercial art for brands and their agencies. Wendy Dembo interview leading artists Scott Campbell and Laurie Rosenwald.

Although listed as an interview, both artists actually gave a presentation about how they worked before being asked a few questions. Both artists work with brands and publications to produce work, with a handmade feel. Take a long look at their sites to see beautiful examples 😉 Most of the presentations were about the work and the process behind the development, so not too much to blog. However, this was definitely one of the most entertaining sessions of the day, Laurie in particular.

Laurie

  • starts off with a blob, that is the spark. Trying to be creative is as good as trying to be charming. She collects lots of things, make stuff out of the collectibles, use them as inspiration. She does lots of lovely stuff and then keeps seeing it killed by client.
  • She does not think of herself as ‘street’, despite being called that. She’s very refined. There’s a trend for people who are educated to pretend they are not. She’s stopped teacing as students don;t know anything. Education is being given a bad vibe.

Scott

  • A tattoo artist, who got into advertising by accident. He’s most well known for his campaign for Camel.
  • he was asked to work on the Victoria Secret redesign. There were 6 artists in the room; the other 5 pulled out computers, he pulled out a notebook. Everything he does is by hand
  • He learnt tattooing from a sign writer, whose craft was/is dying as machine designed signs took over. He’s now moved into watercolours; there’s a commitment there, it’s like tattooing paper. There’s nothing computerised in what he does, everything is unique, from his personality.
  • Working on tattoos, doing 8-10 a day means he works with 8-10 art directors. He’s good at reacting, at figuring out what’s expected and what will look good. He has the ability to present his ideas as their ideas, to get the right level

It’s difficult to capture the energy in a post – you have to go see the art.

Mar 10

Bluejacking is back

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Well, according to the BBC anyway. The craze that never was is back in favour and is currently the most emailed story on the news site. Interestingly, the site links to stories from way back in 2003.

The only time I got messages this way was in a W hotel in New York, just the once. But this time round, it’s not being used to pick people up, but to confuse and confound them.

I came across the idea of bluejacking at an online discussion forum and it immediately struck me as a fun thing to do,” said Ellie, who set up and runs the bluejackQ (Bluejack You) website.

She said the “priceless” expression on the face of her first victim as he tried to work out what was going on has turned her into a regular bluejacker.

“This, mixed with not knowing whether the victim will react in an amused/confused or negative way gives me an adrenaline rush,” she said.

Mar 09

PSFK Conference – Eco-shift or Greenwash

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Eco-Shift or Greenwash? – Tamara Giltsoff (OZO Car)
Brands and organizations seem to be taking up the call to ‘get green’ – but how much of this is misleading posturing?
Panelists: Marc Alt (MAP), Jill Fehrenbacher (Inhabitat),

This wa a general panel on sustainability and green credentials; there were a lot of examples given in the chat.

  • Walmart is one of the leaders in transforming their business through sustainability, but do not promote it in their advertising. They are doing an incredible amount of work, but it gets hidden. But there will be a change in their positioning soon. Walmart are one of the largest buyers of organic cotton in the world.
  • Diesel clothing – have put out a statement about global warming. But are they going to follow up on the message?
  • HSBC are at the forefront of green messaging in Europe, but how relevant is it to customers? They are carbon neutral, but is this an understood position by their customers?
  • are green consumers a specific group, or is it relevant for all consumers. Just exactly is green?
  • H&M have been trying to do stuff with materials, organic cotton. But the company has a bad rep. people love to hate, so not necessarily getting recognition.
  • A company may have good intentions, but the greenness needs to be part of the whole culture; gestures are nothing but gestures, they need to commit at a deeper level.
  • Green marketing is a liability; it is too easy to bash. Marketers need to work across the organisation to make sure the message and commitment is consistent. Corporations should engage in both internal and external transparency when it comes to being green. It’s very easy to see through greewashing. You have to be sincere and commit, can;t pay lipservice.
  • BSkyB in the UK have sent out energy efficient light bulbs with every set top box, which is supposed to offset the emissions.
  • if making a commitment to sustainability, have to address the environmental, social and economical areas. do all 3 otherwise it will come back and hurt you.
  • Some businesses, such as Body Shop, are becoming like mini-NGOs, tackling multiple issues. Challenging you to do something about it.

Some good ideas and thoughts in here, but at times, i thought they needed to take a step back and explain some of the terms. Key issues – commit, be honest and transparent. Make a real difference by addressing it as a company and don’t make token gestures. However, you can say this about any ‘issue’ a compnay may wish to address, not just the green ones.

Mar 09

PSFK Conference – Dave Rosenberg

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A Whole New World – David Rosenberg (JWT)
What is driving the widespread adoption of video gaming and online worlds? What cultural shift is video gaming defining?

I work with Dave on a day-to-day basis, so it was interesting to see what he had to say about a space we donlt spend too much time discussing at work.

  • Games were social activities. The modern era started with arcades, buildings where people gathered to play games.
  • Video consoles spread into the home; we have the PC, PS3, Wii, XBox360; portables such as PSP, Nintendo DS, the mobile. Andthey are connected, online, wifi enabled. The playing firled has increased outside the home.
  • everyone has access to games.
  • Personalisation is becoming more important. Avatars increase
  • The average gamer is aged 33, has played for 12 years. 35% od US families play games together. 38% of gamers are female, 42% of online gamers, playing and average of 7.4 hrs/week. 25% are over 50. 68%Boomers, 52% GenX wanted technology for Christmas.
  • Connectivity has led to expansion; online is a meeting place. XBox live has 2 million conversations/day. Always on, always ready.
  • World of Warcraft- very social, has a strong team aspect. You win together and it always looks great. There are 8m paying customers, 2m in the US. China has 3m.
  • casual, coffee break games are huge. 21m impressions in jan on Yahoo games. These promote mobile gaming, predicted to be a $10b business by 2009.
  • Huge cultural impact; music and peripherals are exploding ie dance, dance, guitar hero. It’s all about control – controlling what you want to do, when you want it.
  • Moving foreard, download distribution will grow; it will become mainstream. Credit cards could give you in-game points instead of miles. The Wii has serious moved the console into ‘mainstream’

This was a very fast walk through the space; Dave culd probably talk all day on it. Key takeaways – it’s mainstream, you have to be aware of it; you can play in the space but play nicely. Add value, don’t exploit.

Mar 09

Arrived in Austin

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Finally arrived in Austin after a slightly delayed flight but nothing too bad. it’s lovely and warm here, the sun is out, a far different climate after cold New York. Checked in, got my badge and met up with Ewan in the line 🙂 One nice meal later, and the odd marguerita, decided to catch up with things before plunging into the madness that is this conference.

Mar 08

Twitter responses

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The success of Twitter is hard to define, I place it in the realm of gossip and nosiness and just fun. It looks to be struggling under the load as numbers grow, every few days it gets really wonky, but people are still signing up.

Different behaviours are emerging; somewhere, someone started to use the @ sign to designate that they were replying to someone. Now, there is a way to direct message people, but when you do, it does not appear in your stream. Now the team at twitter have taken that behaviour and turned it into a feature. When you use @ and the persons user name, the system assumes you have responded to the person’s previous message and tags your twitter accordingly.
Twitter Message

I like this, it helps people follow conversations if they are not ‘friends’ but primarily is a great example of the adaptive method of software development. See how people use the service, which is sometimes nothing at all like the original vision.

Meanwhile, I trying to find twitter visualisations. Here’s one from Tom Carden; are there more out there?

Mar 08

PSFK Conference: Elizabeth Speirs, Dead Horse Media

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The conference opened (at the early hour of 830) with a talk from Elizabeth Spiers, founder and publisher of Dead Horse Media.


Tomorrow’s Media Today – What are the key developments in media publishing in terms of genre, format and functionality? What should we be reading, watching, interacting with?

  • 10 years ago, we were expecting broadband, X-platform programming and media fragmentation. Today, we are still expecting this, but it’s actually happening now. Just not in the way we thought it would.
  • broadband is really here; x-platform programming does not mean putting a magazine on the web, but using the web to present content in a way that suits it.
  • with DHM, all the properties are online and there are no offline analogues, eg DealBreaker, a gossipy, fun Wall Street blog. We focus on tight niches. The ones that work well are user centric- what do you really need. People want information in an entertaining manner.
  • Why is it different? it’s ends vs means, it’s familiarity vs usability.
  • Don;t assume you can do standalone media, it;s all connected. Online media provides a low cost test market -v you can launch a site with 3 people and $2k and see whether it works in 6 months. Far easier and cheaper than a traditional magazine.
  • Overnight popularity can often be achieved by taking an idea that’s already out there and making it usable for all, ie Digg, YouTube.
  • agencies are often looking for a brand extension, often use DHM to consult on this area. Having consumer facing entertainment, on a blog, can help broaden the audience. But it can scare advertisers off. Dealbreaker can be too frivolous. It is read widely in Wall Street, media age 29, salary around 250k, but advertisers don’t always get it

On looking over my notes, I’m not sure I understood exactly the key message was. But I think it was that ‘old’ media has changed, you can use ‘new’ media to do things differently, not everyone is comfortable with the new communication channels but the user is, likes it, uses them more and more. So advertisers need to change.

Mar 08

Too much to blog, too little time

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I’ve got the last NextNY session to write up, everything from the PSFK conference on Tuesday and off to SXSW tomorrow. I feel like I’m not going to catch up. Expect variable blogging over the next week.

Mar 02

MoMoNYC February

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Mobile Monday this week was set up as a demo night, with 8 companies presenting for 6 minutes. The host (Dan?) did a brilliant job of keeping everything moving and ensuring no-one lasted longer than their allotted time. I did not make all of the presentations, but here are brief notes from those I saw.

Greg Harris – Mobivity

  • Set up and run mobile campaigns
  • A simple user interface, to manage lists and all aspects of campaign
  • They’re still having issues with tmobile
  • The api takes incoming messages and pushes off with an api to company’s own systems for management
  • Working on ability to send image/video into the interface – can manage to send correct images using a
  • database to resize images

Doug Moore – Class math

  • Make educational software – 100k classrooms using them,
  • they collect data from child assessments, collates and then delivers back to web or mobile app
    on pdas and handhelds
  • have the walkthroughs of the assessments – remove the need to carry a lot of docs around with them, gives prompts of what they are going to say
  • also helps with problem solving assessment – how do kids work through the math problems
  • is a technology layer that sits on top of the devices, so can be ported to many devices,
  • you can track mistakes by kids
  • also detects common mistakes and helps diagnose issues with thinking
  • can track whole classes and show how they are doing – track work against them.
  • not on wireless synch…there are infrastructure issues. schools have low tech
  • timesavings – average 50% savings. also, the increase in frequency of assessment improves the child’s development

Salespitch.mobi – Cutless Steve Bull

  • working in entertainment areas – campus treasure hunt played with cellphones
  • cutless cell phone tours, eg historical tour
  • carrier and wireless agnostic
  • did karaoke opera and took people voices
  • this is their first b2b app
  • addresses the nightmare of a written report – so you telephone your sales report in, generates automatic report in text that gets delivered..and you approve later. later you get an auto reminder, at a date and time you specify, then the service calls you and the client at the appointed time through the server – so when you do a follow up, the client can get their remarks recorded directly – under client control
  • records the voice and converts to text….transcription are being done by hand.
  • report can be emailed out.
  • can run on wireless
  • not yet integrated with salesforce but are looking at it
  • 150$ a month..biggest expense is transcription. looking at moving to voice recognition when gets to a good enough point

ILoop Mobile Vince Traylor

  • a mobile marketing platform, the fastest most scaleable (according to themselves)
  • serves out SMS, WAP, subscriptions etc – target market is brands and advertising agencies so they can create mobile platform and business
  • gives you the tools to create, connect and control
  • create quizes, polls, subscription modes, connect numbers etc
  • have apps themselves and the the ability to give you a one stop shop
  • can create wap site dynamically, with drag and drop build of site
  • can offer ringtones, wallpapers, RSS, soon doing an ad server you can ad to your pages
  • you can text keyword, it can send you to wap page
  • remote publisher – ability to create social mobile marketing – can connect small groups with one another
  • can use non-commercial you can do proof of concepts to pitch client

Benjamin Eptsein – personal search syndication – Septep systems

  • understanding is that there is a passion for knowledge – goal is to make repositories and share info – so you need search
  • want to make a mobile search easy to use, gives people the ability to bring knowledge management to the masses – build their own repository and provide the tools for it
  • pssdir.co will demonstrate it
  • set up account..set up the engines, the mobile app gives you directories, you can search through, drill down through categories – (hierarchical based on on categories)
  • can give you location based search – put together a directory..working on adapting the results based on where you are.
  • also does word search…gives you results this way as well – within a directory
  • you can assemble collections of wap websites..in WAPWorld category. other results are stripped data from sites, these one in this category and specific for web
  • Q: why is this different from digg, delicious A: they are tagging not categories – they are assembled differently…a bigger search results. has a search process – continues to update then info based on the template you set up to get the data – dynamically keeps it updated

VectorMax – Alan Krebs

  • Anitones – a way of delivering synthetic video over wireless, can do 3d animations, videos, streaming
  • looking at developing new ways of streaming video – compression etc, with mobile an area of focus
  • mobile anywhere solution,end to end with content, player and video deployment
  • on symbian, java and some windows phones
  • can give you a personal agent – a character who answers your questions
  • can take a picture of yourself and get it put into an animation (on their servers) and send the film onto people
  • have a videomotion caption system
  • animation is rendered on the phone directly with the app – so can use low stream 2kbps stream
  • need the player on the phone – or deliver it as video, but quality is better with players
  • app takes up 200k on phone….mainly for hi end phones


Stowe Group – Janet Sullivan/Jonathan Schilling

  • HopCheck – targeted to sysadmins…sends updates of systems to phones
  • to monitor apps/servers/apps. install agents and can access the systems
  • you can take actions from the smart phones
  • can predefine events that will send you alerts when there are problems
  • runs on a variety – windows mobile, palm os, java etc
  • can see what services are running..and can take actions, see laerts etc from phone without needing to get to terminal
  • pretty customisable – can define applications and services that you want to monitor
  • can scan logs
  • You can use it to monitor sales ans store data – not just systems
  • security us https/ssl from phone to server to server.

Jason Send Word Now

  • started as an alert system, a service provider for emergency notification and alerts. Now incident management services
  • now looking at changing to allow people to manage from mobile devices. Not marketing, but business critical apps, eg Walmart co-ordinating employees during an emergency
  • the account has all the contact info and can then send out info through all different channels
  • can do via calling a number and speak the message and send it out
  • will track responses – turns into a 2 way mode
  • can get people direct into a conference
  • can allow a 1800 number to be set up so they can call in and get message
  • this is now all available in pda and palm and blackberry
  • incident management via blackberry dashboard

Unfortunately, I did not see any ‘good presentations’; there were problems with running the pres and with connecting the the web. Nothing was slick, there were problems with using the mike; the machine set up for the presentations seem to put all of them on autoplay, which caused no end of concern. It came over strongly that having on 5-6 minutes to present an idea is very, very, difficult. It’s too tempting to try and do a full company and product pitch when really only have the chance to pick one thing and do that as well as you can. Capture the imagination with that one thing and point people to the web site where all the rest of the information can be found. And if you can make that interactive and rich, you can get all your messages over at that contact point

Mar 02

BBC on YouTube

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You can find clips from BBC shows on YouTube, fans putting them up to share the love. And now the BBC has done a deal with Google/YouTube to create three new channels dedicated to the corporation’s output.

  • BBC – showing added value programming, ie the behind the scenes stuff that goes on the websites. This is advertising free
  • BBC Worldwide – clips from programmes, carrying advertising in which the BBC will have a revenue share. This is the same model for the rest of the BBC worldwide programmes, which are not funded from the licence fee and carry ads. However, in this case, the channel also appears to be open to the UK
  • BBC News – news clips, also advertising funded but this time not accessible to the UK

I’m glad they are stepping up and doing this and think the BBC Worldwide decision, allowing access from the UK, is a pragmatic one. Especially if they show the clips on the BBC sites as well – the US networks have seen some uplift in viewers after putting clips on the service.. But I found the comment from Ashley Highfield ingenious, given the zealousness with which they have been acting to take down the recent Top Gear clips I’ve linked to.

Mr Highfield said the BBC would not be hunting down all BBC-copyrighted clips already uploaded by YouTube members – although it would reserve the right to swap poor quality clips with the real thing, or to have content removed that infringed other people’s copyright, like sport, or that had been edited or altered in a way that would damage the BBC’s brand.

“We don’t want to be overzealous, a lot of the material on YouTube is good promotional content for us,” he said.