Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Author: Paul Wallbank

  • Television in an age of context and the mobile internet

    Television in an age of context and the mobile internet

    One of the great changes to the telecommunications industry is the rise of video. As part of the Decoding the New Economy video series we had an opportunity to grab a quick chat with Torsten Sauer, Ericsson’s Vice President of Broadcast services.

    Video is the great challenge for telecommunications company, broadcasters and consumers with Cisco Systems predicting by 2018 over 50% of internet traffic will be videos.

    As designer Gadi Amit told this website a few weeks ago, the problem is compounded as the broadcast world evolves from a three or four screen environment to an almost infinite range of screen sizes and devices.

    With most of that traffic being over mobile devices, Sweden’s Ericsson has been adapting to the the industry’s change to mobile video with a series of acquisitions in the broadcast production space. Sauer explained some of the motivations and strategies behind Ericsson’s moves in the industry.

    Red Bee Media

    Ericsson’s acquisition of British content house Red Bee Media earlier this year is one of the areas where the company is looking at growing its services.

    “Consumer behaviour is changing and that represents a huge transformation for the industry,” Sauer says. “We want to be a catalyst for that transformation through providing the right services.”

    Along with more traditional fields like basic production services, Sauer sees the company’s opportunity in building the metadata into videos making them more accessible over the very crowded internet.

    A multitude of screens

    The other key opportunity Sauer sees is that by creating richer content, it becomes easier for creators, broadcasters and advertisers to serve appropriate content to viewers depending upon both their interests and the devices they are using.

    “It’s a great opportunity for broadcasters to address new opportunities and revenue streams on different devices and in different locations.”

    Sauer’s view ties in with Gadi Amit’s in that the proliferation of ways to watch videos is going to create great opportunities for broadcasters to find different ways to show their work.

    The innovation race

    With the proliferation of channels, the field isn’t just left to the incumbents with Suaer seeing the entry of new broadcasters as one of the great opportunities.

    “There will be a lot of opportunities for a lot of new players, that will create a healthy innovation base. It’s a very exciting time to be in this industry.”

    With video marketing exploding, Sauer sees it’s important for non-broadcast businesses to experiment with video; “It’s now the time, business models are not all set and technology models are not all set.”

    Just as businesses have to deal with a more mobile marketplace and workforce, we’re also seeing video becoming more important. It’s a great opportunity for businesses to develop new channels.

     

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  • Building an internet we’re not ashamed of

    Building an internet we’re not ashamed of

    Late last month writer, painter and software developer Maciej Ceglowski spoke at the design and technology conference, Beyond Tallerand in Dusseldorf.

    The Internet with a Human Face is his closing keynote for the conference – let’s try to kill that kill that awful term ‘locknote’ for closing presentations – and is a wonderful overview of the unintended consequences of the internet we’re now seeing emerge.

    Maciej compares the internet’s effects with that of the motor car in the Twentieth Century – the rise of the automobile totally changed society in ways our great grandparents couldn’t have expected.

    Unexpected consequences

    In many respects the changes were positive; the age of the motor car saw massive increases in living standards through the second half of the century. However the immediate downside of those efficient supply chains were equally massive increases in obesity rates, suburban alienation and urban sprawl.

    A similar thing is happening with this wave of technological changes; as Maciej describes in our presentation, our views of how the web was going to evolve is turning out to be very different to what we expected.

    One great example is in small business advertising where we expected online channels would democratise marketing. Instead the exact opposite has happened.

    Maciej’s view is far broader than just the relatively trivial problem of small business advertising, particularly with the ‘Internet never forgetting’ with the concentration of the industry in one of the world’s great earthquake zones as another major risk.

    Building an internet we’re not ashamed of

    Ultimately, though Maciej sees the problems facing the internet industry as a design problem.

    “I have no idea how to fix it. I’m hoping you’ll tell me how to fix it. But we should do something to fix it. We can try a hundred different things. You people are designers; treat it as a design problem! How do we change this industry to make it wonderful again? How do we build an Internet we’re not ashamed of?”

    While being ashamed is a big call, and probably unfair in that it’s like blaming Henry Ford for 2014 childhood obesity rates in Minnesota, Maciej has flagged that there are real adverse unintended consequences to the way the internet is evolving.

    All of us involved in the industry need to recognise those adverse effects and start acting to fix these problems.

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  • Bridging the online advertising gap

    Bridging the online advertising gap

    At the Code Conference held outside Los Angeles last week, analyst Mary Meeker delivered her annual State of the Internet slideshow covering the trends and opportunities in the online world.

    One of the most watched graphs is the time spent on media versus the advertising spend on that channel.

    For years Meeker has shown print is receiving a higher share of advertising dollars for the amount of time consumers spend on it compared to online channels.

    That implies print revenue is due for collapse and online advertising revenues will surge. Here’s the 2014 chart.

    2014-advertising-spend-gap-mary-meeker-kpcb

    If we track this over the last five years, here’s what we see with the ‘difference’ column being the sum of print’s over-representation and online’s (mobile and web) under-spending.

    Year Print time Print share Online time Online share difference
    2010 12 26 28 13 29
    2011 7 25 36 23 31
    2012 6 23 38 25 30
    2013 5 19 45 26 35

    The collapse in print’s share of consumer time, down 60% in five years, is stunning and the 2012-13 changes may indicate advertising spend may is now collapsing as marketers start to adapt to the changed marketplace.

    It could be however that advertising as we know it has to change; one of the key reasons for online – particularly mobile’s – spending being under represented is because no-one is quite sure what works in the newer mediums.

    Advertisers may know that consumers are moving from print channels, but at least they know what works in print. Online the experts’ guesses are still not much better than the amateurs’.

    In short, we’re still watining for the digital era’s David Sarnoff. As Mary Meeker keeps reminding us, it’s a $20bn a year opportunity.

     

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  • ABC Nightlife – security, dropping off the grid and 4D printing

    ABC Nightlife – security, dropping off the grid and 4D printing

    Paul Wallbank joins Tony Delroy on ABC Nightlife across Australia from 10pm Australian Eastern time tonight to discuss how technology affects your business and life.

    For the May 2014 spot we looked at computer security, specifically Apple ransomware and The Heartbleed bug along with dropping off the grid, 4D printing and the future of design.

    To protect from the Oleg Pliss ransomware – or any similar problems – have a strong password, enable the screen passkey and enable two factor authentication.

    Join us

    We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on the night on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

    Tune in on your local ABC radio station from 10pm Eastern Summer time or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

    You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.

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  • Debunking the myth of the digital nomad

    Debunking the myth of the digital nomad

    Last century’s myth of the proud nomad is being modernised with the dream of the digital nomad. Unlike the Twentieth Century legends, today’s tales are far more mercenary.

    “Quit your cubicle” is one of the war cries of the current cult of entrepreneurs. It’s a nice thought that overlooks the real risks of striking out on your own and usually pushed by those selling self help books or related services.

    A related concept to quitting your cubicle is the ‘digital nomad’, a quaint idea pushed by the same people.

    The theory of the digital nomad

    In theory, the digital nomad is a knowledge worker who travels the world tethered only to an internet connection and a power socket. It’s best illustrated by this tweet.

    This is a wonderfully privileged western middle class view of the world – backpack around the world in cheap, or free, accommodation while earning a good middle class income through oDesk or Taskrabbit.

    Conveniently this view overlooks that making a western middle class income through oDesk or Taskrabbit is pretty difficult. For most, the digital nomad lifestyle is a myth and seated more in long standing romanticism.

    Building the nomad myth

    The noble nomad myth has a proud history that gained currency in modern times thanks to the mid-Twentieth century stories of Lawrence of Arabia and Sir Wilfred Thesiger.

    While the romantic myths about Arab nomads developed, Thesiger and TE Lawrence pulled no punches about the difficulties of nomadic life – it was a tough, hard and precarious existence that suited a spartan minimalist like Thesiger.

    For the modern digital nomad life is tough and precarious as well unless you have a trust fund or tolerant, affluent employer.

    Western privilege

    The idea of sitting on a Boracay beach sipping a cold cocktail while working a four hour work week is lovely, but for clients there’s little reason to hire a privileged westerner at New York rates when they can employ a better qualified Filipino for a fraction of the price.

    Most wannabe Digital Nomads will find picking fruit in Australia or teaching English in Bangkok is easier and better paid before returning to their community manager jobs in San Francisco, Melbourne or Manchester.

    Thesiger himself would have been appalled at the whole idea of ‘digital nomads’ – entitled middle class people tied down by credit cards, encumbered with expensive laptops and obsessed with Wi-Fi access.

    We should remember the romance of the nomad was built around retreating to a simpler lifestyle, the digital equivalent is actually far more complex – and precarious – than its advocates will admit.

    The digital nomad lifestyle is a nice marketing line for self help books but for most it’s a cruel myth.

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