Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Category: future

  • X Media Lab: Global Media Ideas

    As part of the Vivid Festival, X Media Lab returned to Sydney in June 2010 to look at how the creative and media industries are adapting to a changing world where societies very different to the existing dominant cultures are rising and asserting their place in the global economy.

    X Media Lab’s Global Media Ideas conference day was billed as exploring “cultural and commercial content in a global world; creative ideas and innovation in media and technology; international media business opportunities; new media and new geographies; and new platforms, applications, and content.” It didn’t disappoint.

    The great thing about X Media Labs is how it brings disparate ideas together and exposes the audience to worldwide trends and developments. The June 2010 Sydney X Media Lab was no exception with a great range of diverse speakers. Here’s a brief rundown of their themes, more comprehensive coverage can be found at Brad Howarth’s Lagrange Point blog;

    Ralph Simon
    Dubbed “the father of the ring tone”, Ralph Simon took us on a tour of innovation that started with the Sex Pistols, through applications like Red Lazer and sites like TuneWiki, which uses crowdsourcing to translate music lyrics, to end with mHealth applications where diabetic children use their mobile phone games to test their blood sugar levels. A broad and exciting view of where the mobile Internet and gaming platforms are going.

    Dana Al Salem
    The founder of Fanshake, Dana showed us how her site is used to connect bands with their fans. Her view is that today’s Gen Ys are just like their hippy grandparents except today’s groovers are wealthier have more technology. An interesting take on “the more things change, the more they stay the same“.

    Gotham Chopra
    Gotham described his journey of setting up superhero cartoons for young Indians and intertwined it with a story of his travels through Pakistan as a journalist. His hope is to replace the influence people like Osama Bin Laden have on the youth of South Asia with more positive role models.

    Parmesh Shahani
    The divide between the richer cities and poorer rural areas in developing nations is often just characterised as a migration story as millions of poor agricultural workers migrate to the cities. Parmesh gave us a broader perspective on what is happening in India including some fascinating case studies of how comparatively older technologies such as satellite TV and SMS mobile messaging are changing rural India.

    Joy Mountford
    Among the geeks and developers, Joy was probably the most anticipated of the speakers having being a designer with Apple and vice president of design innovation at Yahoo! Joy showed us how designers are moving from the “look” of computer programs to “feel”. She also showed us how crowdsourcing has worked for other projects including the fantastic Johnny Cash Project which reworks his Ain’t No Grave into a group video.

    Wayne Borg
    The Chief Operating Officer of twofour54, a content creation hub in Abu Dhabi, Wayne took us through the opportunities of 340 million Arabic Speakers covering diverse cultures and where 200 million are under the age of 25. His presentation showed us much of the development plans of the United Arab Emirates and how the kingdoms are seeking to be the Arab world’s creative centre.

    Nick Yang
    The entrepreneur label is often too easily given away, but no-one could begrudge Nick Yang, founder of KongZhong, ChinaRen.com and Wukong.com for using the title. Nick walked us through his journey of being a young student of Stanford, his return to China and both his and China’s growth over the last decade. He also showed us how his latest venture, Wukong.com, aims to change how search engines work.

    Rob Mason and Scott Halcom
    Local flavour was provided by Rob Manson from Sydney’s MOB Innovation Lab and Scott Halcomb from from SystemK in Japan, who walked us through the worlds of augmented reality. Rob concluded their joint presentation with the view that object recognition is going to change the way we see the world.

    Haidong Pan
    Like Nick Yang, Haidong is the founder of a Chinese Internet service, this time Hudong.com which is a “knowledge media” run along the lines of wikipedia that acts as a news and fact service. His presentation on how social knowledge changes the world was thought provoking in how societies are reclaiming their culture and history back from mass media.

    Anand Giridharadas
    Technology Columnist with The New York Times and International Herald Tribune, Anand challenged us to think about the ethics of the digital world and how foreign cultures are now beginning to colonise the dominant anglo-US culture. Personally I struggled with some of Ananda points as our online ethics should be no different to our off line standards and the US domination of global media stems from it being the richest nation, as other countries catch up with US living standards their cultures will reassert themselves.

    John Penny
    Like Anand, John forced the audience to think; he invited us to consider the problem of the television producer where audience fragmentation has meant we’re approaching the point where the only profitable TV productions will be reality shows and advertorials. John as an Executive Vice President of Starz Entertainment was well placed to walk us through this dilemma. John finished with a call to consider how dis-intermediation will help rebuild the fortunes of those who want to provide well written screen productions.

    Amin Zoufonoun
    As corporate development manager at Google, Amin was probably almost as highly anticipated as Joy Mountford had been earlier. Unfortunately his speech on the development of technologies from the Internet’s “Big Bang” fell flat, largely because the audience know this topic. The talk probably would have worked better with an audience of financiers or CEOs who don’t live this topic the way the X Media Lab audience do.

    Robert Tercek
    To finish a long, stimulating and challenging day Robert Tercek walked us through why great minds like Lord Kelvin, Edison and Einstein had missed emerging technologies in their times and how we can avoid it. Robert sees great opportunities for innovators as successful, large companies entering new markets don’t know more than anyone else and in many cases are blind to the potential of these sectors.

    Overall, X Media Labs was another stimulating and fascinating day. The entrepreneurs and artists who had the opportunity to be mentored over the next two days by the speakers were very lucky to be exposed to this sort of talent.

    The key message from this X Media Labs came from Parmesh Shahani when he said “don’t just look at India as a market, look at it as a source of innovation and inspiration”. We shouldn’t be just looking for the obvious, easy markets but watching the bigger trends that are developing around us.

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  • 5 ways to manage information overload

    In a speech to university graduates on the weekend President Obama described some of the problems we face with information overload. That the US President struggles with it despite his army of secretaries, assistants and advisors shows just how big the task has become for the rest of us.

    Albert Einstein famously said “information is not knowledge” and that’s certainly true of the net. We need ways to process the data that comes pouring in so we understand the context and value of what we’re reading. Here’s five ways to manage your information overload;

    Mail Rules

    For most business people, email is the first thing we look at each morning and it’s where half the day can easily disappear. The mail rules built into every email reader help you filter the important from the not so important.

    It’s also worthwhile reviewing your email subscriptions every few months and unsubscribing from newsletters that no longer interest you. The less clutter, the better.

    Google Alerts

    “Unknown unknowns” is a quote from a less esteemed historical figure and there’s a lot we don’t know happening on the net that can affect our lives and businesses. The Google Alerts tool gives you a regular email summary of what’s appeared on the web for any search term you enter.

    The right terms in Google Alerts gives you an insight on news and trends about your industry, competitors and customers. It’s a great, but underused, market intelligence tool.

    Twitter

    90% of what you read about Twitter discusses marketing, in my view Twitter’s real value lies in following smart people who tweet smart things. You get the benefit of the accumulated wisdom of the people you follow and the things they find interesting.

    These days I find I spend as much time reading links I’ve saved from Twitter as I do surfing the net. It’s become an invaluable tool.

    RSS Feeds

    Most websites have a built in feature called Really Simple Syndication, or RSS feed, which pumps out updates to the site as they happen. You can use the built in RSS features in your browser’s bookmarks folder or a dedicated feed reader to keep up to date with your favourite websites. Just click on the subscribe button most websites feature.

    Favourites

    Bookmarks or favorites is the oldest way to save information off the web and it can result in overload of its own. If you keep your bookmark folders organised, it can be a treasure trove of useful information.

    We’re at the early days of the information economy and the flood of data which engulfs us is going to get even greater. The challenge for all of us is to learn how to manage this so we can derive the best benefits from this new economy for our businesses, society and families.

    As President Obama said in last weekend’s speech at Hampton University, Virginia;

    “What Jefferson recognized… that in the long run, their improbable experiment — called America — wouldn’t work if its citizens were uninformed, if its citizens were apathetic, if its citizens checked out, and left democracy to those who didn’t have the best interests of all the people at heart.

    “It could only work if each of us stayed informed and engaged, if we held our government accountable, if we fulfilled the obligations of citizenship.”

    The same is true of our personal and business lives as it is of our citizenship. Get informed.

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  • Five ways to deal with our changing economy

    Last week broadcaster Tony Delroy celebrated twenty years of hosting the ABC’s Nightlife spot. The Gadget Guy, Peter Blasina, and myself joined Tony to look at where technology has changed over the twenty years he’s been on air.

    One of the things that stood out was how the business world has changed radically; today’s workers have all the tools at their fingertips that once only the the biggest organisations could afford. The amazing thing is the change has only just begun. Most of us are still running our businesses the way our parents did in the age of telex machines and snail mail.

    We may have got away with this for the last twenty years, but the rate of change is accelerating and smarter businesses are figuring out how to best use the existing tools while adopting new technologies. Here’s five ideas on how to keep up with our evolving economy.

    Train your staff

    Last Monday I met a lady who cuts and pastes in the old way, with scissors and glue, because she’s “hopeless with computers”. She’s in her early thirties.

    One area we have really dropped the ball in the last twenty yeas is with training, we don’t train our staff sufficiently. For example, simply giving your staff touch typing lessons will improve office productivity out of sight.

    Sending the technophobic workers onto an “introduction to computers” course run by most community colleges will have an immediate return on investment, you’ll also probably find the luddites will become your most enthusiastic staff when picking up new technology.

    Be curious

    We all know people who had to be dragged into the new era, those owners and managers who swore they would never need a fax, mobile phone, a computer or an Internet connection. By not being one of them, you’re ahead of the pack.

    Markets are also changing — mobile Internet, social media, higher energy prices and the Global Financial Crisis are all reshaping customer behaviour. A good example is with Yellow Pages where many consumers have stopped using paper directories and now search online. You need to understand where these changes are affecting your business.

    Don’t be on the bleeding edge

    Early adopters are great for the tech industry as they pay full price and are the crash test dummies for the support sector. As we’ve discussed previously, being on the bleeding edge might be trendy and fun however it’s also expensive and can lead you down some blind alleys.

    Sitting back and letting the overhyped version 1.0 of any technology allows you to learn the lessons from others.

    Be sceptical

    One of the big topics Tony and Peter discussed was the Y2K hysteria. While the rollover presented real risks and the IT industry did a fantastic job of mitigating them, there were a lot of snake oil merchants spreading panic to peddle their wares.

    A lot of these people moved on to other technological waves like Search Engine Optimisation and Social Media marketing so have a healthy dose of scepticism when you’re told the world will change unless you buy a certain tech product.

    Understand sunk costs

    That 486 server or Nokia Banana Phone might have served you well for ten years but it’s crippling your business. It’s time to move on. Similarly any of those bleeding edge technology purchases that turned out not to be so good need to be dumped.

    Basically any technology older than five years should be retired unless there’s a compelling business case for retaining it.

    Don’t be afraid of failure

    As the price of hardware and Internet access falls, so too do the costs of getting ideas, services and products to market. Don’t be afraid of testing new lines.

    The key is to “fail fast”, that is to cut your losses as soon as it becomes apparent an idea isn’t working. The sunk cost rule applies here; regardless of how much you’ve spent on an idea if it doesn’t meet expectations cut it fast and move on.

    Techonology has now matured to a point where people don’t even notice they are using it, coupled with other changes to society we are going to our market rapidly change over the next twenty years. That makes it a time of great opportunity for entrepreneurs. Understanding those changes and having a team who can react to them will separate the successes from the others.

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  • The Future of Journalism

    The Future of Journalism

    Last week’s Media 140 meeting in Sydney looked at the future of journalism and how publishers are paying, or rather not paying, contributors to their online publications.

    The evening was well documented by Martin Cahill and the message was clear — publishers are not going to pay for content because even if they want to they can’t afford it.

    The prevailing view was journalists will have to learn how to multi task; but given YouTube is even more poorly rewarded than online journalism, it’s unlikely sites will be any more generous to video or audio contributions than they are to text contributors. Which only suggests a future of journalists doing more work for no money.

    Valerio Veo, Head of SBS News and Current Affairs Online pointed out SBS is paying a 19 year a $1000 per contribution for covering Obama’s visit to Indonesia.

    Ignoring this is pocket money in terms of sending a camera crew and traditional reporter, the fact SBS are one of the few Australian organisations paying online contributors suggests ABC Managing Director, Mark Scott’s, view at a previous Media140 that only government supported organisations will be able to afford to pay journalists is part of the future is correct.

    So what is the future of professional journalism? Will it be restricted to a few subsidised outlets? Is it the gifted amateur contributing for their love of the masthead? Or is it that of the professional pushing their own or their employer’s agenda?

    Maybe journalists will become editors cleaning up the shoddy contributions of not so gifted writers that have the only benefit of being free. Could it be that curating other people’s content will be the role of future journalists?

    Or perhaps journalists are the new poets, starving in garrets and working in desperate jobs while waiting for the phone call from the ABC, BBC or PBS, penning great works that will lie undiscovered on obscure blogs which will only be found after their passing?

    We didn’t really glimpse the answers at Media140 and this is an important discussion to have as the rise of the digital sharecropper isn’t confined to journalism.

    Many professional and white collar occupations are going the same way and we need to understand what this means for large parts of our economy. Even if we choose not to discuss it, it’s the reality we face.

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  • The real digital divide

    The real digital divide

    The real digital divide isn’t between the young and the old; it’s between those who are prepared to explore new technologies and those who hide from change.

    We’re often told that there’s a divide between the “digital natives”, those who grown up with computers, and the “digital immigrants”, those who’ve had to learn about computers.

    In reality this isn’t true, the real digital divide is about being prepared to learn and explore the possibilities being opened up every day by the Internet and computers.

    I was reminded of this shortly before Christmas when talking to a group of forty year old business owners who dismissed Internet tools like Twitter and LinkedIn out of hand – “a waste of time” “just for kids” and “I tried and received Chinese spam” being a few of the objections.

    The contrast is the Australian Seniors Computer Clubs Association who prove you’re only as young as the computers you tinker with. These seniors, some of whom were retired well before computers became commonplace, are prepared to explore and discover possibilities that change their lives and the lives those around them.

    The forty somethings all had successful businesses and they were the first to admit mobile phones, email and websites had changed the way they work. Yet nearly half of them didn’t have a website for their own business; a statistic consistent with business surveys that find almost 50% of small enterprises don’t have a website.

    In many respects these businesses and their owners are reminiscent of the handloom weavers of the early 19th Century. At first technology worked in their favour and pushed wages up but as industrialisation continued they found their skills redundant and incomes falling. Eventually their trades and businesses disappeared; which is what will happen to complacent companies and industries in today’s industrial revolution.

    A similar thing is happening to society and individuals. While you won’t disappear if you aren’t using the net, those who won’t will find it harder to do pay bills, communicate and simply get things done. Eventually they’ll find themselves marginalised as not being connected will make it harder for family and friends to keep in touch.

    All of this is unnecessary, it’s just a matter of being prepared to try and to give something a go. The real digital divide is between those who choose to give things a go and those who don’t.

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