Good Learning,

Re-imagining the City

Nothing like hard times to shake things up, get everyone reassessing their priorities and questioning the status quo.  Which is exactly what happened at the Doddle Bar his summer with onedotzero’s Cascade initiative.

Now in its second year, Cascade is a cross-displinary project that enables recent graduates to work collaboratively to industry lead briefs. An opportunity which not only challenges the ways they are used to working, but also how they see the urban world around them.

As an invited observer, I was extremely impressed with not only the energy, vision and wit of the creative responses to the brief, all of which were excellent. But more importantly, in my opinion, the positive and inspiring effect that the opportunity to work with people with different skills and experience had on the graduates, many of whom had never stepped outside their own disiplines before or even worked on collaborative projects during their degree courses.

It’s not rocket science, creative people need to be challenged and stimulated and providing opportunities for people with different skills, experience and outlooks to work together can be incrediable powerful, onedotzero understand this, the creative industry does it, maybe one day the UK’s educators will even follow suit?

Is it Real?

I’m really happy to be producing i-Design for the second year, not least as I get to work with some great people. Including the AIG and NMK team members and programme partners; onedotzero, cogapp and cybersonica. We also have a media partnership with Design Week so there’s plenty of support for the day and a really strong line up of speakers and activities.

This year’s conference theme asks Is it real? and analyses the way our physical and virtual worlds continue to merge and the impact this is having on our daily lives. Offering their experiences and vision is a line up of renowned industry speakers including: our event MC Nicolas Roope founder of Poke, David Taylor of the Arup Performing Arts Group,  Andrew Shoben founder of Greyworld Ltd and Martyn Ware of Future of Sound to name but a few!

Thirsty Horses

Observing and evaluating new multi-platform training courses in my current role as a Skillset assessor is proving to an interesting and informative experience. It seems that despite resistance in some parts of the broadcast industry to engage with newer and emerging media platforms, in any meaningful or holistic way, there are some eager and open-minded TV freelancers willing to be not only taken to the water but to also drink deeply (to continue the equine metaphor and justify the horse photo), to explore, discuss and debate the opportunities that working cross platform offers them as producers, director and writers.

Enthusiastic individuals aside, the task of effectively engaging the broader TV industry from the top down as well as the bottom up, in a shifting and fragmented media landscape with all its tribes and strange language – twitter, flckr etc – is a much bigger and increasingly urgent job if the UK is to maintain, let alone increase, its reputation for creativity and innovation.

Around and Abouts…

I’ve spent the first three months of 2009 developing and producing the Partnering for Innovation programme for CITIN. It’s been good honest hard work, interesting and inspiring and has involved a fair deal of time travelling across the UK, which has left little time (or more precisely no time) to update my website but normal service will be resumed shortly.

Love, War, Smoke and Mind Maps

From SMS smoke messages of love in Trafalgar Square to nuclear mushroom clouds in a cold war bunker in Berlin, the last couple of months have proved to be as diverse as they have been busy. Add ‘mind mapping’ the future of multiplatform media at Insync, during the London Games Fringe and last week at the One Media Unconference, to researching the business needs of independent TV producers in the digital age for Pact into the mix and I might even have a valid excuse for not having updated my blog since September as well as (virtual) steam coming out of my ears.

Next month looks likely to be just as interesting and productive as I’m producing C:Cubed, on behalf of Just B (the brains and digital brawn behind b.TWEEN), at the new interactive building and gallery The Public near Birmingham and heading across the Atlantic to New York to toast a new age and explore all things cultural with our recently politically-redeemed American cousins. Think I might just have to leave catching up on sleep until Christmas.

Just Looking

Standing on the tube platform at Victoria last week, I caught my first glimpse of the new cross-platform digital billboards which are being used to screen short promos during the break between trains. Despite being drawn in by the novelty of the moving images and much as I’m a fan of technology and rich media experiences, I was struck by the irony that the ceiling mounted units I’d (wishful) thought were part of a new air cooling system for the underground, were in fact bulky, heat-emitting additions to what is an already uncomfortably hot and claustrophobic space.

I was also reminded of comments made at the end of the i-design 08 conference about the dangers, as well as exciting opportunities, that the wider use of technology in public spaces present. Just because can screen adverts, create new interactive experiences, or provide mobile phone connectivity underground, is that reason enough to do it. More specifically if we want to avoid audiovisual ’spamming’ in public spaces, how do we, (in the context of the original comments) as the digital media community and more broadly as a society, make more considered, and hopefully rational and reasoned decisions about what is appropriate as well as effective commercially. Unfortunately we ran out of time at the conference to properly explore and debate the issues but it’s something that both Malcolm Garrett and I are keen to include in the dynamo london programme in the not too distant future which I’m sure will prove interesting.

It’s All About Meaningful Interaction

i-design 08 is only two weeks away, the programme and speakers finalised, marketing underway and ticket selling – so far so good.

Producing events can be stressful (and at times, a thankless task) but collaborating with Malcolm Garrett, the creative force behind dynamo london, on the programme and development of i-design 08 has been quite the opposite. In fact I’ve had a really enjoyable time exploring new ideas and our shared passion for interactive design and I’m happy to report that despite drinking my own body weight in coffee over the last couple of months, I’m still sane(ish) and really looking forward to the conference, not to mention the rest of the digital design day activities at the Southbank Centre…apparently they’ll be a free bar at the Y Design Awards, perfect!

Out of The Shadows…

Less than a month to go until the Loop Festival in Brighton and I’m really excited that one of my ideas for the digital arts programme, an interactive installation; The Shadows Wall, is currently being collaboratively developed by a group of local artists and technologists. The group, based at University of Sussex, is also working on the development of two additional interactive pieces which will be located across the Loop Festival site during the day. Updates on the groups progress are being recorded by my fellow Loop Digital programme curator, Jon Bird of BLIP on the Loop Interactive blog.

The inspiration for The Shadows Wall (or Shapes Wall) is a combination of my (art student) experience of creating abstract images by placing objects on undeveloped photographic paper before exposure to light, and a piece work I saw at the Sonic Boom exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in 2000, which captured crude silhouettes on wall of light sensitive paper.

Inspired North

It’s officially conference season with a full spectrum of digital media related events all competing for time and attention this summer. First on the list for me was b.TWEEN 08 held in Manchester last month, which proved to be both informative and inspiring. There was a good mix of established and more familiar faces, as well as new and emerging talent, all of whom were keen to share their interactive ideas and knowledge.

The programme highlights included Kaiser Kuo, Ogilvy China’s Digital Strategy Group Director who’s impassioned challenge to the West’s ‘colonial attitudes’ towards China’s netizens, who he suggests are far less concerned with censorship than westerns believe as they embrace their new freedoms, provided a fresh (if arguably self-interested) view of the country’s latest cultural revolution. By contrast Brendan Dawes, Creative Director MagneticNorth offered a new spin on a more traditional ‘old media’ with an insight into the thinking behind his highly successful Mixa online service which allows people to create digital mixed tapes (on USB blank cassettes) and design their own covers and packaging. Proof (if proof required) that the nostalgic value of defunct media formats shouldn’t be underestimated.

It seems that Manchester’s plans to replicate the Silicon Valley model, with £3b worth of investment and building in Salford, to become The media city of the future are well underway and if b.TWEEN 08 is a good measure of the enthusiasm for new ideas and technology driven entrepreneurialism then it’s off to a good start.

Escape to New York

The telectroscope linking New York and London by web cam, which ‘emerged’ on the South Bank near Tower Bridge last month was well worth a visit. With seemly no shortage of reciprocal peering and waving across continents to be enjoyed, it was really good to know that inventor, Alexander Stanhope St. George’s idea of being able to connect London and New York had finally become a reality over 100 years after his attempt to build a tunnel under the Atlantic failed.

The project which was taken on by his ancestor Paul St. George, after he stumbled upon the original blueprints of the tunnel, made simple but very engaging use of 21st Century technology to realise a pioneer’s dream – surely the Hollywood movie is already being planned?