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b.TWEEN ‘07 Advisory notes
The creative sector is extremely fragmented. The thirteen sectors that make up the creative industries encompass companies and sole traders with very different technological and skills requirements. It could arguably be said that the only real link between the creative and digital sectors is their changing relationship to audiences through the creative uses of connected and converging technologies.
The creative technology sector is characterised by small and micro businesses that are often resource constrained. The importance of face-to-face interaction to develop commercial opportunities cannot be underestimated.
At the moment there is no focal point for the disparate activity enabled by creative technologists, or to bring people from across the different sectors together.
b.TWEEN is in an ideal position to begin to facilitate convergence across those sectors. Our challenge is to devise a model (virtual and physical) that recognises the different nature of the component parts of the sector. It should reflect the speed at which those parts operate and it’s fragmented nature and catalyse effective models of communication and innovation.
A recent report from the DTI’s Technology Strategy Board stated:
“There is no doubt that there is a need for a Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) for the Creative Industries.
The services it offers, and the models of attending, accessing and networking would be geared to the specific needs of creative businesses and practitioners….”
b.TWEEN could be a perfect focus point for this KTN. We’re already well down this road!
Providing for this sector is challenging but offers great opportunities. b.TWEEN should be about signposting, catalysing ideas and relationships, inspiring and informing. Most importantly it has to be about real business opportunities; inspiring creative companies, showing them how to channel and capitalise on their creativity and how to monetise their experience and skills
The model has improved year on year because of your support, and will no doubt continue to do so!
Many thanks
What is b.TWEEN’s USP?
b.TWEEN is the only UK event that successfully fuses research activity, business knowledge transfer and networking.
b.TWEEN is not about high-end creativity for creativity sake. The showcases serve to inspire delegates (and reach out into the wider community). This inspiration is then embedded in a commercial context where delegates can explore how to exploit their creativity
b.TWEEN attracts the makers of some of UK’s most innovative connected projects so they can exchange knowledge with their peers.
b.TWEEN provides real opportunities so delegates can exploit their wares and understand how to capitalise on their transferable skills.
b.TWEEN attracts a uniquely broad range of participants with a corresponding wide field of expertise
b.TWEEN is based in the North. This makes it compact enough to offer real value-add to attendants
Small and micro companies need clients and to explore ways of making their business more stable. They also need talent to feed into their growing companies. Students need to interface with successful SMEs working in digital media in a creative environment. Big players need to find innovative versatile small companies who can teach them how to engage in conversations with communities.
b.TWEEN offers an effective interface thats support this entire supply chain in an inspiring dynamic environment.
Our core target audience?
Small or more usually micro companies who create interactive content and tools. They usually employ less than 30.
Our peripheral audience?
o Big commercial players: who need ideas, to access talent and to learn how to enable conversations with a new generation of sophisticated buyers
o Students: to get a clearer idea of the state of the industry they aspire to join, to understand the challenges of running a company and to meet potential employers
o Researchers: industry consultants and public sector researchers
o TV/ Film/ Mobile/ Games/ Educators etc…anyone who needs to find out how the market is changing and how to harness creative technologies to improve their businesses.
What do our core audience need?
o Buyers: to meet commissioners, potential clients and to discover new distribution routes to access buyers directly o New ideas: to keep them ahead of the breaking wave o Collaborators: with complimentary skills o Stability: business models that are less project based and more formed around stable relationships with partners o Talent: to enable effective growth (especially multi skilled, higher level, creative project managers/ collaboranauts)
What is the best way to answer their needs?
o Provide a lens to focus the market place
o Ensure that big players attend, and that the event structure facilitates effective networking
o Provide showcases and show-and-tells of the most innovative projects on the edges of the mainstream. It is often from whimsical experimentation that the next tech blockbuster emerges.
o Continue to develop the creative collaboration workshops. There is no better way to spot potential collaborators than to get stuck into a brief together.
o More warts and all case studies! They are an effective way of learning from peers.
o Introduce them to business investment opportunities such as the venture capital community.
Unanswered questions?
o If b.TWEEN becomes known as THE place to meet the most innovative small companies, will the big players come? o Should we let the buyers in for free to maximise opportunities for small companies? o How do we attract the senior folk from the big companies, not the talent scouts.
Shifting Market
New forms of content and tools are coming from the ground, creative impetus is coming from below. There is a major move towards participation/ co branding / co delivery and co design with users. Remixable films and games are hitting the market. They provide an infrastructure and tools and allow the viewer/ gamer to create their own narrative. Marketing campaigns are being developed that depend on users creating their own content. All this points to a very different and rapidly changing media scape.
The gateways are crumbling. If producers of content and tools can connect enough people, they can hit consumers directly. The underlying technology is affordable and success lies in forming links between communities. Content and tools are becoming commodities. In this new media scape broadcasters are becoming relatively insignificant.
The current games development model is seriously flawed. A massive amount of investment is needed to develop a console game. Millions of copies have to be sold to recoup that investment. A couple of geeks, on the other hand, can spend a couple of months developing a project and can just put it out there to see what happens. If it crashes very little investment is lost, if it succeeds maximum profit is made.
More big companies are rationalising and looking to outsource. Proctor and Gamble have stated that they intend to outsource 50% of their marketing production, as are IBM. Former directors of research have become directors of innovation and are trying to figure out what that means.
What is the most effective way of supporting this interface? What are the most time and cost effective routes to nurture innovation?
The BBC Innovation Labs have explored one successful route. The BBC outlined its needs and offered clear briefs. They then worked closely with talented designers to ensure that pitched ideas answered those needs and fitted with their corporate culture. This model should be explored with other major clients.
What can this sector offer that the other parts cannot reach?
Small businesses are flexible and can adapt to new trends quickly. They are capable of quick and dirty production, putting stuff out there and seeing what happens. This is an appropriate way to commercialise innovation in this fast shifting marketplace.
Alliances of micro-enterprises are likely to become increasingly important. If alliances can clearly show they can compete with, or perform better than, traditional companies by exploiting these differences, they are onto a winner. By their very nature, they would be able to out-innovate and out perform more stable and less flexible organisations. Where is the money?
All avenues of our conversation led to new opportunities for creative technologists in the worlds of marketing and branding. As technology has changed, audiences and therefore marketing has had to change with them. Marketing has become the key to unlock money for innovation and content creation. Branding is the place to be.
Consumers use new media in a hybrid way. They use it to gather information, to communicate and for entertainment. Big players can only gain brand loyalty by accessing this new world and catering to their habits. Effective campaigns build brands into their world. 'Consumers' are beginning to participate or even construct marketing campaigns. Big companies desperately need to learn how to build relationships and conversations with their audiences. New media creatives have the necessary knowledge and experience to enable these conversations and thus are becoming an imperative part of the mix.
Possible Programme themes (case studies, show and tell and panel debates)
o New channels to market: Including overseas opportunities
o New models to commercialise innovation and commoditise content: Communities, new distribution routes, developing successful web 2.0 services.*
o “Serious games”: Innovative use of computer games software and UGC for non-entertainment purposes.
o Co- creation: Providing an infrastructure and tools allowing the user to create their own entertainment.
o The entrepreneurial mindset: Success can only be achieved if young businesses have the right attitude.
o Mobile web 2.0: Case studies from the glut of activity in the US. Will this lend itself to easier and faster commercial success?
o The Mash up market: Benefits of playing with API’s, interesting products and case studies of commercial success.
o Effective user centric design
o The Olympics: Would be mad not to look at opportunities.
- There are three main ways to monetise content sharing services:
o Advertising is the largest o Paid-for features within the free service (eg SkypeIn / SkypeOut products) o Actually selling content to users. We should showcase examples of all three
Interesting and successful projects to explore/ discuss/ showcase:
Earworms Learning, a UK-based company have devised an accelerated language-learning technique using MP3 players. It claims to take the hard work out of learning a language.
[1] (http://www.earwormslearning.com)
Animal crossing: Future is in simple games based on laying foundations and allowing players create their own journeys
http://www.animal-crossing.com
Dare Junkies - Contributors get paid,the top ten monthly videos (as voted for by users) will win a total of $5,000 in the first month and $7,500 in the second month. Will Monetise mainly from ads, and possibly the sale of a “Best of” DVD
Swarm of Angels - A groundbreaking project to create a £1 million film and give it away to over 1 million people using the Internet and a global community of members
Arts Alliance is a venture capital organisation (offices in London, New York and San Francisco) supporting a growing network of Internet entrepreneurs and digital media pioneers.
Eyespot - a web-based video editing and sharing service with a mobile client. The mobile can be used for capturing and sharing videos directly, editing only happens on the website. The web application simplifies the authoring process allowing simple and effective authoring of a sequence on a timeline, users’ own assets, shared assets, stills etc.
Thebigwhatadventure.com – TBWA - Seeking user generated content offering £1000 for the best. Is it an open source experiment, a rip off or a bandwagon hopping? It is Is heavily monitored and nothing is posted until thoroughly vetted by the agency. Interesting example of hooking into communities and allowing them to create their own marketing campaign
http://www.thebigwhatadventure.com
The forum: regional, national or international?
Giving the forum a rigidly regional focus would be ironic in the current marketplace, where anyone can trade from anywhere. If funders force such a focus they run the risk of positioning themselves and the region as provincial and uninformed of market forces.
b.TWEEN should be a celebration of international standing that is embedded into, and representative of, a host regions digital strategy. b.TWEEN offers an opportunity to position that region as a thriving hotbed of digital talent and future gazing activity on an international stage.
By offering an opportunity for local creative technologists/companies to meet big players, b.TWEEN will also attract inward investment. If big companies become aware there is a ready supply of talent with the right skill sets, they are more likely to consider relocation. This in turn will boost the regional economy and strengthen the supply chain.
Suggested speakers
Jaimie: Jam Design, The world of branding (Fiddian)
Matt Hanson: A Swarm of Angels, New business models (Adam)
Tim O’Reilly: Founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media/ A web evangelist/ Internet pioneer, Web 2.0 and new business models (Imran Ali)
Thomas Hoegh: Chief Executive Officer Arts Alliance Media/ Skillset, Capital investment for creative companies (Frank)
CEO Yahoo (David Puttnam)
Geoff Mulgan: Founder of Demos, communities and how to talk to them (Chris)
Pete Cashmore: mashup.com (ask him to curate a panel on monetising mash ups)
Josh Burger: Warner brothers, emergence marketing (Chris)
Someone from Google Maps (anyone have contacts? Interesting conversation to be had about revenue shares being planned with mash up developers who manage to go into profit)
Somebody to talk about practical examples of how companies are increasing their bottom line by signing up for creative commons (ideas gratefully accepted)
The format?
We need to find a format that allows community participation before, during and after the event.
There should still be a core programme on which the rest of the activity hangs. Each speaker needs sufficient time to speak. Q and A’s don’t always work effectively as speakers almost always run over their allotted times. We suggest that this challenge could be effectively solved by having breakouts after each session, where each of the panellists have a more intimate conversation with a smaller group
Content 360 was quoted as a good model. We would ideally like to develop a brief with a big player partner (Unilever / Proctor and Gamble.)
The creative collaboration workshops are an important aspect of the event. Feedback from last year suggested they should be more structured with clearer facilitation. Could we ask brainstorming groups to work together to answer the brief developed with our big player partner. In this situation who would own the idea? These sessions have worked previously and sparked new collaborations.
Young companies will be invited to apply for the springboard session (6 people X 10 mins each). Selected newcomers can outline their research/ projects in development/ newly launched projects in a structured quickfire format.
One to one’s are important and should become more embedded into the programme. We are also keen on experimenting with a more democratic conference structure. Everybody at the forum is an expert within his or her own field and has something valuable to share. The programme will include more spontaneous pitching sessions to encourage a more participatory environment.
Action points
Chris offered to send this doc onto Andrew Senior. He can advise us on the best person to invite to talk transferable international business models
Approach P& G/ Unilever for a brief to be answered (Richard and Roland - suggestions of who to contact please)
Additional opportunities
Yorkshire is churning out high calibre technology students who are desperate for jobs. There is a proliferation of media courses and a huge gap in the supply chain. Securing employment in Yorkshire is hugely difficult for recent graduates with no industry experience. There is a massive amount of competition of graduates being churned out of its media colleges. The most talented graduates should be offered the opportunity to showcase in front of b.TWEEN’s industry audience.
We started developing a project earlier in the year to filter the very best of Yorkshire’s talent into what is essentially a critical mass of industry representatives. This would strengthen the supply chain.
Have already started talking to Ravensbourne, Goldsmiths and University of the Arts London re filtering their best students.
Interesting fact:
Nigerian filmmakers release about 2,000 low-budget films a year, which rack up sales of $200-$300 million. (By comparison, American studios released 611 commercial films in 2005.) They are sold on the street and retail for around $3 each. The Nigerian industry employs about one million people, which makes it the second biggest employer after agriculture. A typical film costs between $30,000 and $100,000 to make.
They have basic production values but the topics resonate with their audiences, and the product is affordable. Obvious links with the web itself selling on the street provides a low-cost platform open to new businesses that can connect with audiences.
Final thought
We have a substantial amount of resources that could prove invaluable to the government as they try to visualise how the creative industries operate. These resources, together with this years programme and the conversations leading up to it could operate effectively as action research on which to base a strategic document. This could enable the government to speak with an informed voice; including creative trends and case studies. Any ideas on how we might move this idea forward?
