b.TWEEN08 Conference Highlights – Day 1 – 19th June
Posted on 20. Jun, 2008 by Chi-chi Ekweozor in Events
I didn’t get a chance to blog this yesterday, got in late after attending and presenting at the extremely interesting QuickFire event at Manchester’s Circle Club.
QuickFire is the b.TWEEN conference‘s take on Pecha Kucha presentations and you can find out more info about them here. You can also watch the videos from all the events at b.TWEEN on their YouTube page. The webcast is here.
I’ll put my slides up on Slideshare over the weekend. Follow today’s (and yesterday’s) events on Twitter by tracking the #btween and #btween08 Twitter hash tags using summize.com. You can also check out a pretty impressive preview here at Conference 2.0.
Now onto the Day 1 highlights… (You can also check out Day 2′s highlights)
I’ve got copious notes but I’m deliberately keeping this short and sweet because Day 2 starts in about 30 minutes (at time of writing! It’s started…) I missed a bit of the welcome speech by Tony Hill, Acting Director of the Museum of Science and Industry, the aptly chosen venue for the event due to the impressively long queue at registration.
Katz Kiely’s introduction to ‘the best b.TWEEN event yet’ was pretty good. Kiely is the managing director of Just-b, organisers of the b.TWEEN conference.
Here come the session highlights. The idea is to type up my fave quotes and notable points..:
Session: Protect or Share – Cory Doctorow, Editor, Boing Boing
The role of the publisher is to identify a work and an audience and bring them together. We can now enjoy the power of low cost collaboration enabled by the Internet.
Consider 1000s of film companies versus 1 million YouTubers. The advent of more disperse, less monolithic, more decentralised companies creates more culture.
Once you start to filter things you get a lot of false positives. The idea that average individuals have to find out how copyright law works before they create is absurd, accept a middle ground, less ‘them & us’.
Session: Creativity Meets Commerce – Steve Taylor, Director of Development & Innovation, Aegis (UK), Nicole Yershon, Director, Innovative Solutions, Ogilvy (UK)
“We are trying to turn oil tankers around.” “Richard and Judy of digital communications.”
This session was about discussing the commercial viability of four creative projects.
Soundscapes – Martyn Ware (ex-Human League) “combining musical tones with large open spaces. Commerce application: “Sonic Mmemonic”, “Sound for calling kids back to mum in shopping mall” Nicole Yershon
StoryCubes – Paper cubes that are used to brainstorm answers to ‘abstract’ questions.
Breaking News – Interactive Visual Art Installations – mobile phone-controlled art installations. Projections that happen concurrently around the work.
Speakolascope – Push-to-talk microphone in a booth with audience filmed answering simple questions e.g. “What’s your favourite story?”
I think the panel liked the Breaking News installation the best and saw commercial opportunities in combining outdoor advertising with user interaction.
Session: User Centric Design – Brendan Dawes, Creative Director, magneticNorth, Alex Morrison, Managing Director, Cogapp, Ann Longley, Digital Strategy Director, MediaEdge:CIA/WPP
Brendan Dawes, magneticNorth: Came up with the very cool concept of a USB drive shaped like a cassette tape. Finished product is called MIXA. The idea was to “physicalise” digital music, “a lot of our memories are hidden away in boxes in our houses, buried away in hard drives”. “It was about bringing romanticism back to digital stuff and making people smile.”
“Good design software* is dice. Deep Indulgent Complete Elegant” Guy Kawasaki quote. *correction by @kaiserkuo via Twitter
“You have to begin by taking yourself seriously. At least in your standards”. Alex presented some interesting work Cogapp has done with the National Gallery in London. Digitised information panels on artists featured called ‘Micro Gallery’.
Ann Longley, MediaEdge:CIA / WPP: “Media is becoming more addressable, searchable, mobile and pervasive.”
Examples of the reach: “Dell Hell”
Dell’s experience after Jeff Jarvis started blogging about them up to launch of Dell IdeaStorm.
“Products designed without user insight may fail.”
“Businesses and products have to be people shaped or they will not survive.”
“If you got to MySpace that’s like going into someone’s bedroom.”
Ann’s Take on the ‘Next Level’: Entertainment is changing, become more interactive and collaborative. Showed videos of work by Schematic which demonstrated seamlessly going from watching a movie about Battlestar Galactica to navigating the game of the movie and getting involved in the StarWars-esque battle you were watching.
Schematic were commissioned by Minority Report director Steven Speilberg for conceptual design for the The Minority Report movie.
Others: I’mTV, mScape, SwarmTribes – self organising swarms around bands and their fans.
Session: MediaCity:UK – Brian Greasley, MD, MediaCity:UK
Missed most of this because I was in an Enterprising Ideas session. Will write this up later as it was fantastic and my notes too long to dump here! The idea is to suggest ideas for moving enterprising start-ups forward. I attend a session ‘chaired’ by Wendy Fisk, founder of review and leisure lifestyle guide, timeforone.com. Lots of great ideas bounced around…
Session: Pitch Clinic – Angel Gambino, ex-Bebo VP Content, Kaiser Kuo, Group Director, Digital Strategy, Ogilvy China, Rosie Allimonos, Interactive Executive, Drama, Films & Acquisitions, BBC, Jake Redford, Head of Partnerships & Services, TV & VOD, Orange
A session dedicated to dissecting pitches. Each panellist had been assigned a number of pitches from companies which they analysed. The winning pitch, i.e. the one they would have gone for hypothetically speaking wasn’t discussed in great detail. Takeaways:
Angel Gambino’s favourite pitch was clear, concise and had great headings. “Make it sharp and concise.” “Think of customer as one you keep doing business with until you retire.”
Jake Redford’s approach to pitch structure:
“Theory – How/Process – Results – Conclusions”
Learnt from report-writing techniques taught during his O Levels. “Don’t ever assume in-depth knowledge of the issue of the reader.”
All the panel were in agreement about how to structure the best pitch:
“Understand what I’m like as a person” – Angel Gambino
“Found out our strategy, what fits our platform. Did everything we wanted and planned for and saved us from doing all the research!” Jake Redford sharing how a great pitch impressed.
Session: Building Successful Online Commmunities – Ron Edwards, Managing Director, Ambient Performance, Elaine Ferneley, Professor, Salford Business School, Matt Hanson, ASwarmOfAngels.com, MT Rainey, Founder/Chairwoman, Horsesmouth.co.uk
Elaine Ferneley moderated this panel and started by showing a presentation that included an image of Karl Marx followed by an image of Rupert Murdoch. Both include a quote which basically say “Power to the people”.
Matt Hanson – “The Audience is Obsolete.”
“You want engagement not passive selling to ‘demographics.’”
MT Rainey – “People trust people more than they trust organisations” Horsesmouth allows people to express different sides of themselves (mentors, those seeking to be mentored etc) effectively even though profiles are anonymous. Authenticity still remains. Demonstrates untapped marketplace for people wanting to help from their own experiences.
Ron Edwards – Demoed very cool commercial uses of augmented reality and 3D worlds. He spoke about commercial applications of 3D worlds, showed MTV’s Laguna beach and a Coke-sponsored 3D site/application. Presentation heavy on visuals and case studies. Was too busy watching and leaving messages on the large onscreen chat to make notes.
This live chatroom running alongside the main presentation screen during the conference become one of the most lively discussion forums at the event, effortlessly linking online participants watching the b.TWEEN webcasts and following the conference on Twitter with the real delegates sat in the Main Arena at Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry.
It added a completely new dimension to the event and I for one would like to see a transcript of the conversation that ensued on it online. Big thumbs up to Kinura who provided both the live webcasts and live chat. Excellent work.
That’s it! If you were there and can add to any of that, feel free to do so in the comments.
Here are Day 2′s highlights.
Related posts:
- b.TWEEN08 Conference Highlights – Day 2 – 20th June – Part 1
- b.TWEEN08 Conference Highlights – Day 2 – 20th June – Part 2
- b.TWEEN08 – Relegating Conference Q And A Sessions To The Dustbin
- b.TWEEN08 conference, PUMA Manchester Exclusive Gig And More
- b.TWEEN09 and WordCamp UK – The Media and Web Conference Season begins
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