Training & development

Digital Consultant links for March 20th through March 22nd

These are my links for March 20th through March 22nd:

Best Practices for Using Video to Convert Visitors to Leads – Good ebook on using video for conversion.Optimum length is apparently 90 secs before a massive attention drop off and authentic,conversational non professional production works better at conversion than a typical corporate promo. great news for us citizen journalists, handy with a Flip, Kodak zi6 and inspired by the passion we have for our subject.
South Africa Set For Digital Music Expansion – Emerging markets for digital music may make up the gap in Western sales: South African could see a commercial music service this year.
Strategic Skills Assessment for the Creative Media Industries 2010 – Skillset, the sector skills council for media (aka a skills funding quango) have conducted an analysis of future skills needs, concluding creative media jobs set to rapidly grow, with multiplatform skills a major shortage and developing new business models to monetise content. Nothing you haven't heard before, but always worth hearing again – particularly in such a deep and difficult recession when so many creatives are losing their jobs and considering getting out of the sector.

What’s the story? Exploring narrative journeys in film, sales and storytelling

This week I have been immersed in a world of stories, or rather contemplating the methods of creating and telling a story and defining what are my own ‘catalogues of narrative’ for my latest online storytelling project which I’m currently developing.

Telling stories on the big screen

It started last Saturday with a screen writing workshop at The Art Organisation (a wonderfully informal community venue, perfect for this fun and interactive workshop) in Nottingham, organised by local screen writer Adrian Reynolds. Adrian got us thinking about both the mechanics of writing for the visual medium of film, asking us to come up with concepts for films without words which differentiate film as a visual storytelling medium rather than the ‘talking heads’ of television drama. We looked at narrative structures for film schematics like the hero’s journey. The mechanics of this are nothing new: these story structures can be applied to everything from Greek legends to The Godfather. I’m convinced my online story needs to consider these structures – even short form fragmented content online has to consider the overall journey of the viewer. It would be interesting to see how I can overlay the format of a classic story onto something that plays out through a series of intertextual multimedia elements.

Storytelling for the web

On Wednesday I attended a workshop organised by Media Sauce on making money from multiplatform content. There’s a good write-up by the aforementioned Adrian Reynolds on what we discussed around IP, content formats and the evolution of TV commerce.

I was pleased to be offered a multiplatform training grant from media skills training body Skillset, which has afforded me the time and expertise to deepen my knowledge of online content – flexing both my business and creative muscles. A workshop earlier this month with major interative drama producer Sean Coleman focused on interactive storytelling: I stumbled my way through a description of my drama which has a genre (comic mystery) and a technical platform (Facebook) but scant details yet on the narrative.

My approach is unusual: unlike most film-makers-turned-interactive producer, I come from a technical background as a web producer, en route years as a web writer and editor, via a degree in music and drama. But ‘doing’ rather than ‘telling’ a story places me at a different part of the creative process at conception which is for me a wide unknown space. At both workshops, my fellow television and film trainees told me: it’s all about the story. Have the story and you have something you can create from and sell. For interactive storytelling this still poses a challenge: but it’s about using the mechanics to play through compelling characters and story.

Telling winning stories for sales

Thursday was the end of a the Exponential training programme, a course I participated on last year, with gruelling business simulations, skills accrediting and epic report writing eventually qualifying me as the first person in the UK with a Diploma in Strategy Business Coaching.

John Leach from Winning Pitch was an inspirational speaker: his plain-speaking and driven ‘get off your arse’ approach to business placed the ‘win’ as all about YOU: research shows that 70% of a relationship the client chooses with their consultant is down to your personal relationship: do they like you? Can you get on? That’s why personal branding is becoming so critically important across all businesses. John’s message a wake-up call for me, as I’ve focused so much energy in recent years on improving my technical skills and sector knowledge – which comes way down the list of why people buy from each other.

Passion is critical in telling your story: business is about fun, fame, fortune and the future. Strategy is about your personal intention, and success is ascribed to 20% thinking (or strategy) and 80% doing. John like to have a ‘rant’ about the big issues in his field: have a point of view, get your voice heard – I can’t think of any better way a business can do this than by starting a blog.

Pitching is another form of storytelling for the purpose of selling – what’s the message? Why me? Why now? What’s the relevance of what I do to the bigger picture? Telling a new story is a critical factor for success: there is no traffic on the extra mile. Disney have a ‘cash extraction strategy’ but you part with your pictures-of-the-president with a smile, buying into their world. Lucosade turned a drink for sickly children into a success product for aspiring sports stars – with a little celebrity storytelling via advertising.

John emphasised that despite being in the service business, as coaches we too can say ‘no’ to clients if the relationship doesn’t fit – selling isn’t just a one way process, and only good relationshipsyield good work. As a business, you need to build long-term gains, not just short-term wins. I’m going to put John’s advice to the test with some ‘pitch training’ I’m doing on my new digital strategy next week.

Today’s marked the end of a small journey in my own career – in a transition to a novice to a newly qualified business coach. I’m so proud my team from back in Oct 2008 won Exponential’s winning team award – plus I was shortlisted for most improved coach and outstanding achievement – something I’d never thought, as someone far less experienced, than my peers, I could achieve. I’m grateful to John, Anne-Marie and the team at Exponential – not to mentioned the other coaches on the programme who’ve been a wealth of support with their experience, wisdom and generosity – for helping me through this mini ‘hero’s journey’ in my own journey.

Are we sitting comfortably? The Story event, Conway Hall

I rounded off this epic week with The Story, an event at Conway Hall organised by Matt Locke (who’s ‘day job’ is head of education commissioning at Channel 4, thus the wonderfully diverse and high level speaker list) all about the art of relaxing and enjoying a good story. The diversity of stories told today was immense: from “Harrison Fraud”, the tale of a tested business relationship told out by forged faxes and letters from Harrison Ford by Tim Wright, considerations of graphic novel telling by Sydney Padua and Livity’s inspiring tale of Jody McIntyre, a wheelchair using MC, blogger and political activist whose only story includes a journey up Mountt Picchu and student union lock-ins, with his tag line ‘that’s just how I roll’. Neither patronising of what a ‘brave hero’ Jody was, his story was inspiring as a great person achieving great things against the odds – classic stuff of legends.

Intriguingly, these mix of stories – superb, average and surreal– in many genres and tastes, gained such differing responses from the audience – we all had our best and worst, and these radically differed. I personally loved Aleks Krotoski’s slide show of the ‘hidden story’ of the making of her current BBC2 documentary The Virtual Revolution, showing the exciting journey, and frustration of ‘making telly’ when you’re passionate about the subject – others I spoke to thought this was ego-centric self-promotion. The highlight for some was experimental theatre storyteller Tim Etchells of Forced Entertainment telling monologues of expletive ridden visions of celebrity hell where leading Hollywood ladies thrust Oscar’s up their arse. I found it an indulgent, misogynistic mix of Naked Lunch cliches and uncomfortably awful stand-up comedy.

The story was starting to unfold: many voices, many styles, many messages make a good story. But as I learned in a storytelling course at university, the story comes alive through the art of telling – it’s all about communicating the meaning and passion to others in a very personal one to many conversation. Which comes back to my ‘day job’ of digital strategy and particularly social media marketing, enabling a big action through interlinking many stories and conversations.

Today the story continues, I’m indulging in one of my (many) unconventional interests – telling stories through games. I’ll be participating in a futuristic group story for 40 people set in a dystopian future, creating our own social stories within the bigger picture – again, not unlike the message vs medium forms of social marketing. Some would call this a cutting edge form of interactive drama. We know it’s a great way to have fun.

Digital Consultant links for February 5th through February 7th

These are my links for February 5th through February 7th:

Charlie Brooker | iPad therefore iWant? Probably. Why? iDunno – Probably the only post to read on the storm-in-an-iT-Cup that is the launch of the iPad, yet another shiny-shiny gadget from Apple which has made the elusive marketing leap from a gizmo to a life-changing-experience. As someone who just doesn't do Apple at all – and prefer proleterate and less expensive devices like the PC and Nokia, this speak to me. "It's an iPhone for people who can't be arsed holding an iPhone up to their face. A slightly-further-away iPhone that keeps your lap warm."
BBC – Media Literacy – I came across this BBC microsite whilst watching the BBC's new 'soap bubble' online drama E20 (a spinoff from Eastenders). The site gives a few video based resources for younger people to undertand the idea of media literacy – including clips from Screenwipe an a interview with teen digital ambassador 'JellieEllie' (I met her years ago, not really sure what to make of what she does now). E20, the BBC are hyping as a 'game changer' as being a significant budget online drama. I disagree – it's a great piece of drama, but as the Controllers interviewed say, the rules of storytelling are the same on the web as TV. I'd like to see the BBC invest in a REALLY innovative interactive drama that does make use of the online medium – E20 is just telly on the web, designed to be packaged back to be telly on the telly. The videos aren't event commentable and embeddable. Channel 4 do some more interesting content for teens in this space like Smokescreen.
Tories challenge BT and BBC as part of ‘100MB broadband’ pledge – Zip. Pains me to type this, but here's another very good electioneering policy from the boys in blue: they want to speed up broadband to 100Mb by 2017 by breaking up BT monopoly, which puts crippling prices onto accessing broadband at super high speeds. As far as I'm concerned, this couldn't happen sooner.

Digital Consultant links for January 29th through January 30th

These are my links for January 29th through January 30th:

Social Media Marketing: How Pepsi Got It Right – Pepsi are another major brand who are dropping their Superbowl ad this year and diverting the $20M (!) into social media engagement campaign. Staggeringly their crowd-sourced new brand development Mountain Dew gained traction from half a million Pepsi fans. This show, where brand loyalty exists, social media is a superb way of using fans to test the market and create word-of-mouth engagement. Big bucks thrown at social media will shift the landscape again, perhaps not all in a postiive way for smaller businesses.
CIPD – Social networking for HR – I'm speaking at this CIPD event on 4 Feb in Kettering with Alec McPhedran from Skills Channel TV. We're talking about social media for HR professional and developing social media strategies.
The state of social learning and some thoughts for the future of L&D in 2010 – Detailed article with links to top 100 social learning resources and how learning professional are using digital/online tools within learning contexts.

Digital Consultant links for January 26th through January 27th

These are my links for January 26th through January 27th:

Why the Idea of the Apple Tablet May Be Better Than the Reality – Steve Jobs has layed down the competition with Amazon and the Kindle, and are developing an Apple i-flavoured tablet which, in typical Apple style (may) revolutionise and breath life into the publishing industry. However, the hefty price tag and service charge are a major barrier, and it's best to say 'wait and see' for now – but one to watch.
The Moment Social Media Became Serious Business – - Tammy Erickson writes a brilliant little piece on how technologies have changed the way communications and workflow exist throughout history – from the telephone and the fax through to social media today, allowing multiple, discerete pieces of asyoncronous and virtual one-to-one and one-to-many communications. It's becoming integral to how we work, and a core tool of serious business.
Accidental Leaders and Managers programmes by Hyper Island – Calling all Yorkshire creative/digital folk: This Thurs is deadine for first batch of the highly recommended Accidental Leaders & Managers course run by Inspiral (a company I did the inspiral.biz project and others with) and Sweden's Hyperisland – the fair-haired wunderkids who are cleaning up the creative training sector with their radical nordic approach. Recommended for business owners.