nottingham

Today’s Digital Consultant Links for September 16th

These are my links for September 16th from 10:43 to 16:13:

Which UK city is the most creative? Nottingham? – Matt Davies from Attitude Design on why Nottingham's is a burgeoning city for creative and media with a bit of help from, and a name check for, our new site CreativeNottingham.com (launching Sept 21).
EM Media receives £500K funding – Hoorah, at last some new funding for my home region for screen sector in East Midlands. WIll be keen to see what their plans are for it and if it's an extension of previous fund which were more big pots of cash into film and games production. Let's hope there's some skills benefits and smaller, more innovative investments attached.
New Bham Council website "an expensive disaster" – Ross Reily comments on the £2.7 million Birmingham Council website which lacks quality design, functionality, security and move forward little in online services or e-democracy (and no RSS either) which ultimately means the citizens of Birmingham are missing out. Managed by Capita.

How social media shortens the gap of opportunity

A few weeks back, I was the guest speaker at the inaugural launch of Nottingham Girl Geek Dinners, part of a worldwide network of local events bringing together women technologists for chat, networking and – importantly – dinner. As a general rule I don’t like segregation in networks but in the high tech sector there’s definitely a need to provide alternative places and spaces for discussion as invariably there’s usually one one women or two in the room. I found the Nottingham Girl Geek group – a dozen or so working in broad fields including web design, PR, programming, usability, open source and education – to be friendly and overall welcoming – really diverse chats I don’t usually have at networks focused on sharing, learning and even occasionally knitting.

My presentation was about social media for business – a similar theme to some recent speaking gigs for DMEX in the North West but this time with a bit of girl geek and historic slant. Here’s the presentation.

I don’t really see myself as a social media evangelist – I’ve been too long in the web industries for that kind of bandwagon-jumping, back since the first dotcom wave and my days in the music biz when the rage was guerrilla marketing, us record exec minions seeded chatrooms, assuming aliases of teen skateboarders, tweenies and rock dads to sell the latest CD (yes kids, people still bought CDs then).

Rather I see social media as a new name for an old thing – like chat boards, newsgroups or forums – it’s just a newer more technologically sophisticated means of using digital tools to communicate – socially or for business. Online video and audio – as eulogised by @documentally et al – is yet another exciting means of creating many direct one-to-one and one-to-many interactions. Although the technology may not save the world itself, the accelerated serendipity and increase in openness to communication (as much a society as technology phenomena)helps us all to address our own personal, social and business goals. This is perhaps as closely related to the rise in the mobile phone as much as the growth in broadband. This can include political campaigning (like the MPs expenses Facebook campaign), creating your own news radar and bypassing corporation (see the decline in newspapers) and marketing a local micro-brand internationally.

But the interesting dinner discussion we ladies had was about how social media hasn’t so much changed everything as speeded it up. In the old days contacting A meant knowing B. Email made finding out who and where was easy (eliciting a response though, now, harder than ever). Social media means those who choose are open to conversations and ideas more readily and easily than before. Twitter and Facebook create small interaction which are less formal than a direct business contact by phone, letter or email. If you play it right, this small talk can more readily lead to medium talk (then to business). But don’t mistake small-talk for actual business or social networking replacing marketing (or even work).

Creating your own support network is quick and easy; seeking answers to questions, finding a supplier or partner more rapid and robust than ever. Social media shortens and accelerates the gaps between people and links up opportunities. Sometimes it fills the gaps to with meaningless twitter and chat, so we need mechanisms for filter this out (not an information overload but a filter failure) which is the next big challenge.

Girl Geeks dinner nottingham

Thanks to Elsa Bartley (find her on Twitter as @marmaladegirl) for organising it all. Here’s a photo from the night c/o PaintedGhost – see the Nottingham Girl Geeks Dinners website for more photos and details of next event on 3^rd August. See you there!

Networking bonanza: NottTuesday, Nottingham Twestival, TigerSpike and Nottingham Creative Business Awards

This week I’ve been networking more in the physical rather than online world, though with some interesting dalliances in-between where online networks facilitate “third city” interaction in the real world. With three networking events in one week in Nottingham, it really does seem like the digital and creative scene in Nottingham is starting to emerge splenderous from its slumbering cocoon – these are exciting times!

Nott Tuesday 10-02-09

Tuesday saw the inaugural launch of Nott Tuesday, a new network for Nottingham’s high tech professionals which saw a packed room of about 50 IT and digital types (90 percent male) descend on The Cape bar for a structured evening of presentation and networking. I think I tracked this down from looking at new groups my LinkedIn contacts had joined that week.

Enthusiastically established and curated by Adam from Essendex, the speaker was Ewan McLeod from Mobile Industry Review who gave a fascinating talk on how blogging and social network grew his business. From his frustration trying to promote a previous business offering SMS to screen display to New Media Age, the main press of the time, Ewan started a blog on SMS news using the simple and classic blogging technique of signing up to Google Alerts and a £5 month Typepad account, aggregating content in a simple 10-minute-a-day round-up.

Within weeks he was the top ranking site for the search term ‘SMS news’ and soon he had an audience, which with hundreds of thousands of page views rapidly exceeded the 10,000 readership of New Media Age. When he started excerting his extreme opinion on Vodafone (in a hand shaking ‘dare I press publish?’ move) he realised he had an opinion people wanted to here, which echoes my own blogging experiences of gaining more reaction to opinion than reportage. With web 2.0 forms of publishing, you can become the press as easily as you can try and chase the tails of them.

Today, Ewan dam used the example of attracting the attention of the Government’s Minister for Information through using Twitter Search to find tweets relevant to his expertise, and responding in Twitter’s unique 140 character format to the Minister’s “Google, good or evil?’ post. Soon they were in dialogue, in a way unimaginable in either a traditional offline, longer-form (like letters or even email) or more formal style of conversion. Adam responded with knowledge and ideas to the Information Minister’s specific need to information right then.

Ewan’s talk was inspiring and made me realise I should utilise Twitter search more for potential sourcing of clients and like-minded.

The crowd at Nott Tuesday was a nice mix of digital start-ups, academics, games people, IT consultants and more and I feel really inspired by the possibilities of the new networks and events self-initiating within Nottingham at the moment (which makes my job many times easier!)

AMC/ TigerSpike launch 11-02-09

Way down in that extreme weather beacon of London village, I was invited to an event which celebrated something almost heart-warming in the present financial apocalyptic gloom: the launch of a new London office for Sydney and New York based TigerSpike, whose business has grown exponentially at 1000% per year.

TigerSpike specialise in mobile technologies and commamunications, and have coined the term ‘Personal Media’ - their term to describe person-to-person communications which include talking, phone, social media and web – and a perfect way of defining for the mobile comms solution. Their vision is to become a ‘platform as a service’ like the IBM for Personal Media.

Great thinking and technological innovation come through TigerSpike’s internal Innovation Lab model using a process called RIGOUR (Research, Identify, Generate, Opportunistic, Utilisation, Re-invest) which seems like an exciting formal innovation process to bring to a UK digital technology company. Definitely ones to watch.

Thanks to Xavier Adam from the AMC group for organising a splendid lunch and a very interesting collection of the city’s mobile and digital types there too, and no thanks for a terrible picture of me at the lunch!

Twestival Nottingham 12-02-09

Back in Hood town, Nottingham Twestival was a very different affair; Nottingham came to the Twitter table with late notice to set up a Twestival to join the 200+ other global cities in one simultaneous evening event for charity celebrating those brought together through the social medium of Twitter. The global reports were impressive – the 700 person artsfest of London Twestival looked mighty fun, I was sorry to miss the 200+ attendees of Brum Twestival where many of my Twitter comrades are.

Nottingham was a more modest collection of 20 or so social media freaks – I was suprised at our diversity and motives – several PR, digital media and social media professionals but also several politicians and a few early adopters from other walks of life – and a few virtual participants joining in via ‘Tweets’ on Twitter. If you’re not already sold on the instant connectivity of Twitter, the idea of coming together over a web platform is probably more barking that tweeting , but if you like the serendipity of how communities share knowledge then you just might find it addictive, and if you do I’d urge you to follow me on Twitter here.

I had a range of very different conversations – from using social media for business, to the pitfalls of beer festivals, to Nottingham’s tawdry legacy of Robin Hood. There’s definitely a ‘vibe’ to the ‘share and share alike’ Twitter community that allows conversations between people from different professional and backgrounds to intermingle.

I’ve been warmed lately by the sheer volume of ‘non geeks’ signing up and how conversation are shaping more widely to augment the community. The number of novice Twitterers, even at the Nottingham Twestival, shows we have some way to come as a social media connecting business community to compete with the chaps in Birmingham and beyond – but now is the right time for us to get inter-connected.

In the bar we had a screen displaying Twitter feeds from our own event, alongside posts from the rest of the Twestivals. The beauty of Twitter is that you can easily aggregate information by tagging your posts with terms like #nottstwestival. Here’s a lowdown of most of our collective conversations via Twitter, and you can follow some recap on action at the NottsTwestival Twitter feed. Thanks to Martin for splendidly organising it all – we did raise £210 for charity (and I won a very bizarre DVD in a raffle that I can only describe as a strange am-dram Biblical version of Alan Bennett which will certainly be making it’s way to a charity shop near you soon. Double donation

Nottingham Creative Business Awards Presentation 16-02-09

And finally, a more formal wine, canapes and presentation do c/o Nottingham Trent University where winners of their 2008 Creative Business Awards presented their wares, with some corporate vid style big-up for the 2009 awards.

Martin Knox talked about how the city is ready to come out of its cocoon and the economy means everything is up for grabs for creatives. That may be true, but I wonder whether the cash-strapped City Council and other private business will fund the awards in 09. I’ve never been one for expensive penguin-suited awards ceremonies being a thorough digital type (the mantra: you get more for less online) but I do see their place in the visual creative industries and anything that openly celebrates the creative scene of the city is good news.

Many award winners werethe successful and predictable – I’m curious about University of Nottingham winning the digital award (Nott’s digerati get it sorted!), although their mad scientist Periodic Table videos on YouTube is, admitedly, quite funky in a “Look around you” way. And Hetain Patel‘s business of the year was a brave step for a one-man performance art canvas.

So despite the financial apocalypse gloom, I do believe the future for Nottingham creative sector is looking pink, if not rosy. And this paves the way for an announcement from me very soon on a new digital project to take Nottingham’s creatives to the next stage of connectivity.

Nottingham – World Design Capital 2012?

I went to a small shindig last night at ChinaChina restaurant organised by Nottingham Ambassadors (City Council) and Invest in Nottingham, to raise profile for the city (in his introduction Simon Green, the city’s council’s Director of Sustainable Development was to keen to point out this was the whole of Nottingham and it’s professional community, not just his local authority’s boundaries) in a bid to become the next city of World Design Capital, which in 2008 is currently Turin.

Mr Green solicited our answers on a postcard – but scant was revealed at this stage of what emphasis the city’s bid would take – or indeed what the benefits would be to us as business owners and practitioners (or will we, like the City of Culture bid, be in position to leverage in more European cash?).

Further probing on the World Design Capital website says the award is for:

“The vision of the World Design Capital project is to promote and encourage the use of design to further the social, economic and cultural development of the world’s cities.

The designation provides a distinctive opportunity for the selected city to showcase their accomplishments in attracting and promoting creative industries, as well as demonstrate how government and industry work in concert with educational institutions, designers and its citizens to revitalise and reinveint the urban environment.”

A laudable aim, but initially my thoughts were:

1. What design industry?

2. Is the city actually offering any systematic, public support to the design sector – or just riding PR off the back of its well-coutured coat tails?

Spot the cynical consultant. Then after some reflection, and a chat with the lovely Debbie Bryan, a designer of exquisite knit wear and booches and resident of creative incubator The Hive, Nottingham is indeed brimming with design success stories – from pioneering computer games developers, great branding, web and design agencies of national calibre (like Souk Digital and Studio Output), a raft of homeware designers and most significantly the fashion industry, put on the map by local guru Mr Paul Smith – who says publicly he is backing the bid alongside other bid brand Speedo - now spinning off a clutch of gifted textiles, fashion and designer-maker names – many graduates from the great design courses at Nottingham Trent University.

Indeed, gatecrashing the fasionista club RSViP night after, quite a show of quality design people were showcasing there work in fashion, homeware and art.

Yet for me the buck stops at how the city (and region) is supporting and promoting its creative and design sector – and thus I fail to see how Nottingham could make a shortlist, despite a talent pool up with the best of England’s bigger cities.

As a starter-for-ten in the nearby, not especially design noteworthy Birmingham, the city supports the Plus design festival and Rhubarb Rhubarb international photography exhibition, alongside newer initiatives like Hello Digital digital film and media showcase. Not to mention Fused mag’s affordable art markets at the Custard Factory and a plethora of media, craft and arts events and exhibitions in between. Many are run commercially or altruistically – yet many are given some seed (or bush-like in some cases) finance or marketing clout from public institutes like Business Link, Arts Council, Marketing Birmingham and Birmingham City Council.

The Council’s official press release on the city’s bid state’s we need to consider several areas for the bid, including: our proposed programme of events, design in schools, regeneration and architecture. This seems quite geared towards architecture and the built environment to me, and as such perhaps Nottingham has developing some interesting work here in recent years.

Someone recently commented to me that Nottingham city officials expects the creative industries to happen without investing in it. Big capital bids like developing Broadway cinema, New Art Exchange and Nottingham Contemporary art gallery run contrary to this, but from my own experience of working in creative regeneration, projects need to be about much more than buildings and institutes, revenues need to flow through to support the fine grain of the creative city – which includes public spaces, networks, events, showcases, training and business support – either through European funding, regional funding, local funding from business rates or capital-turned-into-revenue endowments like the Bristol+ Creative Industries endowement fund I helped to set up with Bristol’s Watershed Media Centre in 2007 (though I’m disappointed that for a digital insitute they seem to be suprisingly unaccountable online as to how the £300K annual revenue is being spent or can be accessed – any further heads-up on the latest greatly received in comments).

And in this respect I fear Nottingham is many furlongs behind other English, let alone European cities. However, I do think events like this are important in starting to galavanise the design community – in all its depths, shapes and sizes – and wider creative business sector to discuss our own strengths, opportunities and maybe do something about promoting it ourselves.

And who knows, perhaps Nottingham Council will put their money where their mouth is and commit to a significant event or series of activities to promote local alongside international design talent and start to put Nottingham on the international map for design – and with it attracting some very necessary tourism and inward investment.

What do you think are our odds for success?

EM Media Producers Forum 20th Nov – Uncovering Digital Distribution

It’s unusual that an event on cross-platform and digital distribution takes place on my doorstep, and more so in the very lovely surroundings of The Walk Cafe, Nottingham’s creative-friendly answer to The Ritz for tea and cake served with a knowing old fashioned charm. And so to The Producers Forum, part of a series of events aimed at East Midlands film, tv and digital producers organised by screen agency EM Media.

A gathering of a few dozen producers – mainly film types but a few advertisers, games developers and consultants too – discussed the changing nature of distribution in the digital age. Lisa Trnovski (2am Films) and David Shear (Revolver) discussed their new horror Brit Flick Mum and Dad – apparently the first film to be released simultaneously on all formats – cinema, TV, DVD, digital download and pay-per-view -(although I seem to remember the same claims levied about Road to Guantanamo) which has caused some consternation amongst indie cinemas who see digital as cannibalising their pay-to-see local business – including the present Chair of Nottingham’s Broadway cinema.

Shear claims the strategy makes sense for the indie distributor in allowing one ‘hit’ to promote the film in all formats to achieve significant scale from a small promotion budget – and allows the producer to get paid quicker. Landmark deals from big studios like Harry Potter‘s simultaneous cinema launch with Sky on pay-per-view (ONLY $50!) are closing the typical 16 week cinema to DVD/digital window. Yet it’s small indies who are able, partly through necessity, to push the envelope in developing innovative and immediate forms of distribution – particularly for niche audience films.

Up next, Joel Kemp from Outso, a true success story of redundant ex-Climax studio developers making good by moving into outsourcing and recently the creation of virtual worlds, including Home for Sony Playstation. MixM8 is their own in development virtual world for music, where artists can create fan zones, give live concerts, and even create unique MP3 tracks and virtual items for sale. They’ve already got the ultra-hip Scroobius Pip and War Child on board. This is an exciting development and opens up genre and sector specific activities within virtual worlds (which are currently something of a scrum ground for unfocused selling of tit-tat and hard to target consumers) which is quite possibly the (long-term) future of social networking.

I was somewhat disappointed by the general discussion from the panel (which also included Michel Peters from Content Republic, Jason Burrows from Together Agency and Suzanne Alizart from EM Media) which took a somewhat narrow film-maker focus as to the limited possibilities of self-distribution. It’s a subject I’m currently researching for my Masters, but Michel Peters in particularly adamantly believed there was little possibility in producers to self-distribute and aggregation was the way forward – believing that even all the major UK cinema chains working together would be unlikely to yield a profitable digital distribution business as a web-based model needs to have global scale and negotiate at least rights across a continent.

This certainly seems to have been the case so far with the music industry where major retailers have failed to launch viable digital businesses. Yet I felt the panel failed to grasp that digital does mean direct contact with your customers, where aggregating data can be a long-play but can lead to greater independence and sustainability. I certainly know from my days at an indie TV producer than we were able to sustain a seven figure e-commerce business through early investment in online through creating our own community.

Jason Burrows believed the challenge is maintaining interest in the ‘information economy’ where the new buzz and product finds it harder than ever to get noticed – guerilla tactics are needed to reach the multi-tasking generations.

Andrew Cooper, chair of Broadway, believes we need to capitalise on the ‘zeitgeist’ Nottingham now has for film makers – where some producers claim they can noticed more becuase they are from Nottingham, in much the same way bands from Sheffield benefit from the ripple effect of The Arctic Monkeys et al.

I found the discussion high level and useful, but the network needs to start bringing together other senior media practitioners other than film people to move the discussion up a gear to get really interesting.

But of course, most importantly, cake…

Em Media cake

EM media cake going...

EM Media cake going..going...