Executive Producer: Digital / Multiplatform

When it comes to changing the world, I believe that scaring the shit out of people only works up to a point.

I really love this quote:

“Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech is famous because it put forward an inspiring, positive vision that carried a critique of the current moment within it. Imagine how history would have turned out had King given an ‘I have a nightmare’ speech instead.”

From the book Breakthrough by Nordhaus and Shellenberger

Nordhaus and Shellenberger argue that the environmental movement needs to reframe its message to use more positive language. Instead of relying on a narrative focused on apocalyptic imagery, death and destruction, we must start to use messages which help us to feel good about creating a more sustainable world.

I think this is true for many other types of public service media. 

Anti-bullying campaigns, Anti-knife crime, anti-social behaviour - they’re all based on a very suspect premise that you can wage war on something that in itself is a negative (remember the War on Terror? We all know how successful that turned out to be).

How could we start to re-frame these issues using a more positive language that gives people the feeling that they can move forwards and make things better? If we don’t, I worry that those who we are targetting will simply switch off and not listen to us anymore.

Or am I just being a typical sandal-wearing muesli-eating liberal?  Don’t hold back..

Part of what a producer (that’s me) does should be to design around what users really need, and to protect the design from becoming negatively influenced by political pressure from stakeholders (who unfortunately are often the ones paying for it).

I’ve seen some shocking cases of Stakeholderitis this year, but last week I saw an inspiring example of how to avoid it.

Nick Torday from Breast Cancer Care gave a wonderful talk at Aquent’s Third Sector Forum event about the 2 year redesign of their website.

What really impressed was me how the charity put user experience at the heart of the redesign process from start to finish. The first thing they did was to hire a user experience design and research company (Flow Interactive) to work with users to find out what they needed. This ended up being centred primarily around the cancer sufferers themselves, and specifically around each person’s position on the cancer “journey” (a fascinating concept which warrants a post in itself).

This was a huge change from the previous website, whose homepage was dominated by fundraising messages. The research suggested putting these messages to the background.  There was restistance from the fundraising and marketing departments, but by having solid research and making these into firm business cases the user experience won through.

To help things along, they involved people from different departments in the design, including a nurse with no previous new media skills who came on to the design team full-time.

The result? Huge increase in traffic and quality of experience, no decrease in funds raised, Impressive stuff.

We’ve just built a new toy called Frankenstory.

It’s an electronic version of the old game consequences where one player writes the first part of a story on an A4 piece of paper, then folds it over leaving only the last line visible - you know the one.

Do have a play and let me know what you think. I can honestly say that some of the results from testing have been side-splittingly funny.

It’s been developed by Mike Stenhouse (UX and developer extraordinaire) on development, Suzie Webb (scarily talented creative director) and myself - we’ve made a pretty good team I think and are going to do more stuff like this. Let us know if you’re up for a collaboration.

Oh yeah, and there’s the obligatory blog and twitter feed.:

One victim of C4’s recent cuts was 4Talent Networks. This was a shame for me - I felt they’d done some amazing things over the years, not least the magazine which was always brilliantly produced. Some of the team were colleagues of mine and I was always impressed with the quality of their work and their commitment to make a real difference to the UK’s creative community.

Not From Concentrate is a new project just being started up which will aim to pick up where the guys left off, with a new commercial, sustainable model and approach. It’s being fronted by James Estill who looked after 4Talent Networks at C4.

In his words:

“What’s driving me in this new venture is the absolute belief - and tangible proof - that outside the libraries of industry’s Little Black Books is a rich seam of untapped creative talent that’s just waiting to be mined.”

“I’ve had meetings with Talent Managers who bemoan the fact that they can’t find the Next Big Thing, but then refuse point-blank to receive any unsolicited material opportunity, preferring only to work with ‘proven successes’.”

I’ll be posting regularly my take on the progression of this ‘off radar approach’ to talent and content format development, from all sides of the business.

I’ve been helping out a bit on digital, and also providing a bit of creative facilitation around defining the specifics of the proposition (having been in the target market a few years ago myself..)

It’s early days right now, but do sign up to the blog if you’re interested in creativity and format development as James’ll be using it as a sounding board for his thoughts as he develops.

Also, please pass the site on to anyone with lots of talent and ideas who’s looking for an outlet and a bit of a boost.

Home Of Metal - Family Tree by Francesca Bunny Wiliams

Birmingham’s Capsule have a mighty interesting project on the go right now:

The ‘Home Of Metal‘ project aims to create a digital archive of everything heavy metal from the 60s to now. An online library of images, interviews, stories and various pieces of memorabila dedicated to telling the story of Metal and its unique birthplace.

Even though I’m not a massive metal fan, this project does has a personal connection for me. Heavy metal is the one form of music that the West Midlands can genuinely lay claim to. Received wisdom says that all metal bands trace back either to Sabbath or Zeppelin - both from the region. I also remember hearing Judas Priest talking about how their music was inspired by the sounds of industry that they walked past on the way to school - something which I experienced a lot in the last 10 years.

From a cultural point of view I think this project does something genuinely interesting. I think building a project like this based on material from the public is a fascinating approach. This makes it genuinely participative, relevant and far less stuffy than local heritage projects normally are.

As well as inviting contributions online, they’ve also run events which aim to bring people together to submit their objects, have their photographs taken and provide oral histories.

It’s a lovely idea - I hope it does well.

This article really depressed me.

Not only is the media making adults needlessly scared of teenagers, it’s having an impact on the teenagers themselves - they’re now becoming scared of each other.

Figures show more than half of the stories about teenage boys in national and regional newspapers in the past year (4,374 out of 8,629) were about crime. The word most commonly used to describe them was “yobs” (591 times), followed by “thugs” (254 times), “sick” (119 times) and “feral” (96 times).

As a result of the negative press, 80 per cent felt adults were more wary of them now than they had been a year ago. However, the most striking finding, according to the research, was that many were now more wary of boys of their own age.

This is so frustrating. Anyone that’s worked with young people knows how much potential they have and how wrong it is they’re so demonised by the media.

What can we do about this? Can digital / educational projects make an impact? How can we create projects which help and support young people in showing their potential?

C4 Education, Mediasnackers, Plings and c21Vox are all orgs I know that are doing good things. Who else? How do we get more of these projects going on a mass scale?

Hmm, so what to say about SXSW? Like many others, my feelings were mixed.

Before I say anything else, I am glad that I went, and do feel it was worth it -  however, it didn’t “blow my mind” in the way many people told me it would.

Here’s a quick run down of my thoughts.

Some frustrations:

Unimaginative session structures

Why were nearly all the sessions made up of people talking at us? Where was the interactivity? Where was the bit about coming up with new ideas?

The Hyperisland session about building teams was hugely inspiring  - it got me up, interacting and learning in a really physical way,  as did the Go Game (more below) but the rest was nearly all about sitting around and listening. I can do that at home.

Sessions pitched too low & no-one saying anything new

The SXSW panels seems better pitched at those who are either really technical or those who are just moving into the social media space. I found that as someone who reads a lot online there was nothing really new for me to make me go “wow!”.

Too big for networking

It sounds odd, but when a conference is that big, it’s hard to meet people.

It’s not something I normally struggle with, but I found there were very few chance meetings with interesting people and met few people until the Brit breakfast on the last day (where suddenly I started meeting lots of interesting folk). Where was the speed networking or other formatted networking opportunities? Again, why did the sessions not give us opportunities to meet each other?

The weather

Ok, not really SXSW’s fault but we managed to take the crappy UK weather with us

So.. now the whingeing’s over, here are a few highlights..

I met some amazing people and talked about lots of ideas

Even though the networking was difficult, I had loads of useful introductions which I’m massively looking forward to following up. Especially when it got sunny there were opportunities to talk ideas and this is always invaluable, especially when you’re far away from your normal work situation.

#kebab no 1

A bunch of Brits take over a session room at the last minute and cause complete pandemonium UK style. A real antidote to the seriousness and, dare I say, staleness of the rest of the event. I learned some stuff too..

The Go Game

Myself and three others (including Katz Kiely from Just-b) running around the conference centre performing tasks submitted by mobile. Fave tasks was performing a ballet piece about the financial crisis and turning a bin into a sex-change machine. Opportunities to make idiots of oneself are always highly appreciated.

I realise this sounds a bit like pissing around but it was genuinely a learning experience - it’s given me loads of ideas.

The Henry Jenkins Session on Game Based Learning

This was my panel highlight. If they release this one, listen to it - it was a seriously interesting debate. I’ll write some notes out on this when I have time.

Time to think

Being in sessions about inspiring stuff for days did help me to really think about the next couple of years and get inspiration. I came back pretty refreshed and with lots of ideas for the future.

Austin

What a fantastic town!

So would I go again?

In the end, the answer is yes.

The second half of the event especially was inspiring and fun - and my feeling is still that the event’s a great opportunity if it’s planned right.

I realise now that the one great opportunity at SXSW is the huge number of interesting people who are in one place at one time. I’m going to go again next year, but this time with a bunch of pre-arranged meetings. I’m going to be much more methodical about it so I get more bang for the buck.

So, that’s it - well done for getting all the way down here.

Also, thanks a huge amount to Screen West Midlands for part-funding my trip. It’s hugely appreciated.

Nice idea this - create your own avatar and add it to a “virtual march” in support of the land rights of the Indian Adivasi people.

Nice to see the large charities and NGOs finding ever more interesting ways of connecting with people. It’s a pretty crowded space now though so it’s important to be innovative or it’ll be easy to be drowned out

The Adivasi Virtual March

Whoopee - news just confirmed today!

When I get back from SXSW next week I’m going straight into a three month production contract with Nickelodeon, developing lots of interesting digital stuff for kids.

I’m doing 4 days a week there, and will be spending day no. 5 (and the rest..) as usual, hopefully developing lots interesting projects with interesting people.

I’ve been a bit nose to the grindstone recently so it’ll be nice to have a bit more time to get creative - let me know if you’re interested in talking ideas.

This has been making me gawp and bob my head up and down in equal measure today - if you haven’t seen Kutiman’s videos and you want to be impressed at what can be done purely with creative editing and some serious talent, then check them out.

These were all done by pasting together individuals playing instruments on Youtube. I just can’t even begin to get my head around how difficult this must have been to do.

This one’s my favourite - a lovely dubby number..

And as a nice parallel, Domestica (my old local washing machine shop in Moseley, Birmingham) does its own take on The Wire’s opening theme. (I think I actually bought a fridge from there once about 6 years ago..