It’s all go at Screen West Midlands at the moment (our local film, tv and digital agency). Here’s an advert for a mighty fascinating sounding job:
We’re looking for an inspirational, experienced and highly skilled individual to support and drive the region’s rapidly changing media landscape.
The new senior level post of Head of Innovation and New Markets will be responsible for delivering over £10 million of investment in the West Midlands’ media industries, developing creative and technological innovations, reaching new markets, negotiating high level partnerships across the board from blue chip companies to digital leaders. You will also be charged with developing a skills strategy that supports the needs of the changing media environment in the West Midlands.
Sounds pretty cool. Let em know if you’re interested.
After posting about the Personal MBA last February, we started up a Birmingham group in March and have spent 2007 reading some great (and some not so great) books about business in all its forms. We’ve just had a summer break and will be re-starting in October.
Two highlights for me have been:
The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun. A really great guide to management and leadership; well worth it as a complement to highly structured methodologies such as Prince.
Getting Things Done by David Allen. If you’ve seen me in person at any point in 2007 I’ve proabably chewed your ear off about this one. It has genuinely transformed my working life.
I recommend giving the Personal MBA a go if you want to learn more about business but don’t have the time or the money to pay for a real MBA course (or if like me you think they’re over-rated and expensive).
Our group is pretty varied: we have amongst us an assistant head-teacher; three people involved in entrepreneurship education; an IT business owner; two digital consultants and a photographer.
The debates following each book’s discussion have been most interesting for me. It’s fascinating how people from such different disciplines can talk about a single subject from different, but empathetic and complementary perspectives. There’s a big gap between photography and IT but it works really well.
People are coming and going all the time so if you’re interested in getting involved let me know.
Here’s a quick run-down of the day, including a few interviews I did with some of those involved.
[12:00pm]
I’ve come down to the Spread Eagle Hotel in Midhurst West Sussex to catch the last part of the BBC Innovation Labs South 2007 project. We’ve had two West Midlands agencies in the running this week (383 Project and Persuaders Media) so on behalf of Digital Central I’ve come to see how they get on.
The Innovation Labs is a nationwide challenge set by the BBC. Each year they ask a number of companies to pitch, then if succesful further develop innovative ideas around communicating in new ways with their audience. If the ideas go down well, the companies may be commissioned for futher developmental work with a view to some being used by the BBC in the long term.
For more info on the project background it’s worth checking out the original brief.
The week by all accounts has been a very intense, focussed period of activity. Each group has been working through their ideas with help from a number of established mentors with a view to final presentations delivered today. I must say everyone seems very chipper even though no-one seems to have had any sleep!
I’ve come down to catch the last part of the presentations (which I’m watching right now) and to be here for the final decisions later today.
[12:30 pm]
The presentations are now finished. I caught the last five, including Persuaders Media whose pitch I must say I thought was very impressive. Their idea centres around a sports based game which aims to get young people to be more active and works both on virtual and actual level. I won’t try to describe it here as I won’t do it justice but I’m sure they’ll be putting more info up on their own site soon.
Nice to see Fitz providing a bit of musical accompaniment too.
[12:45 pm]
I just had a chat with John and Sukhi from 383 Project who pitched an idea around new, graphical ways of delivering content.
I also spoke to Matt Marsh from Firsthand Experience, a user research and design strategy consultancy. Matt was one of the mentors and I asked him for his thoughts on the week so far:
[16:00]
We’ve just had the final results.
First, the mentors gave their own awards – including “Best Use of Virtual Characters” for Persuaders Media and “Best Storytellers” for 383 Project.
The commissioners then went through each agency one by one with feedback and decisions on further commissions. Here’s how the West Midlands companies got on:
383 Project:
Although 383’s idea wasn’t given further funding, the feedback they received was one of the best I heard out of all the companies.
Some quotes from the commissioners:
“One of the best projects I’ve seen in the 4 weeks of doing this”
“You are people we can do business with”
“You have clear visual skill especially when working with 14-16 year olds”
The commissioners clearly felt that they wanted to work with 383 Project in the future so I imagine this will lead on to some really interesting stuff.
It’s worth remembering that from the BBC’s point of view the Innovation Labs is just as much about finding new talent than just the ideas that are developed - 383 did very well in this area.
Persuaders Media
The response to Persuaders Media’s project was exceptionally positive – the main problem being that the commissioners felt that the idea was “Too big for the BBC” (their own words!).
Also there was an issue raised in that BBC Sport doesn’t have an agenda to get kids to be more active.
In light of this Matt Locke felt that the idea would suit the 2012 Olympics New Media agenda better and so will be putting some time into helping the agency pitch directly to the 2012 New Media department.
Matt Marsh, in my interview with him felt that the Persuaders’ project was the best one he’d seen all day (full interview above).
I spoke to (a very tired) Stephen and Fitz from Persuaders Media after the project to get their reactions.
I think this is great news for both companies and fantastic to see West Midlands agencies doing so well in a national project like this.
The response to this was very positive - as well as getting in touch with Ben from Inventicus who has already been researching the idea (and was looking for partners), Laura from Unlimited also responded saying she’d been looking into setting up something similar to The Hub in Birmingham.
Lawrence Cairns-Smith from The Studio in Cannon St. (ex Orange Studio) also got in touch as well a number of people who said they’d love to use a space like this if it existed.
So we’re getting together for a meeting next Thursday (5th April), 6pm at the Kitchen (Custard Factory) to see how we can move forward with this. Laura will hopefully from this point on be spending a significant portion of her time devoted to the project so it looks like there’s real potential for this to happen.
If anyone else is interested in coming along then please do - the more input the better.
Also I’d really like to canvas some opinion before the meeting so if you have any.
What kinds of features would you like in a coworking space? Where would you like it to be? How often would you use it?
Either respond using comments or email me direct.
I’ve recently been chatting to Adam and Lee, two of the new owners of the Rainbow Pub in Digbeth, (Birmingham UK) and they’re looking for someone to run a monthly film night. Actually, every Monday’s going to be a film night but three promoters have already stepped forward so they’re looking for one more.
On a more general note, it’s great to see a new injection of energy being put into the place. All respects to the previous owners who made the place one of the best venues we’ve ever had in Birmingham but no-one’s in doubt that it had gone down the pan a bit in the last year.
They have a big refurb going on at the moment and there’s going to be a reopening on the weekend of the 27th (at which I may be playing, I’m not sure). They’ve even reinstated the website events list!
When they return it sounds like the events are going to be quite a bit more diverse than in the past, which I definitely think will be a good thing.
So if anyone’s interested in getting involved with the film night, send me an email and I’ll pass it on.
Being someone who likes to move around between places while I’m working, and who does sometimes miss sitting in an office with a group of other like-minded people, I was really interested by an post on Co-working spaces I read on the Creativity Exchange blog today.
The idea is to create a flexible working space which can be hired out whenever necessary but more importantly to create a social space and sense of community around the space. As the post put it (sort of) “Part cubicle, part coffee shop”
I think this is exactly the kind of space we need in Birmingham City Centre and / or in Eastside. I’d use it. It fits exactly into a lot of what I think Glenn Howells was trying to say about the importance of dialogue to the development of the creative industries at the Eastside Dialogues last year.
One of the interesting things is that the idea has a wiki which spaces all over the world can use to share information and best practice on how to set one of these places up as well as finding other people to collaborate with when doing so. Having checked it out I’m pleased to see there are already plans to set one up in Birmingham. I’ve emailed Ben who’s proposed the idea to find out more and will post more if and when he gets back to me.
In the meantime I’d be interested to know what people’s thoughts on this are. Would you use it if there was one here? What features would you like it to have?
A great example of how to mix online and offline elements to create a great participative project. Check out the website and tell them who you think should be projected in gigantic letters across Birmingham City Centre.
Touted as a way to "Master Business Without Spending a Fortune", the basic idea of the Personal MBA is that instead of spending tens of thousands of pounds doing a traditional MBA in a business school, you spend a tiny fraction of the money on reading a preselected list of books which have been chosen to provide a solid background in business. You can then discuss them online with a group of like-minded people. For more on the idea and the list of books take a look at the manifesto. I think this is a really excellent idea and perfect for someone like me who’s got better ways of spending 20 grand than paying for the heating in a lecture room. I find studying books the most valuable way of learning, second of course to actually jumping in feet first and trying things out, and this method provides a nice way of tying the two things together. I’m thinking of starting a little group in Birmingham, if anyone’s interested in giving it a go then please get in touch. We have three on board already for a trial run. We’re going to start with Getting Things Done by David Allen. I’ve read some of this book already and it’s probably the most useful thing I’ve picked up at all year.
This conference took place yesterday and was organised by UCE (Charlotte Carey and Sara Harris were the organisers)
The theme of the conference was one that I’m particularly interested in, namely how to educate creative people on how to run their businesses better, specifically within Higher Education.
I have to say that it was well-focussed, well-attended and well-organised conference (and it’s not often I say that!). It was great to see UCE at the forefront of a debate attended by HE institutions and policy makers from all around the country.
What was interesting was that everyone seemed to basically agree on what needs to be done. The day had a hugely positive vibe and a feeling of strong alignment between everyone.
Specifically I was hugely encouraged by what the DCMS were saying - pretty much in line with what we have been saying for some time as far as I could tell. One of the major points on which everyone agreed was that enterprise and business is usually only glanced over in a very cursory way within HE courses. Everyone agreed that this needed to be changed, but that to do so was going to take some time as it involved a total shift in the culture of these institutions.
I do think it’s vital that creative students are taught about enterprise and business. However I also think it’s vital that this support continues after college, as these are often the times when the help is most needed.
I’ve been noticing recently how many more people I am meeting in Birmingham who seem to be living successful (and in some case incredibly well-paid) lives as self employed creatives.
For all my positivity about the creative industries until recently I’ve never been totally sure that this was ever going to happen. Everyone just assumes that creative people are always going to be skint and that’s hard to fully shake off.
However what I’ve realised is that in a place like this the market actually grows the more talented people there are around.
A good example is photography - the most succesful photographers I know aren’t waiting to be commissioned, they’re actually inspiring people to commission them by showing them the amazing effect their images can have.
This to me is one of the wonderful things about the creative industries. If you want some work, all you have to do is think of a new idea that’s going to make someone’s life, (or some company’s profits) better and ask them to pay you for it. Simple really!