Archive for the 'Trends' Category

I’ve been invited to speak on Saturday at the Social Media and Photography one-day conference at the London College of Communication (LCC), part of the University of Arts, London. My brief is to give an overview of social media for the students at LCC while other speakers will be looking more specifically at photography within social media, such as Flickr and Photosynth.

Here’s the summary:

“Forms of social media, in which the user is also the author, are transforming the role of photography in contemporary culture. On sites such as YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, MySpace and Second World users generate and share content, eemingly side-stepping the influence of corporations, governments and editors&;though new forms of censorship are on the rise. What attitudes and assumptions are built into the structures of existing forms of social media? What can we learn about ourselves, our moment in history, and about photography (and video) from looking at social media more carefully?

Speakers will include Roger Hargreaves, Yang-May Ooi, Alan Sekers, Craig Smith, Lucy Soutter and Paul Tebbs.”

The conference is organised by my friend Lucy Soutter, an art photographer and a lecturer in photography at LCC, and the other speakers are her professor colleagues. I’m looking forward to hearing what they are going to talk about as it will be a great opportunity to learn from some academic experts.

In my session, I’m going to focus on what social media means for creative artists and those working in the creative industries, especially where a lot of content on the web is created for free and distributed for free.

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For those attending the conference, you can download the slides from my presentation Social Media: Free for All? - the password will be available at the conference.

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This is a cross-post from my arts and writing blog, Fusion View

Following from my post on SlushPileReader.com, where readers can vote for unpublished manuscripts to get a publishing contract, Amazon.com and Borders are also getting in on the act with their own versions of the democratic publishing ideal.

See the January magazine article Looking for a New Publishing Paradigm

These business models all rely on one of the characteristics of social media - user-participation. On the bookmarking site, Digg.com, you can bookmark on online article that you like and it will appear in a public page on Digg. Other readers who then follow the link to read the article you bookmarked can then vote for that item - the more votes it has, the higher the ranking on the Digg page and more readers will see it. Wikipedia is dependent on users making and editing entries.

In general, experts take the view that only 10% of visitors on a site participate in any active way eg leaving comments or other action that contributes to the site or enterprise offered by the site. Digg is very technology and sports biased. I expect that the people who populate Wikipedia are serious fans of whatever topic they are writing about and enjoy the kudos of being an expert. Many other user-generated site I’ve come across has a strong bias towards the interests of young guys with a tecchy, gadget-, sports-, or auto-focused interest. While there are many book lovers who are young guys, I have a sense that the majority are women who love books, the physical things, and may not have such a passion for reading their novels online - and have less of a fervour about being an expert. I would be very interested to watch how these publishing business models pan out and whether there’s going to be a bias towards sci-fi, fantasy and male-readership genres.

I also note that these ventures are all US based. America is notoriously self-focused when it comes to book publishing and it is hugely difficult to get your book published if you’re not American - even if, as a non-native, you write about a US setting with American characters, it’s very difficult to get it past the US literary sniffer dogs. I wonder if these ventures will let in more non-American manuscripts or if we will still find only US books getting through. (I don’t know if there’s a condition of entry that rules out non-US manuscripts - does anyone know?)

Am I portraying gender stereotypes here? What do you think? Please add a comment.

Pic: thanks to archangeli on flickr.com

Following on from my post about the founding father of the web, Tim Berners-Lee, who created HTML and the follow up, giving a bite-sized explanation of Web 2.0, here is an excellent video that animates the whole story from the humble beginnings of HTML code to the dynamic interactive arena that is Web 2.0 - and how Web 2.0 and social media is now making us re-think copyright, authorship, rhetoric and just about everything else.

Thanks to Lucy Soutter for sending me this video.

Last week, I attended a City Womens Network drinks reception hosted by haute couture fashion designer Roubi L’ Roubi in his studio in the City. I chatted to Roubi about the presentation I had just given at the Copyright Licensing Agency earlier that afternoon.

In contrast to the social media approach to content - where bloggers freely use photos from other websites and video-makers create mash-up movies from other people’s footage - the traditional approach to content is to protect it from being used by others without financial payment.

The main theme of my presentation to the rights-holders was that there are other currencies and values to be gained from taking a more free and easy approach to your content - kudos and community, fun and creativity can be used by content creators to disseminate their work and their reputation more widely than the old protectionist approach and in this way, create a more valuable brand and a larger market for their product.

Roubi, who creates amazing ceramics and large canvas paintings as well as beautiful fashion designs, nodded enthusiastically. “It’s much better to share and be open with your work than to hide it all away!” he said. In the fashion business, designers look at designs created by others for inspiration and develop and build on those designs to make something entirely new - but there are also those who copy an idea out-and-out. Roubi’s take on this is: “If someone copies you, it’s an inspiration for you to get new ideas, keep moving ahead, keep innovating. That’s business. You have to be a leader and keep creating and being the best. You can’t stand still in business. Creatively, it’s a good way to be challenged to come up with new ideas.”

This entrepreneurial take from a successful creative designer was striking for its contrast to the worries and concerns expressed at the copyright meeting earlier that day. As a novelist, I completely understood those concerns from the afternoon discussions and yet, as someone involved in a creative online business, I also immediately connected with what Roubi was saying. Looking at the social media, marketing and communication businesses out there online, it’s easy to see that the millenial approach of openness and sharing is very much to the fore. Here on the ZenGuide blog, I offer advice and tips and share my views for free in the same spirit.

Roubi told the story of a jewellery designer who had created an innovative design for a delicate and exquisite necklace. The necklace was sold only through one retail outlet in London. The designer had not sold many over the years but had not wanted to make it available in more outlets because she was afraid it might be copied. It didn’t make any business sense, Roubie commented. His story reminded me of the self-defeating approach of the Bertolt Brecht estate I mentioned earlier this week.

I want to leave the last word to Roubi, who emailed me some additional thoughts on succeeding in life and in business:

“My two rules of thumb:

- open your little black book and share with others.

- be transparent with work and open to others.

They serve me well and make me enjoy attracting people with same attitude to life.”

Last week, I gave a presentation at the Copyright Licensing Agency’s annual open meeting about The Impact of Web 2.0 on copyright issues. It was a packed hall with over 180 people, many of them standing. The delegates ranged from authors and content producers to publishers and librarians and knowledge management professionals in education and business organisations. Althought I couldn’t make it for the whole of the round table discussion on digital information and copyright chaired by Chris Bryant, MP, I managed to catch the tail end of it. I also had the chance after the event to speak to a few of the delegates, including representatives from the BBC, a photographic rights agency, a publisher and a corporate knowledge management professional.

I’m jotting down here some of my impressions of the issues from the conference - these are no more than impressions and vignettes of the discussions as they were aired and raise more questions for debate rather than giving firm answers.

• The government is making funding available for schools to help students become more internet- and social media- literate but there are apparently delays due to concerns about schools using materials off the internet in breach of copyright. However, there are apparently special sites offering copyright-free material for schools and educational establishment for just this purpose. But, overall, can the government with all its unwieldy bureaucratic machinery be the right instrument for change is the fast moving area of online technology and networked communication and enterprise?

• Is digital rights management here to stay? Or will content producers like the BBC have to accept the fact that they will have to let go off their rights to a product some time after it’s been produced?

• At the moment, the likes of the BBC can still find a market to sell its high quality products like its natural world series etc due to the fact that pirated versions on the internet are of low quality. It is probably not long before the technology will be freely available to upload high quality pirated versions online. What then for the original content producers?

• Is there a future for book writers when digital readers become more widely available? At the moment, book lovers are still attached to the physical book but as the young techno-loving iPod wearing millenials and their children start to outnumber us oldies, will they adapt more enthusiastically to electronic book readers? If so, will that be an opportunity for “bijou” writers who don’t produce blockbusters to gain a wider readership through digital distribution because they won’t be at the mercy of the bookshops for distribution? Or will it be a threat because their work can now be easily copied and freely distributed illegally?

• Chris Bryant mentioned the estate of German playwright Bertolt Brecht. The estate were apparently restrictive for a long time in granting rights for Brecht’s works to be used, quoted, performed or edited. For example, his plays in their original would run for over 3.5 hours which is difficult to market to today’s theatre-going audiences. However, they have recently been more open in rights granting and the result has been that more Brecht plays are being performed and the increased exposure generally from the dissemination of his works through freer rights has resulted in greater revenue returns for the estate.

• The panellists in the main discussion all called for flexibility in managing copyright - yes, it is important to protect and value the products of creativity and hard work but in this digital age, it’s important to be flexible to enable the sharing of information and knowledge.

• I was struck by the comment of a university representative about the difficulties of printing off 50 copies of an online article to include in a student pack for discussion on one of the university’s courses. It’s ironic in that the founding principle of the World Wide Web was that the technology was meant to make information freely available for all…

What do you think? Have you had experiences around copyright issues and social media or online digital technologies? I’d love to hear your views - please add a comment or email me.

Photo: of Sony Digital Reader thanks to askdavetaylor.com

ymcla

Today, I’m going along to the Copyright Licensing Agency to give a presentation at their open meeting on the impact of digital media and Web 2.0 for copyright stakeholders. It was somewhat last minute as their original speaker for the Web 2.0 segment, Giles Colbourne, a web usality expert at cxpartners, was unable to attend due to a conflicting engagement in the US. Giles asked me to step in last week so I spent most of this last weekend, putting together the presentation and slides.

While thinking about the issues to bring together for this talk, I found myself having a vested interest in both sides of the rights-holding debate.

As a a writer in print media, with two novels published, a third book (non-fiction) in the works and articles published in magazines to my name, I am fully in favour of my creative rights being protected by legislation. The reason is primarily to do with the monetary currency that I receive in return for my work from the bodies who publish my writing. As a professional writer, I expect to be remunerated for the work I create.

As a blogger and free-wheeling consumer of social media on the internet, I’ve got used to the idea that stuff from the web should be free - other than real-world-type things that you have to buy like CDS, books, groceries online or software of a certain level of high complexity that is worth paying money for. People create videos on Youtube and give you an embed code so you can embed (publish) it on your own site. Musicians create podsafe music for the joy of distributing their music to millions online even though they may not be able to get a record deal. I spend as much time - if not more - writing on my blog for free, compared to how much time I spent writing my novels, for which I was paid. Others offer their photos under the Creative Commons Licence so we can enjoy their creative work for free. The idea of having to pay for social media stuff in order to remunerate their creators feels like anathema.

This makes me feel strangely schizophrenic.

But I think the answer to breaking through the apparent conflict is in how we value the content we create in different media.

In my post last week on the world’s first website, I discussed the founding principle behind the world wide web and social media - the principle that information should be freely available to anyone. This is seemingly at odds with the traditional view that information and intellectual property has value and if you want it you need to pay for it.

In the traditional model, the value lies in scarcity and protection. In the new social media model, value lies in abundance and in sharing.

What I’ll be exploring in my talk to the CLA is what value the web’s open source principle has to offer to us offline content creators and publishers - and how we might look to take advantage of it, which I hope will be an interesting and useful approach for the writers, publishers and rights agents who will be attending.

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For delegates attending the CLA open meeting, you can download my presentation slides on The Impact of Web 2.0 - I will be making the password available at the meeting.

ymcla

Laurence van der Posts book “The Bushmen of the Kalahari” instilled in me an awe for the skills of the bushmen trackers in the eternally magnificent African landscape. Now in the 21st generation, their ancient skill that has been passed down through generations is being enhanced by PDAs - personal digital assistants. According to the International Trade Forum:

The high-tech wildlife trackers have been used against poachers, in ecotourism, environmental education, research and monitoring. The free software that links up traditional knowledge to electronic data mapping has been applied around the world to social surveys, organic farming, integrated pest management and disaster relief.

I love this photo that shows how comfortably the uber-modern sits with the traditional.

A survey by BurstMedia in June this year on women and the internet reveals that over half of the women (54.5%) in the US say the Internet is their primary source of information when researching products they might purchase. The survey sampled over 1,800 women aged 25 and upwards. Their next port of call is to ask family and friends - but only 10.9% of the sample do that. Newspapers and magazines come in at 9.9% and brochures and pamphlets at 5.1%, with radio as the last port of call with a rather sorry 1.3%.

While this survey is specific to the US, I expect that you might infer a similar tech-savvy approach to shopping in most of the industrialised nations where women are empowered and have the oppportunities for self-actualisation and financial independence.

For businesses, this represents a huge opportunity to tap into these eager consumers online. The key factor here is that these women are using the Internet to find out about products before or as they purchase. If your business has products and services that are of interest to women, you could really capitalise on this with creating informative and user-friendly pages that will help these potential customers in making their shopping decisions. While they are on your site, reading up on all your useful data and advice, they are engaging with your brand and your online presence - all great for marketing and customer-retention as well as conversion of these potential customers into actual ones.

One thing to remember - you don’t have to target your customers in a gender-biased way eg this opportunity is about more than handbags and pink accessories. Women have to buy household goods, computer equipment, iPods - even power tools - just like men. So whatever you sell, there’s an opportunity here to help all your customers with their buying decisions, not just “the ladies”.

Blogs are an easy way to share your opinions and reviews about products. Here are some to explore:

Shiny Shiny - hmm, very pink and very focused on the gender thing but a good and useful site in spite of that.

Endgadget - the ultimate gadget guide

Rugged Notebooks - a number of bloggers blog about this hardy product, one of whom is digitalnomad, a ZenGuide regular commenter.

Amazon of course have the customer review sections for all their products. I rely on those fairly heavily when considering whether or not to buy a particular book or digitial gadget they are offering. Whether it’s the case or not, customer reviews always feel as if you’re getting a range of opinions and not just the store or manufacturer’s party line.

Photo: thanks to brittanycondo.com

Elton John recently ranted against the internet and social media, according to Neowin.net and other news sources. He is quoted as saying:

“The internet has stopped people from going out and being with each other, creating stuff. Instead they sit at home and make their own records, which is sometimes OK but it doesn’t bode well for long-term artistic vision. It’s just a means to an end. We’re talking about things that are going to change the world and change the way people listen to music and that’s not going to happen with people blogging on the internet. I mean, get out there — communicate. Hopefully the next movement in music will tear down the internet. Let’s get out in the streets and march and protest instead of sitting at home and blogging. I do think it would be an incredible experiment to shut down the whole internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced over that span. There’s too much technology available. I’m sure, as far as music goes, it would be much more interesting than it is today.”

It reminded me that there are still many people out there who don’t know much about online social culture and who for some reason don’t want to know about it. I think it’s a shame for them - there is so much creativity and experimentation online in terms of self-expression and artistic expression as well as increased communications between people and cultures.

Here are some examples:

Music

There are a number of virtual recording studios like Net Studio where musicians can collaborate with other musicians anywhere in the world, not just those who are in the same town as they are.

Podsafe music is music that can be used for podcasting without paying a royalty. Podsafe networks allow musicians to distribute their music globally over the internet and there are internet stations like Accident Hash that specialise in playing podsafe music. And a lot of it is really good stuff, too.

Individuals doing funky things with music for themselves and their friends and in the process becoming music legends online - like this young Korean guy playing Pachelbel’s Cannon like you’ve never heard it before.

Books and Blogging

Bhagdad Burning was a blog by a young Iraqi girl which was subsequently turned into a prize-winning book of the same name.

Blood, Sweat and Tea is a book that was compiled by the blog of a London Ambulance driver, Random Acts of Reality

The Blooker Prize is an annual prize for the best blog, modelled on the Booker Prize for books.

Photography

Andrew Losowksy started a collection of photographs of doorbells in Florence, Italy on Flickr, the photo-sharing site. He would write stories to accompany the pictures. He gained a huge following online for his stories and the photos and stories have now been transformed into a book The Doorbells of Florence that has won the Blooker prize.

There’s a whole genre of photography around the theme of a daily photo from your city eg City Daily Photo Blog, Santiago de Chile Daily Photo Blog, Brighton Daily Photo etc

There is a group on Flickr that creates short stories using a series of five photos.

Art

I love this web installation by filmmaker and artist Miranda July - it’s filmic, witty and a commentary on websites all at the same time: http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/

Rhizome is a site that posts news about new media art and the intersection of technology and art, with great links to a vast range of different art websites and blogs.

Social Networks

As for making connections, blogging and social networks like Facebook help people connect so much more easily than in the days of snail mail. I’ve personally made some great new friends in Malaysia through the litbloggers network there and I enjoy using the online telephony service Skype to connect with my family. Facebook and Twitter has enabled me to keep in contact with a range of friends in the UK and Malaysia that I might otherwise not keep in contact with. In many ways, I feel I have a much richer social life through both offline connections with my regular local friends and online connections with those who are further away or in another country.

In my view, the things that are going to “change the world and change the way people listen to music” - and for that matter, change how we relate, connect and create - are already happening online with great energy and creativity. With or without the likes of Elton John.