Digital Lifescapes

How do you prosper in a highly competitive world where talent, creativity and imaginative ideas are the most important commercial currencies? Can spawning new digital technology start-ups act as a lasting stimulus in an otherwise ailing economy within a developed nation? These are questions that are top-of-mind for me. It’s an intriguing topic for others as well. It seems that supporting high-tech entrepreneurs is now viewed by many political leaders, from all parts of the globe, as a potent public policy remedy that may help them solve their local economic development challenges – particularly a lingering high unemployment rate. As I walked through the exhibits on the South by Southwest ( SXSW ) trade show floor, I wondered what all these national and regional public sector agencies hoped to achieve with their presence at this year’s Interactive festival in Austin, Texas. From my own trend-spotting perspective, what was the big attraction this year? Once again, the “SXSW Start...

The following is a list of exhibiting vendors or companies that presented at panel sessions and captured my attention at the SXSW Interactive event -- last week in Austin, Texas. I encourage you to check out their Web sites to learn more. Music Metric provides insight and understanding into consumer behavior online globally for the entertainment industry. They aggregate and analyze all music related information available on the web. From websites mentioning an artist or release, the social networks frequented by music fans, peer to peer networks used to trade music and anywhere music fans leave a comment, they aim to be there and to be tracking the activity. OverBlog is a blogging platform in constant evolution. They say it's the biggest blog platform in Europe (based in Paris, France) and right now is undergoing massive development for a new release in 2012. OverBlog already has many features: including communities, monetization agreements, lots of statistics and a user g...

What I didn't see at South by Southwest Interactive ( SXSWi ) this year is just as important as all the interesting things that I did experience. So, I'll start with some of the most notable topic departures from the prior years. The denial, by big media company executives, of the digital disruption phenomenon is much less pervasive than in the past . As an example, blaming others for the continued downward spiral of the newspaper industry now seems futile . The backlash from the industry's SOPA and PIPA lobbying effort may have already tempered the traditional media's trustworthiness mantra. Moreover, one particular never-ending scandal is a constant reminder of the apparent credibility gap that exists today. References to "User Generated Content" are gone from panel discussions, as everyone now recognizes that digital storytelling and self-publishing is open to anyone with a point of view -- via the internet, enabled by numerous free cloud-based t...

This is the first in a series of reports that I will share about SXSWi 2012 related events. Once again, I'll be attending the Interactive conference and trade show in Austin, Texas. Forty British digital companies were selected to participate in the UK Trade and Investment ( UKTI ) Mission to South by Southwest 2012. Each of the companies joining the mission are listed below, in alphabetical order: Acknowledgement Ltd Acunu AMEE Analytics SEO Anywhere.me Codegent CultureLabel Ltd DAD Technology Ltd DeadSoci.al Eventless Ltd Foodsplore Fortune Cookie Gravity Thinking Hailo Happiest Ltd Harvest Digital Milky Tea MOFILM Ltd Musicmetric Net Communities Ltd Numiko Oil Productions Palringo PlayMob Portal Entertainment Psonar Ltd Realeyes Recite ShareMyPlaylists Shopcade Sign-Up.to Sohnar SoJoLife StickyWorld Ltd The Unit Thrive Software TWAds (Addiply) Ltd ustwo Yazino I look forward to the opportunity to connect with the UK Digital Mission del...

The following is a list of exhibiting vendors or other companies that presented at panel sessions and captured my attention at the SXSW Interactive event -- earlier this week in Austin, Texas. I encourage you to check out their Web sites to learn more. LeNewz is based on data discovery technology that mines and analyzes news feeds to identify main topics and group them into a picture. The power of leNewz is twofold: it summarizes today's news on a single screen, and enables zooming in and out of news pages from multiple media sources. Storify is a way to tell stories using social media such as Tweets, photos and videos. You search multiple social networks from one place, and then drag individual elements into your story. You can re-order the elements and also add text to give context to your readers. Yapper allows anyone to simply build mobile applications without writing a single line of code. It goes beyond simple mobile apps to offer a mobile publishing platform for m...

Brand marketers in a variety of different industries are beginning to accelerate their multimedia production and distribution efforts. They're acting more like non-fiction storytellers and commercial publishers, as they create new forms of digital content. This established trend was one of the significant themes at South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) 2011. In addition, the early-adoption of Transmedia Storytelling techniques -- by a relative few forward-looking organizations -- was the noteworthy emerging theme. I attended several conference sessions on these topics. Here's my summary of the commentary shared at the event and the apparent implications to savvy marketers. Don't You Dare Call Them Journalists "Brave New World: Debating Brands' Role as Publishers" produced a lively discourse among panelists who believe that purchasing ad space in a trade publication is obsolete. Instead, now marketers just create their own site on the topic. Howev...

I’m attending SXSW Interactive once again in March. As in prior years, over the course of five days, I’ll assess the overall themes that garner my attention and then write a summary of the most compelling storyline that emerges. Based on the buzz leading up to the event, and having reviewed the current schedule of SXSWi Sessions, I can somewhat predict three key theme possibilities: The previously independent Music, Film and Interactive festivals will continue to converge around common-ground -- as an example, with Transmedia or cross-communication projects becoming more mainstream activities this year.   The term “User-Generated Content” will likely disappear as a description applied to all low-budget content creators -- it’s inappropriate for the multitude of talented writers, musicians and videographers that produce quality digital media.   Bloggers that contribute to Content Factories (aka content farms), and the companies that host their material, will be targeted as...

The following is a short list of exhibiting vendors, service providers and others that captured my attention at the SXSW Interactive event earlier this week in Austin, Texas. I encourage you to check out their Web sites to learn more. The two basic themes I noticed were new tools that aggregate your online presence on various social media sites -- most are attempts at creating a dashboard-like solution. The other noteworthy theme was a variety of easy to use do-it-yourself content management and microsite publishing tools, with a resurgence of basic HTML page designs (SEO-friendly CSS rather than Adobe Flash). Awareness has created what they call "social marketing software" -- it's an integrated good-enough solution to building online communities for those who prefer not to apply the free best-of-breed tools that essentially do the same thing. Sobees created what they call "my social client" -- the latest release adds Digg to the list of supported ser...

As the South by Southwest Festival of 2009 comes to an end, let's acknowledge the open unConference events -- as people from all over the world connected together and joined their Indie Music or Independent Film "community of interest" while in Austin, Texas. I've launched the GeoBrava Media project, in celebration of all the independent talent that stays true to their art-form -- passionately creating new digital media content -- regardless that their work is considered unCommercial by the legacy big-media companies. Free and Open Distribution Models The rise of the unLabel music production and open distribution model is a revolt in response to the traditional record label's business practices. Ditto, with the rise of the unStudio video production and open distribution phenomenon. A multitude of social media networking sites are creating the new open marketplace online, where the vast market supply is freely exposed to the awaiting eclectic market demand. The ...

There once was a time when a few big media companies ruled over the news and entertainment industry. All was calm, as long as everyone in a position of power agreed to play by the same dysfunctional rules. Access to the legacy content distribution ecosystem was tightly controlled and longstanding restraint of trade barriers were successful in ensuring that most attempts at innovation never saw the light of day. Tactics like pay-for-play payola schemes were able to perpetuate the content scarcity model that fueled the industry's efforts to limit and manipulate what was considered popular (pop), and how it was going to be marketed to the awaiting mass-media audience. The macroeconomic theory of supply and demand can not reach its full potential in a closed marketplace model that restricts access to the chosen few participants. However, the oligopoly regime of legacy big media companies loathed any notion of creating an open market. Re-Booting the Media Business Model Make no mis...

AngelouEconomics has released their first comprehensive economic impact assessment on the City of Austin from the South by Southwest (SXSW) Music, Film and Interactive Conference and Festival. Few entertainment industry events in the world can compare to the depth and breadth of SXSW -- given the range of activities, performers, presenters, and visitor attendees. In 2007, SXSW featured nine days of industry conference activities, six days of trade shows, a five-night music festival featuring over 1,500 artists in more than 70 venues, plus nine days and nights of film festival with more than 275 screenings in six venues. In total, it's estimated that the event last year was attended by more than 125,000 people. According to the AngelouEconomics assessment, the 2007 SXSW events were directly and indirectly responsible for injecting about $95 million into Austin's local economy. Digital Media Entrepreneurs That said, while the creative residents of Austin contribute to the city...

Since the beginning of time, storytelling was considered a core human trait for conveying events by combining gestures, expressions, sounds, images and words. Sharing stories was an essential part of culture and a means of instilling tribal knowledge. In fact, prehistoric cave drawings demonstrate the early use of symbolic figures representing the elements of simple storylines. As language skills evolved, oral stories were passed from generation to generation primarily by human memory. Later, with the development of writing, stories were recorded, then transcribed and shared more broadly. In the classical cultures of the world, the act of storytelling was believed to be inclusive -- everyone has stories to tell. Moreover, while some people were recognized for telling stories in a more engaging way than their peer group, the basic ability is innate to all humans. However, as civilizations progressed, communication of a narrative evolved into an art and science. Chronicled events...

This year the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival, a conference targeting web technology innovators and digital creatives from across the globe, will celebrate the 10th anniversary of its SXSW Web Awards, designed to honor web designers and developers who fuel the online world. Finalists in sixteen categories have been previously announced. Winners will be revealed at the upcoming SXSW Web Awards Ceremony presented by Adobe on Sunday, March 11 at 7:30 pm, during the SXSW Interactive Festival. This event will be hosted by web celebrity Ze Frank, best-known for his popular and comedic online videoblog, "The Show with Ze Frank." Over the past ten years, SXSW Web Awards entries have been a indicator of online trends and there's been a significant improvement in the overall caliber and complexity of entries with the evolution of dynamic content, web standards and coding technologies such as CSS. Current trends such as Web 2.0 and the growth of social networking si...

The South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Conference and Festival announced its complete lineup of panels, short films, retrospectives, and new additions to the feature film schedule. The panels lineup will conclude on Tuesday, March 13 with a special session entitled "Ready for Primetime: TV Comedy Today" featuring notable TV performers and producers such as Seth MacFarlane ('Family Guy'), Al Jean ('The Simpsons'), Rob Corddry (Fox's new show 'The Winner,' 'The Daily Show'), and more. Other notable additions to the panels lineup include: "A Conversation with Bill Paxton" on Saturday, March 10, the addition of filmmaker John Cameron Mitchell ('Shortbus') to the Monday, March 12 session "Sex Scenes Stay Hard," and a multimedia presentation by acclaimed animator Emily Hubley. The complete panels lineup and schedule will be on the SXSW Web site on Friday, February 16. "The panels aspect of the SXSW Film Festival has a...