Deb's SM Survey:

A new discovery in my research has been the New Media Consortium (NMC), an organization spurring creativity and innovation with many academic, artistic, and corporate partners.   They are putting on a Symposium on the Future of Communication  on December 4-5, 2007.  The location is in Second Life, but there is a still a registration fee.

Another site that looks promising at a quick glance is fuel4arts, an artists’ marketing site.  Free registration is required to access the materials; a cross-section of creative endeavors are represented with lots of useful information available.

The NMC site led me to the wiki for a workshop “50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story.”  The wiki includes a list of 50 free tools that can be used to combine audio, video, images, and sometimes cartoons.  A slide cast summary is also available.

I admit my Facebook profile is boring (but go ahead and friend me, anyway).  But with all the controversy over Facebook’s new Beacon advertising program  I’m glad I didn’t take the time to list every band or movie I like.  Who owns this data, and how can users take control back?  Among the many commentators on this issue,  Jason Calacanis and Doc Searls weigh in with two valuable and somewhat different perspectives.

(Which is how I found out that Doc’s role as a Berkman Center fellow is to head a project on Vendor Relationship Management.  How cool is that?)

I went to a great event tonight, a kickoff to MIT’s Future of Entertainment 2 Conference. Co-executive producer and writer Jesse Alexander and transmedia specialist Mark Warshaw from the TV show Heroes were at MIT to discuss the show and how they use transmedia elements.

I haven’t watched the show – yet. But I was impressed by what I learned at the panel and the commitment of the Heroes’ team to ensure that all products fit into the show’s cannon properly. They also discussed the balance between creating a multi-episode serial structure versus an episodic structure for more casual viewers. With the popularity of DVRs (they claim over 20% of their audience use one) and online viewing or downloading, complex stories can be taken in at the viewer’s own pace. But the networks are still focused on the broadcast audience.

The Heroes’ universe contains far more than the show, with multiple official websites featuring comics, interactive novels, games, webisodes, background mythology and more. A printed graphic novel is also available (and there are other products, like novels and video games, either in production or already available). Some characters were designed specifically to be utilized primarily on the web or in other spinoffs, not on the TV show.

On the economic side, this expansion of the story into many different forms is paying off. Advertisers are not only demanding product placement in the show, but also an online presence. This has included sponsorship that covered the production costs of online webisodes. (Commenting on the motivations behind the current writers’ strike, Alexander and Warshaw noted that most of these expansion materials are considered “promotional” and the writers don’t get any residuals from their sales or from advertising revenue associated with them.)

This transmedia approach is still new and changing rapidly. Networks are beginning to adapt on a national level, but haven’t yet realized that the internet means all shows have a global audience the moment they go on the air (or the net) in one country.

This discussion will be available in various forms from MIT. The official NBC page for the show is a great way to start your exploration if you’re a new fan, as I suspect I will be very shortly.

I had a great chat the other day with Len Edgerly, a technology evangelist and podcaster whose niche is working with arts organizations to help them see the possibilities in online media. Len led the great Arts 2.0 talk at Podcamp that I discussed in my last post, and had a lot of good ideas for me.

Len has enjoyed meeting visual artists who exhibit work in Second Life. He also has lots of questions. How many are there? What kind of money do they make? What about musicians who play in Second Life? I hope to talk to some of them and see what I can find out.

Len’s also a published poet, and had some recommendations in the literary realm. Science fiction and horror author Scott Sigler has used “bum rush the charts”-style techniques to get his book up the Amazon charts (and also creates podcast formats of many of his books, available at Podiobooks.com and elsewhere.)

In a slightly more traditional vein, the Poetry Foundation of America has a podcast which includes interviews with poets about the meanings of their work. Len feels that the informal but intimate atmosphere of a podcast will make poetry (and other fine arts) more accessible. As more people listen and comment, the formal arts institutions will slowly become more responsive and less elitist.

Poetry comparisons continued as we discussed the “snack media” meme recently revived by Jeremiah. In a poem, every word counts. Online media needs that intensity. Shorter is better. The haiku – the new standard for art on the internet?

Arts organizations have some of the same issues that corporations do with social media. Letting go of control, letting the public have their say. But many participants at Len’s talks are also very excited about the possibility of these new tools. Len hopes arts organizations will take a more active role in training their members on ways to use these new tools and bring more creative voices online.

Thanks, Len, for sharing your thoughts with me!

My graduate independent study is on marketing independent media on the web, so I spent most of Sunday exploring the creative side of Podcamp. I was late to Len Edgerly’s excellent presentation “Arts 2.0,” but it is available via the link (courtesy of Phil Campbell and BlogTV.com). Len’s been consulting with arts organizations about how to use the web and has some great examples, from Reactee shirts with SMS short codes for viewers to text message to artist Kristine Schomaker who is creating and selling her creations in Second Life.

The following session, Kfir Pravda hosted a discussion on “internet TV” The problem is that “Internet TV” — or preferably, “video on the internet” — is just like broadcast TV, except distributed over the net. Why aren’t video creators taking advantage of the inherent possibilities of the web like interactivity and hyperlinks? Should online video become more like Alternate Reality Games? Some of the creative possibilities were discussed, as well as the opposite scenario of convergence. Someday it will all be one screen and the distinction between “internet TV” and “TV” may be gone.

HughMcGuire of Librivox discussed how open source problem-solving can help the world and is the essence of democracy in the next session I attended. He proposed that access to data and collective problem solving provide humans’ evolutionary advantage. Audience discussion was lively, ending with a call to collaborate and help each other and a reminder to follow our own creative instincts. The “focus group” is often wrong.

Reputation Management for Digital Natives, presented by Paull Young, Michael Denton and Christin Eubanks categorized responses to a question about online do’s and don’t into 6 categories: Respect, Personality, Friendship, Learning, Awareness, Consciousness. The discussion led them to add another category: Acceptance of Differences. Both cultural and generational differences are present in online interaction, and can complicate communication.

Podcasting and music go hand in hand, and I had the pleasure of chatting with some of the musicians performing in the hallway as part of Rockosphere’s table. Grace Buford, Natalie Gelman and Bill Grady were showing off their chops. I didn’t get very good video, but love the backlit effect for a photograph.

The final panel I attended was on podcasting and the music industry. This was a great discussion about the future of the music business and the various experiments that are going on (Radiohead, etc.) C.C. Chapman emphasized that any band can put out podcasts. Even short messages from the road can keep an artist’s fans engaged. Don’t forget to make it easy for your fans to stay connected and to help you out.

It’s all about community. That’s the message I took away from the two days full of meeting amazing, passionate and creative people who share my love for new media. Thank you all!

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