Visioning with UK Sport body CCPR at their CEO Convention.

CCPR CEO's Convention Nov 2009,

"What did you think? I thought he was alright. Couple of things he spoke about I didn't quite get, but yes I think he provoked thought.

Actually I disagree, I don't think he went deep enough."

It's two weeks since the UK's sports umbrella body's big gathering on November the 18th/19th and execs are assessing the feedback.

I'm David but I thought what would it have been like to sit in the audience and listen to me, so briefly I have made up this pseudonym, Jason Edwards, from the federation of Touch Rugby, based in Falmouth, seated in the audience. Jason brings together some of the feedback I received afterwards. I guess the really bad ones would not have been said to me face-to-face :}


Jason Edwards writes
I liked the videojournalism. I hadn't heard of it before so that got me thinking, but I would have wanted more specific examples, but it was interesting to see how he conducted a live interview.

He covered a number of things, perhaps a bit too many, but I found I was cherry picking. Social Networks is something I already know about. I got the sense that he wasn't in favour of them or had issues, so I would have wanted to have known more.

I guess yes, its difficult when you're having to address members in which we're bound to have varying needs, but he seemed to know his stuff. He moves about on stage a lot, which for me was a little bit distracting, but that's a small matter.

My needs at the moment are not so much the use of these new tools, but its impact on our corporate policy. It's alright to look at these networks and say you need Face book, and Twitter, though David wasn't saying it that way, but we have to be careful with our brand and the way we communicate with traditional and new constituencies.

What would you give him, well probably an 7.5 - 8/10.


Jason's response, also blogged, found its way to David who posted this response.



David writes

Hello Jason,

It was good to hear your feedback and thanks for the grading :). I entertain all comments. It's what makes us, me, grow, so thank you.

I spent considerable time thinking about the pitch for this eminent event.

All talks have their different dynamics and so I donned my lecturing hat, media coat and artist shoes to work the room. The shoes, maybe that's why I walk around so much.

You probably didn't know this, but I had a couple of videos teed that were specific examples of sports, and more importantly would have, I hope, given you time to breathe in between my talking and perhaps reflect on some things I might have just said.

Videojournalism Sports promo video - see here for report on Channel One

Sadly a system Adrian, the technical wizzard, and I had worked out to trigger the tapes went South. And I got so deep in the zone that I missed the cues. Hahahaha Lesson learned for next time.

I tried not to go too deep as I figured that would be slightly unfair to those approaching this for the first time. However, lets continue to stay in touch, and hopefully we can share some mining-shaft stuff.

If anything there were a number of thoughts I wanted to get across.

• That Social networks (SN) are not new, but as the in-thing at the moment require some thought. What do you want from your network if you plan to create one? Remember the unit currency for business, money, has been replaced by something else - your "free time" and "transparency".
  

• Your payoff is having a relationship with your SN offline. Ask what you're giving to your new friends, what they want and what you're getting back?

• Splintering is an obvious default of SN, as needs change within your dynamic fluid group that coalesces around needs. SN will reward you when you're giving them something, otherwise it's a dormant affair. Celebrities/VIPs provide the illusion of access into their private lives. Non-celebs may need something more tangible otherwise those huge number you amassed after your bril pronouncement might illustrate you have 1000s of friends, but that's about it.

• That videojournalism offers a rich seam of visuals and films. And you can do it on any number of cameras, such as this one here the GY100 JVC.But VJ is NOT TV.
  

• Train staff, but also consider setting up relationships with universities. There are media grads who you could empower to deliver something for you, that goes beyond the internship of "we tell you what to do"

• And that mobile and the web will go much further than it is now ( see Reuters phone film) . 2012 is a date that will have more significance than just the Olympics.

• Ultimately the future will be personalised TV, hyperlocal and Public visions (seen here on Apple). Kent TV presents an interesting case study in council TV, as does Swindon becoming the first large town to go wifi. The publicity alone they're getting may have been worth it all.

I promised Sallie Barker Head of Services for CCPR that I would write an executive report, which I will with video inserts from interviews and links to useful sites and strategic points, so do come back to me/viewmagazine.tv in about a fortnight's time, or less.

Cheers David

Britain's digital future

Media expert Peter Bazalgette says the Guardian is in trouble.

Jeremy Hunt MP could be the next Secretary of State for Media, Arts and Sports, so it would be wise to listen to him as well as secure an interview.

I'm yet to work on the latter, but in between a panel discussion and drinks, that grey zone after a conference I managed to catch him for a few words.

Firstly, did he have any strategy for helping media employment with the many students who will graduate and find themselves competing in the jobs-for-the-boys-and-girls-market?

Secondly how would his strategy for sports differ from Labour in view of the ping-pong, indeterminate approach to sports the government has attracted from critics.

Crickets return to terrestrial TV seems to smack more of retribution to Murdoch than an honest plan say the detractors.

And Lord, good lord what's going there. You might as well sell Buckingham Palace

Big Digital Question
Both big questions said the shadow minister, trying to get away, nicely, before doing the Clinton touch reminiscent of Primary Colours.

"What's your name?", he asked, before repeating "David Dunkley Gyimah" and adding "google me for my email and send me an email".

Conference-afters, everyone wants to get away and when you're accosted by me - part geek looking, part soul-man-gone-wrong, sporting chinos, army walking boots and a tweed jacket - you sense the pace quickens.

I blame my parents for still looking like a 20-something, when I graduated uni more than twenty yeas ago.

This was a select crowd so I was thankful for the invite. The evening itself was empathetic of the big themes, even though wasn't time enough to drill into particulars.

Digital Highlights
But the highlights were as follows.

• That Labour would not adequately address the issues of Net piracy, the digital levy for broadband and devise a proper strategy to saving the nation's ITV local news
• Peter Bazalgette, a UK creative behemoth who launched Big Brother, argued we demand 10 million quid from the BBC and Channel 4 for new programme content and that he felt the conservatives would not downsize OFCOM.
• He would also add that the Guardian newspaper were in trouble financially. Their success online presents "a double whammy" to their print form making money.
• Sacha Deshmukh, a giant in media corporatedom looked forward to a bridged divide between gaming and TV.

I recorded part of the proceedings and will put that up later part of the weekend. Here MP Jeremy Hunt answers a saving local media.

Hunt's future of media was that the net would be tv and tv the net. Not so foolish, me on viewmagazine.tv, after all.

p.s Thanks to Charlie Beckett for the invite.

An easy guide to Social Networks

Social Networks, now there's an interesting term, which you could be forgiven for believing is reasonably new.

Its rotation alone in the media would lead us to believe it is the "cure all", just as Marxism's proletariat uprising would cure society. Of course its much more complex than that.

More than a hundred years ago, academics started to probe this thing with more rigour.

German George Simmel could have advised today's fashionistas e.g. Posh Spice and P Diddy how they would wear Prada, but inevitably at some point tire to set up their own individualistic line.

Fashion is about becoming part of a social network, and then ultimately abandoning the group to lead a new one.

Much like most things in the arts, sciences and free love, it was the 60s when the frenzy to rival today's Social Networks took off - albeit behind university and corporate walls.

But you could argue social networks are as old society and politics. You only need to pop inside a museum to see that from the paintings of the Aborigines and words of Socrates or Hobbes.

Social Network Thinker
Thomas Hobbes' ideas, like many emerging thinkers of the 17th century feed straight into Social Networks.

Europe needed a way of settling disputes without drawing swords and Hobbes' perception of the Intelligent Commonwealth - was a social network of the highest order, er, ruled by a sovereign.

But one of the important point in Hobbes was the notion that we the people should give up private self-interests to get along.

And relinquishing private self interests today (privacy), in which the sovereign has been replaced by technology has never been so acutely discussed.

We are selfish, and protective; you wouldn't give your house away, you rarely, if any offer strangers a lift in your car. We're generous and giving, we react to disaster reliefs. We've always been networked.

When our ideals come together, when we're given a route to pursue first a self-interest which then correspondingly coincides with others ideas, the social network gets interesting. Note self interest doesn't have to be selfish.

Social Network theorists discovered it was better to have a wider pool of loosely connected people, than a smaller tighter group of friends to make a difference - something President Obama showed in his campaign.

So long as we can keep reinventing technology to meet our dreams: "Oh look an app to show how I can teleport my thoughts", a network, with no surface recourse to financial gain will subscribe. Uncontested bartering is the ongoing currency.

But we also know from history how cyclical the politics of networks are and already as I'll discuss some other time, we're beginning to witness fissures in these leviathans.
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The above is an extract from a talk David is giving to a fortune 100 company

In the future

A future of news. Some imteresting, some seemingly far fetched, but it would be a brave person to suggest pigs won't fly by 2020

Future communications and journalism

In the 1700s the government of the day laxed the laws on newspapers and the pamphleteers had a field day. The scenario is not so unfamiliar to today, except it's different institutions attempting control.

Talking at SXSW in January, I told a warm and generous audience who showed up to my 10.00 Saturday presentation that the rules of videojournalism, the nature of comms was still being rewritten.

It stands to reason really; we're in the pamphleteer era. New scions are making their mark, many are yet to. There will be chaos and upheaval until it gradually settles, but then it never will.

There are some standards: we like stories; we need commerce, but the currencies are changing. Stories are being devised in an assortment of ways. videojournalism neither exclusively news, nor docs is laying down its marker, whilst the oldest system of trade is gaining pace.

Bartering. Money will suffice. Murdoch wants it to, but it won't always be the method of exchange, we know that much. Stallman probably had no idea what all this would come to

A video magazine
When I built my site viewmagazine.tv in 2004 I had a number of strong views; some have materialised as common themes: embedding video within a page, whilst others are yet to crystallise.

Apologies I'm not trying to be clever. But perhaps to illustrate how easy it was for traditionalists to be dismissive of ideas, when you did not have the tools or skill set to produce them. The rest is trend extrapolation.

A similarly trend extrapolated is video hyperlinking; embedded scanable links from XML driven TV, which can be stored, accessed etc. Deep drilling in video and accessing more of what we like, will get more interesting. If you're a TV show not carrying perma links, you will. TV always learns the hard way, from the newer media.

TV show making and its second shift aesthetic will be overhauled.

I've looked to congeal the years of radio, TV and print and ask what if? Firstly through a scientific methodology around my training as an Applied Chemist, then journalism and now through social sciences at SMARTlab and the Arts.

Fact is we're still in the dark ages of the web. History tells us that. Broadband speeds are still poor, despite our ambitions. Fathom what will happen at unlimited downloads- no constrains - actually 100mb first please.

Future Design
Think how the language of html to hxtml, will be ceded by xml. Design seven years on will have embraced a new renaissance, based around open spaces and mobile devices.

I mentioned that full blown video across the page would be the norm sometime ago. That didn't go down to well with some, but they were honourable not to throw eggs.

Next week I'll be sharing my views on the future of comms in a keynote with UK CEOs. I still subscribe to the comments on Apple's profile site that any attempt at predicting the future is a mug's game. But we can guestimate some intelligent trajectories.

I've amassed a number of interviews from key players to whom I grateful and will with some dispassion and academic rigour deconstruct those.

Content Analysis is producing some interesting ideas. There are also obvious holes in what we can plug e.g. our misuse at present of journalism grads and the methodologies for pushing forward online - finance evaluation.

The latter is a legacy of the dotcom boom when PE ratios meant nothing. Today, assets and liabilities still don't square up in modern nomenclature. Nine years on you'd think MBAs would have cracked it.

Meanwhile we continue to constrain a new system into an aging one. We do that for obvious job security reasons and the notion that it's better to modify, rather than entirely rebuild Rome. Furthermore how can you create what you're not completely sure of.

In some respect that's when art comes in. Whilst innovation without functionality is meaningless, this fluid period we see ourselves in combines artistic practice with a technology bent towards conceiving any number of ideas. Entrepreneurial indeed says Jeff Jarvis.

You begin to think we need to also reinvent a whole new vocabulary - it's happening. Our thoughts might turn to new modes of knowledge creation for a new generation - that's happening too.

And as we plough ahead, it's also worth looking back, farther back to contextualise. The past may not have all the answers we seek, but we deny its impact at our peril.

Those pamphleteers, some started to publish books, Defoe became one of the most celebrated journalists, many others went to the wall. We're not so different after all, but for sure it's not exactly the same.

David Dunkley Gyimah, academic, video journalist and artist in residence publishes next year looking at integrated video and videojournalism

Time Magazine's 2009 Best Inventions

Well it's their choice. Some good ones. The Blue Fin story is a much richer one that provided here.

There's a good write-up I picked up in Bloomberg London, inside their magazine.

Interesting segue for me is about this vide- free info. Cheap to make. A few drop ins and the chance to see inside the machine of Times, but should it be free to embed.

Not if you're Murdoch. Yes this isn't one of his.

I still subscribe to Times, nabbed by a free offer which has run over year on year. Truth I'm not a religious devourer of their site's content, so the mag helps at the gym etc.

Anyways some off-topic thought, here's Time's best inventions.

Performance Lecture

A performance lecture from Dr Leslie Hill, Director of studies at our practice-based PhD program

Scream if you're brilliant

Nay worries. I'm decidedly mute.

I'm in our library, but it's awfully loud in here. I mean screamingly loud. It's in my head.

And when it calmed down and I decided to hit these keys, I thought:

The singular most powerful idea you have is YOU.

Now this sounds atypically oxymoronic. **** you might even think narcissistic, and best of times, stupid.

We spend our times chasing the tornado and each time it eludes us. It has to.

The quick fixes we search for, only fix a short term habit. The long term solutions require more thought, considerations and commitment.

Look, see, consider, share, act.

Ideas to share
The best idea is You because you know what it is that lights your fire. You're just, a bit like me, a bit flummoxed, how to find it. And when you don't know where it is, the best person to help you is the conversationalist.

Society got so ancy about it, they called them Psychiatrist ~ someone who evokes talk.

A room full of people - all with different needs. Some will inevitably leave a conference bitterly disappointed. Those that don't often attend in the first place to hear what it is that makes them think about themselves.

Scenario 2.

A room full of people, with the same aims. I'd just let them talk to each other, and then come to a consensus. Stand-ups do it much better. "Oi you, what's on your mind?"

In presentation, it's not what you've done for yourself, but what the people present, will do for you.


Twittering on
I speak at a fair few dos, and each time I think: "What it is I would like to know, seated in the audience". In shape shifting mode, I begin to wrestle with myself. Damn it hurts.

Tips here, facts there - all good, but the overall tempo has to be one where the presenter is giving, engaging, clarifying, and making You feel that the world will not come tumbling down on you because 0.7 secs ago, you had not been on twitter.

Or that google wave came and went and you missed the set.

Good CEOs and managers, I learned, leverage their strategies by allowing the flow of modules one at a time. And these often take weeks, months, but what they give you upfront is the ability to start thinking about the differences.

OK, stop!

Why does this matter, because frankly, you're not supposed know everything. Unless you're a self appointed polymath.

I bet Steve Jobs can't shoot documentary as well as you. My point explained. If you're a tweet king or queen, great. If your video skills aren't ace, don't beat yourself up, and vice versa.


Plumbline
Lizbeth Goodman, the Dean of our Phd programme refers to it as your plumb line and circle of influence. Your plumb line is fixed. That's the thing YOU do exceptionally well. It's your comfort, no matter what happens you keep coming back to.

I'm obsessed with visualisation and narrative. My mind works in visualisation the same way I think I speak. It's not rocket science, If I have made/cut/produced some (5)000 videos.

Now you see, if I want to go web design mad, codecs n' all - I know a thing or two about them - I'd have to forgo my love affair with film.

Am I bored? Or plain mad.

Your circle of influence says as you grow your knowledge, expand beyond the realms of your comfort, you'll absorb all this new stuff, but your circle of influence, where you can make a change is the core.

And frankly I'm happy with that. It has nothing to do with tunnel vision, narrowness, but that each step that elevates or comes down supplements your core skills or depreciates it.

In a couple of weeks I'm about to shoot a series of films that last 20 seconds inspired by twitter.

You gave me that idea through us talking. Thank you.

You, You, You.

Postscript.
Now that I have got that out of my system, it's time I went home.

Videojournalism's wasted opportunities

If you're looking to be truly inspired scroll down to the end.

This isn't a piece per se, but observations from a talk I'm set to give to a group of CEOs .

In it I will talk about videojournalism (TV and Online) and the web-journalism movement.

While the web has made significant gains in an alternative and, now often, primary source of news info; we've learned a new nomenclature for writing and linking on the web, you could not universally claim the same for videojournalism.

The overarching criticism with TV news was and still is, in spite of impartiality rules, its heavily mediated. The choice of interviews, visuals and structure is heavily codified. The them versus us.

See for yourself. News simplifies an argument and relies on a small set of people, in its contacts, to inform you.

News by its language and vocabulary discriminates. Its a pros and cons.

Was videojournalism supposed to be an alternative to the status quo? You could be forgiven for thinking so. But what could we argue has videojournalism brought to the information table?

Are we talking background news, breaking news, or active news (news on-the-go)? How does videojournalism qualify its efficacy?

These are important questions and perhaps require a fundamental change in parameters to measure contemporary news' values.

And how do we do that?

And consider this? When we extricate ourselves from the oft-discussed discourse about cheap TV, what is videojournalism's usp?

I could name a few, but we're missing something, a big something.

Videojournalism is versatile tool, but its content quotient and driving force must depend on not just visual skills, but an in depth understanding at knowledge and content creation, made accessible by access to good content and its sources.

If not we relegate videojournalism to a second rate medium. It's there when you have no alternative or decide to run your station purely with features. Videojournalism's specialism calls on much more and in many ways needs re branding.

Rebranding
In the 80s Lucozade was a drink to repair the damage of illnesses e.g. common flu. A decade on it rebranded to a fluid to replenish the strength of athletes. Videojournalism-on-the-web's contribution needs an upgrade.

Thus far it's become synonymous with cheap. It's practitioners will understand that the quality of the pen comes from the sustenance of the journalist.

Great commentators aren't made by giving them a newspaper to write for, but a tenacity to engage with knowledge and rework the issues we face now in various context of their antecedents.

There are a great many individual videojournalists, but the form is yet to attain the status it deserves.

The soloist in the orchestra marks his position and relationship with the audience from years of toiling in the bigger band.

This does not mean we should discriminate as television did with its hierarchy, but be more self aware of how we intend to use our new found abilities.

End++

posts script.

I came across this story as a RT @alexgamela 7 of the Most Inspiring Videos on the Web http://ff.im/-b9srs.

This is not a solo videojournalism piece, but still undertaken by a small team. It is the ability of videojournalism to usurp the agenda and find rich stories like this, which I teared up to with joy, that makes videojournalism or should I say DVCam storytelling worth its weight. More bravo.

Belief conquers old. Boxing lessons Briton's Haye vs Russian giant Nikolay Valuev

David recalls the experience of mind over matter as one of the film makers of the heavyweight champion of the world, lennox lewis.

On an afternoon in the hotel, having just completed a morning shoot, ringside. My friend and exec producer delivered a boxing lesson redolent of life's experience.

I had dared uttered the statement: "If Lennox Lewis wins.....".

Kofi, one of Lenox's right hand men, literally flew of his chair in mild rage

"What do you mean, "if". David, there are no ifs here. You disappoint me".

He had reason to. I had been invited. In fact rephrase that: I had been hired by Lennox Lewis to be one of his documentarists.

If you could see me. I was the cat with the cream.

Many outfits and journalists had requested to be part of the inner sanctum of one of the most anticipated fights in contemporary boxing history: Lennox Lewis vs Mike Tyson, and I had ring side seats.

And now I was about to blow it.

Training days

Over the days watching Lennox train though something happened, I found myself in conversation with a journalist and to my own amazement was chastising him for very comments I had made earlier.

I had turned. No longer an objective bystander, I was now a believer. It was extraordinary. The evangelical belief inside Lewis' camp had an intoxicating affect and I was drunk.

Watching the build up to Haye's vs Nikolay Valuev, I might imagine that Haye was wrapped in his own inexplicable, but explosive, self-belief.

It seemed impossible and if anything there would have been a fair number of people whom I'd imagine would have wanted the Russian to shut him up.

But yes he did it. And the event brought back that sense of purposeful belief I came across during Lennox's fight.

Before the big fight Lennox takes a cat nap. He is a figure of serenity. And then with minutes to spare he walks through his tactic: jab, jab, punch.

The biggest stage was set for an explosive fight, but in many ways the fight had already been won in the head of Lewis' camp. The mind conquers all. A lesson we could all learn, a lesson that Haye punched home yesterday.