redesigning viewmagazine articles

Viewmagazine.tv is going through a few face lifts. At some point I thought of abandoning it. But have slowly come around to an alternative.

Quite a few of the videos, you've prob noticed don't have controls. That's because they're pre-Flash FLV.[2003]

It was a nice idea back then to present video at all.

But user control and navigation are even more pertinent now than they were back then , so it's meant reworking those files.

Similarly, even CSS on the pages require updates with hand held encoding, particularly if you're using IE 6 or 5.

Understanding what's going on is probably good enough for me, but then seeing something out of kilter needs remedying.

I'm a firm believer in the rule of interdependence: let the specialists do what they do, but when everyone's busy, you've simply got to pick up the tools and try and do it yourself. That was what brought on viewmagazine in the first place.

The articles are often an illustration of a theme, and perhaps a method of how I might cover it.

So the report on The Mayfair Club, one of London's most fashionable night clubs, whilst not new as a feature piece, coupled with the more open use of white space in the article, provides an example of a particular slice of work.

Here's the Mayfair Redux, and an update coming soon.

Matching cinema's new promo strategy

Fighting for the same attention, eye balls, time and money, cinema bosses have become complicit to a number of ways to get front row, before you decide staying at home for a rerun of Wired - fantastic drama - is indeed a good idea.

Hollywood kickstarted the trailer, it discovered the DVD, and now a surprisingly interesting proposition.

I first noticed it on Doubt - an intense drama on the morality and burden of proof of child abuse by a member of the cloth, staring Hoffman and Streep.

And more recently, before general release on the much-talked about Valkyrie starring Tom Cruise amongst many, documenting the intended assassination of Hitler.

In both cases, though it's now deprecated on "Doubt", you could watch the first six minutes of the film.

I can't think why only six minutes, but what bosses perhaps are gambling on is that it's enough to get you immersed into the characters and the chance to make up your own mind against the welter of flux talk - that's the back chat over a movie's worthiness.

And I'd say it seems to work. In both cases I can see myself trundling off to the plex and handing over my tenner.

Now, what's the equivalent in innovation in TV? And I'm not advocating the equivalent action in TV by the way.

The days of "tent poling" and the likes, on TV, are being usurped by the depletion of appointment TV, more so online. And so it's online where these ideas to engage the new, time poor, consumers could play out.

I'll say something though for TV.

NBC 1998 and their innovotary exploration of "Homicide - Life on the Street", which saw an extension of the TV episode play out on the web, with a new team of detectives.

Now that truly was clever, and that was 1989.

Responding to Prepare for the Future, Skip the Present

To Prepare for the Future, Skip the Present

‘… today’s obsession with saving newspapers has meant that, for the most part, media companies have failed to plan adequately for tomorrow’s digital future.’

By Edward Roussel who is digital editor of the Telegraph Media Group (TMG)

Ed wrote a truly fine piece on , Nieman Reports (Harvard site). I have a few friends who are former Nieman scholars, so often take a run around the site. Do read the piece. Below was my response.

David Dunkley Gyimah says:

January 11, 2009 at 3:22pm

"Stop trying to control everything and just let go! LET GO! "

One of the more memorable aphorisms in 1999 from David Finch's "Fight Club".

Quite a few media execs are picking themselves up, handkerchief dabbing that upper lip; either they've got a hang of these abstract new rules and expressions e.g. (SEO, code-event driven multimedia) or they've confined themselves to the thinking: "it's all gonna stop soon - this madness".

This year we're told to expect the following:

- Increased traction to mobile web; writing twitter type micro stories
- Refinements in search string optimisation
- More APIs encouraging greater mash ups
- Thermo, 3D, and further breakthroughs in HD web video and videojournalism.

And then as one respected company, Razorfish, put it, expect more of the unexpected.

Sociologists might refer to this period of uncertainty and abstractness between journalism and the media's comprehension as "Grand Theory", when what we appear to be caught in is a highly fluid phase of Deduction.

Meaning you can match customs [macro and micro] and behaviours, to the way viewers and readers are inter and (intra) reacting with a myriad of new exhausting apps and modifications - spawning new social theories.

But you need to be in it, to see it, let alone win, which certainly shouldn't turn you into a techie shepherd, but open to the idea of the speed and paradigms of change affecting the media/consumer/ etc.

Countless newspapers, particular the big brands with room for "Chatham House" rule type experimenting, are already in there.

And, building up those figures may help thwart any future shocks. Or should that be "those future shocks".

Old sea hands scoff at 5m waves; quiet storm, they say, she'll get a lot more rougher yet.

As Ed put it, the dominant newspapers have an advantage over start-ups.....but time is running out.

Here in academia, and outside, with the an eye and modules on the future, a new generation of all round digi-journalists is gestating.

Thought-swilling piece Ed, and I have enjoyed the training and interaction with your extremely bright trainee multimedia journalists.

Future Net TV - Outernet shapes up

Many of the big names in TV manufacturing are now building Internet capability into TVs. Now there's a surprise.

It's the annual fest of TV people in Las Vegas. The other news TV's will become 3d. Extrapolating games culture trends gives some idea how this might work.

The trick, with Internet-TV, is to transmogrify the socio behaviour of lean forward to the big screen. It's been tried before, but didn't much work. I attended my fair share of NET-TV meetings in 1998.

Still have Microsofts strategy document they gave out.

But now, and I recall posting about this in 2004, HD wide screens have been normalised into the home. This IS the Outernet. If you compare this image here in this article, with this one Apple featured from viewmagazine.tv a couple of years, spot the difference

Ipod - a mini culture cannibalising super sizes - is accepted. You place your ipod into a docking station to get surround sound. We might not shirk now at wifiing the cinema screen while still controling the screen from my Mac.

Essentially it could act as an intelligent monitor.

If this does take off, then the televisual feel for websites, not breaking the fold, will be common place. 950 px x500px may not be a daft idea after all.

Er someone called it daft recently.

Does it seem much of a stretch now for video story telling to take on a cinematic feel?

p.s Did you know Slumdog Millionaire was a whisker away from going straight to DVD? This link says US TV dramas are looking to go big time on the internet.

See Trends 2009 posted two days ago

Qunicy Jones, Viewmagazine and SXSW

Been invited to speak at SXSW in March, where Quincy Jones will be delivering a key note. So I have posted this brief interview with Quincy in Soweto, South Africa.

At the bottom of the page are links to Eartha Kitt interview, the late James Brown's right hand man Maceo Parker and that pic of Jay-z with Prince Charles which I have got some video of that meeting somewhere.

Meanwhile busy day: firstly going through entries for the VJ Awards 2009, researching thesis, assessing Journalism Masters' websites and working up a funding document with my colleague.

We had quite some fun using google's open app word document, which enabled us to share writing an article together, whilst skyping and conferencing with friends in the US, the Ipod blaring, with the occasional sms to punt.

We might take this technology for granted now, but only five years ago, none of this was possible.

Now where's that type writer. Oh yes, I have a type writer somewhere.

If you haven't booked for SXSW, what are you doing?

Freemium model - how to sell digital assets covertly

On In Business, Chris Anderson editor of Wired, behind the best seller, The Long Tail, talking about his new book, Free and how digital companies are making money, through a play on the Open Source Movement.

Of course the word "free" in any product is enough to catch anyone's interest.

The more contemporary form has its roots in software development, in which you get version one free and version two comes at a price.

Have little knowledge other than from the interview on BBC of Chris Anderson talking about his book, but it's a fair bet it'll be a good read.

2009 trends for accelerated media - videojournalism

Scientists refer to the point where one species is superceded by another as "passing through the bottle neck".

It is a punctuated timeline which yields an entity, species zero, much able to cope with new conditions. So if you thought newspapers and TV will disappear, having adopted web 2.0 mannerisms, you might want to think again.

So what are some of the things that might crop up in 2009?

• Ever more richer multimedia films in which the likes of Thirst in the Mojave presents one of the more interesting uses of the lean towards greater linking e.g. video linking. Use of the events in the FLV player provides "bloombergesque" content. Next step in Mojave is independently being able to drill or hold the info on screen.
• HD video, richer saturations, wider screens and more player innovations e.g. click to send to your i-phone etc will become more evident. Paradoxically, the web is set to realise the same problem TV wrestled with during its launch. It'll need a brand to face those videos. To some it's not rocket science, but the "screen" factor for the generation ahead will begin to matter in deciding who to visit in this vast digital soup of ours.
• Since front end ads have proved not to be a distraction for viewers, will we see behaviours such as tent poling creeping into video stories? That is the first 15 seconds sets up the next story from the one you've clicked.
• In the face of a crippling economy and lay offs, is this the year finally when whole swathes of former bricks and mortar broadcast employees set up alternative online structures. e.g. NottheBBC.com or Alternativebbc.co.uk. Might as well, particularly if you can keep overheads down.
• Video journalism - appreciation of the psychology of the moving image and its emotional flow online
  
• Training, training and more training - not for information, which is transient, but knowledge.
  

Outernet - Internet+ Out there + behaviours - musings

It's the stuff of Isaac Asimov, except that it's really not so far fetched.

The snippets of news from Razorfish's report [see last post], the general uptake of new apps and their volcanic explosion, revival of TV integrating new social tools on line e.g. wiii on the net etc, all add up to something akin to a grown up web in the offing.

So far the net supports a number of apps, that, with the exception of the obvious mobile ware, is largely fixed. But the very variable that constrained the Net, will be the Outernet's gestation.

The context, "Internet"; inward looking makes empirical sense. Outernet, sees the Net and apps work all around us e.g. an audio twitter demand that calls up a programme and turns your followers' TVs and PCs into a TV screen, [Orwell] or triggers an event which changes the music at Dance club "100Z"

Sensosor related apps, iris scan receivers that give more info on pleasure you derive from videos.

Beahviourial science drives the Net
The work of Martin Lindstrom in Buy-ology, a New York Best seller points to this. In his book, Lindtsrom conducts a number of MRI experiments. [brain scans] to unlock meaning to our actions.

Attaching people to probes that give some idea of their thinking, if we can, and some sort of nano sensors will do that, gauge behaviours of consumers via the web, then we're climbing new levels.

And what if we could conduct the same real-time studies for watching video. It would crystallised some of our own thoughts but also reveal new ones.

What makes a good video, and what makes a bad one - a loaded question which envelopes aesthetic, codes, visual design, psychology of lines, tone, mis en scene. Frankly a whole panoply of signifiers.

Couple of years ago, I filmed myself on one of the huge monitors in the heart of Time Square (I'll post that this week). The gig was arranged by Reuters from an Online News Association Summit. But what if the tech-set existed to do that myself with my twitter flow, at a cost of course, but triggered here from London.

Why Not?

It will be difficult to know what the Outernet is, you'll have to be there to see it - I am reworking Morpheus' line in The Matrix, but the reality is closer, believe, than we think.

Two decades ago I abandon a career Chemistry and Maths, for a more exciting one in the media.

Now it's the technologists and science who'll be pushing the best part of the Outernet. I need reversioning.

Connected consumers reveal new habits

Consumers prefer using multiple destinations, and then aggregating media and services, via simple tools like RSS, into a highly personalized view of their digital world.

This is just one of many findings from Razorfish's consumer report 2008.

You won't believe the amount of news (broadcasts,online and newspaper) that originate from surveys. I used to fill several waste paper bins in the morning at news meetings.

Still, few out of the 100s are chosen. So what determines their worth?

• Content - how truly unique and of use is it; that is the qualitative research.
• Trust value - What's the motive for the report. If it's narcissistic, why bother.
• Presentation - Is it eye catching?

Razorfish that powerhouse of design released Meet the Connected Consumer last year. What I liked about it is having revisited today is its:

• Transparency - it doesn't play overtly to Razorfish. Unlike say a survey that says chocolate makes you sexy and you discover a chocolate company commissioned the survey.
• It's got some break away thoughts from your standard quo. This is probably the a result of the quality of those they questioned

Take this: "Brands will need new tools and services because today’s widget might become tomorrow’s TV set". It sounds innocuous but obsolence in new digital media is rarely discussed so this is an interesting view.

And: "We were most surprised to see widespread acceptance and frequent consumer usage of Web site widgets."

And finally: "We are still in the early days of social media". .... "Online video consumption by connected consumers continues to soar, as 94% of respondents reported watching online video with some level of frequency."

It's not good news for TV people, that's the underlying message, but says the connected society are having a ball.

Well worth a digest, forget that it's two months out. This should give food for thought

Drinking the most expensive beer in the world

One gulp would probably have you reaching for an aspirin. Not because of the price per se, though that might be the case if anyone was serving, but the taste.

That slosh across the palate at one point tasted... "am I allowed to say exquisite", but today clouded by impurities and well past its sell by date, this brew really has returned to a museum piece.

Tutankhamun ale, not your average Budweiser saw the light of day somewhere in 1995, from being in the dark for 3000 odd years.

Some archaeologists unearthed the formula from scraping old pots; science, the kind seen on CSI and actually while I was standing behind test tube , using gas-liquid chromatography did the rest. Et voila, this is what the Egyptians drank way back when.

Then Harrod's, London, decided to sell some 500 or 5000 bottles, not sure, on the day. Folks came from far and near for the purchase. The first one went for more than $7000.

Oh please if you're out there and you want this, I can go and fetch it from my uncle.

The beer of beers
Back during its launch, I was dispatched by my editor to do a VJ piece. On Harrods' hospitality balcony I sampled one and then picked up two. I later handed out glasses of it at a party - dem days huh!

But show me a reporter who doesn't like a jar and I'll show you a banker who can tell the difference between pyramid selling and banking.

Harrods' PR as I remember pleaded with me for an eternity, not because I wasn't turning my camera on, but he wanted his boxy thing back, or to the historians the wooden sarcophagus.

He wasn't wrong, as they've become a bit of a collector's item - which brought about this tale in the first place, when over Christmas I stumbled upon said great beer and a friend asking me if I knew what the box was worth. %$£@*!!.

I mean I always knew it was somewhere, but like an old letter bringing back memories, I picked it up reminisced, scurried up stairs for my camera and did a vlog.

I thought of doing a straight cut but having travelled to Egypt and brought back some video, I have a different idea. I'll post on viewmagazine shortly

This morning it was announced beer served in pubs in the UK was being reduced to 99p a pint. Chirpy cheerful huh! That should alleviate us Brits from the credit crunch.

Mine's going back into the vault, spirited away to a good friend who likes the idea he can tell his friends, "beer 99p? You wanna try this - the most expensive beer in the world".

He'd better not flippin drink it.

Generation N+1 - deconstructing the future

The downloads didn't match the spread of video

The company knew their video had gone viral but the web's analytics did not reflect this.

Then someone asked the question, which left strategists scratching their heads in wonder.

The game was being heavily trafficed, except that around the playgrounds teenagers had dispensed with the nonsense of rushing to a url and waiting a couple of minutes. Instead, it was being blue toothed from a primary source and further blue toothed around.

There's no way strategists could have gauged the level of activity, well......!.

This story emerged from a web 2.0 conference, where, in one session, instead of the obligatory suited execs, they let the screenagers tell us what they did; a further revelation, as if you didn't know, they [a gross generalisation] won't pay for things online.

Two lessons. Firstly you might figure you know what's going on with your target audience, because you've a cool video or product, but then some.

Secondly, some of the best media companies get it wrong.

We, any generation, gen N+1 ( the screenagers) including, behave independently and dependently of each other given the circumstances.

We show video on our sites, but won't allow them to be downloaded once we've branded and tagged them. I'm just as guilty, but then I'm not in the process of building a media behemoth- quite.

The epitome of youth research and being in touch on the ground takes more than what goes on in board room meetings.

Tim Windor on Zero Percent Idle gives a perspectives on digital natives in a recent post.

Innovation - visuals, video and the message

There is a line. To the naked eye as invisible as the break of dawn, where visuals perform sensually alongside sound and their execution is like sea horses mating. And when that happens, something new happens. It's like an awakening and you marvel without equivocation.

It can take years to get there. And sometimes never. Good content is king, but it requires a good courtier to show content at its possible widest best. There is technique - a formula - in this, if you can spot it

And then there's creativity, and the journey, the journey is one of emotion, a connection, an acknowledgment.... respeck.. of the brand. For visual story telling, there can be no future, this is it, and it can be remodelled any way.

There is a line, where good artists, reside and what they do is breathless- story telling at its..........

The director of this spot is, Mark Romanek, and behind him lies a whole creative team. The client, who else, is Nike, whose "Just do it" refluxing street, sport, lifestyle and the cool hunters has stood the test of multimedia time .

If you want to read more then that 2000 phenom book No Logo - Naomi Klein is as good as any place to start. I have just pulled mine of the shelf for a skim pleasure read.

Thanks to Ian Schafer for catching this sparking my attention. On his site he does a brand break down.

I'll put together a series of viewmagazine.tv pieces previewed here later after cutting a couple of stories I intend to take to wemedia Miami.

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David Dunkley Gyimah presented "The Cool Hunters" for the film council a while back from working with Jon Staton Productions who was formerly the head of TV at Saatchis and Saatchis, whre they devised the agency, Re-active.net.

The connectors - connecting people

Picture I took of Riz Khan interviewing Gerald Scarfe, Political Cartoonist for the Sunday Times.

Some people are born with it; others acquire it, some never achieve it.

Riz Khan, an old friend based in Washington where he hosts his popular show, Q&A with Riz, definitely has it.

That innate ability to connect with people and in many cases connect them up.

In the latter it's a selfless quality pairing up ideas and names, in which the connector receives nothing in return, other than the silent joy of seeing something come of an intro.

On a flying visit to London we caught up with each other. Firstly where can you find a decent pub when you want one.

Pub found. And really those non-smoking rules do make all the difference.

Off the back from interviewing Oliver Stone, and with an enviable roll call of names to his show's credits, we talked ambitions and the future.

At heart, Riz is a geek. We could talk Macs and Ipods all day. In fact there was a time when we did, editing programmes through the night, following Riz's reportage from the Hajj for the BBC World Service

Now at Al Jazeera where he's been based since leaving CNN International at the turn of the millennium, his audience may know him as the news anchor and talk host, but there are many other layers there.

He's done little in the way of Breaking New outside broadcasts more recently, but happened to be in Mumbai at the time of the terrorist attack and found himself hosting an off-the-cuff live show for a couple of days.

But then we come down to connecting. It's that old chestnut between connectors. You never overtly ask, don't think I ever do, but an idea sparks another idea, which leads a connector to proclaim interest in how the idea can be taken further.

Successful connectors as Malcolm Gladwell points out in Tipping point have certain qualities.

They're very likeable, have a diverse number of friends and are well trusted, and as such make good dinner guests. [ I added that last bit]

In Riz's case dinner with Kofi Annan, or former UK PMs are just one of those things.

AJ, is yet to break through into the US, though 60 percent of online traffic during Riz's show, which combines interactive feedback via Livestation, comes from the states.




Two hours pass and a couple of things we'd like to do for 2009 and time to wrap. With Riz the connecting doesn't stop.

Making our way out of the pub, an elderly man spots him. "Hi, like the show".

Riz connects back.

The tao of video journalism continued - making media

An interview with one of the world's greatest musicians and
composers Quincy Jones, but how many times can I repackage this?

Video journalism is badly in need of a neologism.

It's not nearly enough now to categorise a video piece with journalism as the apotheosis of video journalism in much the same way an astute writer in the 60s might have said there were writers from New Journalism.

Definitions vary across geographies. Film's inception spawned a slew of categories from German Expressionism to French New wave.

The exception, there are no ontological categories for VJism as yet, meaning it's so fresh a form that we're yet to assign prescriptive genres other than proclaiming a VJ piece as "breaking news" or "featured piece from a broadcaster or non broadcaster".

Categories have their purpose: in awards it's the difference sometimes of a few more hundred submissions. But for future generations I'm inclined to think, we'll likely hear of the "accelerated VJ" or "Photologue VJ" ~ more neologism.

Or not.

You could argue that in fact many video journalists are indeed not what they seem, whilst others actively, with good reason reject the claim.

The simple def for VJ is that person who does it all, but there's no accountability for style, substance or proficiency. You could be an amateur film maker, photographer, in broadcasting a P&D ( producer/director) but in video journalism you are who you say you are.

Does it matter? I'm not arguing either way, but attempting to dig deeper into process and production, setting out to refine some thoughts for 2009.

I might call myself a VJ, but don't deny I've P&D'ed network TV programmes, made promos, produced commercials, shot this and that... you get the picture.

For that reason then what am I? And does the term alone VJ suffice, indeed for a generation of 90s talent who shot factual programmes on DV Cam? And also now generation?


In search of the VJ plus
The more intriguing aspect for me has always been the "whole". A body of work, a film, exists as is, but the transaction between the maker and audience still has connected dots with marketing, posters, campaigns and indeed the net.

Video online is as much influenced by the furniture around it; even when it's white space(-), the site design, the allure, the wow, ease of use - all matter if you're looking to build an audience.

Again multimedia, I have said in previous posts, is just the half of it.

At Future TV, one of first conferences of many digital media to kick start 2009, the body of knowledge in the sessions assumes compelling content is a given i.e you've already got Quincy Jones, but how do you a publisher or broadcaster become omnipresent?

Is that still possible?

If you're a broadcaster coming out of 2008, yep. If 2008 was a consolidation of the 2007 experiments, 2009 is where you're looking to reap those rewards.

For a more robust explanation of this read Dealing with Darwin by Geoffrey Moore. Here's an illustrative cycle well worth looking at for how innovation beds down and early adopters versus Early Majority

Those wise web guys and gals who showed you the big L, well guess what? You now know what they know and you've got the content.

On Future TV, this caught my eye.

CONFERENCE TRACK TWO: MARKETING & BRAND MANAGEMENT
7 counterintuitive strategies to succeed in a Web2.0 world

• How can you use the opportunities of Web2.0 to attract more customers?
• Are consumers expectations of instant, always on, and free content making revenue generation harder?
• What are the new rules of brand management that you need to bring to your organization to thrive in the social media era?

We're back to basics, updated for the 21st century. All the content in the world, the new technology to boot, and if you're a corporation not bringing it in, woops!

Because we're back to the fluidity of the brand. Did we ever leave it? Briefly, fleetingly, because for a moment everyone else's opinion mattered but the publishers.

The kerzillions of conferences during the 90s that we covered unveiling marketing plan after plan; now there's a whole new branch of social philosophers detailing how we consumers do what we do.

I'm fascinated by the the above, deeply, deeply so. It engages every aspect of the creative process I have come to know in design, film and marketing.

Because it engenders behaviour, value, desire - the qualities of desire, want, need and aesthetics.

• How do you know when something's good?
• How do you instantly reconcile that which isn't working with your ideas?

That's pretty much my 2009 thoughts mapped out. And as for video journalism why can't it be called videnouralism, other than the fact it's daft name.

Hitchcock's genius today

"I'm a believer that film belongs to the masses. It was the newest art of the 20th century and there always that feeling that commercial or box office are dirty words. It's nothing to do with it. It's to do with telling the story with the widest possible appeal but still applying all the artistic techniques and manner of story telling without degrading yourself to what is vulgarly called commercial".

I'm watching an interview with the great Hitchcock talking frankly about film. The interview had been cobbled together from rushes, a technician discovered.

In it Hitchcock confirms his extraordinary talent in the philosophy of film, the image-movement, and his innate understanding of audiences.

The image-movement in essence is an understanding of the images before and after. In other words the actual scene you're watching is not as important as the next one that will follow contextually, ie it's all in the edit.

Hitchcock made 60 films in his career and my ambition is to get through, in some cases revisit every single one of them starting with 15.

Hitchcock was fond of a roguish, seemingly affable phrase he coined ascribed to audiences called "moronic logic". Essentially it was the art or non art of asking the bleeding obvious, when in retrospect it would have been obvious why a film maker would have taken such a course of action.

It's a tad harsh but I can see how I might apply the phrase "loose logic" to some of the material I review.

His first director credit as 25 was The Pleasure Garden - a silent film which gives glimpses of his signature through out his career.

There is in this filmic cytoplasm lots to dissect.

Multimedia, multifaceted, multistate - 2009, back to 2005s future

Back to basics?

Viewmagazine.tv circa 2005 as posted a couple of days ago remodelled today.









2009 will likely see a consolidation of many of the discombobulated ideas flattening out in greater open spaces. We've been excited by the last few years. There's not a lot you don't know now that your neighbour does not.

There is a broad consensus of agreement on what works. Our entropy of ideas are pulsing less frenetically than before.

But the new league of thinkers have smelt blood. So their ideas push on. From Twitter - the new new thing - what cometh next?

India's growth in media and newspapers defies all other geographies, and China too will become a cauldron for remodelling newer media ideas for their own sensibilities.

There are questions of process and production? How do we deconstruct this rubik cube, we've just worked out, to reveal new puzzles?

Why because some people are compulsive temperers [1]: taking radios apart, picking the wings of blue flies, figuring out why "why" needs an answer.

Some look to the future, others hark to the past; some rework old ideas, others think the original. The latter are a rare breed. Eureka moments that shift Teutonic idea plates are thin on the ground.

Truth it's always been like that, even this recession is no new phenomenon, though its intensity is arguable. Necessity is the enforcer of new thinking. In 1992 at the height of the UK's recession I learned that much relocating to South Africa.


RETIP IDEAS
The law of the few, stickiness and context - the impulse there and then- is as important now, more so perhaps, than when Malcom Gladwell published Tipping Point.

Because we're conscious of what to look for. Our ontology of ideas seek newer sources, whilst the fundamentals reside within the philosophers, old, post modern and contemporary. History is nothing if not one big cheat.

In Leonard Shlain's Art and Physics we learn the bizarre coincidences of natures important finds, not first through the scientists, but artists - those who dared to dream, and often mocked at first.

The application of new technology, a mix of the fundamentals, and many of our own socio- political behaviours is a strong formulae for the supernova of creative sparks we've come to acknowledge of late.

So what now? Business needs to bed those ideas down. The underground that became traditional c.f. google and yahoo are themselves at risk from a new generation of geeks and cool hunters - that's just the way it is.

Darwin. In 2009 his ideas will be combed over even more as we celebrate his 200th birthdate.

2009, the year of change and paradoxically steadiness.

Obama's factor will be unquestionable. In times of strife, we are at our most creative. It's when the cretins rule that the creatives seek a way to be seen.

But Obama has to steady the seas of uncertainty; the environment, global warming, finance ,will, may, call on creative ideas - many of which may be old ones, dusted off from 2000. Process and Production again.

But Obama may also turn out to be the traditionalist. His stride as much in the new camp as that of the unnew.

2009 will be a year of collectives, newer ones, emulsifying ideas which ask questions about change and innovation. 2009 will for me be about back to the future. The ideas we seek, a quality of life, a quality of thought, a quality of ramblings with roots one severed, rediscovered.

C'mon 2009.
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temperers [1] - someone who tempers

Bravo BBC Today Programme

We all have our tales for recounting our meetings with celebrities.

One fine afternoon, some years back, my agent, yes those were the days, rang me up to appear at a Warehouse in South London.

There it would transpire a number of young black professional had gathered for what was to be a photo shoot and article for the Evening Standard.

There was little other that connected the people gathered.

Small talk ensured, but truthfully it was a played-down theatrical performance in the peacock syndrome. Not purposefully from the writers, fashion designers, journalists and musicians, but instigated by the newspaper.

The photo shoot was ten young black men and women supposedly going places and the photographer and Evening Standard journalist needed everyone to be at their most upright proclaiming the great things they had done.

On the far side of the lineup was my first glimpse of a true celeb, and a rare one. Tall elegant, not saying much, almost slightly irritated, it wasn't difficult to ignore her.

She had just broken through the conservative league of writing a novel that was monumental in many ways.

This was true talent, which is not to say the others were not, but what this writer would go on to achieve is testimony of the chatter back then and now.

When I picked up the Evening Standard afterwards, that one quote - a sort of phrase that is murmured but dare not speak itself, screamed.

"It'll be progress when black people don't have to necessarily gather to show what they've achieved" - or something thereabouts.
Zadie Smith - author White Teeth.


BBC's Guest Editor
Today, the BBC's flagship news and current affairs programme that imprints on the day's digest of news was given over to Zadie Smith to edit - a typical run of guest editors for the festive season.

And what a superb collection of reports and packages she chose.

A discussion on avant garde writing, classism in comedy, a deeply provocative report from Libera, which played more to quiet gonzoism than traditional reportage, and then a one-on-one with the Today Presenter Evan Davies where she queried whether Obama's style of politics differed for different races and cultures.

If you're interested in the germination of thought-bombs, the stuff of "blink", "Wisdom of Crowds", then I'd advise you spend sometime listening back on the programme.

I was particularly interested in the ideas surrounding 21st Century avant garde, and as Ms Smith put it, if there exist a movement that challenges traditional writings?

It's a question you could apply to modern journalism and one I constantly ask. As a side step, why do we still refer to is as journalism, when the objects we write for are no longer exclusively journals.

Hari Kunzru, another superb writer [I have a video interview of him somewhere] argued against the romanticism of the avant garde in favour of a vanguard.

The relevance of this can't be emphasised enough and dovetailed nicely into Zadie Smith's panoramic radio report, as well as a her observation of US President-elect Obama's "sweet potato pie" oratory. [ New Yorker article by Mark Danner]

Explanation: In electronic story telling, modern reportage, contemporary web story telling, is there a new discourse we (non traditionalists) can either tap into or spawn.

In the 80s this was evident in the music industry. For whatever culturally popular modernist programmes did like Top of the Pops, there was always a Guy called Gerald or Tricky.

Zadie's poetically authored, yet disturbing piece, from Liberia, in which she deliberately became part of the report, veers off to Hunter Thompson's Gonzoism, but for a completely different form - radio.

The BBC's already does this to an extent with "From our own Correspondents', but Zadie's story illustrated how the feelings, mannerism, demeanour, the ability to feel shit, guilty, impassioned could seep into a report without taking away the grand message.

It's quite deconstructive, and if anything floats towards the discursiveness of a facet of blog writing. Whilst traditional broadcast reportage, for instance at the BBC, is proud to proclaim its objectivity and impartialness, their blog has become the outlet for the story, about the story.

Over the last few years this level of reportage is becoming common place, which begs the question, what lurks behind ?

The underground by its very nature is that, often misunderstood, not universally accepted, but part of a quiet brew, which potentially could become the zeitgeist.

The many backroom experiments performed by millions, the non-conformists, is the spark plug for ideas of the future.

Zadie's report about Liberia, was as much a report about Zadie; a report within a report.

Perhaps it could only be pulled off by those adept at seducing us with their skill for words, but it works all the same and has a place to be studied or experimented with with the new vanguards.

Here for Zadie's ideas she contributed to the programme

Viewmagazine video journalism meets online design

Following, a series of front covers from Viewmagazine.tv and charting online design starting with above, Viewmagazine.tv's first cover.

I art directed this shot, taken on a Canon Eos50, of Anita Asante, one of the UK's foremost footballers. Viewmagazine.tv's raison detre is to report popular stories that rarely see the light, and Anita and Women's football was indicative of this.

Before that in 2001 the site UnitedProductions, Viewmag's precursor hosted this.



In 2004, the menu evolved into a series of animated images which triggered a series of sound files and video. A theme I'll be returning to in 2009.





The quad face design was an opportunity to feature around 200 of the video pages on Viewmagazine, including

• an incredible operation in Ghana to rebuild a young boy's face
• and the new intelligence officers following a graduate recruitment drive in langley -an interview with former CIA chief James Woolsey
  

Viewmagazine.tv takes on the ubiquitous newspaper colour - white. The top band is a strip of 950 by 200. The screen window on the right reveals more of the sites menu. But the symmetry of the site is lost.

A meeting at the BBC between members of the Online News Association (london). The BBC announces its first trials of embedded video.


I'm standing in the corridor when this shot is taken. Prince Charles meets Jay-z. Five minutes later I found myself with one of my students standing within arm's distance of Jay-z.

She wanted to know what to ask him. I told her. But frankly I couldn't, doh, think of a one-on-one myself. Sometimes it just isn't the moment.



One of the attributes of online design which will increasingly become a feature for TV display is the televisual look. All the content appears above the fold, because frankly there isn't one.

The three screen grabs come from a new site I designed for the Arts. Unfortunately it's built exclusively in Flash- a mistake I made with viewmagazine.tv, which was rebuilt with xhtml with allowances for SEO.



Series of front pages. Top:

• Arsenal's Anita Asante, now a firm fixture with England's football squad
• Top Right, Hedonism on Greece's Falaraki - where young Brits flock to lose their virginity.
• Bottom right, Brix2Bronx - a group of young Londoners gear up for a trip to the Bronx

A film, BBC Radio story, flash -multimedia, Director Multimedia, blog, photomontage, and story in a magazine. Whatever happened to director? Flash killed it off and CDs/ DVDs are no longer de rigeur for exlcusive multimedia. Use DVD pro instead.

IM6 - integrated multimedia 6 ways lets me strip a story and devise a number of ways of producing. This shot of me 50m below the Dardanelles is one I won't forget in a hurry. Couple of minutes later I get hit by a current which sends me tumbling into unexploded ordianates.

Then I run out of air...

Eartha Kitt - An interviewer reflects on viewmagazine

I never thought she would take up the offer, but when the tannoy at BBC Radio went off, saying "David your guest, Eartha Kitt was here", I can't tell you how nervous I was.

What would she be like? Here was a strong, seen-it-all woman.

Born in Cotton fields to a family who would both give her up; her father, the son of a Slave Master, her mum a slave.

But that's not the lingering thought I had as I went to reception to greet her. It was her body of work, the cabaret cum night club singer, most famously that smouldering belgian-chocolate voice.

Eartha Kitt was the seductress, the cat woman literally, that takes no interviewer a prisoner, particularly if you ask the "wrong" question.

I'd interviewed other woman much like her:

• from South Africa, the Madonna of Africa Brenda Fassie.
• Diva Grace Jones
• Fabulous author Thulani Davis, "1959"

But like most celebrities, what mood would she be in?

Her publicist urged against issues on race, and definitely no getting her to do the cat sound.

As interviews go, this was one of my most memorable. Eartha was warm, charming, and delightful.

As I walked her back to her car, she looped her hand through my arm and continued to converse about "race and politics".

I only met her briefly, but like many of her fans, I too muttered: OMG Eartha Kitt - how sad.

You can hear a 4 min segment of the interview on he front page of viewmagazine.tv

Viewmagazine - David postits - end of year

First day out in a long while. Really should be twittering this. In an Apple store in Kingston, Surrey looking at the macbook pros. Nice!

Just walked into Waterstones book store and picked up Blink, Tippin Point and Wisdom of Crowds.

That's my Christmas read done.

Picked up the jury notes for the Royal Television Awards. There's a meeting in Jan. Meanwhile in Berlin, they've started their judging for the International Video Journalism Awards.

Actually we're doing it online. I have started casting my votes and comments on a range of films.

Yesterday, pitched up at Uni/ Varsity. Paul, one of my colleagues on lecturing in "Principles of Journalism" pitched too. We were going through the marking regime for the 40 plus International Masters students.

Some good stuff. Some more to get through. And then second semester modules to dust off and get ready. Next year we're going hyper multimedia.

Trying to work out finances et al for getting to Miami for the Wemedia Game Changer event and then looking at my Phd Module got a couple of 3000 word essays to hand in on research.

Probably the best news to end the year, well, if getting rid of my cold is one of them, is a publishing deal from one of the big US publishers.

You know what these few days off.... actually I can't wait.

I'm going to go cold turkey on blogging etc. so Happy hols, a merry Christmas and may your new year be more special than the last good one.

Now how do I resist getting out of the Apple store without spending... arrghh!!!