Future of Media 08 summit wrap

16Jul08

I headed down to Sydney yesterday for the Future of Media Summit 2008 hosted by Ross Dawson and his Future Exploration Network. Firstly, congratulations to Ross and his hard-working team for putting on such a professional and informative event. It went off without a a hitch and everyone was extremely accommodating.

Officially the #FOM08 event was held in two parts: the conference session with live simulcast between Sydney and Silicon Valley, and the "Unconference" sessions allowing for debate and open forum conversation on various topics.

However, like last month’s PubCamp events in Sydney and Melbourne, there was a third aspect to the event that only half the attendees were aware of – the Twitter back channel and live commentary being conducted by many of the audience. For me, this was at least as informative and stimulating as the conference itself.

On stage, and in Silicon Valley, a series of insightful panels discussed various aspects around the future of media, including:

Mark Antonitis, President and General Manager, KRON-TV

Angelos Frangopoulos, CEO, Australian News Channel

Mark Goldman, COO, Current Media

Wendy Hogan, Vice President & Managing Director, CNET Networks Australia

Stephen Hollings, CEO, News Digital Careers

Loic Le Meur, CEO, Seesmic

Willie Pang, Head of Yahoo! Search Marketing, Australia and New Zealand

Mark Pesce, Founder, FutureSt Consulting

Chris Saad, Chair, Dataportability.org and CEO, Faraday Media

Robert Scoble, Managing Director, Fastcompany.tv

Mark Scott, Managing Director, ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Jenny Williams, Director, Ideagarden

While, from the floor a spirited dialogue was being delivered via
Twitter, Summize and on several blogs. Gavin Heaton was providing a
live commentary straight onto his Servant of Chaos blog and Stilgherrian
was broadcasting the event from his laptop. Seriously, the technology
and clever use of apps was just as impressive at our table as it was
for the entire summit. I probably learned more from this than the whole
event.

Meanwhile, the new v traditional media chestnut roared into life as
soon as Jane Schulze from The Australian opened her mouth with the Twitter
back channel going into overdrive in response to Jane’s obviously
limited understanding of blogging and new media. The debate continued
in the Unconference sessions too.

To be perfectly honest, I am tiring quickly of this debate. Both
sides have valid points. Traditional media isn’t about to drop of the
twig tomorrow, nor are bloggers about to rule the Universe but there is
clearly a transition phase underway and all parties should be aware of
it and be working on how to optimise their potential utilising all
available media.

I attended two "workshops" during the event, both were around New
Business Models. In both cases the discussion veered toward old/new
debate, then to advertising models, which in turn seemed to be mired in
old/new philosophies. What was interesting to me was the fact that
no-one could really offer a better suggestion for business models
besides advertising driven sites. Subscription models, recommendation
models and bundling models were thrown around but it all eventually
came back to advertising continuing to lubricate the digital world in
much the same way it funds traditional media.

That leads me to the one remaining philosophical debate of #FOM08: content. It seems that there are two schools of thought surrounding content.

The first one, which is largely propagated by the traditional media players, is that they must create content. Mark Antonitis went as far as to say that his company aimed to rule the world and would be doing so through the creation on online content. I am sure that mark was being at least somewhat humorous in his remarks, but the sentiment was echoed by others including ABC, SBS and Australia News Channel.

These comments were regularly howled down on the Twitter back channel with a comments like: yes its about content, just not your content.

The second school of thought appears to be around the idea that there is an abundance of content being produced already, quite independent from the traditional channels, and the challenge is to find an effective way of utilising and delivering this content. Much of this content is more immediate, cheaper to produce, and more independent. My earlier observation regarding the third tier of the summit being broadcast live online, via Twitter and Summize, live blog coverage etc is proof of this abundance of content.

Harnessing this is a key to the Future of Media.

Popularity: 1%