Transmedia – it’s kind of everything

This weekend has been about recouperating from SXSWi, physically as well as mentally. Time zones are still playing havoc with my sleeping patterns, but slowly but surely things are settling into place again. Which is good, as there is much to be done.

In hindsight, SXSWi took the field of transmedia at least a couple of steps forward. I read this well written article in The Guardian, by Oliver Burkeman, on takings from this year’s SXSW festival, and one thing in particular resonates strongly with transmedia today, as I see it. Burkeman writes:

” It was the end of day two of South by Southwest Interactive, the world's highest-profile gathering of geeks and the venture capitalists who love them, and I'd been pursuing a policy of asking those I met, perhaps a little too aggressively, what it was exactly that they did. What is "user experience", really? What the hell is "the gamification of healthcare"? Or "geofencing"? Or "design thinking"? Or "open source government"? What is "content strategy"? No, I mean, like, specifically?

The content strategist across the table took a sip of his orange-coloured cocktail. He looked slightly exasperated. "Well, from one perspective, I guess," he said, "it's kind of everything."

The many requirements

That’s what transmedia is evolving into as well, in my opinion. No longer is it good enough to know one field well, like television, or film, or online portals, or how to write a good story, although all these are still important. It’s just that it’s not enough anymore. When writing a story, you need to have a notion of the possibilities that story can give to an online entry into your world, or as an ARG, or as a graphic novel. It's like a CEO of a trucking company; today he needs to know the basics about SEO as well, to keep himself in business. Or the florist who needs to get savvy in the ways of Facebook, just to pick up on all weddings being planned.

When in pre-production for your tv series, you need to have an understanding for how the interaction with viewers can take place on Twitter, Facebook and so on. Most people – great people at what they do – really do not have that inkling yet. This again leads to examples of bulky, unwieldy transmedia that does not connect logically and seamlessly, as it has been assembled from the same set of pieces but with everyone involved looking at their own blueprint that they themselves have drawn up, without talking to each other overly much.

TAG

Here is where I think the Transmedia Artists Guild has made a timely entrance onto the transmedia arena. Because we have to learn, each and everyone of us. And the best way to learn is by doing, and talking to people who have been there, done that and got a number of t-shirts. Whether it’s about best practises or how to engage an audience, about how to connect an ARG in the best way or how to use characters Twitter accounts for best effect, I see the TAG forums as a great place to interact with other creators and developers and get their invaluable insights. If you haven’t yet, do sign up – it’s a place to talk and a place to find other people to discuss with that you do not first have to spend 30 minutes explaining the concept ”transmedia” to.

See you there!

SXSW Round Up Day Five

My own participation in the SXSW line up this last day of SXSWi was cut short by a forced visit to St Davids Hospital in Austin. As a side not, let me just take this opportunity to accolade the medial service provided; all involved were extremely professional, kind and efficient. Wait to get in was 15 minutes tops. Kudos! On the other hand, waiting 2h for a taxi was slightly irritating; in the end a collague got a cab down at the Convention Centre in one minute flat and came up to get me.

So, even though being in Austin, this last day I had the opportunity to follow SXSW in the way most people actually do, those not attending that is; by trying to follow the right persons, read the right blogs and figuring out the essential hashtags.

ARGs tell your story

Adrian Hon from sixtostart held an – apparently – well attendend talk on ”Project 314: Putting the Game back into ARG”, which was about looking at ARGs as stand-alone experiences, can it work or not? As said in the description of the talk – ”we found that there are enormous advantages in creating an ARG that's attached to an online game; for one, you can avoid the irritating friction that always occurs when switching between media; for another, the ARG feels completely natural.”

So, ARGs promise to transform the world of entertainment and storytelling, but often end up not really delivering. They’ve been overhyped and oversold and are now in a state of disillusionment – on the other hand, that means the only way is up! One great way of scaling ARGs is to automate them – example is www.smokescreengame.com - but this comes at the expense of the ‘magic’ of the story. And, which must be remembered, every extra action a participant needs to do in order to advance the story is an opportunity to just say "screw it, I'm giving up".

Adrian advocates, and I’m with him on this, not making ARGs so hard to play. The charm of ARGs isn't in the hoax - it's in the experience. Knowing how long a book is doesn't spoil the experience of the book. If you’re wondering how to make an ARG - steal success strategies from other types of games to improve the ARG experience.

All in all good advice. ARGs are a brilliant way to engage people, but just as Andrea Phillips talked about in her Hoax or Transmedia talk, with some of the examples she showed us, hoaxing might feel tantalizing and fun, but most of the time it’s seriously counterproductive. Trust your story and the way you’ve built your experience, let the people get immersed, and there will be no need to try to fool them. Above quotes were a condensed version of the #project314 hashtag.

The Transmedia backlash

Now, a big trend this year was the transmedia backlash which was very apparent during these days at SXSW. From @feliciaday stating being really tired of transmedia, to @jaybushman jokingly suggesting that he’d submit a panel to SXSW next year about everyone who hates the term transmedia, the term has gotten some severe beating from a number of sources – including @kevmoss, putting up this page on “Should I Feel Embarrased to Use the Phrase Transmedia?” for people to slug it out around the term.

In my opinion this is a very natural backlash. I second @glecharles who tweeted “Interesting to see the #transmedia backlash building. That's good; it's the step that comes before awareness and proper adoption. Go!”

It is also a question of so many people having to come around to the term, from developers and designers to marketing people and producers – it is quite natural that the term gets thrown around a lot and a bit battered in the process. I had a discussion with @geoffreylong over Twitter (before phone batteries and wifi connections let us up) and I totally agree with him – “Abandoning #transmedia because the buzz is wearing off is like abandoning the Internet after the dotcom collapse.” There is no need to abandon anything yet, but I can see where Geoffrey is coming from, as he is anxious not to abandon terminology that can help us build a standard for creating transmedia, a standard similar to “close-up”, “POV” etc in regular film-making. On the other hand I would argue that much of that terminology is moving away from technically-based and into more experience-based terminology.

All in all, we’re getting there – and I still think it’s nice that we do not have a definite definition of Transmedia yet. It’s more interesting like this ☺

Conclusion

I will conclude by saying that SXSWi is a blast. It’s also exactly what you make of it – at any given point, dozens of people are talking about interesting things, just go listen… or chat to the guy next to you; he might be the online traffic analytic from Canada that your project has sorely been missing, or the venture capitalist that is looking for exactly a project like yours. Almost guaranteed though, he or she is a nice and friendly person whom you can have an interesting discussions with. And yeah, find the right parties via Twitter, Yobongo or any other app you’re using, and try not to bust up your foot ☺

I’ll add some links to this post as soon as I am somewhere where the wifi connection is a bit better. Here's a link to Guardian UKs look at the tech presented this year. This is Fast Company's list of the most innovative companies in 2011. More links coming in the near future. Thank you SXSWi, and goodbye! Hope to see you next year!

SXSW Round-Up Day Four

This Monday started out on a personally slightly unpleasant note, as I apparently had managed to get some sort of inflammation going in my foot. Basically, it hurt like hell with every step I tried to take. But, well, staying at the hotel didn’t really feel like an option, so after a prolonged an unsuccessful search for a crutch or a walking stick (and a visit to the First Aid centre at ACC – ”what’s your status sir? Do you have an insurance?”) I just decided to hobble along (but discounting sessions at Sheraton or even the Hilton, as I really didn’t feel like walking a lot.

15 minutes of transmedia blast

So, first session was a short and intensive one, as Anthea Foyer held a talk on Transmedia – Formula for Success at the Future15 track of the SXSW (which is basically everyone talking getting 15 minutes to talk on their subject). Now, hats off to Anthea for this session, which from my point of view was the most condensed and to-the-point one so far.

So, as Anthea did put it, there are five aspects to creating a transmedia property:

• provide your audience with new and exciting ways to participate with your content (as an example, their own Time Tremors)
* create multiple points of entry, maximize audience exposure and uptake. And yeah, it really doesn't matter if the audience understands what transmedia is; it is enough if they are comfortable with the platforms used
* drive content and audience through a number of interconnected platforms and channels. An example would be Cisco's The Hunt
* create a momentum of audience participation that is both sustainable and far reaching. There might be audiences you had no idea of, but your audience will find them. And yeah, gone are the days of forcing the consumer to consume what you want them to. Just remember, be agile - let people come in and tell their stories.
* make sure you create meaningful content and a great story. When you're in the story, you don't care about platforms or tools as you're immersed.

A fast and furious take on transmedia, and perhaps the best 15 minutes I spent in Austin this first time I was here. I sincerely do like when people who have done something can come and talk about their experiences and their conclusions from that. Thank you Anthea.

The future of television

I then - mostly because of said hurting foot - remained seated in ballroom E to hear more Future 15 talks. Richard Bullwinkle, Chief Evangelist of Rovi, talked about the Connected TV and about how the television is not a PC, however much you would like to make it into one. In fact, Rovi has pulled data from boxes in a lot of houses, showing that 86% of viewers have no idea what they are going to watch when they start watching television. Bullwinkle's point was then, naturally, that no matter if you didn't know, your box should know what you would want to watch and suggest those things to you (where I'm more inclined to think that it would be nice to open the box and immediately choose between two options - the "I handle this myself" option and the "OK then let's see what you'd suggest for me" option). Bullwinkle's take on it is to have a second screen be your navigator - your smartphone, tablet - and use that for better interface, personalized ads etc. Well, I don't know about ads - I'd much rather have it as one entry into a transmedia project, use it for storytelling... Fine, if a brand can fit into that without messing things up, why not? But story first.

A little while later, Utku Can from Mint Digital delivered an interesting quarter of an hour on TV vs the Web back channel. Now this is one trend being discussed at several sessions here, about The Hills and their backchannel, about the Twitter streams around the Oscars etc. And yes, TV is social, and the social has moved from the sofa to the web, just as @utku pointed out. Fact is that 52% of all people use the Internet while watching TV (and a staggering 77% in the age group 18-24). With chatter being inherently competitive, and much content lending itself beautifully to chatter, this will just grow and grow - so design for that, design for split attention! But recognize that the viewer will choose how to watch.

@feliciaday and @garyvee

The keynote with Felicia Day was a bit interesting; she is an entrepreneur and she's good at what she's doing. Basically what she said was "Do your own thing, find your audience, let them advocate you, have great content, don't sell out". All good advice.

Rounded off the day by hobbling into Gary Vaynerchuck's session on brands. The man is a maniac to be sure, but a lot of the things he says makes sense - brands have got to become humanized; less like that friend who calls you all the time to tell you stuff you don't really want to hear, but more like the friend YOU call when you want to talk to someone or needs to ask advice. Give first, worry later should be a motto. And yeah, like many others I've encountered during these days, @garyvee is a big believer in context. To quote: "if Content is King the Context is God. I'm obsessed with context." This holds true for transmedia stories as well; don't forget the context. And keep it real, true - authentic, not necessarily realistic.

...and an un-cooperative foot

All in all a pretty packed day, not to mention meeting such a lot of awesome people, also at some parties later on... Yesterday evening I ended the post thus:

(at this point I’m going to have to stop for the moment, as foot is killing me. Hospital next I think, which sucks majorly… I’ll be back with the rest later, bummed to (probably) miss the last day)

And to update - yeah, the foot was x-rayed, nothing broken, muscles and soft tissue getting an inflammation going basically. So, on crutches and following the last day over Twitter at the hotel, unfortunately. I'll blog about that tomorrow, I think :). And yeah, thanks everyone who've expressed their concerns and offered help - you're all brilliant. My foot says hi.

SXSW Day Three Round-Up

So, Sunday, and a bunch of geeks – actually a pretty huge bunch of geeks – were grumbling about hangovers and daylight saving time. But, alas, there was nothing more to it but up and into the fray again (and yeah, SXSW gets a bit funnier if you participate in the #SXStarWars game as well – look the hashtag up, some real gems in there. Unless you’re a Trekkie of course…).

Today there were going to be a number of transmedia panels which I was looking forward to as our fully packed shuttle bus was hurtling down the Interstate 35 towards downtown. I’m not sure but I think there were even more people at the ACC today than yesterday; the badges are really taking over town (or at least a couple of blocks).

Creative leadership - pretty handy

No transmedia in the morning though, so Sarah B Nelsons talk on Creative Leadership was the first panel to go to. That ballroom – C, as it happens – was also packed. Guess everyone needs to know either how to be a good leader or how to know if their leader is not a good creative one.

Sarah had some really good points throughout her talk. I really like when people are talking about stuff they know, when they know it from experience from having been there, done that and gotten the t-shirt. Nothing like banging your heads against walls in order to gain some real knowledge about what works and what not, and how to deal with the stuff that doesn’t work. Sarah was also good at explaining this process and her experiences, which made this a good talk. For example, one of the hardest things about being a creative leader is setting the team off in the right direction from the beginning. To do that, one needs to kick off by asking people what they want to do within the project, not just about schedules, workflows and suchlike. Do that by goign through everyone’s goals, everyone’s fears and everyone’s expectations with regards to the project. And what every creative leader apparently should do, is get familiar with facilitation training. There was a lot more, slides are up at http://bit.ly/fRDExS so please go and have a look if creative leadership interests you. You could also look up the #creativeminds hashtag, there are bound to be some tweets still on that feed.

Transmedia in the house

Andrea Phillips held a good talk on Hoax or Transmedia, talking about something that we (and many others I’m sure) are wrestling with when developing transmedia content – to hoax or not to hoax? And if hoaxing, how? What pitfalls are there? There are better ways of doing it – LonelyGirl15 was first a public figure on YouTube and only afterwards a one-to-one phenomenon – and worse ways of doing it – Martin Agget was one-on-one to begin with, which made revealing the hoax to be much more negatively received.

Rabbit holes are also dangerous things. It’s very OK to send a scent box signed by HBO to get key people to talk about the upcoming (yay!) series Game of Thrones. It’s something completely different to send people anonymous, vaguely threatening letters as part of a stirring-up-some-interest campaign. That’s what not-so-nice people do, and you don’t want to be associated with them!

On Twitter we were simultaneously discussing possible Rules of Transmedia Engagement. I think the bottom rule should be “Don’t Be Mean”, or something along that line, or perhaps "Do Unto Others...". Also, as Andrea pointed out, one must always take into account the Risk of Harm with a project – if I design it like THIS, how will it affect the people playing or watching, bystanders, bypassers and so on? Also – do not mistake “realistic” for “authentic”. A world can be authentic, well made and compelling, and making people want to join that world, without it being at all realistic (probably “Pandora” as an example?).

The checklist Andrea came up with was pretty straightforward. 1) is this so realistic that people will be fooled? 2) what about people who see only one piece? 3) what potential ham could it cause and 4) can it get me sued? I will be sure to follow that list in the future.

Examples of storytelling

Moving forward, the Unexpected Non-Fiction Storytelling session featured @zefrank, Tommy Pallotta, Hugues Sweney and Caspar Sonnen. It was actually all about showcasing. Pallottas project Collapsus is quite intricate. He also showcased (premiered, actually) unSpeak, which is basically tackling hard questions through voice over and footage taken from YouTube. UnSpeak is opening up to the public in the near future, aiming at letting them mix stuff up as well and tell the stories of UnSpeak in their own way.

National Film Board of Canada showed their stuff, like the Pine Point documentary which is simply a beautiful piece of art. The prize of the bunch though goes to @zefrank, for several innovative ideas that he presented, like http://youknowI.ly and http://star.me , all craving user interaction. The difference between @zefrank and the others at the panel were, IMHO; that the others made content for the audience, whereas Ze Frank made content with the audience. Great quote to close that session, from Le Frank: If people would just pay attention to the narrative of their possible funding, they’d be a lot more successful.

#tmtm (or, can you make money from transmedia)

Alex Chapman and James Kay, coming from the legal angle, held a talk on Transmedia Transmonetisation. Can you make money out of it, basically. Ideas have value, but not until we have something produced can we lock down elements and key points and minimize the risk of someone else stealing it. There were a number of comments on Twitter on some of the issues. @Fflic ‘s summed up a lot of it: #tmtm session at #SXSW. Lawyers always assume that rights = cash and control. Sorry, Context is king. (to which I added “Content” – great content and great context belong together and feed off each other.)

The TAG Team

Finally, at the Transmedia Artists Guild session, everyone got together in a heap in the middle of the room (or at least moved themselves and/or their chair a bit closer). @vpisteve and @jaybushman did the most of the talking to begin with. The guild will not compete with unions – it wants to talk about transmedia, perhaps do some lobbying for the new forms of media and so on.
To begin with there were obviously many different opinions and suggestions and questions, which is understandable. TAG has put up a website, where you can register and go to the forum’s to discuss transmedia and what it actually is and/or look for a job or post a project of your own. It’s accessible at http://www.transmediaartists.com. There was even, after a while, some love for TAG from a union official in attendance.

Now, much of the talk was almost US only, but the challenges of developing and producing transmedia are universal. I sincerely hope TAG will succeed, because like Steve said: "A success for one of us is a success for all of us, as it helps establish working practices and genre”. Looking forward to linking up the transmedia that is being done in Europe with TAG at some point in time.

That long day was then continued within the framework of transmedia at the Driskill. Now, some parties later and a blog post later, I am seriously ready to hit the sack (and yes, I’ll sort out the links tomorrow for the post; do not have the energy right now).

Some extras

PS. Heard a lot of good stuff about Barbara Vance's talk and Frank Rose's Tron session - unfortunately they were overlapping. A Wired article by Frank on Tron is up here and a VERY comprehensive post about Vance's talk is up here.

SXSW Day Two Roundup

Second day of SXSW was pretty packed. It wasn’t actually until today, with most attendees present and a full day of talks that it dawned on me just how big this thing is – at any given moment there are 30-40 odd talks going on, and it’s just impossible to go to everything that sounds interesting, especially as the events are spread out over ten different venues all over Austin. The shuttles don’t help much either, as the traffic makes it a quicker option to go on foot.

That said, it is possible to catch interesting sessions. The only issue then being that if you, like I found myself at a couple of occations today, are at a not-so-interesting panel, the option of going to another is not really a viable one, as you probably won’t get there before it’s over. Today also made me take note of Robert Prattens excellent advice – at a place like this, take the opportunity to go to talks that are a bit off from what you regularly do, as the ones that are about what you do can be a bit to basic.

The first session I attended was entitled ”The Last Broadcast: Entertainment is Social – What’s Next?” and featured Brian Johnson, Marcelino Ford-Livene (as moderator), Dr Jeffrey Cole, John Marcom and Gary Wheelhouse. I should perhaps have read the description a bit more thoroughly, it being about how our nowadays connected devices are changing into personalized entertainment platforms. And that was basically what the talk was about. Brian came in with some good points, for instance that the change in television as a media – it becoming more social, more connected, more online - is coming not because it is a marketing trend and not because the industry has decided so, it is happening because people want it to happen. Just at with most other things in society.

Other than that, the panel was pretty dire fare, never venturing far from the field of ”wow, people want to tweet about a show” kind of thing. Summing it up pretty nicely was a question from the audience, a man trying to build a social media strategy for his broadcaster, and asking the panel to help him with some advice as many producers were of the opinion that opening up to the public is a disaster waiting to happen – what should he do? Answer from the panel? ”Yes, it’s a disaster waiting to happen. I would not be opening up.”. In my opinion, in a connected world where authenticity, openness and a feeling of ”real” is the currency you trade in (other than the quality of your content, naturally), such an approach is not only outdated, it’s outright counterproductive. To be fair, Brian was of another opinion - "do open up, explain the context and social norms will prevail".

The AVAdventure showcase panel was a step in a totally other direction. 1693 Productions have launched AVAdventure, which is a tailorable solution to engage different-sized groups of people into what could be likned to an ARG or a flash mob. Is can be an interactive live play, played out over a day, or something shorter. It can be about education, promotion, music, basically whatever. People download an audiofile to their iPods and then, at a given moment, simultaneously press play and follow the instructions that they are given. Accompanied by actors and a script, they can play out almost everything, from the Declaration of Codependence to a music video.

It was an interesting talk, to be sure. In stark contrast to the previous session, these people were extremely used to losing most control over things that happened - for instance, if one of 100 participants had started their iPods 30 seconds early, that person was sure to be doing stuff that got everyone else going "what?", but in a good way. It still turned out very well and people had a great time. They’re only now thinking about sponsors etc. I think their way of doing things would have strong ties to transmedia, should one start to explore them.

At the keynote of the day (with a ridiculously long line to get in, almost the whole length of the Austin Convention Centre) Seth Priebatch of SCVNGR fame talked some interesting things about gaming. If the 2000s was the decade of social – connections, if you will – then the 2010s will be the decade of games, or influence, in that case. In the 2000s, Facebook built the layer of social on top of the world, now it’s time to build the layer of gaming.

As an example – the problem with schools is that the engagement is broken. The solution? Introduce status and levels. If school is a game, then grades is a games mechanic. But it’s a flawed one, as it allows some people lose. Instead, look at D&D and introduce experience points and level up. It works to change the rules; at Princeton, no one is supervising the tests. The Code of Honor that students sign also say that complicity is as much crime as the original offence. The result is that fewer and fewer people cheat. You can also use the power of leveling up in this context.

As Seth said, Location Based Services are not commonplace yet. But to get them more commonplace, go more loosely location based, not tightly; it can be enough that people say they are going to be somewhere, not that they actually are somewhere, for instance. A game that people played out in the audience also showed the powers of decentralized leadership paired with a a joint goal and and a countdown. The Game Layer think is interesting, and I believe future projects must take this into consideration.

Finally, on the panel on transmedia, Daniel Lorenzetti, R. Eric Lieb, Louie Provost and Christian Raymond were talking transmedia.

The players on stage were pretty experienced producers and what-not. That said, I don’t think the talk really lived up to the subject of the talk. The panel mostly talked about transmedia from a movie/film/Hollywood perspective. Not much talk of other forms of transmedia, not much advice in the way of how to create transmedia other than hooking it to some other content. All in all, a not too impressive panel. But some gems were to be found, like the fact that transmedia elements can prop up the project where the film Is not-so-good, but the accompanying game might be the best ever. That will keep people attached to your brand. All in all, you have the same customers.

All in all, a hectic day and a day that showed the wisdom of leaving a panel if you’re not impressed and go find something else. After the day we attended meetups and parties, which was nice. Now, however, totally knackered. Will now sleep, to be fresh and back tomorrow!

SXSWi Day One wrapup

As the first day of first SXSWi is behind me, I thought I’d take the time to sum up a bit about the experiences.

Overall, SXSWi is a nice conference. Nice in every aspect of the word; the organizers are nice – friendly, welcoming, there when you need them, saying the right things at the right time (like the fact that you can help Japan and their earthquake/tsunami victims here). The venues are nice – granted, it’s hard to make a conference centre nice, but they’re trying. Above all, the people are nice. People I’ve spoken to in queues, people I’ve talked to next to me at seminars, just about everyone is nice and happy to be at SXSWi. Which all summed up makes for an über-nice experience, so far.

At the back of the 330 pages thick SXSWi book is a wordcloud derived from the 1000+ strong programming sessions. It’s no surprise that ”social”, ”web”, ”media” and ”meet” are the largest words in the cloud – slightly more surprising is that words like ”cloud”, ”app” and ”APIs” are barely visible. But yes, social web and media, and meeting the people who are doing this, seems to be what SXSWi is about – this year at least.

The two sessions I attended were the fireside interview with Tim O'Reilly conducted by Jason Calacanis. It was a good interview – although Jason had a pretty easy time, as Tim was pretty good at speaking about the things he was passionate about. Some gems that came out of that discussion were for example talks about brands; as Tim sees it (and I agree fully), brands that connect in the right way with their targeted audience can give them the feeling of being in on something unique, something special. ”Being in the club” was the phrase Tim used. He went on explaining how a great idea is great, but it must be able to pull a load of train carriages behind it. Furthermore, it must go where a lot of people want to go, to fill up the carriages. Must be inclusive.

Tim O’Reilly categorized himself as being best at ”recognizing patterns”. This allowed him to think of ads online, of Web 2.0, etc. This is something that can be summed up as pattern recognition = having good notions of what is happening + have a core set of strong beliefs, loosely held + meet a lot of interesting, passionate people + make sure one pays attention to what they have to say.

At the ”The New Frontier of Social Gaming” with Brian Reynolds of Zynga, we started off with a look at social media. Facebook to the notion of being social to a new level – now you could be social efficiently. It doesn’t necessarily mean deep social interactivity, but Facebook is good at light social touches, which is where social games come in.

There was a lot of talk around the subject, but the key elements were that if you want ot make a social game, concentrate on helping people socialize more efficiently. Take something everyone can play, a pretty game, simple and featuring a universal aspiration. Finally, provide tools for people to express themselves. One unique element is that no matter what time of the day you play the game, other people logging in at 3pm are playing the same games as the people playing seven hours later. Now, games should be fun. FUN, according to Brian Reynolds of Zynga, is being provided with a series of interesting choices, where he or she can learn and recognize different pattern and provide surprise and delight to the ones experiencing it. So how do you make a fun app? Prototype it, revise it, show it to friends. Revise it. Review it. If it’s still not fun and ready, try to evolve it further. Put more choices. Make these choices matter more or build a story with surprise, suspense and/or humor. Hide patterns in your content that the audince can find them along the way. Add some kind of social like connection, and / or build a story where I – the audience - is the hero. Basically a lot of stuff that goes for transmedia development as well; if your content doesn’t feel good enough or fun enough, perhaps try one of the methods above? And if you’re not already testing your content on a bunch of people and revising accordingly, start doing so now!

In the evening was an informal transmedia meetup, attendend by a host of peole, such as Scott Walker and Sheri Candler. I enjoyed the conversations, and above all the feeling that transmedia people everywhere are struggling with the same things – sustainability, a measure of understanding from the client’s part, acceptance and a want to immerse from the part of the public…. Still, these are just obstacles to overcome. Looking forward to a lot more discussion at the formal meetup, on Sunday.

Transmedia Rising - comments

The JWT report of transmedia as a trend – Transmedia Rising, downloadable here – is a good read and shows pretty well where we are right now, in the world of transmedia (which evolves at a dizzying pace, but then again, what doesn’t). The report does have branding and revenue as core elements in the report; on the other hand, no transmedia project can expect longevity without a sound business model at its core.

I did have some thoughts on a couple of the topics discussed in the post: creating the flow and digital natives. We say transmedia but in my mind we really need to think sansmedia; there is very little we can create or come up with within the borders of a project (short of true telepathy or something suchlike) that there is not a viable technical solution for, or one that can be invented. This is not to say that we should not look at platforms or tools while developing and writing, as these many times can work as inspirational material and enablers, rather than obstacles. But to start a project with the assumption that ”this will be a television, web portal and iPhone app-project” and let that assumption define the story, story world and transmedia experience, that’s just plain wrong. The digital natives experience their content without thinking about platforms or codes used, they just do it. So must our content, our stories, do. Furthermore, it really is not enough to come up with new ways to tell stories and technical solutions for it, if we do not find new ways to empower the audience and let them have their way with the content - but in a way that we as creators can still be OK with.

Coming, as I am, from the world of television (television formats to be precise), this is a process and a way of developing and producing that absolutely MUST be viewed with positive goggles on. It is far to easy to look at ones’ television documentary or drama and simply give up on getting to grips with the challenges of a many-faceted story world with multiple intertwining stories; it is equally far too easy to look at such a project from a traditional marketers’ point of view and simply long to go back to selling those 30 second ad spots for the sitcom you represent.

The reality is, of course, that this is true if one lets it be. I would suggest quite the opposite; that such a project would give a producer a multitude of ideas, that can get an audience to engage deeper and truer in a story and a story world, it can give the producer and the developer invaluable contacts to their core audience, it can lengthen the life span of the content many times over… it is building an exoskeleton of pure titanium on a hitherto lovely but limited story, enabling it to punch through the traditional storytelling walls and invite an audience to follow.

For the marketer the benefits are even clearer. As the story gain more aspects, more details, more spaces to occupy, so will the marketer gain more possibilities to connect to a brand, to reach customers, to advocate the content and thereby the associated brand(s).

To quote JWT’s report:

For marketers, this is an evolution of the integrated marketing model: Rather than a consistency across multiple touchpoints, the goal is for different channels to communicate different things (within the overarching strategy), with an emphasis on putting the brand community at the center

.
Now, substitute “marketers” for “storytellers”, “marketing model” for “storytelling model” and “brand community” for “narrative superstructure” and it is very obvious that these are two sides of the same coin.

The JWT report is a good sign that transmedia thinking and development is getting into more and more people’s minds in a good way. I for one am looking forward to what 2011 brings - a year that has already started magnificently.

SXSWi 2011

These are hectic times, with projects upon projects going (almost) too well, leaving me with scant time to delve into things to the extent that I would want. I and a colleague are, however, leaving for SXSWi tomorrow, which will be mighty interesting.

It's great to see that SXSWi features a number of talks on transmedia this year - and a lot of other talks that tie into transmedia, from a storytelling, a technical or a funding angle. To check out my schedule, have a look here (I used Harvest as my tool of choice, just worked best for me) (and yeah, erm... all those parties I have checked, I'm not going to ALL of them. I think.)

If you're there, hope to bump into you, if you're not, I'll write a comprehensive resume afterwards!

What Motivates a Transmedia Audience

This must be one of the things that creators of just about anything wonder about the most – will people, my intended audience, feel motivated enough to partake of what I have to offer? Will they participate like I would want them to participate? Will they stick around? Will they advocate my content to their friends? Or will they just turn their back and go do something else that they think is better?

This goes for blockbuster movies, for television series, for indie graphic novels and yes, for transmedia projects as well. To try to get to grips with this challenge, big-enough companies do target group research, polls etc, while smaller producers and creators poll their friends and family but mostly trust their gut feeling.

I struggle with this as well, naturally. I am in the quite luxurious position of having access to a laboratory and researchers focused on media and user experience, with whom we at the format development department work closely to get to know as much as possible about the experiences people derive from what we have to offer. Granted, many times the bulk of work goes to getting the testing itself focused to such a degree that it actually helps us in the development work. But as we work on it, we refine it and become better, naturally.

Something I’ll be bringing to the development work, and to the testing, is something I just saw. This very interesting video from RSA.org, featuring a talk by Dan Pink, is about what motivates people in the workplace. Do have a look, it’s (as all RSA-videos are) very good indeed. Basically what is said is that research shows that motivating people to work better with more money as the sole reward works fine as long as we’re talking only about manual labor. As soon as we go into any kind of task that would call for creative work, the people who received more money worked worse and failed more often. On the other hand, ventures like Wikipedia, Linux and Apache show that people – highly educated, motivated people at that – will work and give of their knowledge and skill, for free. So, what is the reward? Autonomy, mastery and purpose, according to Dan Pink.

We’re big on doing stuff that we want to do ourselves, not things that someone tells us to do. We’re also big on the feeling of mastering something, knowing that we know this thing and we are competent in precisely this regard. Finally, we’re big on having a purpose; of knowing that today is a step along the way towards a goal, whatever that might be – from ”making the world a better place” to ”teaching people”, for instance.

This was the workplace, mind you. I am quite convinced that this goes for a transmedia project as well, where you would want people to interact, to participate, to become a part of your story world. To put it into the categories of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose, if you want the audience to immerse, engage and participate:

- You must not guide them too much, or the feeling of autonomy will be lost. It's a tricky task, to leave enough openness for everyone to find something "new", and to be able to make their own way through your story and your world, and make their own stuff there; too much and you have no control (which might be what you desire), too little and you will have obedient people following your instructions (if there are any people left for you to instruct, that is)
- You must not make mysterious content that no one will ever master, or they will never get the feeling of being competent in your story world. Instead, perhaps, leave areas where audience members can become masters; masters of what they themselves have created within the ramifications of your story, or masters at guiding other audience members in understanding the intricate fabric of the story and the world.
- Finally, you must not build a story where the participation of the audience has no meaning for anything, where their actions or lack of actions has no impact and it simply does not matter what they do or not. Neither can you build a story world that has no purpose in itself, or there will be no reason for anyone to engage in it.

I’ll take these thoughts into my development work. I’ll let you know how it plays out!

Tools for Transmedia part 6 - HistoryPin

Short post due to winter holidays...

This, HistoryPin, is a service that was launched in mid-2010 (which makes it ANCIENT, no? ☺) . I saw it back then, in May, and promptly forgot about it until @storytellin tweeted about the service today. Looking at the description of the service, I think HistoryPin is a tool that could be used for quite intriguing aspects of transmedia storytelling. Say that you are building any sort of scenario, and want to build on the history of the world you’re creating – by using HistoryPin you can a) get an excellent feeling for different places and views, what it felt like, back in the days, or alternatively you can plant your own photos, allegedly from that time and age.
You could even plant clues in these pictures, clues that can lead to other content elsewhere or give deeper understanding about some scenario in one of your storytracks.
The only obstacle might be HistoryPin itself, since I have no idea whether they would agree to hosting ”fake” pictures; on the other hand, deals can surely be made, and the pictures available for a certain time only, for instance.

Tools for Transmedia part 5

There are constantly opening up new services and software that could be used in a transmedia setting, and I will admit it is hard to keep up. So a big thanks to Scott Walker for pointing me in the direction of two more of these, this time focusing on enhancing geolocating possibilities, Voxora and Geoloqi.

Voxora

This is a service that on the surface is basic, yet does something no one has done before (at least to my knowledge). Voxora ties in with your Foursquare account and lets you leave a message tied to the location you are in, a voice message that you can listen to yourself and that others can listen to as well, by calling a certain number.

Now, I have not been able to try this out, so I might be missing something. I think it would be a wonderful tool for just about anyone doing transmedia stuff; this could be used, for example, to leave voice messages for people at certain locations, messages that tie in with some sort of ARG or other – could potentially be quite powerful stuff.

It could also be tied to a viewing of a movie at a cinema, for instance; at the end of Avatar, if there would’ve been a number there to call, where Jake would have told me 30 seconds more of how life on Pandora went on after the humans had left, I would’ve called that number immediately. Basically, Voxora has potential to be of very good use for transmedia content developers.

Geoloqi

This is a somewhat similar service, but handier for a developer of transmedia. Through the interface – a world map with a simple interface – you can drop Geonotes just about anywhere (like dropping a geonote on the grocery store before leaving the house, which means you won’t have to bring a shopping list). Through the website you can also drop notes for other users – just know the username of the user and you can decide where on the map you want to leave a geo note for them. This note will then pop up when they go past that place.

Now, the ways to use this service in the realms of Transmedia are numerous. The only hitch being that at the moment you would need for people to sign up, and in some way, shape or form tell you their user name on the service, for you to be able to create these geo notes for them.

On the other hand, once you have their usernames, you just have to plant clues, information, greetings, reminders or conversation out there, in their geologically logical places. If you’re shooting a documentary, you could concievably have messages ready for different places that were seen in the documentary, places of interest, and have these messages communicated to people who are dedicated followers of the subject or of the documentary itself.

These were just a couple of examples, and more Tools for Transmedia are sure to spring up. In the meantime, does anyone have any experience of using the examples above? I’d be happy to hear more.

The Three Facets of Transmedia

There has been an interesting discussion going on over at the Storyworld group on LinkedIn, about transmedia; what should be constituted as transmedia and what should be filed under ”flimsy cross media marketing”, to quote, and what should be taken into consideration when transmediating content. Deriving from that, I felt the need to expand on a couple of points, regarding the three different facets of a transmedia project:

The telling of a story

Transmedia storytelling is, at its core, simply that. By spreading out over different media and by creating a greater whole, we move deeper into the realms of transmedia. What it is, is basically the art and technique of telling a story, or rather multiple stories, connected directly or indirectly inside a larger story world and/or narrative superstructure and/or mythology.

As we all know, this can be done in many ways; through characters in blogs, through exciting and engaging television drama series, through sms, Twitter, Facebook, apps… The key is create the stories and the world, and use the platforms that comes naturally to the different parts of the story

Engaging an audience

The second facet is also crucial, that of embracing the audience and bringing them into the story/stories, to sandboxes or cheese-holes or perhaps even to less structured, more open areas in the structure of the stories and the story world.

This, of course, as many have discussed, profoundly changes the notion of an audience. Your audience is your audience, but at the same time they are your co-creators, investing themselves in your story and inevitably bringing change with them. It is then up to you, the creator, to choose just how much change you want. But generally, the more people invest, the closer they will feel to your content. Best case scenario, you not only have an audience and a horde of co-creators, you also have advocates that bring your stories to people in a fashion you yourself never could.

Financing your creations

The third facet is that of building sustainable financial structures, which have to be re-developed for each case, just as the stories and the worlds are re-developed for each new project. Transmedia projects have so many variables in play, that they inevitably become different from each other – more different than, say, television series or feature films. This leads to the creators needing to re-think the financing for every project; for sure there is a measure of recycling financing models from previous transmedia projects, but there will always be new possibilities in the context of a new project. This – sustainable financial structures – can take many shapes; from brands financing the lot to crowd sourced funding via IndieGoGo or a similar service.

Win-win-win

I firmly believe that to transmediate content opens up a whole lot of new possibilities to turn a project into a win-win-win situation, where you as a content creator win since you can tell more stories to more people in more ways, and get more and better (as in more fitting with your project) money in when you can play with a number of platforms and a number of stories. The brands or financiers win since you can target their message better, and since there is room for more financiers to partake - tv, online, books, mobile - the cost is less per participant with more bang for the buck as the end result. Finally the audience wins, as you have more money to make better content and make it available on more platforms to be even easier to obtain, engage and participate with and advocate for the audience.

The Phantom - a Theoretical Transmedia Case Study

Yesterday, in a post about developing existing properties towards becoming transmedia properties, I warned everyone to leave The Phantom be, ’cause he was mine to develop. A jest, naturally, but today it actually got me thinking a bit. See, today, the 17th of February, marks the 75th anniversary for the iconic comic hero, who saw the light of day on this very day in 1936. I found an old Phantom magazine from when I was a kid and had a look; lo and behold, the foundation for a solid transmedia setting is there already!

Below is what could be called a Case Study of a Theoretical Transmedia Development (or CSTTD) (happy there were two ”T”:s in that abbreviation, or this post would’ve featured in some quite different google searches) of the existing property The Phantom.

The Phantom has always, for some reason, been most popular not in it’s country of origin, USA, but rather in the Nordic countries of Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway. Lee Falk, who created The Phantom, rewrote a lot of the background story at the same time as the actual first strips were being publised in 1936, building an intricate setting which almost could be part of the real world as a framework for the story.

The story of the Phantom

The Phantom is, as we all know, over 400 years old. Back then an ancestor was on a ship that was overtaken by Singh-pirates. Wounded, he managed to flee, was found by the pygmés (the ”bandars”) and woved never to rest until he was avenged. He created the mask and the costume, and after his death, left it all to his son, who left it to his, and so on, until today.

Do observe that we’re already talking ”distant mountains” here. Singh-pirates? Bandars? The Skull Cave? A lot of things to explore and dive deeper into.

Over the years – and the strips – the world of The Phantom grew bigger and bigger; a number of tribes appeared, a country (Bengali or Bangalla) where the Skull Cave and surroundings were situated, the Jungle Patrol overseeing justice in the wilderness, the island Eden, where all animals live in peace… strange going ons like The Little People and the slave trading nations in the north… freely mixing 18th or 19th century traditions and legends with the technologies of today, Falk and his co-creators created a rich world and a rich mythology – sometimes with different parts at odds with each other, but most often not – which would be just right for a transmedia developer.

The Phantom goes Transmedia

The Phantom has tried to revive itself – from the movie in 1996 to different features and fan clubs – but obviously not looked at their property from a transmedia angle. Some suggestions I would look at, were I to develop said property:

- What are all the different storylines that need to be collected? Can they be benchmarked against each other and either be removed from the canon of The Phantom or embraced, included and communicated to everyone associated with the brand? This goes hand in hand with….
- Re-writing the mythology, starting from the storylines that have been spared, to get as much flesh on the bones as possible and evaluating the efforts made already – how does it all fit together.
- Which of the canonical storylines are at home in the real world, i.e. which can, as a casual impulse, use for instance the Internet to perform a task. Myself, I’d like to work on the Jungle Patrol and how the Patrol was created in greater detail, opening up their web presence to today’s readers, adding twitter accounts, a continuous Help The Patrol online mystery game etc, and see what other stories can be derived from the Jungle Patrol without directly involving the Phantom.
- How can a storyline (or more than one) be translated to an ARG or suchlike, and where and how can such an ARG take place? The Phantom has bases all over the world and has been on adventures everywhere, which should lend any ARG-developing team a helping hand.

And of course, there are a multitude of stories, that have only been briefly touched upon in the magazine or the strips, enough to create a whole Phantom shadow world as a shadow of the real world.

I’ll stop here, but I think you get the point. You will be able to go transmedia with almost any project. But some are simply just already made for it. And once again – hands off The Phantom! ☺

Twain on Transmedia

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.
- Mark Twain

Through the wonderful world of Twitter, I was pointed in the direction of a post on Mark Twain and social media from last summer. Twain had, some 120-odd years ago, written a piece on how to tell a story. It’s a good and true read, and in many ways instantly transferrable to any transmedia project being considered or developed today. In his text Twain refers to the two ways to tell a story – the humorous way and the witty way. Says Twain –

The humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling; the comic story and the witty story upon the matter.
The humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander around as much as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular; but the comic and witty stories must be brief and end with a point. The humorous story bubbles gently along, the others burst.

The humorous story, Twain argues, needs an artist to tell it right. The witty story, on the other hand, is a story that could be told by a machine.

This is, I feel, a kind of crossroads where transmedia is today, as more and more people are beginning to see the uses of a transmedia approach to telling a story, as producers and companies can point to increasing revenues from transmedia projects and as technical and sociological means and practices open up newer, quicker and deeper ways of telling stories over different media.

Some will be – are, already, actually – going the ”comic/witty” way of developing and creating transmedia. To, again, quote Twain:

[…] the teller of the comic story does not slur the nub; he shouts it at you--every time. And when he prints it, in England, France, Germany, and Italy, he italicizes it, puts some whooping exclamation-points after it, and sometimes explains it in a parenthesis. All of which is very depressing, and makes one want to renounce joking and lead a better life.

I see that as a great pointer to what NOT to do with a transmedia story. There is no magic and no fun – and most of all, nothing to discover – in a story that someone is banging you over the head with, no matter how the story unfolds over different media platforms and/or turns out hundreds of different merchandize possibilities. On the other hand, as the quote on top says, an ideal transmedia story could also have ”no order to it, and the reader (user) would have to discover his own.” …which is an approach that tickles the imagination a lot more vigorously.

As Bill Wren, who wrote the post on Twain and social media, translates Twain’s musings, there are two ways to tell a story; the right way and the wrong way. It all depends on your ulterior motives:

As Twain describes it, telling stories is manipulative. However, the reason for the manipulation is what makes it a good or bad thing. Doing it to delight your audience is good; doing it to bamboozle them into doing something that profits you, is bad.

So, with the possibility of transmedia as a term being connected to a lot of not-so-beautiful projects in the near future – and with Steve Peters’ tweet from yesterday, which I believe was a reaction to the massive transmedia hype at the NY Toys Fair (which actually was mostly franchising in the traditional sense), in mind – we might be wanting to take care of the term transmedia a bit more. For me, transmedia has been - and still is - a term that tells of possibilities and excitement, not necessarily revenue streams and franchising. If too many projects labels "transmedia" are told in Twains comic/witty way, we might be looking for a new term in the not so distant future.

On the other hand, terms are terms, and should not be taken too seriously. It’s what we create, why we create it, how we create it and how we execute it that matters. However, to round off with a final quote from the great Mark Twain, I think transmedia, in all of it’s momentum forward, might want to rein in a bit and reassess:

Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation. - Mark Twain

Developing existing properties, a Simple Solution and SXSW 2011

Some thoughts on this week in transmedia (so far)...

Developing existing properties

If there is one company that one should take example from when it comes to transmedia, it is probably Starlight Runner. Jeff Gomez and his team has worked a number of bestseller, like Tron, Pirates of the Caribbean and so on. This week the news broke that SLR will partner with UK startup Witchfactory to develop their Adore-franchise. This is a franchise already in place, based on the notion that there are fairies living in the real world, in the shadow of us normal humans. The franchise is skewed towards 5-9 year old girls and the artwork (which has already gathered a following and is generating considerable reveneue early) is just exactly right for the target group (I should know, my elder daughter is 10 years old).

In the urge to create new transmedia ventures, projects and stories, I believe this is something to take example from. There is already a multitude of possible transmedia stories there to be developed, expanded and told. Many of these have a loyal following, or at least the power of recognition amongst an audience. It does not have to be anything as iconic as Back to the Future, although it could be, now does it have to be anything as revenue-making as World of Warcraft, although it could be that as well.

The obstacles are pretty easy to identify, the biggest probably how to get the original owner of the content/franchise to agree to a transmedia development. It would obviously help to have the reputation of a company like SLR, but not many of us are in such a position. What you could do is identify the best brands or the best stores you would like to work with. Next, identify which of them seem to be the most accessible and the most progressive. Then, take a day or two to outline the blueprint for a transmedia development, including estimates of costs, and adding useful links to similar, successful, transmedia adaptations of similar content. Finally, approach. Perhaps get someone to vouch for you, or go attend the same conference as someone from that company. Even better, just drop them a tweet, a mail, a phone call, asking if they are interested in hearing more. You’d be surprised how many actually say ”yes”.

Then it’s up to you to create a good enough plan to hook the potential future partner, and then deliver. Just remember – it’s their story, so in this case THEY are the creator. Yes, you are a creative and yes, you work creatively, but you really need to identify the essence, the tone and the soul of their content, if you want to be able to develop meaningful transmedia content for them.

And yeah, hands off The Phantom, he's mine.

To hoax or not to hoax

Steve Peters had an excellent suggestion in a post yesterday. It has to do with stuff that has been discussed before, by me and others – to hoax or not to hoax people, especially in a transmedia setting.

I’m of the opinion that hoaxing most often is not the way to go. There are several reasons, but mainly it is put of respect for the user, and a feeling that if my content is good enough, I won’t need any hoaxing – the wilful suspension of disbelief will be enough. (Another side of the coin is ”telling the truth but not the whole truth, only the parts that fit into the transmedia story” which I am totally fine with – as long as the creators are aware that WHEN (not IF) someone finds out the ”whole truth”, it must not be anything that talks AGAINST the tone and feel and soul of the transmedia property. Otherwise, the backlash will be severe.)

Steve’s proposal is simple and great. Include a Fiction Tag to HTML, letting people easily find out if the site they are on is fiction or not. I support this; it would free us from gigantic logos intruding on our stories, and it would let ut NOT hoax anyone that does not want to be hoaxed, if we choose to use the tag.

I haven’t heard a simpler or better solution in, oh… several hours, I will readily admit. ☺ So, here’s hoping for an adaption!


SXSW 2011 Rookie Alert

I, along with a colleague of mine, will be attending SXSW this year for the first time. Looking at the schedules, the location of our hotel, the party listings and the amount of people attending, I would guess it will be a lot like the first time at MIPTV – a day or two spent walking around asking people where that session that started 15 minutes ago is being held, completely misunderstanding their advice, getting lost and ending up with a beer with some friendly guys from Australia.

If anyone care to give me some advice on HOW to prepare, WHAT is essential (it’s always something that’s so obvious to everyone that no one even thinks about it, like ”be at the registration office before 9.30AM otherwise you’ll NEVER get you badge”) and WHOM to listen to and meet, I’d appreciate it. Mail me at simon dot staffans at gmail dot com or leave a reply here. Thank you!

Content 360 - a transmedia opportunity

I’ve been attending the MIPs (MIPTV in the spring, MIPCOM in the autumn) for six years running now; marketing our formats, building networks and relationships and keeping up with the trends in – predominantly – the television industry.

The MIPs have always tried to keep up with the times – granted, mostly with more than just a glint of ”where’s the next revenue stream going to come from?” in the eye – and introduce new elements every year. During my years there I’ve seen focus on mobile television, User Generated Content, interactive television, 3D television etc. There have always been sidetracks to the actual MIP-fairs; once upon a time one sidetrack was called MILIA (and searches still give the name is MIPTV featuring MILIA, where MIPTV is ”World’s premier audiovisual market” and MILIA is ”World’s largest interactive content forum for TV, mobile &broadband.”

This year MIPTV includes MIPFormats the weekend before and, during the week, features the sidetrack Connected Creativity, where ReedMIDEM, the organizers, team up with GSMA, the global mobile industry association, for something they call “A global forum uniting entertainment, technology and mobile media”. Still a serious focus on revenue streams, no denying that, but at the same time the mantra “Content Is King” keeps popping up.

Opportunity for transmedia

This is where the transmedia angle enters into the picture. See, in what has become a fixed event at MIP, they’re hosting the Content 360 competition, a competition where organisations and companies from the media industry look for new content in specific categories. Content 360 usually attracts quite a lot of entries, ranging from the pretty poor to some truly groundbreaking stuff. The prizes usually are a wad of cash and the possibility to work with the company/organisation in question to develop and produce the winning concept. So, this is perhaps more a chance for new developers and smaller companies to start forging a deeper relationship with a major player, than for a big development studio to come in and sweep all the prizes.

This year I personally believe that anyone who had done their homework and are adapt at thinking transmedially will stand a good chance to be picked for the final round, perhaps even win a category. For example, read what Clare Tavernier from FremantleMedia, who sponsors one of the categories, has to say about what they’re looking for in a good entry:

We aren’t looking for TV shows with extensions. We are looking for cross-media experiences in which TV is a part of the mix.
We will also look at the commercial and brand integration potential. We want creatives to really show a capacity in coming up with brand-friendly and market-friendly ideas.

Now, even though she says “cross media”, do tell me if a true transmedia project wouldn’t fit the bill a lot better – especially when you are talking about brand integration, as I’ve touched upon before in this blog.

Then we have the things you always have to worry about – will my submitted idea be safe? Will someone rip it off immediately? Are there any guarantees? And of course, one can never be 100% on the safe side. As soon as you’ve told someone your idea, a rip off is possible. We’re chosen to go with the Format Recognition And Protection Association, FRAPA, to register our ideas with all necessary timestamps. If you have an idea or a format, it might pay in the long run to take a look at their services.

So, you’re thinking, he’s done a decent job of selling that competition to us – but will he submit something of his own, eh? Answer is – yes, but in a slightly different setup than my normal dayjob. So in a way this is pretty stupid of you, you continue, asking for more competition? Answer is again, yes, in a way. But I believe the more good transmedia projects we get up-and-running, the easier it will be for all of us to create new transmedia stuff. It’s all good, basically.

See you all in Cannes in April, right?

What’s in a name?

This blog was for a long time named “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”. Not that I had any preference for Mary Poppins, I just liked the word. Then, I changed the name, to “The Developer’s Log”, as I felt it better reflected the things I was writing about. And now, a U-turn, and the name is the same as it was before. The reason? There’s more to life – and to a blog – than mere work ☺. The content will, more or less, continue in the same vein as earlier.

Disclosure: I do a - non-paid - monthly guest blog post for ReedMIDEM, the company behind the MIPs.

Moving with the times

I come from a background of traditional media; newspapers, radio and television. I still feel that especially television can play an important part in a project, since it is a tried and tested way to reach people, a way that many are familiar with and can accept fairly easily (and no, I’m not talking about television as being watched on a television set, but the notion of a television show, no matter where and how you view it. The 30 minute slot, the feeling of a sitcom, the soothing tone of a well-spoken voice over, all the things that we accept as natural parts of a television show). So, naturally, I keep track of what happens in my old – but still very current – areas of the media landscape.

This year, we are witnessing the beginning of a small upheaval that just might turn into a bigger one. Over at Hulu, CEO Jason Kilar wrote passionately about the new ways of consuming television and his firm belief that the traditional television companies would have to move with the times and rethink as more and more people are abandoning traditional television. Ty Braswell wrote an excellent piece over at Venture Beat about 2011 being the make-or-break year for television. A quote from the end of his post:

2011 will be the most significant year in the history of television. We are days away from the tipping point. Industry leaders who fail to organize with their competitors will see their business evaporate. Digital natives are already becoming comfortable and savvy getting TV and movie content illegally.

2011 will be a very good year for people in the business of television if they realize that television as we know it has gone away. For the start-ups and their investors, a tremendous opportunity has been created: Whoever teaches the television industry how to monetize content and make it easy to access will become the next big thing.

Granted, that was written to a large extent from a financial and distribution angle. I do believe, however, that this will be a positive thing for transmedia storytelling. As is discussed and hoped for in the posts mentioned above, we are looking – perhaps forced to look, but still – at a significant change in the way people consume television, a change that will be for the better and in a more coherent way will touch on the viewers' way of living and consuming. This space is not yet occupied, and in my eyes it does have a decidedly transmedia-ish shape.

Using transmedia storytelling as a way to re-invent television makes absolute sense to me. That is the best and - I was going to say "easiest", but that's probably not the right word - most accommodating way to utilize the fact that many a loyal and engaged member of any show's audience has already torrented it from any number of sources weeks before it hits their territory via traditional television, and are viewing it on their laptops. In such a case, perhaps clear call to actions in the content of just that show means that "delving deeper into the story" is just seconds away. Remember, these are people who have not just switched on the television set and are watching your show because they have nothing else to do. These are active and engaged people, who have taken the effort to download YOUR show rather than anyone else's, because they like it. Don't throw that away!

I firmly believe that television as we know it will not exist for that long. Yes, there will be television sets, although the way t use them will evolve. Yes, there will be television shows, although their function might evolve as well - from being the end product to being the lunch vehicle to engage an audience into your story world. And as the term "I'm watching television" moves to whole new contextual levels, so must the content and the stories we want people to listen to.

Learning from virtual worlds

I really do like when people say or write things that I find are absolutely 100% true, and useful to boot. In an article about Branded Virtual Worlds (i.e. Habbo, or why not Hello Kitty Online, or any other franchise branching out into the virtual world) the emphasis was, naturally, on virtual worlds, but many aspects are directly transferrable to whichever kind of transmedia format one happens to be working on. The best quote:

"Transmedia storytelling shows that while users enjoy engagement and can navigate the different types of media, they do need a good story to lead them through the experience," says Elisabeth Unverricht, senior planner at agency G2. "The crucial success factor for any type of virtual world is ease of access, offering instant as well as continuously rewarding experiences through storytelling and a good mix of lean-back and lean-forward moments."

While this certainly is true for virtual worlds, this is also very true whether you are making a transmedia project around a documentary, around music or around a television drama series. Some terms could perhaps be rephrased. It is not only a story that should lead the users through the experience, it is probably several. That which should lead the users through the experience is the story world, the mythology, that has been built up around and under the story you are telling. This story world, canon, mythology… needs also be easy to access and focused on the giving of "instant but also continuosly rewarding experiences."

I feel the last point might be the hardest to realize in a transmedia setting. The plot(s) and the storyworld must be very well developed and very supportive of each other to give a good mix of lean-back and lean-forward moments. To get the users/viewers to engage to the point of leaning forward and finally participating requires clear call to actions, a good story to draw the user in and a clear, logical route for the user to take, no matter which entrypoint he or she chooses.

On funding transmedia, part two

Yesterday I read a post by David Wilson over at Transmediator, which raised a number of legitimate concerns with regards to how everything is becoming content creation, commodifying storytelling and wrapping everything in a thick layer of ”how-can-we-make-money-out-of-this-then”. To quote:

Finance is terribly fragmented. Independent producers get money any which way they can: sales agents, brand owners, vanity angels, arms dealers… and they often have to give any equity away to get the thing made.

[…] Independent producers must now present business plans, franchise opportunities, enterprise investment schemes, marketing plans… no wonder everything has turned into ‘content creation’. We are forced to juggle lots of pieces and do this predominantly on our own and without any money in our pockets. And this is damaging to the end product, because too much time is spent fundraising and not enough on development.

As anyone who has had a great idea but no means to get adequate funding to get that idea developed and into production can testify, it’s not a good position to be in. On the other hand, there is the question of marking your idea to market; if you can’t get anyone to cough up the dough to make it, perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to start with? Then we could go into the debate about how to pitch your project, how to meet the right people and so on… But that is sort of a different ballpark.

I a couple of previous posts I’ve been banging on about the need for transmedia projects to have a sound financial footing. I have a hard time believing that all the creative people into transmedia storytelling at the moment will have the energy to keep creating content if there is no financial windfalls at any point. That’s why I think – contrary to David’s post – this dilemma should be viewed as an opportunity, not an obstacle.

See, if you work together with people who can get you sponsors, who can get you funding, who can sell your project, AND you can integrate that which they bring to you into your story world, making it a natural part of the mythology you are building, you will at the same time create a stronger story world that will be more attractive for future sponsors to hook into – especially as they can compare your world with the values they themselves stand for, and see that they match. (And if they don’t match, you might want to look for another sponsor ☺ ).

No, there are no clear-cut models yet, and I do not believe there will be a one-approach-fixes-all-solution to the problem. For instance, getting modern-day companies to sponsor your medieval history drama and make them fit naturally into the story world might be a bit difficult. But get a brewery in and you might come up with a solution. Ultimately, it is down to the content you create, the story world and mythology you build. As I said, if it is truly impossible to fund, perhaps it needs a bit of re-working?

David starts his post with the legendary quote: “Build it and they will come”. Thing is, they’re already there. We just need to build it. For that, we need funding, and for that, we need to look at how we develop and produce transmedia.

The Long Haul

I tweeted this question earlier today, but 140 characters is pretty short when struggling with difficult terms and even more difficult nuances. What I would love to discuss with other people in the same field is the question of formats and transmedia, especially when thinking about marketing and localization etc.

The terms

To be clear with the terms we are talking about, when I say ”format” I mean that which in it’s most traditional sense is a television format. The recipe and the know-how, the production notes and the hard- and software needed to re-make a certain show or series in another territory – that is a format. And formats is a big business nowadays; not only stuff like Big Brother or Millionaire, hundreds, if not thousands of formats are being marketed and produced, in every genre from game shows to children’s TV.

It also makes perfect sense – if a show has been successful in a certain territory, and you can buy all the knowledge and content needed to re-make your own version of that successful story, you would most often go that way, were you a commissioner or acq. executive who needed to not be in the red when the financial year draws to an end.

Now, as most people agree on, transmedia is the telling of one or several stories over two or more platforms, with the stories all being connected to a greater storyworld, the mythology of the stories and their context.

So, to the point I’d like to discuss: formats and transmedia.

Many, if not most, transmedia projects are one-offs. It is a crime novel with a Facebook connection, or perhaps something tied to a live event with people searching for clues within a certain time limit. As I’ve preached before, I firmly believe that we should also look to create transmedia projects that can run and run, of their own accord and with a sound business plan as part of the core. I.e., what I want to make is transmedia formats, that can be localized, marketed, and enjoyed in different territories, without losing out on the story, the mythology, the narrative superstructure.

Some questions

What I’d welcome some thoughts on is basically:

- Can transmedia be formatted, and still not lose out on the crucial story and storyworld?
- Are there genres that would be more suitable for transmedia formatting than others, or are we talking on a project-by-project basis?
- Any thoughts on whether a transmedia project having run in one territory would make audience engagement deteriorate in later territories due to it not being ”fresh”, or is there just a lack of localization (which in a transmedia setting probably should be called ”creative wipe”, cleaning off and drawing new content on the same blackboard)

Discussions are welcome. Will update when I know more about this.