Björn Jeffery

Chris Kimber and Ayesha Mohideen held a great presentation about the concept “My BBC Radio”. They took up a lot of ideas, although most of them didn’t seem to have been done yet. So don’t use the points below as an example of the BBC being great (there are other arguments that proves that). I made a few notes that I thought I’d share with you. A bit chopped up I’m afraid, but it will have to do for now.

Chris and Ayesha listed six key points:

Access – anytime, anywhere, anyhow.
* Seven day archive with all the programmes.
* Broadcast through streaming, downloads, podcasts or other.
* BBC bought a tab in MSN Messenger enabling them to listen to radion through that.
* They are looking into putting radio into videogames. An interesting example was showed of an example of a car game playing 1Xtra on the car stereo. Interesting!
* In the UK today you can get mobile phones with DAB-chips in them (through Virgin).

Discovery – content that’s prominent, finable and navigable.
* Lifting out programmes out of the radio station, and sorted them into genres instead. The programmes are linked together and thus making them discoverable. In general they were just looking to find more ways of people finding content.
* Segmenting content to enable more specific finds. At the end of this year there will be a trial of technique called Listen & Label which is listeners that create tags on these segments.
* Musicubes – web-widgets with music streams for use in communities.
* Search through DAB EPG

Enhancement – textual, audial, visual
* Enhancing not only the sound quality, but also work with visual branding, adding information on the music piece, perhaps picture or some trivia.
* Many devices that you use listening to a radio, also have a screen. Not that people watch all the time, but when they do it can enhance the experience.
* An example would be filming a radio recording and adding it as extra material to the radio show.

Extension – beyond the listening experience
* BBC starting page with recommendations and a community feel.
* Permanent link to every radio show to make them bloggable.
* Possibilty to rate every track, buy it, send it to a friend, tag it and use social recommendation.

Participation – before, during and after broadcast
* More about individuals sharing, than the community part
* Every programmes page has aggregated comments, ratings, tags
* BBC launched blogs written by presenters. This is running today.
* Sent audio and video through Second Life in order to get the BBC content and brand out in the spaces where people interact.

Creation – making music, radio and applications
* How to we tap in to the peoples creativity and use it?
* “Making tracks” – a programme for listeners to make music. The winner won a recording by an orchestra.
* Odeo – making podcasts. BBC wants to use this idea to record rants/voice/quetions online for radio shows.
* BBC uses Flickr groups for BBC events
* People make their own BBC mac-widgets

tags bloggar.se: NMD06, bbc, radio

Cliff Webb from Narrowstep held an interesting presentation. Narrowstep does IP-TV, or rather “TV over the internet” as they chose to call it. Apparently clients and customers tend do go for the more descriptive than technological approach.

According to Webb, enabling a complete freedom of choice is the most important factor for the success on IP-TV. The second factor for success was engaging niche communites. As more and more people are part of a community of some sort – both online and offline – this enables the long tail on an international level.

Webb mentioned a few examples: itvlocal.tv – the British television network ITV are launching nine special channels, apart from the four regular channels that they have. With the new channels, they work hyperlocally (see my post on Rob Curley for more on hyperlocal). They have classifieds, dating, property, live cameras (showing a miserable day in Brighton at the time) – all with a hyperlocal perspective.

This also opens up new ways of advertising – people can make their own tv advertisments and then you can upload it to ITV. It then runs on the website. This costs them about 25 pounds for 30 days. Even the Brighton surf shop does it! The formula that seems to work best is one 30 second ad, every 5 minutes. The viewers then know that there’s only going to be one ad, and because of that they keep watching.

One more example. Cycling.tv has made half a million euros in premium memberships – this year alone. They have about 30-50 000 viewers and have sold ten ad packages á 25 000 euros so far. Seemed to be very successful. And how do they know what cycling to send out? They ask their community of course. That’s how you get loyal viewers.

tags bloggar.se: NMD06, narrowstep, ip-tv, cycling.tv, itvlocal

Doc Searls put on a good show as aspected. A few new things, and a few things that I had heard before. Below is a mix of quotes and my own thoughts and interpretations of what he said. I’m not trying to rip him off, I just couldn’t catch enough quotes in real time. As it happened, the internet didn’t work(!!!) so live-blogging wasn’t really an option.

The first thing that made me think was the statement that the “Internet isn’t a medium – it’s a place. It’s a place you go to, not through.” When I have presentations myself I tend to say that the internet is a superior medium, and a carrier of medium rather than being one itself. Searls took is taking it one step further here, and I think it’s on point. Time to update my slides perhaps, but I’m giving this a think first.

He brought up the same comparision as at Reboot – a good one, so that’s fine. Static web vs the Live web. The static web crawls the web and indexes whatever it finds, looking through billions of sites. The live web on the other hand (Technorati for instance) listens to millions.

The live web responds to the signs of life – when things actually are happening. Seals also pointed out that the Live web organizes chronologically – the first real organisation of the web so far.

* * *

Then perhaps the most interesting point: VRM. The new CRM.

VRM stands for vendor relationship management. It’s going to give the people formerly known as consumers – now customers, co-creators, people, humans – the possibility to have more power in the relationship between him/herself and the companies. CRM carry all the responsibility for the relationship – if it was truely a relationship both sides should have a part of it.

“VRM will obsolete most advertising”, Doc said. The customer will let the companies know, when they need things. Connected it to the phone and finding a hotel i a new city is a piece of cake. This also means that cell phones will become open platforms – they will have to be to keep up. Look at the open source development on PCs.

* * *

“We are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. we are human beings – and our reach exceeds your grasp. deal with it” – Cluetrain manifesto

* * *

And then some guy finished of with asking a stupid question involving Web 2.0 being dead and bla bla bla bla. People trying to chase the next thing tend to not notice what’s going on under their own noses. I can’t be bothered to comment on that tedious issue more than that actually.

tags bloggar.se: nmd06, vrm, crm, doc searlds, relationship marketing

Conference time! I’m at New Media Days in Copenhagen and we’re about to listen to Doc Searls talk. Should be good, his talk at Reboot was excellent but I hope he does something slightly different today.

If you’re here, come over and say hello. I’m the one not wearing a dress shirt (which narrows it down to about ten), but with a scarf and a Milkcrate Athletics t-shirt instead.

tags bloggar.se: new media days, nmd06, konferens, doc searls

I just finished watching Fight Club for the second time. Apart from being a good film, it raises the issue of consumption being the shackles of society. This would fit nicely along with my previous post on identity through non-ownership. That is, if all consumption leads to ownership – which of course it does not.

The consumption of material things differ from services or disposable items such as food or drink, through binding up money in the form of an object. You can happily spend anything from 25 to 55 Swedish crowns on a beer – but if you buy a brand object for 50 crowns, you find it hard to throw away. Even though you don’t need it, and don’t intend to use it. You lock your money into objects that create a mental weight that needs to be carried.

In order to avoid these objects and the anxiety that can be connected to them (old memories, bad decisions when choosing the product) , I’m implying that there will be a large increase in the consumption of services and disposable items instead. Food and drink are experiences that you carry with you in your memory, not on a shelf in your home. Therefor they stays in your mind as long as they are needed or wanted, and may come or go during your life depending on what triggers your memories. The experiences are free in your mind, and thus – you are also free.

Also, you can buy more of this freedom through consuming services that allow you to not do certain things. A popular example here in Sweden, connected to our recent shift in government, are maid services at home. Cleaning and general housekeeping, for instance. You purchase these services in order to expand your free time, and your freedom through that. The carpet is always clean, and the thought of it not being so doesn’t even enter your mind. I’m leaving the moral aspect of housemaids and the likes aside for the time being.

The more I think about it, the more I see people moving away from physical things and towards experiences instead. And in order to have these fantastic and memorable experiences – you need the knowledge and information that leads you there. This information on the other hand, can’t necessarily be bought. And at that moment, the value of information supersedes the value of money. This is new, and I reckon it’s a trend that should be watched very carefully. Read more about it in my previous post concerning The Netocrats by Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist.

tags bloggar.se: identitet, informationalism, nätokrati, nätokraterna, fight club, ägandeskap, Ping Intressant.se

If there are any readers that happen to live in Jönköping (bit of a long shot, I admit) – come over to the IHH and say hello tomorrow (Thursday). I will be discussing the future of the internet together with a few very interesting names. But there will be plenty of time to talk to others as well.

tags bloggar.se: jsa, jönköping, debatt

Every now and then I accidentally press the folder in Bloglines, instead of a link. This means that all the unread posts open at the same time, and there is no way of cancelling it either (please fix this Mr Bloglines).

Anyway, every time I do this I have to go through a few hundred posts just to make sure that I don’t miss anything. I guess this is good in some sort of way, at least I get through it. Here’s a round up of a few links that I liked:

Get a group of people to answer questions with SMS. Should work really well on a local or hyper-local market.

How magazines have shifted to digital publishing – about time too, one might think.

Difficulties that newspapers face while building communites

GeoTagging for WordPress. Thanks!

Online Journalism Awards finalists – always interesting to see a few newcomers on the list.

Five rules for building a successful online community

Finally, the slightly old Startup Review of MySpace. Anyone working with the internet should have read this.

tags bloggar.se: bloglines, journalistik, communities, media

Or at least it’s better looking. Thanks Olof and Peter. If something looks a bit shifty, try and reloading the page. Everything doesn’t seem to follow through straight away.

London last weekend was a treat. I met three inspiring women that left my head spinning all through Sunday. I love this travelling life, it’s what keeps me on point I think. I’m already looking forward to going back even if Warsaw or something like that is probably up next.

Just a short post now – three sites that I saw and heard of in London:

Ocado
A Supermarket-service that delivers food and groceries from Waitrose to your home. If you try it, I recommend the fine Lincolnshire sausages. I wish I could get some of those here in Sweden.

Opodo
Seems to be the English equivalent to Travellink.se, the .com-address links to them both. Nothing special in my eyes. I searched for London – Hong Kong and found… nothing.

Carbon Neutral
This one sort of speaks for itself. I read several articles about this issue (about time too!) and I reckon this will be become big business everywhere pretty soon.

tags bloggar.se: ocado, opodo, carbonneutral, England, London

Copied from Good Old Tech:

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…and taking interns

If there are any Swedish students that are interested in doing their “exjobb” with us you are welcome to contact us with your project idea. Web projects using dojo && (django || turbogears || rails || equivalent framework) will be prioritized.

Send us an e-mail if you’re interested and we’ll take it from there.

technorati tags: work, hiring, django, dojo, job, sweden, malmö

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