Bar Camp Dublin Needs to Focus on Content
Posted on April 16, 2007
Filed Under Channels and Content, What's New |
I was over at the Open Coffee morning Friday and just had a quick interchange with Joe Drumgoole about Bar Camp Dublin. In both cases I’ve had a chance to begin with my opinions on where the start-up community should be looking for adventure but as I left Open Coffee early and can’t make Bar Camp I’ll have to write it all down.
Saturday I’m with one of the artists, the lead artist for my new gallery devoted to works of digital art. I can’t travel to Dublin but I can do something over the web if we start the debate here. Here are my ten points.
1. Open Coffee are rightly thinking of forming a group that can make controversial statements about enterprise policy in Ireland. I applaud this because it makes it reportable. As a journalist I can’t really report what Conor or Joe are up to but if there was a united voice, it would be hard in the end to resist it.
2. I think the tech start up community overlooks the real impact of convergence on potential client bases. It is too technology focused. Technologists need to start thinking about how to win audiences, how to programme audiences across time frames, how to win devotion, to understand narratives. And understand therefore how media companies think.
3. The industry that does these things - content media - do them very well but are entering crisis phase. Joost, babelgum, and now wildwave will impact on RTE, and technorati is going to impact on irish newspapers this year. I can almost guarantee it. Not one newspaper or TV company in Ireland understands the impact of the technology our tech colleagues are working on; they don’t understand the transformation of audience behaviour nor the development challenges they face.
4. Here’s a fact IBM pulled out of the bag for me recently. The majority of younger people would be happy to see their TV stations showing bebo and YouTube-type content. They are prepared to see at least 25% of their viewing made up of this content. That’s one TV fact RTE, TV3 etc, will have to respond to this year. It opens up tremendous scope for a technology/content initiative if only the VC community were alive to it, and were it to launch it would open up lots of knock on opportunity..
5. Technorati will launch niche media products aimed at specific markets and subjects. I expect them to launch things like an ecology online media product with a strong Irish focus, for example; possibly one in teh food area too; and seek other areas where the classifieds and display advertising are not already in the hands of the media majors. It will have a major impact because the primary contributors will be bloggers who already have audiences and because they already have a major ad bureau on board.
6. Products that contribute to these developments will be in demand, if only people like technorati, joost etc know of the existence of companies working on them, so reviewing software and content, merging personal data with technorati data, anything that speeds up technorati ad revenues, anything that propagates babelgum, anything that ekes out the benefits of changing audience behaviour, any measurement software….
7. The Irish technology, media and financial communities need to debate where these opportunities are emerging, use collective intelligence to tease out new opportunities and seize them in a coordinated way - for example launch a new TV channel made up of social networks.
8. People should not build what they are doing around an IPO model. Build a company to sell to Thomas Crosbie or the Irish Times or babelgum or technorati. Look across the converging media space at companies who are in pain because they don’t know where they are going or how to get to a safe place.
9. Irish start ups should already be looking at who they can collaborate with not just to form new groups or a new culture but to ramp up products quickly. It is worth making a noise about what the media majors need and then offer to deliver it - maybe that lobby group of start ups should also have a rapid prototyping service.
10. The converged media space is not yet a matter of public debate in Ireland so Enterprise Ireland and the financiers aren’t aware of the opportunities. That means someone walks through their door and has to do all the advocacy that in the US is done by the tech community through blogs and online magazines and red herrring, Wired etc. I still think a converged media mini-conference is a necessity for start ups and the finance and support people here in Ireland. But it should have a focus - one big new initiative, now. A new TV channel built around social networking, podcasting, vidcasting etc etc, something to seize the coverging audiences and open up a market for Irish Web 2.0 start ups.
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11 Responses to “Bar Camp Dublin Needs to Focus on Content”
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Haydn, a post of this quality really deserves a much bigger audience. I assume the nationals would never publish anything like this? A pity for us and, more importantly, for them.
I particularly like your point about collaboration. That’s something I’ve been remiss in concentrating on but we are finally getting movement there.
Hi Conor, thanks for those kind words - my intention was to make a contribution to Bar Camp. I can’t make it because I’m so close to the gallery opening but I guess we could do something virtual and so I started it here. No, don’t think the message is attractive to a newspaper.
[…] Haydn has offered up some quite controversial opinions on where many Irish web companies should put their energies and also what the BarCampDublin focus should be. It’s something I’d like to see argued from both points of view so please head over to Mediangler and offer your thoughts. Barcamp, BarCampDublin, BarCampIreland, content, convergence […]
A fantastic and insightful post. I think you might be seeing the future, but it will be an uphill battle to convince the likes of EI. Having spent the morning recently with their e-business section it is abundantly clear that they have a very narrow remit and they stick to it religiously. I made the point that most of the progress I see is coming from grass-roots rather than top-down.
A conference would probably stand on it’s own feet with little problems. As much as the old school media companies don’t ‘get’ new media, they are absolutely desperate to understand what new media ‘is’. I’m sure many media entities would be in attendence at such an event. I would certainly want to attend.
Rgds
Richard
A lot there to discuss, but for some reason this stuck with me: “The majority of younger people would be happy to see their TV stations showing bebo and YouTube-type content.”
I wonder.
They may well say so, but I wonder what the reaction would be if TV stations actually moved to this type of content…
There are several huge issues with the statement. One obvious one is that each one of those young people is basing their statement on the content *they* chose to watch after searching YouTube et al.
No such choice exists currently while watching tv - you watch what is served up.
Secondly, I wonder if the old adage ‘don’t listen to your users, watch them’ holds true here. Young people may believe that the content they love to watch while online would appealing on television, but could they be underestimating their own preconceived notions of television?
I wonder, if when actually faced with user generated, sub-par content on television - a medium watchers are used to seeing high production values on - will the channel changing begin?
Thirdly, why do I keep saying ‘they’? I’m a young person goddammit. I want to see more quality productions on television, not more ‘reality’ based crap, and certainly not reality crap shot on a wobbly home camcorder…
Nice talking points Haydn.
The main point of the bebo research is to alert TV broadcasters to the fact that what people want is connectivity. Content = connections.
What I wanted to draw attention to was that anybody in Web 2.0 should be a content geek. media companies need you. We have to make them aware of that.
Thansk for commenting fellars.
And - does nayone know how I can join in Barcamp without actually being there? Shouldn’t that be a breeze for a group like this.
Fair enough - slightly different slant to the one I understood from your post.
There are certainly opportunities. I’d love to see some data on the popularity of those Music Video shows that allow you to vote by text for what comes on next and send text comments to be displayed scrolling down the end.
I assume they are popular judging by the text content that scrolls down the bottom of the screen.
Definitely huge scope to be explored in terms of interactivity and connections as you put it.
I would guess the technology is lagging behind in terms of real jumps forward - not my area but I believe there are developments on the way… god knows when Ireland will come up to speed of course. I’m guessing infrastructure will get in the way?
Haydn, we were going to network in someone (Tom?) remotely at the first BarCamp but it didn’t end up happening.
There should be nothing stopping them doing that for you in Dublin. If you have Skype and a Webcam, you could quite easily do a Max Headroom on it.
I think Elly is in Israel but maybe ping Eoghan McCabe, Joe Drumgoole or Paul Browne to see if they are up for a bit of fun with that!
I’ll just give it a miss Conor at this stage - have a lot to do with the gallery.
Interesting insight. I’ll respond more on a post I’m doing.
If u need a guinea pig 4 remote ‘chit-chat’ let me know!
Lal