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Mash 2011 – Post Conference Notes, Summary, Photos and Vids

May 19th, 2011 Posted in Conferences, Content, Mash, Mash 2011, Mash Journalism Lab, Media, Social Audio, Social Media, Social Network, Social Platforms, Social Tools, Technology, Trans Media, Uncategorized, Video Interviews No Comments

People are still tweeting the hashtag #mashmedia, a week after the conference.

For those of who you didn’t make it, these notes will give you a comprehensive summary of what happened on the day. For those of you who were at it, this is a chance to revisit points that resonated with you and refresh your memory.

The story of how the conference unfolded can be viewed on Storify at this address: http://bit.ly/kMZs0x while the photos from the conference can be found on Flickr via the following link: http://bit.ly/iizwJA.

The Mediacontact.ie blog can be found at this address: http://bit.ly/bUXu4L.
Audioboo and blog content from the conference was provided by DIT School of Media – huge appreciation to them.

Session One – 9.00 – 11.00 – Transmedia: The Evolution of Communications

The Future of Digital Storytelling: Nathan Hull – Digital Publisher, Penguin

- 2010 was a landmark year for digital publishing, with new words such as e-book, iPad and app entering the public domain.
- Consumer reading habits are changing, and publishers must think of new ways to put out content.
- New job titles have been created, such as Creative Technologists and Interactive Designers.
- Penguin has rebranded Spot the Dog as Spot for an e-book version, as well as Percy Jackson and Stephen Fry’s memoirs The Fry Chronicles. (http://bit.ly/gfvEx0)
- A library app for Percy Jackson has been developed, making a technology app a reading tool.
- Penguin got the author, Stephen Fry, involved in marketing the e-book. Fry speaks himself on the ‘My Fry’ visual index app, urging people to buy the e-book. See http://bit.ly/bF8TKR.
- Penguin uses apps to drive the purchase of print products. Paul Hoffman’s The Left Hand of God was Penguin’s first app for the iPhone in 2010. It featured snippets of paragraphs from the book, with the option to purchase the entire book.
- E-books currently account for 5% of all book sales in the UK and Ireland, and 10% in the United States.
- The key to a successful transition from online to print is to move at a pace.

Social Media Links

- Audioboo: Nathan on the future of digital storytelling. http://bit.ly/kfpF9I
- YouTube: Nathan Hull speaking at Mash Media Conference. http://bit.ly/iGNM1D


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Preserving the Past Online – Bill Thompson on digital culture

May 10th, 2011 Posted in Conferences, Mash, Mash 2011, Mash Journalism Lab No Comments

In a philosophical discussion entitled ‘Giving The Enlightenment Another 500 Years: How The BBC Is Digitising Their Archive’ at the Mash Conference 2011, Bill Thompson explained that although we are not living in a “digital world”, we are in a “digital culture” and this has repercussions for our past.

“We are dominated by electronics and that has consequences to our culture and society and the way we live our lives,” said Thompson.  He compared the race for society to get involved in technology is like the introduction of literacy 6,000 years ago – in the near future being digitally literate will be a necessity.

“As digital culture has become dominant, analog thinking has become a problem.  Too many people think the internet might be a fad and ignore the reality of increased productivity and the advantages it has,” he said.

However, he also stressed the importance of not forgetting the old ways, something is actively taking part in by digitizing media produced by the BBC.

“If we are going to embrace that culture we need to do so in ways that don’t forget the past.  I think it’s time to digitize and take all the information we have and get it online,” he told the audience.  This included everything from complete library to 3D objects such as sculptures.  “We don’t want to replace objects and books, we want to make them available and accessible,” he said.

So, how is the BBC going about this?

- iPlayer – putting programmes on the website for everybody to avail of.

- Commercial exploitation – such as selling BBC produced programmes on DVDs.

- Television services – such as hard-drive television boxes, where views can record digitally directly from televised broadcasts.

- Digitizing archive film reels – putting them online using funding from partnerships with various organisations.

By Ellen Curham

John Mulholland on David Astor

May 10th, 2011 Posted in Conferences, Mash, Mash 2011, Mash Journalism Lab No Comments

John Mulholland, editor of The Observer, paid tribute to the newspaper’s former editor, David Astor, at the Mash Conference 2011.

Describing what he called “The Observer’s greatest story”, he told of how the newspaper became instrumental in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.

He described how at the time, the 1960s, the newspaper became the voice of South Africa and campaigned for the freedom of Nelson Mandela.  Relating back to the theme of the conference, ‘Exploding Media’, Mulholland said that while new technology has indeed advanced media, storytelling is still the fundamental basis of journalism. He said he wanted to show “the power of a person, the power of a story”, in this case, the “legendary” Astor.

Astor’s political activism lead to Nelson Mandela referring to him as a “friend and supporter” and his wife claiming that his “sympathetic coverage” of the trials saved Mandela from the death penalty he would have otherwise faced.

He presented the audience the Middle-East time line on the Guardian website, showing the “fantastic” uses of technology but also warned that “without people” this would be impossible. Mulholland said that it was Astor’s “passion and vision that made a difference”.

“People have the ultimate impact,” Mulholland said, “regardless of the tools.”

By Ellen Curham

In Praise of Print

May 10th, 2011 Posted in Conferences, Mash, Mash 2011, Mash Journalism Lab No Comments

The latest Dragon to join the Den, Norah Casey spoke positively about the future of print at the Mash Conference 2011 in her talk entitled ‘From Postbox To Inbox: How magazines can survive the electronic revolution’.

Casey is the CEO of Harmonia, Ireland’s largest magazine publisher.  Harmonia prints magazines various topics from food to fashion. “50 per cent of us love magazines and 50 per cent of us don’t,“ she explained, “I merely say that you can’t write off the magazine.”

Why? According to Casey, print magazines are:

- Accurate

- Coherent

- Concise

- Beautiful

She also said that they feature trained editors and designers and pull in readers through “buzz words” and intriguing covers. “Online is devalued through low quality material,” said Casey.

“The people who love magazines, like you and me, are not dying out,” she continued. “If online works so well why do we have so many magazines that are printed to encourage us to go online?” concluded Casey.

By Ellen Curham

In Praise Of The PDF

May 10th, 2011 Posted in Conferences, Mash, Mash 2011, Mash Journalism Lab No Comments

Aidan Kelly of the Candy Collective praised the pdf format at the Mash Conference 2011 today in his talk ‘Publish Online – It’s Easier’.  Kelly is a co-founder of the online magazine that he says publishes “anything a little bit different” and concentrates on creativity.

“The pdf saved our lives because we didn’t have the money to produce a real magazine,” he explained to the audience.  He said the pdf, along with sites like issuu.com they give people “a chance of being international because of it’s format and availability.”

Kelly and the Candy Collective choose not to advertise, instead focusing on “pure creativity”.  By using online publishing the magazine doesn’t need the revenue for “expensive printing costs” because they can reach their readership for free.

As Kelly said, “online is now a permanent state of mind, we will always be online.”

By Ellen Curham

Free games – Are they worth it?

May 10th, 2011 Posted in Conferences, Mash, Mash 2011, Mash Journalism Lab No Comments

According to Nicholas Lovell, the founder of Gamesbrief, a blog dedicated to the business of games, yes they are.

He acknowledged that “the higher the price, the lower the demand” is true to the gaming world, especially with the emergence of online and social gamin in recent years.

However providing your game for free doesn’t necessarily mean losing money.  Why?

Free users are :

- Potential converts

- Eyeballs for advertising

- Leads for lead gen deals

- Influences for improving the game

He advised the audience at his Mash Conference 2011 talk ‘Why There Has Never Been A Better Time To Be A Content Creator’  to keep their games “enjoyable, easy and free”.

By Ellen Curham

Contextualising the information age

May 10th, 2011 Posted in Conferences, Mash, Mash 2011, Mash Journalism Lab No Comments

When Osama Bin Laden died there were over 5,000 Tweets a minute.  With such a huge amount of information being thrown around the public sphere, how can we decipher what is important to us?  How do we make context out of a mass of real time information?

At the Mash Conference 2011, the theme is ‘Exploding Media’ was discussed by a number of industry insiders.  Both Burt Herman, the founder and CEO of Storify and Eduoard Lambelet, the CEO of Paper.li explained how their websites can both refine and contextualise online information.

STORIFY

Storify allows users to create stories using information from social networks.   While working for the Associated Press, Herman noticed “everybody was becoming a reporter” and while he described the new digital media world as “amazing”, it was also “overwhelming”

He explained that by pulling information from Twitter, Facebook, Audioboo, Flickr, users can put their own story together while inserting their own text. “It’s about giving context to social media so you can help people understand what’s going on,” he explained.

“It’s about giving context to social media so you can help people understand what’s going on,” concluded Herman.

PAPER.LI

Similarly Lambelet’s Twitter and Facebook gathering website, provides context to the thousands of Tweets floating around the internet by creating their own online newspaper composed of entries from the social networks.

“We are not all content creators, but a lot of us feel we have skills to curate the content,” he told the audience.

“You have tonnes of people sharing interesting content, but it’s difficult to discover what kind of content,” Lambelet continued.  He claims Paper.li is an advantage to new publishers, allowing users to “create their own website” and “curate the nation”.

By Ellen Curham

Catch me if you can – Evan Ratliff on vanishing

May 10th, 2011 Posted in Conferences, Mash, Mash 2011, Mash Journalism Lab No Comments

Evan Ratliff, a writer for Wired magazine, decided to disappear one day.  Ratliff set a challenge to readers of the magazine to try and find him within the space of a month.  The idea resulted in a huge game of hide and seek, spanning a nation.

RULES:

- He could build a completely new identity but could not disappear off the face of the earth.  He was required to maintain an online presence under a new name and live a relatively normal life.

- His editor at Wired had access to everything, and would reveal clues such as recent purchases.

- Whoever found him, revealed the code-word and took a picture of him would win $5,000, $3,000 of which was donated by Ratliff himself.

STEP 1

His actual photo and details were published in the magazine, offering readers a glimpse into his former life. These included helpful little clues such as he is coeliac.

STEP 2

Get some fake I.Ds.

Ratliff created business cards with his new name James Gatz, a reference to The Great Gatsby.  “It was a play on the literary character,” said Ratliff, speaking at the Mash Conference 2001 but also practical because he couldn’t be Goggled easily.

He decided not to apply for credit cards, instead opting for pre-paid credit cards that prevented him being tracked.

Then he set up a new office in Las Vegas, where mail featuring his new name would be send.  Along with the office, he started an online business that he registered in Mexico.  “People could look up my website as a vereifcation of my identity if they weren’t sure of me,” explained Ratliff.

He also set up a blog and Facebook page but had to make it appear realistic.  “A good way is to find people who will friend anyone just to increase their number by one. I had a couple of dozen friends so if I met someone they wouldn’t go onto my Facebook and think ‘who is this loser?’,” he joked.

STEP 3

Settle down.

In Ratliff’s case  he chose Louisianna.  One danger, he said was online presence because on his IP address.  He used software to disguise this so his IP would appear to be coming from somewhere else.  He would also log into his home computers into his office computer that was eventually tracked down.

STEP 4

Change appearance.

Evan Ratliff before he vanished

Ratliff grew a beard and wore ‘Harry Potter glasses’, dyed his hair and got coloured contacts.

He eventually shaved his head when followers began to catch on to how he might look.

He was interviewed as a by-stander by a news team in LA, sporting his new look. “What would be more funny at the end to say I was hiding in plain sight, I was on this video and you didn’t catch me,” said Ratliff.

THE CHASE

Teams got together a couple of hours after the original article was published in Wired.  This was done through social networking.  “Using a Twitter hash tag is a relatively simple way to coalesc under a certain topic, in this case clues,” Ratliff explained. His followers used the #vanish.  However, he could see everything they posted so they moved to password protected chatrooms.

Ratliff was eventually found by the @Vanish team when a Microsoft employee tracked his Facebook down by creating an app that would find people with a small number of online friends.  His Facebook page told them his location and ‘Missing’ posters were put up all over New Orleans. He was tracked down on Day 26.

The day Ratliff was caught

By Ellen Curham

The role of Twitter in dramas

May 10th, 2011 Posted in Conferences, Mash, Mash 2011, Mash Journalism Lab No Comments

“Stories are fundamental to our culture and identities,” said Hilary Perkins, the Multiplatform Commissioner for Drama and Film at Channel 4, speaking today at the Mash 2011 Conference in Croke Park.

Perkins is responsible for commissioning some of the channel’s most popular dramas such as Skins, Misfits and more recently, The Promise, all of which have used social media as a way of promotion and audience engagements.

APPS

The Promise

The Promise, a controversial political romance-drama made its online presence through the use of an application they created to debate the story, which focused on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

“It feels wrong to put out a drama like that, in a way that would not start a debate,” said Perkins.  The app, she said was an “interesting experiment” where views could express how they felt about the narrative by voting on the issues raised and by tracking Tweets relating to the programme.  The programme-makers were able to gain audience feedback, however as Perkins explained, “it wasn’t engaging enough” and there was “no audience participation”.

TWITTER AND FACEBOOK

Series 5 of Skins

Other programmes, like the popular teenage dramas Skins and Misfits, used audience interaction gained through social networking as inspiration for their characters and narratives.

“Skins has social media at its core,” said Perkins looking back to the launch of the programme in 2007, with the help of MySpace.  The series has since moved to Twitter for most of it’s social networking.  Scripts were written for Twitter, and Perkins described the micro-blogging site as “an actor”, playing a core role in the programme.  Audiences were able to follow and friend the cast, interact with them and suggest new storylines.

Similarly, Channel 4’s superhero drama Misfits had Facebook and Twitter profiles for its characters.  Further online presence for the show included games based on the series.

So, while the story may be the most fundamental part of a drama, social networks and digital media can enhance these stories by allowing audiences to participate in them.

By Ellen Curham

Beyond the book – Penguin and digital publishing

May 10th, 2011 Posted in Conferences, Mash, Mash 2011, Mash Journalism Lab No Comments

Think there is only one way to read a story?  Think again.  Nathan Hull, the Digital Publisher of Penguin, explained that one of the publishers best sellers, Stehpen Fry’s autobiography, ‘The Fry Chronicles’ is available in six different formats, all of which were best sellers in their respective fields:

- Smart Phone App

- MP3 audio download

- E-book

- Physical book

- CD

“New is technology coming from nowhere,” said Hull at the Mash Conference 2011. He explained that there are now “different ways in which a story can be told and read.”

Although Penguin has had to change many of its publishing techniques in recent years, the company is up 180% up on last year alone, contrary to common belief that books are dead.

The publishing company has embraced the challenges that the “new world of digital media” that has been forced upon them, bringing choice to their audience in the Information Age.

By Ellen Curham

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