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I twittered @antonmannering isn’t there a breakfast thing happening next week? (yes, this is a lead in…) Anton Twittered @cimota That’s right there’s a Digital Media Breakfast in Belfast next Thursday 8am. Exact location TBC (Probably Ten Square or similar) 🙂 I twittered @antonmannering did you say there’s a Digital Media Breakfast in Belfast next … Continue reading “Digital Media Breakfast, 8 am Thursday 5th Feb”
I twittered
@antonmannering isn’t there a breakfast thing happening next week? (yes, this is a lead in…)
Anton Twittered
@cimota That’s right there’s a Digital Media Breakfast in Belfast next Thursday 8am. Exact location TBC (Probably Ten Square or similar) 🙂
I twittered
@antonmannering did you say there’s a Digital Media Breakfast in Belfast next Thursday 8am. Exact location TBC (Probably Ten Square) 🙂 Cool
Did you get it?
Today I posted a quick note about a workshop being held in the OhYeah building (with special thanks to OhYeah and NoMoreArt for helping pull it together). The event itself was conceived during an OpenCoffeeMorning conversation between myself and Marty Neill of NoMoreArt – as he puts it, democracy without bureaucracy. The workshop is designed … Continue reading “Creative Industries Innovation Fund Workshop – Thursday 29th Jan”
Today I posted a quick note about a workshop being held in the OhYeah building (with special thanks to OhYeah and NoMoreArt for helping pull it together). The event itself was conceived during an OpenCoffeeMorning conversation between myself and Marty Neill of NoMoreArt – as he puts it, democracy without bureaucracy.
The workshop is designed to help those in the “creative industries” find the time to fill in the forms for the Creative Industries Innovation Fund. I’ve spoken to a lot of people about this Fund and extolled it’s virtues and I hear a lot of the same story – it’s something they’ll get around to.
Well, time is up. The closing date for this first call is Thursday the 5th of February and if you miss this one it’s months until the next. And the best reason in the world to hold a workshop is to help people focus the mind. Ideally we’re aiming for a largish group of people all focussed on filling in their forms and getting the paperwork out of the way.
There will be two sessions: one from 11 am to 1 pm and the second from 4:30 pm to 6 pm. The content for both is the same and it straddles part of lunch and just after work so that people from all walks of life can make some time to come in and at least get the forms.
The workshop itself is not about guidance – it’s not about trying to ensure success – it’s about getting the forms in on time, because if they’re not in then you’ve got no chance. I have invited representatives from the Arts Council (who are managing the fund), NIMIC and NIScreen (who are especially relevant to the digital content industry) and the Digital Circle Steering Group – hopefully an individual might be able to talk to these representatives and maybe get some guidance or inspiration from people who have experience with this sort of thing.
It’s meant to be collaborative, it’s meant to be a learning experience and it’s meant to be a shared social experience. At the most basic level it’s a heap of forms and pens and desks and chairs. What’s more is that it’ll be a collection of people who all have something creative inside them which they feel is deserving of public funding in order to have it realised.
There’s a form for registry – just to help us get an idea of how many people will turn up so I’d appreciate it if people could register beforehand. The format will be informal and it will be about completing forms.
Ian Graham of TheCodeFactory.ca writes about whether we CREATE or FACILITATE communities: Create is in fact a very strong word and implies that you make something from nothing. If you read the bible you will recall the story of creation. In seven days God created the earth, man and all of the wild beasts. Pretty … Continue reading “Create or Facilitate”
Ian Graham of TheCodeFactory.ca writes about whether we CREATE or FACILITATE communities:
Create is in fact a very strong word and implies that you make something from nothing. If you read the bible you will recall the story of creation. In seven days God created the earth, man and all of the wild beasts. Pretty powerful stuff. Most mere humans lack the capability to create something.
Facilitate is different and more of a catalyst in nature. When you facilitate you act as an agent on existing elements helping to bring them together. Communities waiting to happen exist everywhere. These communities can often be made more vibrant and dynamic with a bit of facilitation or the act of bringing elements together.
I tend to the side of FACILITATE.
The first community I worked with was the Northern Ireland Mac User Group. I created the mailing list, web site and the forum which allowed the community to manifest. The community was already in existence throug word of mouth and shared emails.
Some groups don’t tend to naturally congregate and therefore it’s hard to quantify the community as whole – though the internet provides a method of easily managing this side of community engagement.
My day job, as the Facilitator for the Digital Circle really means creating a focus to allow the digital media creation ‘community’ which then permits the “Steering Group” to focus the direction of those members of the community who want to collaborate towards the given goal. Yes, at times it’s a little like herding cats and everyone can joke about managing a committee towards a decision.
If we, as facilitators, focus our energies on creating an ‘oasis’ where communities can engage with each other, and then work through the process removing baggage where necessary, we can better achieve the stated aims of the ‘oasis’ (which, again, may not be core to the community aims).
I’ve just penned a long post over at the DigitalCircle blog about taking ideas to the next stage. I’ve covered this before here and here. The post is focussing on some of the initiatives which are out there in the province for doing just that. Again, I’d mentioned this before here and here. I find … Continue reading “Moving ideas to implementation and beyond…”
I’ve just penned a long post over at the DigitalCircle blog about taking ideas to the next stage. I’ve covered this before here and here.
The post is focussing on some of the initiatives which are out there in the province for doing just that. Again, I’d mentioned this before here and here.
I find it both amusing and exciting that there is increased opportunity for people to get their ideas realised. It’s like an XFactor for ideas rather than singers which, on the face of it, might be a better model than a Dragon’s Den (which let’s face it, both are getting very tired). It also smacks of Cambrian House which espoused crowd-sourcing as it’s primary model of innovation and market research. (The problem being that crowds tend to be stupid rather than smart). So while it failed, it wasn’t necessarily all bad.
This all shows that there is a market for helping people with vision get stuff done. And isn’t that what venture capital is meant to be all about. We have a poor VC network in Northern Ireland in terms of both quality and quantity. The very best tend to be entrenched in businesses they understand very well and that, for all the frustration it might cause post-Web 2.0 entrepreneurs is perfectly reasonable as it would be folly to expect an investor to put money into a venture they didn’t understand. That said – unless we start to see VCs with a little experience in the tech world, we’re not going to be able to change things.
On top of the schemes I mention on the DC blog, there’s something else planned for next summer which, at the moment, is still in stealth mode (insofar as not very much has been done for it but there’s energy, ideas and time).
Stephen Fry writes: Nintendo understands that while play does involve competition, territoriality and rehearsal for war, it also involves silliness, laughter and fun. I adore silliness, laughter and fun. Maybe it comes with being a parent or maybe with marrying a woman who adores it also but I love that we laugh, we joke and … Continue reading “silliness, laughter and fun”
Nintendo understands that while play does involve competition, territoriality and rehearsal for war, it also involves silliness, laughter and fun.
I adore silliness, laughter and fun. Maybe it comes with being a parent or maybe with marrying a woman who adores it also but I love that we laugh, we joke and we get along like kids.
Fry’s essay is an exposition on why the Wii continues to outsell the XBox and Playstation despite both of them being vastly more capable and powerful. And this, like the recent surge in gaming handheld interest via the iPhone (and Apple’s repositioning of the iPod touch as a gaming handheld) is why casual gaming is making some people rich and lowering the bar for independent developers.
Saturday morning as I handed out MURDERDROME T-shirts, I spoke to Jonathan Temples of EO Creative. Jonathan made a bit of a splash a few years ago doing graphics work for CodeMasters.
Looking forwards to today and we have Northern Ireland games companies springing up out of the woodwork – like Blue Pilot Software, Craic Design and a couple of others (who I’ll tell you more about if they give me a release to do so) and for more ‘serious’ gaming, Dark Water Studios up in the far north. I’m absolutely sure that this is the tip of the iceberg with regards to development here in Northern Ireland.
The province has a long and chequered history of being in the forefront of media creation and, to a degree, digital content and it’s satisfying to see that return.
Marty on the NoMoreArt blog writes about CreativeCamp and the Digital Circle.: For those of us a little bit older, it’s easy to get jaded. Especially when you’ve taken a few right hooks over the years that instilled the deja-vu-ometer that goes off in your brain when someone mentions something like ‘Digital Circle’ or Invest … Continue reading “More on Digital Circle.”
Marty on the NoMoreArt blog writes about CreativeCamp and the Digital Circle.:
For those of us a little bit older, it’s easy to get jaded. Especially when you’ve taken a few right hooks over the years that instilled the deja-vu-ometer that goes off in your brain when someone mentions something like ‘Digital Circle’ or Invest NI’s Digital Content Strategy (on a side note, I’ve yet to meet anyone who actually contributed to that. Answers on a postcard please…)
…
It’s about time that the credit went where it is due and Digital Circle can perhaps help in bridging the gap between great underground events in Blick Studios on a Saturday afternoon and the level of support the sector has earned and deserves from government and beyond. It’s there, let’s get on board and use it.
I wasn’t around in the NIMA days and the only thing I want to know about it are the lessons we can learn. The Digital Circle is, first and foremost, an opportunity for everyone in the digital content industry. Who’s that, you may ask? It’s likely to be 90% of people who read this blog. You might make software, make music, make web sites, make films, make animations, make games – these days only a small section of it is not captured digitally in some form or fashion. That makes it digital content.
Digital Circle is a trade body. You choose whether to join and participate. You choose whether to be counted. You choose whether to attempt to make a difference. The Digital Circle has a steering committee, people who have benefitted from networking or done well in the industry and who wish to see something happen for the wider community. They commit their time to this in order to make things work. I think that if everyone donated a fraction of their time, Digital Circle could do two things.
VCs can still get a slice of the action – but it’s a smaller slice and it involves them opening up their address book and their existing portfolio rather than opening up the cheque book. To create value in this new world, the VCs need to make themselves into the glue that binds starting businesses together.
So my suggestion is that they work out where their passion could be focused, and expect to spend the rest of their career trying to be the best in the world at that one area of expertise.
The test is actually very simple, just two questions:
- If you could afford to, would you do this work for free?
- Are you willing to sleep under your desk to be the best at this topic in the world? (Because your competitors are.)
If nothing else, join and attend the meetings and get to know the people who have, thus far, put in their own time to start this up. Exercise your vote, get in people who you trust to do a good job and who you know would put the needs of the industry ahead of their own needs for a few hours every month.
Look at the ‘underground’ events like BarCamp and CreativeCamp. Both of them sponsored by local companies and with some input from the meagre Digital Circle marketing budget. Believe me when I tell you I want to encourage this sort of grassroots approach because, end of the day, I’m grassroots myself. Get involved. You may not like the name, you may be bitter from previous experiences but you should treat this with the right philosophy – it will only succeed if the people reading this, the people who actually care about the industry, do something about it. I’ll be knocking on doors in the near future and asking you to join if I know about you. And yes, it’s been decided that there’s a membership fee. And every penny from that membership fee will be used to sponsor more events like CreativeCamp. You want more value? It’s coming.
What are the choices left to our industry? We can do nothing or we can do something. You can be separate from Digital Circle but what end does that serve?
Stuart Gibson writes about going local with Twitter: Northern Ireand can feel a little insular at times, even more so when you are outside the sprawling metropolis that is our capital city, so to find this whole world of other geeky types so close was a revelation. Within a week I had stopped following @kevinrose, … Continue reading “Local Creatives (and a little about DC)”
Stuart Gibson writes about going local with Twitter:
Northern Ireand can feel a little insular at times, even more so when you are outside the sprawling metropolis that is our capital city, so to find this whole world of other geeky types so close was a revelation. Within a week I had stopped following @kevinrose, @veronica and all the other web 2.0 celebrities and started connecting with real people there was a chance I could actually meet.
There’s other reasons to go local with your services – at the end of the day, the new media A-listers can be assholes. Sure, local people can be assholes too, but at least you have a connection with the locals.
Stuart also continues with his proposal for a site for NI Creatives. He reckons it needs:
To be honest, a lot of this is what was planned for the “Digital Circle” web site but I think it’s worth separating the functions of these. One of the conversations I had a CreativeCamp Belfast was ‘what is the digital circle’.
The Digital Circle is: The Northern Ireland Digital Content Industry Group – it’s essentially a recognised interface (and representative body) for providers and producers of digital content. The current work is to help address some of the identified barriers to success for digital content creation, these were identified as:
On top of this – it’s an opportunity to present your opinions to public bodies. Everyone involved in content creation, management and delivery is part of the Digital Circle in some fashion because the Digital Circle is just a label for the industry itself – and those who choose to band together to do something about it. There’s no legal entity called “Digital Circle”, at the moment it’s just a commitment from InvestNI to listen and from several businesses around Belfast to attempt to band together and give their time freely to create something bigger than just their individual companies. If you’re working for the betterment of the industry through collaboration, sharing of ideas and networks, then you are the Digital Circle. It’s not up to me to decide, my role is to help people connect and to help implement the decisions made by the group. If you’re interested in the content market in Northern Ireland, then you really should get involved.
Lastly, rather than having multiple seemingly unconnected ‘camps’ around Belfast, I think it would be worthwhile to get people talking together about these things, for instance,
In any given month we already have OpenCoffeeClub, Mobile Monday, NiMUG, Comic Creators in Belfast and no doubt half a dozen other ‘open’ events. I say ‘open’ in preference to membership network events where there’s a very formalised structure and membership (and an expectation to deliver business leads to other members). I’d be interested in hearing about others. I’d written half a proposal for a slightly more formal ‘conference collective’ which I was tentatively calling “NORTH” for design, music, technology and anything else that could be considered, held multiple times a year with a focus on different aspects.
What do you think we should do?
ENN writes: Companies located in The Digital Hub will grow at a rate 30 times greater than the national average during 2008. That’s according to the Digital Hub Enterprise Survey, which also revealed that 43 percent of Digital Hub companies have a product that is completely new to the market, while 25 percent have developed … Continue reading “Digital Hub companies growing 30x average in RoI”
Companies located in The Digital Hub will grow at a rate 30 times greater than the national average during 2008. That’s according to the Digital Hub Enterprise Survey, which also revealed that 43 percent of Digital Hub companies have a product that is completely new to the market, while 25 percent have developed unique business practices, and 24 percent use a business model that is unique to their particular market. “Approximately one in six of the digital media companies currently operating in Ireland are located in The Digital Hub,” said Philip Flynn, CEO of the Digital Hub Development Agency. “So this survey not only gives us an insight into how Hub companies are getting on, it also gives key indicators about the health of Ireland’s digital media industry overall.”
While it’s possible to look at this success from an all-Ireland point of view, we have to remember that in the Black North we have our own economy and our own companies to support. We don’t (yet) have an equivalent of the Digital Hub Development Agency, though I’m presuming this is what Digital Circle is meant to grow into. The DHDA works to promote companies within the borders of Ireland and not the UK – we have our own development agency for this.
In the sense that all ‘digital hub’ companies are competing, we must be ready to compete with each other as well as with our peers in the Republic of Ireland. But friendly competition as opposed to the sort which is all too common in Northern Ireland (where a competitor tells customers that you’ve gone out of business because, you know, that’s a fair tactic).
I’d need to read a lot more about the criteria for unique business models, unique business practices and completely new products on the market[1], but it’s encouraging statistics. It goes to show that having a government agency-supported focus group for an industry is a very good way to grow the industry. Having a facility like The Digital Hub is a great step for companies which are pre-Bubble in their work ethic (while hopefully being post-Bubble in their business plan).
The closest we really have for this is the Northern Ireland Science Park which, to be honest, looks antediluvian compared to The Digital Hub – it has a lot of potential and just needs a little more energy and a little less process.
We’ve got more happening than just the InvestNI/Momentum events. Look at BarCamp, look at Belfast OpenCoffee Club (meeting Thursday 3rd July). Look at the as-yet-unnamed event happening in six months! Northern Ireland is buzzing.
Where we need the government to assist is in reducing the centralisation of all digital content companies in Belfast. There’s no reason for it considering the resources available in Omagh, Derry, Newry and Armagh. I’ve personal experience with some of the local colleges in these regions and they’re doing a lot more than people give credit for. They’re pushing ‘digital/technology’ education forward and this matters because in a broadband world it doesn’t matter where in the province you are from.
[1] something that is completely new to the market is not usually a good thing.