As a producer of both offline video and online interactive content, the internet is both our creative medium and our distribution mechanism. If I do not understand the opportunities, business models and structure of the Internet, then I cannot fully exploit it creatively.

A recent example I worked on was the cross-platform project Scorched. Scorched was a one-off drama about Australia running out of water and Sydney being pretty much razed to the ground by fire. It aired on Channel Nine in August 2008. To accompany the TV show, a huge creative effort was expended on the website. The show was a 90 minute telemovie, but online were the following:

- 25 x 2 minute online drama series called Cassie Has Dreams
- 10 x 1 minute video blogs
- 10 x 2 minute news broadcasts for a fictional newsnetwork called CPN
- 4 fictional websites for various companies and characters from the show

For a one-off Australian drama, that’s a whole Opera House load of content.

While there were many lessons learned, and many things that the team would do differently, what was so enjoyable about the project was that the web was seen as a creative medium in which to experiment, not just a distribution mechanism for DVD extras or catch-up episodes of the show itself.

The cross-platform TV panel on which I participated at SPAA talked a lot about Scorched. The audience was keen to understand how it had got off the ground and, most urgently, what the business was behind the project.

The angle I took, and one which has been resonating louder and louder since is that it is vital for screen producers to differentiate between the internet as a distribution mechanism, and the internet as a creative medium. They are means to different ends, they have different business models attached to them and can be confused easily.

The internet as a distribution mechanism currently focuses on catch-up TV models of pay-per-download (iTunes), advertising-supported free distribution, or subscription TV channels. These are the models that distributors and audiences are used to for real-world experiences via a cinema, DVD rental or Pay-TV service.

The internet as a creative medium is barely born. While the WWW was invented in 1992, it took a good 5-10 years for people to start experimenting with interactive fiction on the web, online MMORPGs and video. I have yet to see a truly native internet/web creative experience of scale. I do not believe that any existing film or television director, producer or executive is capable of conceiving such a project. I would suggest that an individual would have to have been born from 2004 onwards to be able to use the new tools that are available to us in any truly fluent way. Anyone born before then is experimenting, enjoying and pioneering this new medium like a young student to a new language. We enjoy the newness and make great strides into the new landscape, but we are not fluent in the language. We are about to enter the phase which all language students will recognise when the language is used for humour, but I have not seen anything yet. The fun we can have by going through phrasebooks looking for bizarre example translations has yet to be experienced in full on the internet, though there are many one-liners.

The projects which we work on here at The Project Factory, and the partners with whom we work are, I hope, beginning to define elements of this new language. Like the slapstick humour, pace and ‘repeat until funny’ gags that were in the silent movie era, I hope that when the generation of fully fluent digital natives starts to really flex their creative muscles with the non-linear structure of the internet, they are able to look back and laugh with, not just at, our initial early attempts.

Behind the scenes, virtual worlds have been maturing, getting stronger and learning from the over-hype of Version 1.0. Here’s a nice piece about what’ll happen next…

I have mentioned several times in my various blog about the next big steps in the metaverse and two of my key points spring to mind, 1) Integration with existing online ‘life’ tools and 2) a company with super deep pockets, Google. So without much fanfare or pomp or circumstance ‘Lively - perpetual beta‘ was sneakily launched. A Google driven Social Virtual World made up of customised and personalized ‘rooms/enviroments’ that runs inside Windows web browsers (IE,FF). After a 2 minute install I was up and running checking out some CCEs (Community Created Environments) and looking for folk to chat to. The YouTube gives a good sense of the experience, but turn the sound down

With avatars and aesthetic nearer to there.com than Second Life (bizarrely referred to in the marketing blurb above and on the instructional site) the real point of difference here is the fact that you can embed your ’spaces’ in blog posts and other embed friendly web 2.0 apps. Here is one of my rooms embedded inside my Justvirtual.com blog (yes you have the virtual world as an embedded active window!)…

…plus the fact there is a multitude of other integrations with the Googleverse around the corner. I have seen talk of contextual advertising, built in YouTube on various screens, items within the rooms containing Amazon-type product links and of course the ability to plop your space on top of Google Earth/Maps - the list goes on and on…There is also integration with Facebook, MySpace and others via OpenSocial.

There is also a nod to PS3 Home given the strong create your own room using bits of found furniture (in fact very Habbo also), embed it in your blog etc and what looks like a catalog where 3rd parties can eventually come along and sell pixel products, virtual goods - which is where the real biz model is of course. Here are a couple of room screen grabs I took on a first whistle stop and I will report more when I have had time to dig in deeper…I include the ever so important embed pane at the bottom of each room, will Virtual Environments start to go viral? Sadly using the current technology each room has been crippled to only 20 avatars at a time and the movement around is a rather clunky mix of click to jump there and drag with mouse to smoothly move around. There are some fun elements though…

…and I just filmed and uploaded onto YouTube a quick grab of me Gazlitt and some of the 20 or so avatar interactions - limited to fun-fights or petting ala Simpsons vs sophisticated Second Life custom ones. I can see this type of world working well with the there.com demographic, or even perhaps the 10-early 20s and I am already tempted to create a couple of machinimas due to the cartoon’y nature of the graphics.

… and some more insight - A Google talks YouTube video from January 24 of this year looking at the backend…

Apparently Millions of Us and Rivers Run Red have been making objects and a few first off the block branded spaces too. A good summary of the service can be read at Virtual Worlds News which features some quotes from Head of 3D Worlds at Google, Mel Guymon…

“Our goal is to get everyone on the Web using 3D and to validate it as a part of the social experience,” said Guymon. “If we [as an industry] are going to do it, I think getting someone like Google to do it is crucial. And since we are doing it, I think we’re going to look back at having had Google do it as crucial.”

…and to show that embedding web 3.0 into 2D social networks are going to be one of the really interesting growth areas this year how about this new 3D ‘vivaty‘ plug-in for Facebook with tons of web 2.0 integration? Wired has a good introduction article on it from last week…Vivaty Scenes Taps Facebook, AIM for ‘Immersive Internet’

A new immersive web platform called Vivaty Scenes lets users create tiny virtual worlds and decorate them with content from around the internet. After adding Vivaty Scenes, which entered public beta Tuesday, to a Facebook or AOL Instant Messenger account, users can set up a customizable “room” where they can host chat sessions or small virtual gatherings within a web browser. The free service lets users pull content directly from some of the internet’s most popular sites. Scenes’ virtual televisions can be populated with any video from YouTube; virtual picture frames can be filled with any picture from a user’s Photobucket, Flickr or Facebook accounts.

Virtual Innovation - Brian Caulfield

So, you’ve grown bored flirting with fellow furries in Second Life? Well, the winners of the Tech Museum of Innovation’s first annual virtual exhibit design competition found something much more useful to do with their time than chasing virtual tail.

Silicon Valley’s center for recalling and learning about innovation features hands-on exhibits that make the abstract idea of innovation concrete, and fun. Last December, the museum launched a sort of online annex, dubbed, The Tech in Second Life, or The Tech Virtual.

The virtual museum is much more than an online facsimile of the institution’s brick-and-mortar headquarters. It includes a “creative common”–dubbed Parkside Hall–area where visitors can work together on exhibits. In January, the museum announced that it will award 14 cash prizes for the top exhibit designs, funded by a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

The winning virtual exhibits will become real-world additions to the museum. They will join hands-on exhibits that let museum-goers try their hand at genetic engineering with live bacteria or strap themselves into a contraption that simulates an astronaut’s jet pack. In other words, the museum has high standards not just for educational content–but for fun.

“We are conducting a grand experiment in open-sourcing the museum content- development process, and these virtual exhibits exemplify the collaborative spirit we are striving for in this competition and with this initiative,” said Peter Friess, president of The Tech in a statement.

The result: There are now 30 exhibits in the museum’s Parkside Exhibit Workshop, and the museum has become one of the top draws in Second Life’s SciLands virtual continent.

The first winners, announced in March–whose ideas are built around the theme of “art, film and music”–should fit right in at the museum.

One pair of winners focused on music. Leanne Garvie proposed a musical carousel where each seat represents a different instrument in an orchestra. Jon Brouchoud won for an exhibit that challenges visitors to set pins in a box corresponding to the placement of notes on a staff. Another, Marie Crandell, proposed an interactive exhibit showing the evolution of painting over time.

The last winner might be the cleverest: Alan Hook and Pete Wardle proposed a portal through which visitors to both the real-world and virtual museums can collaborate on a variety of games.

Of course, there’s still time to build an exhibit of your own. The virtual museum has regular sessions to walk visitors through the process of building an exhibit. On March 31, a panel of judges will review the exhibits and award additional prizes.

Only about eight exhibits will be constructed and built in the real world. Others will be available only online, in the galleries of the virtual museum, giving the museum’s visitors something fresh they can see online. More prizes for exhibits built around different themes will be awarded later this year.

Teens will get a competition of their own in the museum’s virtual presence in Teen Second Life. So far, there are 12 projects and 27 participants.

How To Spark Remote Learning - Bonnie Ruberg

“Second Life,” the online world that brings players together from across the globe to socialize, shop and even fly, is developing a second career as a hot spot for learning English as a second language (ESL).

It’s a classic innovation–a novel way to use a tool created for an entirely different purpose, namely to have a good time. That’s still the reason why most players come to “Second Life,” but English-language instructors who spend time with students there say they’re combining fun and learning–and getting excellent results.

Kip Boahn, who has co-led a real-life English-language school in Germany for the last eight years, has become passionate about teaching in “Second Life.” As “Kip Yellowjacket,” Boahn started teaching ESL to fellow “Second Life” players back in 2006. Originally from North Carolina, Boahn got his start in the game with a group called The English Village, but has now built his own ESL center. “Second Life English,” Boahn’s new project, is a virtual island entirely dedicated to providing free online resources to language teachers and students.

Though it only opened last month, “Second Life English” is already receiving about 75 interested visitors a day, Boahn says. More people are likely to begin stopping by once Boahn starts advertising the island’s service, both in the game and on ESL web sites. To date, “Second Life” has more than 5,000 foreign language learners, Boahn estimates, and approximately 1,000 language teachers, most of whom are also instructors in real life–so finding a community to use his resources should be easy.

Boahn first began dabbling in “Second Life” as he was searching for ways to use technology to augment what happened in his real-world classrooms. “I became intrigued by the immersiveness of “Second Life” and other 3D worlds,” he says. “The richness and multitudes of environments seemed to offer fantastic opportunities for exposure to language.” Today, Boahn counts himself as part of a growing group of online ESL enthusiasts–including teachers from America and Europe, and students from countries as far-flung as Uruguay and China–who come together to practice language via text and voice chat.

In addition to providing resources, Boahn also offers free ESL workshops through “Second Life English”–a great deal, he says, since private language lessons in-world can cost as much as $20 an hour. Like many “Second Life instructors,” Boahn takes a hands-on approach to teaching in a virtual classroom. During workshops, he uses a team of teachers to present students with different linguistic tasks, which could include anything from asking for directions to bargaining to buy a knickknack. To do those tasks, Boahn and his colleagues use “holodecks,” rooms that can flip through as many as 40 different scenes at the mere click of a mouse. Want to practice ordering American fast food? Just switch the holodeck to Dara’s Diner and line up at the counter.

Another popular way to teach English in “Second Life,” says Boahn, involves role-playing and quests. “I once dressed up as a pirate, had a ship and everything. I was kind of rough on the students,” he admits. “I put some of them in cages, and had them confront language in a shock-and-awe kind of way. They seemed to like it, and they learned all sorts of new words, like ‘loot’ and ‘booty.’”

Boahn’s approach may appear nontraditional, but he feels a new medium calls for a new way of teaching language. Even using the game’s English interface gives students a chance to practice what they’ve learned. “We like to encourage teachers to see ‘Second Life’ itself as a classroom,” he says.

Elsewhere in “Second Life,” “The English Village,” the island where Boahn first got started teaching English, takes a more commercial approach than he does. As many as 2,000 people regularly frequent “The English Village,” which connects tutors with paying students for more conventional English classes. Paul Preibisch–a.k.a. Fire Centaur–a Canadian living in Seoul, Korea, who founded “The English Village” two years ago, says he’s also experimenting with free language-learning trips, such as treasure hunts and skydiving.

Educators like Boahn and Preibisch aren’t the only ones turning to videogames to promote English language instruction. Two years ago, Edd Schneider of State University of New York-Potsdam paired his communications class with a group of high school students in China and told them to play “World of Warcraft” together. In spite of the enormous difference in time zones, Schneider told game industry site Gamasutra.com, the project was a huge success. “Sometimes [the Chinese students] didn’t even realize they were speaking English,” he said.

The effort to use online games to encourage language development is part of a more sweeping field of so-called “serious games,” videogames that either teach or study straight-faced subjects: everything from mathematics to the international oil crisis to contemporary American obesity. “Second Life,” of course, has few serious pretensions. It’s the players who are turning things “serious.”

The results, Boahn says, can surpass those of far more nose-to-the-grindstone approaches. “I have one student from China who used to be so shy,” Boahn says, speaking of one of the many “Second Life” residents he’s worked with exclusively from across the globe. “Now she’s found her niche. She started participating in classes, then organizing events. Now she’s ready to be an English teacher herself!”

Firstly, the enormous rise in internet revenue has not caused an equal and opposite drop-off from other media.  This contradicts the Chicken Littles forecasting the end of traditional media revenue streams - at least for the time being.  So where is this revenue coming from?  Traditional advertising budgets have not increased by this amount in the UK.  Certainly there are large companies playing in this space - but not close to the £3bn level.  This leaves the proposition that Google and internet advertising have managed to create a new and incremental revenue stream from new sources. 

Small offices and businesses, and new digital pureplay businesses are most readily positioned to use Google and online marketing to their benefit, and this is where the money is coming from.  An Australian-based colleague recounts the example of a friend of his who runs a gourmet food delivery company and whose marketing spend is solely focused online to the tune of $11,000 per month.  The result is a geo-targeted, search-friendly campaign that appeals to neighbourhood homes - and only neighbourhood homes - in a more effective way than the private ads in free local newspapers.

The second point of interest is that without Google, the angle of the growth line for other Internet advertising would be far shallower - a much more realistic 10-15% growth.  I have seen many a new media executive take the overall internet growth trend line as a basis for their business forecasting without filtering out search revenues in general and Google specifically.  Needless to say, trying to deliver results on a 30% growth rate would be applicable to start-ups (and Google) but not for existing new media businesses or portals.

Using this chart as a basis for international forward projections in general - and the Australian market specifically - the picture tells a story with the confidence of a time-traveller.  The television advertising market is today worth $3bn.  The total internet advertising market in Australia is currently at approximately $1.3bn, and has experienced growth that matches the growth on the chart.  While there are different methods between the UK and Australia for measuring traditional media advertising, the trend lines are similar between the two countries.  This positions Australia at the end of 2005 in comparison to the UK.  On the trajectory in the chart, and if the line continues, total internet revenue in Australia will surpass television advertising in 2010. 

And finally, what might throw this line off?  If the global markets exert a squeeze on advertising budgets, across all sizes of businesses, which media will feel the pain?  Judging by this chart, and the apportioning of budgets across large companies and small companies between old and new media, the answer will depend on which size of business pulls back first.  If large business pulls in the reins before small businesses, as they usually do, then it is likely that old media will see a reduction in media spend budgets first.  If small business pulls back, then internet spends might be affected more. 

Forrester’s Josh Bernoff has put forward a partisan case for retaining and even increasing new media spends on social networking sites during a recession.  Accountability is a good argument for reducing the risk of the marketing budget, but the business development pipeline still needs to be expanded in a broad sense, something that broad-reach above-the-line media still excel at.

As with horoscopes, these charts can be read and interpreted in different ways.  Different people have different experiences that they overlay which change the interpretation.  But when the actual data of different media revenues are compared directly over a decent period of time, the trend lines become valuable guides into a fast-moving future.

If these guys are to be believed, they are being educated by their young children in the finer nuances of online business models, user interfaces and consumer trends. Absent are the slides about panel-based research, global trend analysis, years of experience built up through creating innovative new media projects. In its place are picture of a small child, and the conclusion that it is able to conjure up the magic ‘Open Sesame’ that will open the Alladdin’s Cave of monetised content and future new media trends.

As a colleague said yesterday as I started on this topic: “Kids TV is not produced by kids, so why should a new media strategy?”. A perspective I agree with wholeheartedly. Please show me the rows of 5 year-old animators at Pixar, the pre-school scripwriters creating the Finding Nemo sequel, or newly-borne babies writing strategy papers for content portals.

Is this peculiar to our new media industry? In some ways I hope this embarassment has not management-consulted its way into other industries. If it has, please let me know and send examples. Only for ridicule though please. If it has not, then are we not seeing a group of very highly-paid senior executives publically demonstrate that they have no more knowledge of how to create new media projects than a small child? “Ahhh” is not an appropriate response. Next time, please try: “Arghh!” and hope that the following presentation has creative insight based on experience, innovative thought and solid new media business practise.