Editorial

 

An interesting essay by Mark Prensky (“On the Horizon” - NCB University Press, Vol. 9 No. 5, October 2001) caught The Hub's attention recently as it added some useful vocabulary to the increasing lexicon of digital media jargon.  The essay sought to further differentiate the generational divide in our digital media saturated world by proposing that there are two distinct groups actively participating on the connected side of the digital divide.   These are the Digital Natives and the Digital Migrants.

Digital Natives, it proposes, are those who have grown up with digital technology and simply take it for granted. It is a seamless part of their lives and more worryingly, it is critical to their daily lives. A recent example of a Digital Native was relayed in the Sunday Times recently the story of a teenage girl who journeyed 5 miles to her college only to realise that she had forgotten her mobile phone. So important was it to her, that she traveled back home to retrieve it. She happily admitted that her mobile phone was almost an extension of herself, a completely necessity to have on her person at all times.  These Digital Natives, one could argue, are part of Generation Y. But this essay highlights that where as before they were regarded as technically savvy, now they are becoming technically-needy.

On the same side, but with different outlooks, are the Digital Migrants. These are the older generation -  25 and up  - who remember the days before digital. Many of them remember dialing analogue phones, watching black and white televisions and purchasing their first VCR. Collectively, they encompass Generation X and the Baby Boomers. Technology has reluctantly become an integral part of their lives – be it email, the web, DVDs or mobile phones. They are still getting their heads around the changes and remember with nostalgia the days when they were non-contactable,  save for checking in at a pay phone.

The other notable difference between the two groups is that the Digital Natives are moving in leaps and bounds. They adapt much more quickly to new technologies; they spend increasingly more time online then engaging in more passive activities such as watching television or going to the cinema and they are much more intellectually demanding then they are given credit for. This differentiation yet again puts the kibosh on the manufactured claim that media is dumbing down and thus so are our kids. On the contrary, television drama, games and independent cinema are in fact becoming much more sophisticated with increasingly complicated plotlines expanding across many media platforms.

One need only take the example of ABC's Lost, which as well as being an incredibly challenging programme on a cerebral level, has now crossed into various formats, both online and offline,  pushing further the boundaries between what is real and what is fiction. The fictional book “Bad Twin” written by one of the fictional characters on the programme, Gary Troup, is now on the New York Times bestseller list. Gary Troup, of course, is an anagram for purgatory giving avid viewers a further clue in the puzzle of the labyrinthine plot of Lost. The show also has seen more online banter then any show previously and this again is fuelled by the remarkably clever online websites that the producers have created to further blur the lines of reality and fiction. Needless to say, this has left many Digital Migrants baffled
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So it seems that we may be heading toward a brave new world where the natives are the pioneers and the migrants merely by-standers looking for crumbs from the table. So while the Digital Migrants still cling to their passive entertainments, the Digital Natives are embracing the New Medium and shaping it as they go along. Myspace.com, Youtube.com, Bebo.com  the more you read about their harmful and malignant influence in the passive medium of the newspapers, the more you know that the divide is growing wider between the  pioneering Natives and the bewildered Migrants.  The choice now is which side you take.

First Tuesday tackles Video on Demand

 

First Tuesday is back on the scene giving further credence to the notion that technology investment is seemingly back in vogue. Although, overall venture capital funding for start ups has fallen in the first half of the year, it is likely that the nascent Enterprise Ireland Venture Capital Fund initiative will stimulate further investment, particularly in the technology and digital media area.

First Tuesday's recent seminar – “Video On Demand – Emerging Distribution Channels for Media Content” - co-sponsored by the Digital Media Forum and Magnet Entertainment, highlights how the market has matured since the early days of the dot com boom. Back in 1998 there were plenty of similarly titled seminars promising much and in effect, delivering little. This seminar on the other hand perhaps promised little, but delivered much more.  Of particular interest to The Hub was the diversity of the audience - a subtle mix of content producers, technologists, financiers, entrepreneurs and third level interests. There was also a much more sober atmosphere to the proceedings, with revenue models being carefully queried and the obvious weight of experience in the content of many of the exchanges.

One of the Key Speakers was Kevin Cummins of Digital Cinema Ireland who outlined his plans for the global rollout of digital cinema using his proprietary hardware, encryption software and  applications. His presentation was concise and to the point focusing more on the logistics and the business plan, as opposed to the technology (which we can now largely take for granted). His revenue projections were realistic, if even somewhat downbeat, and the overall offering made sense. In effect, Digital Cinema Ireland will look to become the middleman between the cinema owners and the studios, supplying the digital distribution platform and projectors for free to the cinema owners, while charging the studios for the digital print and encryption. This nicely puts pay to the problem where studios own the cinema chains. Piracy is obviously something that studio owners take very seriously and Cummins platform offers ample security. In light of the startling fall in cinema attendance worldwide, Cummins also offers an alternative use for cinemas in downtime by allowing for the delivery of live sports and music events as well as conferencing and lecture facilities. So your nearest multiplex may soon become a more fully rounded entertainment venue.

The second speaker was Charlie Ardagh, one of the entrepreneurs behind the US owned Magnet Entertainment.

In terms of video on demand, their target consumer is the home user, ironically perhaps the single greatest threat to the cinema owner. Their proposition centres around that elusive bundled offering - the triple play. This is a combination of digital television, telephone and broadband internet over a broadband IP connection. Although Magnet are mainly focused on the ADSL market, they also have fibre running to new built homes as well as a wireless offering. The final piece in the jigsaw is content hence their sponsorship of the event. Charlie was canny in admitting that he is a newbie to the world of content  his natural home being both telecoms and politics.(He is after all a Fianna Fail Councilor, following in the footsteps of his father, Fianna Fail TD Rory Ardagh)

Content, to use that old chestnut, is still King. But it seems few operators are willing to pay a premium for it – or take a risk on it. Instead, they seem happy to make content deals with the broadcasters or large content owners. Worse still, is the fact that Irish producers don't necessarily even own the content that they produce. This became rapidly clear in the question and answers sessions where producers expressed dismay at how financing deals have precluded them from making money from video on demand. It became obvious during the discussion that the traditional financing of films and television content in Europe is not particularly complimentary with the new forms of distribution that are developing. When one considers that a 10 minute video of an argument between two commuters on a bus in Hong Kong has had over 60 million downloads on www.youtube.com, it's fair to say that something is happening! But how you make money from it is a different question.

The panel also discussed their experience with podcasting and mobile downloads. Again, there was obvious excitement at the potential but the reality has still left a lot to be desired. In the case of Brown Bag, one of Ireland's premiere animation houses, they were pleased to relate that downloads of their Crap Rap series of animations was doing extremely well on Apple iTunes. Only downside was that neither they, nor the broadcaster RTE, were profiting from it. This sort of brand building is all well and good, but at the end of the day somebody has to pay for it. Giving content away for free isn't a good business model unless you're Google.  

Mobile downloads and the potential for mobile broadcasting was greeted with more optimism. Mobile infrastructure has a dedicated billing mechanism in place so content owners can get paid for their content being downloaded. However, the gatekeepers namely the incumbent telecos charge a heavy premium and the small content providers generally are the ones that are squeezed. This is the experience of mobile games producer,

Peter Lynch, CEO of Eirplay Games in The Digital Hub. The learning curve for his company was that spending 100,000 euro developing a game that sells for 6 euro doesn't make much sense when teenagers will spend 3 euro to download a wallpaper image of David Beckham or Britney Spears. Eirplay had to quickly re-think their business model and the answer for him was to create a portal Play.ie where users can download all sorts of content.

The benefit of this approach, as opposed to selling directly to the operators, was that premium MMS, SMS and iMODE do offer a way around the operators where the consumer does the deal directly with the provider. Still the content provider has to bear the brunt of the marketing costs in order to get noticed in the highly competitive world of mobile content. In terms of Mobile TV as launched by Vodafone with Sky and being trialed by O2 with RTE a curious question still remains will you need a TV license?  The Department of Communications, still ensconced in its DTT trial, is keeping mum on the topic. But in the UK, if you are watching a live stream of broadcast television well, then the answer is categorically yes. You do need a TV license. I wonder how teenagers will feel when 150 euro is debited from their Pay-Per-Use mobile bill once a year!

News

 

July 18th: Another podcasting first for Digital Hub company Athena Media and Digicast

Athena Media, a multimedia production company, based in The Digital Hub, has created the first health podcasting channel in Ireland. The channel VHI Health Club was launched on Monday July 3rd by Digicast Ltd, a new digital media content distribution company formed by Athena Media's CEO Helen Shaw, Joe Conway and Simon Factor of Moving Media.

Ireland's primary health insurer VHI is the sponsor of the new channel which is available through www.vhi.ie and www.podcastingireland.ie Digicast launched podcastingireland as a podcasting portal last March along with its first podcasting only channel 02 Making Waves, a new Irish music channel. Making Waves, a weekly podcast available through the podcastingireland portal or iTunes as listen online or download, is now in its 30th week and it is also produced every week from The Digital Hub by Athena Media.

Digicast has also launched a third new channel The Happening, a short events guide to Ireland, presented by Mick Caulfield, and featuring three choice events every week. VHI Health Club, the new health consumer channel, is bi-monthly and is presented by former RTE Health correspondent, Aileen O'Meara. Further plans from Digicast and podcastingireland.ie include a major educational project and new channels of content in travel, the arts and entertainment as well as corporate podcasting projects for clients.

June 20th: Digital Media Forum Launch new Accel-funded training initiative

The Digital Hub-based Digital Media Forum (DMF) has launched its Accel-funded training programme (16/06/06), which has enabled Irish animation company, Kavaleer to train and hire half the graduating digital media degree class from Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology for a major animation contract.

Kavaleer needed animators to fulfill a major contract with Irish e-learning company Riverdeep to supply education materials in the US.  The programme allowed Kavaleer to up skill a large number of people while also meeting ongoing project deadlines.  Both Kavaleer & Riverdeep are located in The Digital Hub.

Events

 

July 27th : Internet Marketing for 21st Century Businesses
Location: Great Southern Hotel, Dublin Airport.
Time: 9am
Price: EUR265
Most companies use their websites as nothing more than an on-line brochure. By attending this morning seminar, discover myriad ways to directly leverage your company's website for consistent, high-quality sales lead generation. Doing the right things in the right way, a website can radically improve a company's selling landscape. This non-technical seminar is geared towards marketing and sales personnel, entrepreneurs and companies who recognise the increasing importance of online marketing to business success.

More info: john@praxisnow.ie 086-8103183 http://www.praxisnow.ie/seminarsDublinNorth.html

August  1st: : DCEB - Website Development
Location: GEC, Dublin
Time: 9am
Price: EUR100

This three course provides guidelines to assist web site owners at each stage of web site development and the internet marketing process. The course is designed to provide participants with background information, knowledge and tips to help plan and implement on-line web strategies. The event is spread across three days, the 1st, 3rd and 9th of August, from 9am until 1pm.

More info: info@dceb.ie 01 677 6068 or Fax 01 677 6093
http://www.dceb.ie/opencontent/default.asp?itemId=15

August 10th: Internet Marketing for 21st Century Businesses
Location: Stillorgan Park Hotel, Dublin
Time: 9am
Price: EUR265

Most companies use their websites as nothing more than an on-line brochure. By attending this morning seminar, discover myriad ways to directly leverage your company's website for consistent, high-quality sales lead generation. Doing the right things in the right way, a website can radically improve a company's selling landscape. This non-technical seminar is geared towards marketing and sales personnel, entrepreneurs and companies who recognise the increasing importance of online marketing to business success.

More info: John@praxisnow.ie 086-8103183 http://www.praxisnow.ie/seminarsDublinSouth.html

 

Sept. 6th - 7th:  Enterprise Ireland Innovation Forum - Releasing the Hidden Strength of your Enterprise
Location: Dublin Castle, Dublin.
Time: 8am
Price: tbc

Leading international experts on business innovation will gather in Dublin to debate the essential role of innovation in driving the economic growth of both companies and countries and explore how innovation can be exploited to achieve maximum commercial effect. The Innovation Forum will be of interest and direct relevance to people across the business spectrum, including entrepreneurs, senior managers, strategic thinkers, technical staff, SMEs, start-up firms and established firms seeking new ways to innovate.

More info: innovation@enterprise-ireland.com Tel:  01 808 2000
http://www.enterprise-ireland.com/Innovation/

Sept. 11th: DCEB -- Start Your Own Business Course
Location: National College of Ireland
Time: 6pm - 9.30pm
Price: EUR200

DCEB's Start Your Own Business Programme covers all the basic information to help you set up a business and get things right from the start. This eight evening programme course is highly practical and interactive. You learn new skills and how to develop both your business and yourself.

More info: info@thelookdublin.com 01 677 6068 Fax: 01 677 6093
http://www.dceb.ie/opencontent/default.asp?itemId=15

Sept. 13th: DCEB -- Finance and Funding for Small Businesses
Location: National College of Ireland
Time: 5.30pm - 9.30pm
Price: EUR30

This course will give participants an idea of where to secure funding for fledgling businesses -- when the Enterprise Board and Banks can't or won't help! It will also familiarise participants with the systems required to record all of the transactions in their businesses and introduce them to the appropriate systems in order to survive the first few years.

Sept. 13th: Dublin City Enterprise Board -- Financial Management
Location: National College of Ireland
Time: 5.30pm - 9.30pm
Price: EUR150

This four evening programme (13th, 20th, 27th & 4th October) is suited to any individual aspiring to running his or her own business or to have a refresher course on what requirements are necessary to the successful running of a business. Due to the fact more businesses are failing because of insufficient financial control, it is crucial to have some expertise in this area. This programme will give you the skills and knowledge to understand basic financial structures as well as detailed information on planning finance for initial start up.

More info: info@dceb.ie Tel: 01 677 6068  Fax: 01 677 6093 http://www.dceb.ie/opencontent/default.asp?itemId=15