Watch this video for the overview, or below for the full event:
Hosted live at 29 Studios, the panel discussion - with audience and Twitter interaction - was filmed and shared on the Moviecom.tv platform. Thanks to Michelle Rodger, Kev and Gillian O'Neil
"[There's] a new phenomena that I like to call the Stacks [vertically integrated social media]. And we've got five of them -- Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft. The future of the stacks is basically to take over the internet and render it irrelevant. They're not hostile to the internet -- they're just [looking after] their own situation. And they all think they'll be the one Stack... and render the others irrelevant. And they'll all be rendered irrelevant. That's the future of the Stacks.
People like the Stacks, [because] the internet is scary now -- so what's the problem there? None of them offer any prosperity or security to their human participants, except for their shareholders. The internet has users. Stack people are livestock -- ignorant of what's going on, and moving from on stack to another. The Stacks really, really want to know you're a dog.
They're annihilating other media... The Lords of the Stacks. And they're not bad guys -- I'd be happy to buy them a beer. But really, a free people would not be so dependent on a Napoleonic mobile people. What if Mark Zuckerberg trips over a skateboard?
This structure won't last very long... But you're really core people for them and their interests. You are them. I'm them. And your kids are going to ask embarrassing questions about them. And there are voices here and there complaining about them, [like] Jonathan Franzen. He says Twitter is destroying literature. And he's right. So don't make fun of him. He's telling the truth."
Powerful.
]]>I tweet that I want to play guitar again and someone I have never met gives me a guitar, won't take a penny for it. You have to stop sometimes and reflect on how amazing people can be when they feel part of a community.
For my part I have freely given start up advice, relationship stories and fostered partnerships that have blossomed but still I didn't expect a guitar. Humbling really.
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My reasons for this are many but it really comes down to a belief that I achieve my best work when I am free from the inertia of a large agency, and especially free from the shackles of selling over creating.
Currently I am working on a number of lovely projects including Head of Digital at Nova Festival, but I do have capacity so please let people know I am available for hire.
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I was rendered unusually speechless on Monday evening and I wanted to put you in the situation and ask what you think. The scene is a Social Media Week conference, 150 professionals interested in digital communications, are packed into a room and as an aside a speaker says “Hands up who has heard of Alan Turing?". How many hands do you think go up?
Three.
Yes, three. Three hands go up in the room to signal that they know of the man who by played a significant role in the creation of the modern computer.
Come on, something is wrong when people don’t know the origins of the technology that allowed social media to exist, right? I wanted to ask the room if they know who Tim Berners-Lee is, but I refrained; I might leap into the Thames if I didn’t see 150 hands go up.
Does history matter?
]]>Our greatest moments of innovation are long behind us. This may sound harsh but it needn’t be, as long as you recognise it and stop trying to grow up.
I was talking with a mother recently, she was amazed that her young son could pick up a knife and fork and with absolute conviction craft a story of good and evil, of both battling it out where there could only be one victor. I remember how a white sheet draped over boxes could become a snowy wilderness for toy soldiers to scale, chilling me to the core to live their struggle as I played.
One day I read a verse from the bible that scared me until, without realising, it became true: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways”. Eventually all I knew seemed childish.
Innovation is something we as adults strive so hard for, but often miss out that it is the opportunity taken that we need, not to think harder, but almost to not think at all. Like the children we once were, free from the inherited pressures of growing up, with space to fail, to learn, to embrace and to grow – not up but out.
So I challenge you – are you truly more innovative now than then, or happier even? If not, maybe the opportunity you need is the one in front of you.
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Social Media Week Italy: Introduction, my background in digital from Mark Jennings on Vimeo.
Social Media Week Italy: How is social media changing? from Mark Jennings on Vimeo.
Social Media Week Italy: How has social media changed advertising? from Mark Jennings on Vimeo.
Social Media Week Italy: Campaign vs. Community, a critical way to view campaigns from Mark Jennings on Vimeo.
Social Media Week Italy: Social commerce opportunities from Mark Jennings on Vimeo.
Please comment and share :)
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A guest blog by Sara Thomas @lirazelf
There is a bookshop in the west end of Glasgow called Voltaire & Rousseau. The shelves are stacked floor to ceiling, it smells of old paper, and there is a waist-high pile of books by the till upon which is curled a permanently snoozing cat. I cannot see it as the type of place to offer coffee (although there’s an excellent tea house just round the corner) or do a 3 for 2 offer (although there’s a £1 section by the door). The shop next door sells vinyl. These are places which have found their niche. Voltaire & Rousseau would certainly never launch their own e-reader, the event which sparked a conversation between myself and Mark on Twitter a couple of weeks ago, which led to this blog.
The Death Of The Book has been discussed endlessly, with a tiresome repetitiveness matched only by that which accompanies the assertion that Rock is Dead, or that it Wasn’t Like This In My Day. I wonder how long it was after Defoe had finished Moll Flanders that some ragged urchin was telling him that it was all over, that the bubble had burst, that the market was forever changed and would no longer support the format. With Borders gone, and Ottakers a distant memory, it’s the turn of the Death of the Bookshop.
As someone who worked in and studied popular music for a good few years, the eye-rollingly tiresome nature of the various debates surrounding e-books and the Death of [well, insert your chosen format here] is compounded because I’ve heard it all before. The book industry could, I think, learn from the failure of the major labels to adapt to the changing marketplace. For years they stood stubborn, presenting sob stories of falling revenue, piling blame for the supposed demise of the industry upon every teenager in her bedroom who didn’t want to pay £15 for an album mostly made up of filler material. Sod that, she said, and went to the Pirate Bay instead, and spent her cash on gig tickets and merchandise. The purchasing landscape changed, vinyl became a cult niche, the CD faded almost out of existence and the label-less musician managed fine. The indie record shop didn’t do so well, granted.
One of the main differences, of course, is that we’ve been pirating books for years, in the form of library lending, and far from vilifying these institutions who brazenly lend material – for free! – to the general public, we declare them to be centres of cultural enrichment. (Even the ones that have the bloody Twilight series on their shelves.) We fight to preserve them. When it comes to words, we seem to have understood at one point at least that reading begets reading.
One thing that the e-reader/e-book could maybe offer is a resurgence for different formats. The short story lends itself perfectly to the hardware. Whereas I resent paying £8 for a downloadable book, I wouldn’t at all mind paying 50p or £1 for a short story. Word for word, the writer gets the better deal with the latter. With Neil Gaiman recently lending his support to the tweetathon to save the short story, in reaction to Radio 4’s declining support for it, it seems that we have a renewed interest in the form.
I’d like to see a branch of Waterstones where I could wander amongst the physical books, then either download them in the shop onto an e-reader (cable? QR code?), or buy the physical copy. There is something about (and I do hate this word, but it does get the point across) the element of discoverability which a physical bookshop offers, which is (as yet) unavailable online. Shopping for a present for a friend recently I looked (in vain) for something about darts (it seemed like a good idea, she plays), but wandering from shelf to shelf, from floor to floor, I found myself looking at a book about film theory and then at the eventual purchase; a gloriously packaged hardback dedicated to creating the perfect vintage tea party. “People who bought this also liked…” has never produced similar results, in my experience. All nostalgic paper-junkie longing aside, there are genuine advantages to the real life bookshop – and I wonder if the key to the survival of that experience is the embrace of new technology in a way that the music industry didn’t manage quickly enough.
Sara Thomas is an iPhone owning paper junkie who used to work in live music venues, and has a PhD in American Popular Metal 1994-2004. She now works as a charity fundraiser, and writes poems and short stories. She can be found @lirazelf ranting about something or other.