Producing content for digital media

Written by: Jonathan Briggs

October 30, 2007 [3677 views]

Here are the notes from a recent presentation in Paris.
!Outline of sessions

1. Current trends (9.00 – 11.00)
2. The production process (11.15 – 12.30)
3. Turning ideas into productions (14.00 – 15.00)
4. Workshop (15.00 – 16.30)
5. Questions and answers (16.30 – 17.00)

Goals of the day

1. Demystify digital media technology and applications
2. Introduce current trends in digital media
3. Discuss production process for digital media
4. Identify opportunities for media producers
5. Provide plenty of opportunities for discussion and questions

Who am I?

1. Professor of eCommerce, Kingston University
2. Business Development Director, the OTHER media
3. Curriculum Advisor and Co-Founder, Hyper Island, Digital Media, Karlskrona & Stockholm

Current projects

1. British Academy of Film and Television Arts
2. English Eccentrics
3. Paul Smith
4. Royal Academy of Arts
5. Stanfords Books and Maps
6. Virgin Experience Days

Session 1: Trends in digital media

Let’s define what we mean by digital media and look at some of the most interesting things happening at the moment.

What is digital media?

1. Content and services delivered over digital channels such as Internet
2. Connected or unconnected while watched (Streaming/live versus downloads/DVD)
3. Increasingly unimportant what connected channel is used but need to understand opportunities/barriers to interactivity

Digital services

1. News feeds including sport, weather, and entertainment
2. Information and advice sites
3. Education and training
4. Personal publishing, blogging, sharing
5. Marketing, customer acquisition, customer retention
6. Communities, forums, knowledge sharing
7. Shopping and auctions
8. Games and gambling
9. Pornography

Also

1. PS2, Xbox and PC Games
2. Kiosks
3. Mobile phone content
4. DVD interactivity

The 10 most interesting things in digital media?

1. Convergence – YouTube and Joost plus PSP, Wii, XBox
2. Customer generated content
3. Web 2.0 applications and social networks
4. Electronic commerce
5. Mashups and web services
6. Mobile
7. Multichannel propositions
8. Search engines and reputation
9. Second Life
10. Intelligence

Questions

1. What are the key technologies?
2. How do you create a hit?
3. How do you know what the audience wants?
4. How do you engage your audience?
5. How do content owners make money?

Key technologies

1. HTTP servers and clients
2. AJAX
3. Compression
4. Web services
5. Digital rights management
6. Java, .NET, Ruby on Rails
7. Databases

Reputation

1. Vital for achieving an audience or commerce
2. Core to Google’s search results model
3. Earned (eBay) or engineered (Search engine optimisation)
4. Basis for visibility in social networks (MySpace, LinkedIn)
5. Buying reputation? (Google Adwords)

Intelligence

1. What is your audience looking for?
2. What do web users want?
3. How do you monitor audiences?

Business models

1. Pay per action
2. Subscription
3. Commerce
4. Sponsorship
5. Advertising

Session 2: Inside a new media production

In this session we will use an example project to explore what is involved in a new media production.

Process

1. Responding to or creating an opportunity
2. Where does work come from?
3. New client
4. Existing client
5. New venture
6. Brainstorming
7. Being distinctive
8. Planning to make money
9. Pitching
10. Writing proposals
11. Working out a budget
12. Creating visuals
13. Negotiating
14. Functionality
15. Budgets
16. Project management methods
17. Waterfall
18. AGILE
19. SCRUM
20. Development
21. Design
22. Rapid prototyping
23. Involve the client
24. Reuse
25. Create partnerships
26. Testing
27. Browsers and platforms
28. Functionality
29. Usability
30. Accessibility
31. Support
32. Training
33. Content management
34. Editorial schedule
35. Search engine optimisation
36. Marketing

Some people and their roles

1. Graphic designers – work within brand and knowledge of the medium
2. Information architect – designs the visitor experience
3. Template creators – convert graphics to work on the web
4. Programmers – create tools or software that power the site
5. Database design – creates scalable storage for content and information
6. Testing – proves that everything works across platforms
7. Project management – manages the development process
8. Account management – manages the client relationships
9. Copywriter – helps the client write for the medium
10. Search engine marketer – helps create the audience

Technologies

1. Flash – use sparingly to create interactive elements
2. AJAX – use to create improved user experience
3. Content management – enables editorial processes and asset management
4. Web serving – core application enhanced with server based software
5. Integration – enables data to be transferred to/from other systems
6. Rich media serving – specialist serving for video and audio
7. Load balancing – enables audience to grow
8. Secure hosting – prevents hacking and fraud

Problems

1. Client does not know what they want
2. Clients do not understand what is involved
3. Innovation is costly
4. Most projects have multiple stakeholders or audiences
5. Integration with existing systems
6. Clients don’t understand the nature of web publishing
7. Technology changes very rapidly

Opportunities

1. Work with partners
2. Reuse what has already been created and proven
3. Leave some ideas to phase 2 and beyond
4. Link with offline activity

Session 3: Turning ideas into productions

Explore and understand the unique content, information and data contained within or accessible by your client and find ways to engage your audience with this content.

What is content?

1. Stories and narrative
2. Articles and documentaries
3. Product information
4. “How to”s
5. Sports results
6. Comment, discussion and uploaded photos, video

Why is content important?

1. Timely
2. Provides advice, opinion, expertise
3. Drives audience
4. Supports commerce
5. Supports repeat business
6. Builds reputation

What should your client be doing?

1. Exploring their competitors, their industry and their marketplace
2. Opening up their organisation – behind the scenes, access to people, web services
3. Facilitating conversations – commenting, reviews
4. User generated content
5. Creating or harnessing unique content
6. Redesigning their businesses and processes
7. Learning about the web and what works online
8. Experimenting

Supporting traditional media

1. Used to market films, TV shows and products
2. Backchannels are increasingly important providing supporting information, behind the scenes, feedback opportunities and potentially revenue generation
3. Viewer generated content: upload your videos
4. Video on demand (VOD) – provide greater choice now
5. Near Video on demand (nVOD) – provide greater channel choice in 15 mins
6. Interactivity
7. Discussion and feedback
8. Voting and polling
9. Play along

Rich media content

1. Photos
2. Audio
3. Music
4. Documentary
5. Webcams
6. Games
7. Video
8. Interactive visualisation

Designing content

1. Design bite sized content as visitors have limited attention span
2. Give them control over scanning the content
3. Make interactivity easy
4. Avoid forcing them to learn your interface
5. Design content to be found
6. Design for multiple platforms
7. Provide alternatives for visually impaired and text only visitors
8. Consider business models

How can you make money right now with digital content

1. Partner with a broadcaster, mobile operator or Internet portal
2. Design a game format
3. Offer your services to advertisers and marketers
4. Sell something alongside your content
5. Sell advertising alongside your content
6. License your content

Quick guide to online marketing

1. Most responsive advertising medium yet created
2. Without marketing your work will be invisible
3. Marketing needs to be extremely well design to be cost effective
4. Types of online marketing
5. Banner advertising
6. Search engine marketing
7. Reputation marketing including search optimisation
8. Viral marketing
9. Reciprocal marketing

Discussion: Questions and answers

Session 4: Ideas workshop

In this session we will work together to generate some ideas for a client of the OTHER media.

1. Describe the client needs
2. Identify the audiences
3. Identify the content
4. Consider competitors and the market
5. Brainstorm opportunities
6. Partners
7. Mashups (data and services from elsewhere)
8. Revenue
9. Consider the implementation issues
10. Describe the options
11. Evaluate the options
12. Make recommendations
13. Implement

Session 5: Questions and answers

In this session I will attempt to answer questions raised during the day. Here are a few questions to get you thinking.

1. What role will you personally be playing in the future digital media world?
2. Will television change as a result of the way it is transmitted/received?
3. What are the real opportunities for mobile?
4. What happens to advertising?
5. Are social networks such as MySpace really important?
6. What happened to interactive television?
7. How will our use of mobile devices change?
8. How does old media respond to new media?
9. What are the social and ethical issues involved in digital media?
10. How can I make money with my idea?

What do you think?

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