heute:pop:blog.  

The below is one of the themes I wrote (with edits from the great Eric Leong) to be discussed at transmitCHINA this year. It has been posted on the trasmitNOW blog this morning and we are looking for feedback and questions for a Virtual Roundtable we are putting together over the next few weeks. Please add you questions and comments here.

While many may agree that the Cloud has offered huge conveniences for consumers to access content, it has also opened a new avenue for content distribution.  In many media and entertainment industries, content distribution was always restricted to carriers (eg. ISP,s CDs, DVDs, etc.).  With cloud-based content, some may argue that there is simply no need to ‘own’ discs, papers, or hard drives that contain content if it’s available easily through different devices.

Cloud computing does, however, expose a new range of questions regarding rights and ownership. When content is accessed across country borders, whose laws are governing this transaction? Are there any liabilities if the cloud provider’s service is being disrupted and content cannot be accessed? When consumers are adding content they have previously purchased to a cloud based ‘locker’, should content owners be compensated for any of those transactions?

When accessing cloud-based content and information, the device that acts as the information gateway is suddenly in a powerful position; device manufacturers may decide to block access to certain cloud content services or charge for it. They may insist on receiving parts of any revenue that content creators may generate through these devices.  Device platforms may also not support certain technologies and, therefore, directly influence how cloud-based content is distributed to the consumer.

The consumer’s relationship with their devices (and, therefore, their relationship to content) has been changing rapidly over the last few years.  With the continual innovation of more capable and compact mobile technologies, consumers tend to be much closer to their devices and, in many cases, have them nearby at all times. Consumers have become accustomed to having instant and constant access to information and entertainment as a result, and this places content owners under pressure to constantly ensure their output is available once it has been created. Unlicensed sources may be preferred if their legal alternatives do not yet offer the access to desired content. This may suggest that there has been a huge power shift between consumers and creators of content – with new devices occupying the space between them.

While lack of control may be perceived as an obstacle in cloud-based distribution, this isn’t a subject matter that’s out-of-the-ordinary with content owners.  In fact, consumers have been able to easily share digital content since the advent of network computers. Nevertheless, new and open channels of distribution can also be seen as opportunities to access new consumer bases and find new revenue streams for media, entertainment, and other content-based industries.

Discuss this topic as well as many others at transmitCHINA 2011 presented by BlackBerry, September 14-17 in Beijing.

If you read my blog or you follow me on twitter you might have noticed that the transmission: GLOBAL SUMMIT in Victoria last week has not only been taking up a lot of my time but also a large part of my ‘mental capacity’ since late last year. And this is a good thing.

Last week we got 150 leaders and thinker from the Creative Industries together and managed to produced an event that seems to have been not only inspiring also highly enjoyable. Even though I have attended and spoken at many conferences over the years I had never been involved so closely in organizing one. So I can honestly say that I’m not used the the sense of achievment I feel when I watch the video below. All this was taking on the 10th and 11th February in Victoria and I think it speaks for itself.

Next up: Beijing.

transmission: GLOBAL SUMMIT 2011 from transmitNOW on Vimeo.

Only a few weeks left until the transmission event in Victoria, BC and for everyone who is joining us (or thinking about coming over) we put together this short video to provide a snapshot of what’s going to happen in February. I’m really looking forward to this event, we already have a lot of great companies attending and amazing speakers confirmed. Hope to see you there!

transmission: GLOBAL SUMMIT 2011 from transmitNOW on Vimeo.

Full disclosure (in case it’s not obvious): transmission and transmitNOW are a client of mine.

We only did this for fun but now watching it again I’m actually making sense. This was after six hours of interviewing people so a bit of a surprise.

Jonas Woost on Jonas Woost from thenumber creative on Vimeo.

I attended the Transmission conference in 2008 (and wrote about it on here) and was impressed with the unusual and inspiring format of the event. Little did I know that I would move to the West Coast of Canada two years later…

It is with pleasure that I can announce signing up the team behind the Transmission conference as a new client. I will help them in the role of Director of Community Development.

Everyone who has ever been to Transmission (or on of the TransmitCHINA satellite events) knows it’s not the usual music industry trade show but a think-tank style conference that focuses on finding solutions and inspiring ideas. It does not compete with the other numerous networking and deal-making formats. We will now make sure that we can continue the conversations that we kick off during to conference dates past the last day of the event and have a dialog throughout the year. That’s what I will mainly work on.

For our next big event in February we will broaden the focus from the music industry to additional creative digital industries and build a hub for people that want to develop ideas around the economy of digital media and entertainment.

I invite you to follow TransmitNOW on Twitter or Facebook to be part of the conversation.

When I realized that I won’t be able to attend this years Transmission conference because of other commitments (it will become more clear next week) I was disappointed. I had such a great time last year and I felt I’m missing out.

Fortunately I was able to participate at least in one way: I took part in their Politalk48 session which is basically a panel of experts who discuss a topic via email over a period of 48 hours. The results are then published on the TransmitNow website for anyone to read. The topic was “Next Generation Leadership” and the outcome can be found here.

I now had a few days to digest the Transmission conference that happened last week in Vancouver.

It was quite intense (and that’s a good thing) and very educational. This is something you cannot say very often for music industry events, most of the time we are discussing the same issues over and over again and when you attend these events on a regular basis there are not many new idea coming out of them.

Transmission was different, probably for two reasons: a) many of the people attending were experienced professional who would have interesting ideas and b) it was a busy two day event with various presentations, round tables and meals. Essential we were kept busy for the entire time which I enjoyed.

Thursday started with an introduction of our ‘general facilitator’ Paul Hoffert who was introducing us to the ‘bagel effect’ which deals with a 50 years cycle between “freedom and security” which explains the disintermediation in the music industry. It was an interesting start and dropped us right into the deep end.

He was followed by a presentation by Dennis Adamo who is trying to resurrect allofmp3.com. After claiming the music industry is losing $5bn per year through unlicensed music downloads and the best way of “converting pirates into customers” is to drop the price, he lost my attention. Surly p2p file-sharing is more then just about the cost for the consumer and music services will have to attach additional value to recorded music if they want people to pay for it.

Mark Holden was speaking after him about his company Hip Digital and the download store they built for Aeroplan and Nectar Card. There seems to be an opportunity for the industry to generate revenues through people redeeming their reward point for music. Seems to make sense but surly this is a niche market, right?

This was when most peoples favourite part started which were the round tables. Up to 10 people from different industries would discuss topics for about an hour and the outcome would be reported back and at the end of the conference we would have a look at the overall results of our conversations. I met plenty of people who I hadn’t met before and I would normally not meet since they might work in different ports of the music industry.

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