Digital is still young. If the media we know and love was a family, what would it look like?
- TV would be the Dad, still trying to act cool, occasionally pulling it off, trying out email and interactive TV
- Radio would be a great uncle, whose picture would be on the wall, dressed in a World War I outfit, gone but not forgotten
- Cinema would be a great-great grandfather, a sort of viz-esque Victorian Dad, starched collars, classical but timeless
- Print would be an ancestor, immortalised in a painting, or perhaps a old manuscript, with a single page framed in the hall
What about the new generation? Digital, and it’s younger sibling Mobile?
Well they’re not even out of school yet. Digital is just about in secondary school, and Mobile? Well Mobile is still in shorts. They’re both trying to find their way, to sound more official and grown-up, but the grown-ups simply aren’t taking enough notice. Well some are, but most aren’t taking them seriously still, because they don’t know the lingo.
What if there was some way these young upstarts could somehow get recognised? What if they could become more mature?
I’ve been speaking to a lot of people in agencyland in the last 4 weeks, and something they all say is that there’s a real shortage of digital production talent, at all levels. Another problem is that Seniority is not comparable. Some producers claim to be senior after a very short period of time, which may be possible, but not with so little experience in terms of projects, technologies, platform, and people.
Agencies rely on being able to produce great work reliably to retain their clients, and they’ve been doing so because their output is being managed by a very experienced group of TV, Radio and Print producers who’ve been doing it for years in a tried and trusted way. Everyone knows their roles and responsibilities, there’s an unspoken code of conduct generally, and there’s even a spoken one in the form of accredited courses, for example the one run by the IPA and various higher education establishments. But there’s few equivalents within Digital.
The IAB run a course, but it only skims the surface, 2 days hardly qualifies you as anything other than a beginner (but it doesn’t profess to be more than this). The IPA currently offer nothing, but are showing an interest. Higher education establishments are trying, most notably places like Hyperisland, but few in the UK seem to be doing the right thing. Places like Plymouth have built up a good track record, with what was formally their MediaLab arts course, now called Digital Arts & Technology, but this doesn’t give enough focus to managing the digital arts. London College of Communications has produced some good people recently as well.
What I’m interested in is an industry-driven accreditation though. I’ll be speaking to some Heads of digital production over the coming weeks and putting together a plan for an official course for those who do want to hone their craft and be recognised for it. Any course worthwhile won’t be easy, and it won’t be quick, but it will be useful, and it’ll help this industry evolve into what it needs to be so that Digital and Mobile can stand side-by-side with all the other members of the media family.
What will a course look like? Well I see 3 levels, much like the scrum alliance format.
- Beginners | aimed very much at Juniors or those with less than a year of experience | a foundation course run over a few days, reinforcing the basic concepts and perhaps introducing some new ones. Digital platforms, their associated workflows. Roles and responsibilities. Media plans. Budgeting and Risk Management. Differing methodologies. Tools. QA.
- Intermediate | for those with between a year to 5 years experience – skilled practitioners | A system of peer-review could help strengthen the value of this rating. Applicants might be required to carry out some recommended reading and write an essay on digital production to demonstrate their knowledge and experience. This would be backed up by references from team-members, and details of a broad spread of technologies and technologies (successful ones). One could consider having a points system, or using Professional Development Units to ensure sufficient experience is gained.
- Advanced | for those wishing to engage in training and management of other producers | Again, this could be a points based system, perhaps with tasks aimed more at helping people to understand best practice. One could have more in-depth training over a period of weeks with practical and written tests.
I’d be keen to hear your points of view on this. What do you think? Would you invest some time to make this happen? Maybe take a quick survey on what’s important for digital producers?
The Technological Horoscope
What Chinese Star Sign are you?
I’m a Snake, specifically a Fire Snake (1977).
That’s down to the 60 year cycle of the Chinese lunar calendar, which passes through 5 elemental states (Metal, Wood, Fire, Wind and Earth), and 12 creatures (Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Ram, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and the Pig).
The soothsayers of our modern age have been proclaiming that this year is finally the “Year of the Mobile” for quite some time now. And I for one feel like this has now arrived and is officially here to stay. Perhaps that’s because I’ve been living not in the “the year of the mobile”, but rather “the Decade of the mobile”.
With any technology, by the time it hits the peak point, its value as a marketing medium for innovators and advertisers diminishes. No longer will be people be so wowed and turn their attention to this technology, because it’s plateauing out and the market has hit saturation point.
And what makes something the leading technology of that year? It’s reach? It’s percentage growth? It’s wow factor? The Marketing spend? The amount of noise people make about it? Well, surely all those things and more.
But what about last year, or next year. If one was to chart what has actually happened and see what people have said, what would each year be called in terms of the Technology that’s captured the imaginations of the most people? is 2010 the year of the Tablet? was 2009 the year of the App? that’s a whole post in itself that I’m going to have to come back to.
Now based purely on supposition, inspired somewhat by this post about the future from Mr Russ Tucker, and where we are with devices like smartphones, iPads, and the rate of increase of broadband speed etc., I’m going to throw out some ideas about what future years might be called.
The year of the networked earth – broadband and wifi technology becomes so pervasive that even giant squid at the bottom of the sea and eagles above Everest could log into their gmail if they needed to. The cost of broadband drops through the floor, and the industry becomes state-run whilst some governments try to cling onto the thought that they can control information. This “Dataflow” raises the possibility of every single object on earthbeing able to talk to each other, providing a record of every living and inanimate object in time and space.
The year of the uncomputer – further advances in nanotechnology, superconductors, quantum computing, and micro-kinetic power sources will see high powered computers woven literally into the fabric of daily life. Always on, always plumbed straight into the internet, always working harder to change the way we live. Your socks will recognise when one of their thread’s circuits breaks when they wear out, and send a signal to your watch, which in turn will tell you that it’s time to get some new ones, and order them for you, in the right size, in time for the next time you need to put some socks on (your socks know your daily movements after all).
The year of the HUD (aka the year of the iGlasses, and then the year of the iBall). Apple will invest heavily in Head-Up Display technology and eyeglass nanotechnology, aiming to miniaturise the display device for their now ubiquitous app platform, and beam their products straight onto the lenses of their legion of fanboys. Augmented Reality will become an actual reality, and brands will fight to become the person controlling yours. Location awareness on the micrometre scale means that people will be able to see in the dark, and overlay all the data of the internet on the world around them. Apple dub their first prototype iSee. This is all just a diversionary tactic though, as the real surprise is that Apple’s been investing even more money via a shell company in visual cortex biotechnology, and whilst their competitors have been trying to build rivals to iSee, Steve has had his retinas fitted with a nanochip in an operation akin to laser eye surgery, so that with the blink of the eye, he can switch on his HUD and truly be the first layer between the brain and reality.
The year of the voice – A new generation of oxbridge and MIT students raised on the appalling voice recognition technology used in call centers enhances the existing technology by tapping into the research that’s been carried out on alpha waves and brain patterns during communication. Combining the two by capturing alpha wave radiofrequencies in a new kind of earpiece receiver designed to capture a much wider band of the aural and radiomagnetic spectrum, the voice recognition technology combines the information to capture not just words, but intent as well. A whole new dictionary of emotions is searched alongside the databases of words and sounds giving rise to a whole new industry, “Communication recogniton”.