Author: DaniÃ«l van Gool (Page 1 of 4)

PICNIC on Crowdsourcing Cars and Apple Stores

November 3, 2010 / DaniÃ«l van Gool

We return to ARGNetâ€™s coverage of PICNIC 2010 with more coverage from day one of the conference, themed “Redesigning Design.” The first speaker of the afternoon section, Tim Kobe, is founding partner of Eight Inc., referenced as “8_” throughout the presentation (and for the rest of this article).Â 8_ is a combination of many different things, all rolled into one company: design agency, architectural firm and “collaborative design innovation studio.”

Their output, so to speak, is design for both residential environments, products, and commercial buildings and spaces. One of 8_’s most famous projects was developing theÂ architectureÂ and design for the Apple Retail Stores. According to Kobe, 8_’s goal is to find strategies to design for brands to engage the consumer.

Kobe’s presentation was titled “Making Design Real,” but mainly served as a showcase for what 8_ does, starting off with a clip from Men in Black where several applicants for a position at the MiB need to fill out a questionnaire while sitting in egg-shaped chairs.Â Kobe followed the clip with a quote by Charles Eames: “The extent to which you have a design style is the extent to which you have not solved the design problem.”Â In Kobe’s own words, design is equal to serving a certain purpose as best as possible.

_8 works with clients like Apple, Citibank, Coach, Gap, HP, Nike, and Swatch and embrace the fact that they make things (even though they are not fabricators), preferably things that change the way people think, feel, and act. They pride themselves in building “irrational loyalty” as Kobe calls it. And why do they have that opportunity? Because, apparently, 80% of production companies think that their product is differentiated in its market, while only 8% of the consumers agree. Kobe notes that 50% of all purchases are done based on word of mouth, and 80% of word of mouth is generated by direct experience.

Jeff Gomez Reveals Secrets to Transmedia Franchise Development at CineKid

November 1, 2010 / DaniÃ«l van Gool

This past week, Amsterdam played host to Cinekid, the annual international film, TV, and new media festival for young people. The festival also provides separate sessions for professionals working in these entertainment media. One of these sessions, the Junior Cross Media Market, brings together producers of transmedia content for children with international financiers and co-producers, including broadcasters, networks, and entertainment companies.

The Junior Cross Media Market was held on October 28^th, and while ARGNet was unable to attend the Market in its entirety, we were able to attend and report onÂ Jeff Gomez‘s transmedia masterclass.

Gomez has made quite a name for himself in the field of transmedia. Heâ€™s the President and CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment, a company that has been developing cross- and transmedia strategies for big Hollywood companies including Disney and 20^th Century Fox along with other major brands such as Coca Cola, Hasbro, and Mattel. Most recently, SRE worked on campaigns for the Tron, Transformers, andÂ Pirates of the Caribbean franchises.

Gomez has been on the advisory board for Cinekid for a few years, and was invited to speak on the subject of transmedia with the specific goal of educating an international audience of professionals in the television and movie industries about transmedia storytelling techniques and devising a transmedia strategy for specific brands or products. Monique de Haas, one of the driving forces behind From Story to Legend, introduced Gomez, remarkingÂ that Gomez was a key player in the push to arrange accreditation for transmedia producers with the Producers Guild of America.

How to Build Legends Out of Stories

October 6, 2010 / DaniÃ«l van Gool

During the Netherlands Film Festival the brand new transmedia event From Story to Legend was held in Utrecht as an initiative of both the Dutch Organisation for Professionals in the Movie and TV Industry (NBF) and the transmedia agency Dondersteen Media. The goal of FSTL was to introduce professionals in the TV/movie industry to transmedia and the opportunities and possibilities it has to offer by having several experts who have earned their stripes in the field speak on the subject. And ARGNet was there to report!

What follows below is a recap of the four presentations that were held by the panel of international experts, after which everyone who attended got a chance to join the experts for Q&A in several round table sessions.

PICNIC: Everything We Know About Transmedia Is Wrong

September 26, 2010 / DaniÃ«l van Gool

This installment returns to our coverage of PICNIC with one of the “PICNIC Specials” sessions, and advanced masterclass entitledÂ Everything We Know About Transmedia Is Wrong! It’s worth noting that some speakers referred to the session as Everything You Know About Transmedia is Wrong!, a subtle distinction.Â The panel was moderated by Seth Shapiro, two-time Emmy Award winner, principal of New Amsterdam Media,Â and a leader in the field of digital media, having worked for a number of media initiatives. One of these initiatives that may be familiar to our readers is Tim Kring’s Conspiracy for Good.

All of the panelists were first given the opportunity to introduce themselves along with a short presentation on their ideas on transmedia. First up was Dan Hon,Â co-founder of Mind Candy and Six to Start, currentlyÂ a senior creative at the London branch of Wieden + Kennedy.Â Dan started by showcasing one of W+K’s recent major success stories, the Old Spice viral campaign. He then prefaced his definition of transmedia by discussing The Beast, a game that many consider to be the first alternate reality game. HonÂ reminded the audience that The Beast played out on the pre-YouTube, pre-Facebook and pre-Twitter “archaic web”, a time when sharing and collaboration online was synonymous with email.Â The Beast and its launch was based on the principle of “Internet archeology”: if you start digging for something online, you might just discover a story and even get involved in it. So, in the case of The Beast, people intrigued enough by a brief mention of a “sentient machine therapist” working on the movie A.I. to search further would stumble upon a deep narrative.

According to Dan, there’s a major challenge facing the traditional alternate reality game, something we might nowadays call transmedia entertainment: people seem to associate them with massive collaborative problem solving and puzzles. One of Hon’s major complaints with current alternate reality game and transmedia development upon which he as waxed eloquent in the past is thatÂ ARGs are not mainstream enough because they “incorporate obscure shit that no one want to see or do” by relying on tactics such as steganography, cryptography and solving stupid puzzles. Hon chastises developers, saying,

Stop doing this! Your audience is not stupid. If you put a work of fiction in front of them, they will understand what it is and we do not have to pretend that ‘it is not a fucking game.’ The number of people who are interested in mathematical cryptography is very very small; instead, let’s make stuff that just entertains people. I don’t want to jump through hoops to enjoy something, I want to view Charlie bit my finger on YouTube.

What if, Hon posits, the first alternate reality game wasn’t based on a scifi movie, catering to a geek audience? What if it was based on the movie AmÃ©lie, which also came out in 2001? An interesting question. What would have happened? It begs the question: are we are using the alternate reality gaming genre in the right way?

Redesigning the World with PICNIC

September 24, 2010 / DaniÃ«l van Gool

This article is the first installment in ARGNet’s coverage of PICNIC 2010. Over the coming days, DaniÃ«l van Gool will provide summaries of the sessions he attended as part of ARGNet’s media partnership with PICNIC.

PICNIC reinvented itself once more this year. The self-proclaimed largest conference on innovation and creativity in Europe, held annually at the end of September in Amsterdam, managed to pull off another rather spectacular festival. Reinvention was a prominent feature of this yearâ€™s conference, as seen through it’s theme “Redesigning the World,” focusing on changes that are going on around us on different levels and with different impact.

This is ARGNet’s fifth year in a row covering the conference, and while many aspects have been reinvented, some thing remain constant. Â The PICNIC Club, which serves as the central hub of the event, looks amazing. The Club was impressively decorated, brimming with things to do and see and buzzing with people lounging, networking, eating (in actual picnic fashion) and browsing the offerings of several high and low-tech innovators. There was the 3D Lounge, where you can submerge yourself in audio and video using Sonyâ€™s new 3D TV system, as well as a setup of Microsoftâ€™s Kinect (which, incidentally, if rumors are to be believed, will not feature the much-hyped Milo & Kate game that Peter Molyneux talked about extensively at last yearâ€™s PICNIC).

Over the next few days, I will be reporting on some of the sessions I attended, starting here with David Romanâ€™sÂ thoughts on emerging industries and the emerging markets they will (need to) be catering to, in a presentation titled â€˜The Next Generation Enterprise meets the Net Generation Consumer.” Roman is the Chief Marketing Officer at Chinese-based PC manufacturer Lenovo, and has a history working with companies including HP, NVIDIA, and Apple.

From Story to Legend Initiative Brings Together Transmedia Talent

September 21, 2010 / DaniÃ«l van Gool

Do you know what distinguishes a legend from a mere story? A legend is a storyÂ that is carried by its audience, often gaining some of the audienceâ€™s own perspective. This definition resonates with the working definition for transmedia storytelling.

To discuss and expand on this topic, several parties in the Dutch professional film industry have teamed up to organize From Story to Legend,Â an initiative to get leaders in the transmedia realm together to talk about their experiences in creating stories and worlds and share these experiences with professionals in the field of traditional media.

On September 27, during the Netherlands Film Festival, prominent speakers will share their thoughts and experiences. Their combined input will be turned into a masterclass on transmedia and film, which, apart from professionals in the film industry, will also be open to students in the relevant field.