In Cahoots blog

South by South West Interactive held in the Live Music Capitol of the World Austin, Texas – five days of geek heaven featuring a whole array of debates, speakers and keynotes showcasing the latest in digital innovation and technology. Not forgetting of course all the chance meetings and great conversations you have queuing for your coffee or at the many hundreds of evening 'networking' events (ok... parties) sponsored by the likes of Google, Mashable, Microsoft and Wired amongst others. Preceding the world-renowned SXSW Music, SXSW interactive has been coined 'a spring break for geeks'. The annual event attracts a unique mix of people, both creatives and techs from all over the world. Celebrating its 25th birthday this year, SXSW 2011 certainly felt bigger and better than ever.

The Serendipity machine (…a perfect description of South by)

As a SXSW veteran (this was my 3rd year), I hit the ground running. Having learnt from previous years that despite the effort of planning a carefully selected schedule you often find the most inspiring panels by just going with the flow. So, having identified one or two must see panels for each day, I then kept an eye on what was creating a buzz on twitter and what my peers were going to. It turned out to be an incredibly inspiring few days.

The core themes running across the event this year included gaming for change, social search, lean startups and the growing debate about our relationships with data with web 3.0. I was also excited to find a series of panels and debates throughout the five days with a focus on innovating and developing with libraries, museums and archives. This linked well with our cultural heritage work, particularly with The People’s Archive and WeVee.

My SXSW experience in hash tags looks something like this #startup #timespace #gamelayer #bettersearch #TED #behance #sxsw11lib #librarymeetup #sxswmoot  #sxswLAM #ideasnotobjects #sxswtoms #web3

So what were some of the highlights…? I’ll start with the opening keynote. 

 

The Game Layer

"If the last decade was the decade of social, then the next decade is the decade for gaming".

This was the headline as Seth Priebatsch, Chief Ninga of Scvngr took the stage for the opening keynote of SXSW 2011 to discuss ‘The Game Layer on top of the world’. His passion and enthusiasm were infectious and the 2,500 strong audience (plus those also watching from the other campuses where the talk was due to be live simulcast) waited in anticipation for what Seth promised to be a participatory keynote.

Priebatsch led an energetic talk about the impact he believed game mechanics will have in the next decade around motivating action in the real world. Taking the mechanics of reward and challenge he explored how location based games have the potential to become more mainstream and will affect change on a more communal as well as global level. He demonstrated how individual action can be incentivised when you feel you are part of something bigger. We, the audience, were set a challenge - as a room we would have just two minutes to co-ordinate a mass trading of coloured cards. Based around the classic card game Pit, audience participants had each been given a colour card as they entered the room, our challenge was to ensure each row within the room ended up all holding the same colour. We had rules, including the restriction of only being able to trade with the person immediately in your vicinity. If we were successful Seth promised to donate £10,000 to the National Wildlife Federation – we were.

He used this to demonstrate the power of game dynamics and how he believes global issues, such as global warming, might be influenced through the mechanics, of reward and challenge concluding that communal gameplay plus communal discovery plus a complex problem = making the impossible problem slightly less impossible.

So will the next decade prove to be the decade of gaming and will Scvngr and other location based applications move more into the mainstream as Priebatsch predicts? 

We've got our own experimental game launching this week. I'm intrigued to see whether the level of reward and challenge we've built in proves to be successful. Check out www.city4reel.net to find out more.

 

Other highlights

Other highlights this year have to include the keynote from Blake Mycoskie, founder of Toms shoes, The Next Chapter of One for One. He talked about his journey so far since setting up the company and how the one for one model had touched people's lives - both those buying shoes and those receiving - for every pair of Toms shows brought a pair is given away to a child in a developing country. There is a brief clip of this talk here. Top panel sessions included Steve Behance’s Stop Dreaming, Start Doing: Tips for Execution - his focus was on the execution of ideas, making ideas happen, from the many hundreds of ideas we all have and how the dreamers, the doers and the incrementalists are all part of this process; Innovating and Developing with Libraries, Museums and Archives - panellists talked about a variety of projects across USA, such as phillyhistory.org, that are opening up cultural heritage content to a wider audience, the issues of digitisation, quality and quantity of metadata and funding were debated; and June Cohen Radical Openness: Growing TED by Giving It Away gave a fascinating insight to the story of TED and announced the TED API which will be released later this year. You can watch a brief clip here. She reflected on how openness isn't easy, it goes against a lot of our human instincts, however their experience has shown that despite the challenge of openness, if you can push through that fear the creativity which results is incredibly exciting and rewarding.

During the next few months SXSW release all the keynotes and panels in full as mp3 files, these usually appear from April onwards and are worth watching out for. For all of us visual learners out there, Ogilvy Notes were documenting many of the panels and keynotes through a mix of visual notes and mind maps, they've made all of these available for download.

No doubt I'll be posting more about SXSW 2011 over the coming weeks.

Finally, just to say that it was a pleasure to attend SXSW with such a great group of people this year. In Cahoots attended as part of the West Midlands UKTI Delegation. Thanks all for making it such an awesome week. 

 

 

In Cahoots was commissioned to produce a short video to promote a fantastic Midlands concept called 'Find It In'. Currently there are 'Find It's' in Birmingham, Sandwell and Wolverhampton, with the idea of companies coming together from the same geographical areas to find employment opportunities as well training and networking. 

This video was for the latest 'Find It', www.finditinworcestershire.com. Filming took us to four companies, ranging from small family run Telecetera, who run a mobile management system and Breakwells, a specialist shipping and road haulage company to large corporations such as Oakland International, food storage and distribution and Thomas Vale, a multi-million turnover construction company. 

We had a great time during the filming meeting some of the lovely people of Worcestershire, we were driven around on forklifts, saw inside what can only be described as a fridge the size of a football pitch and I'm glad to report back that no matter how big or small the company they're all more than happy to put the kettle on! 

Sam (left) & Paul (right) at a Thomas Vale construction site - The build of a new school. (If you were wondering Paul didn't get smacked on the head by the huge girder despite my huge grin.) 

The video has pride of place on the home page of www.finditinworcestershire.com. It was also the centrepiece of the launch event held at Sixways Stadium, home to Worcestershire Warriors. 350 delegates attended and there was a brisk turnover of enquiries at the In Cahoots stand throughout the morning. I think many delegates were surprised that you could get a film of this quality up and running on a web site for around £2000.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport spent an hour talking to an invited panel of Birmingham's creative industries on February 4th and I was asked to represent In Cahoots. The conversation was largely about the Government's vision for a sixth national TV channel with a USP of delivering a local television news, so perhaps 22 hours of national programmes and 2 hours of local. It's fair to say that there was "a lot of love in the room for Jeremy" who was completely genuine in his desire to hear from those of us that could make this happen for Birmingham. Equally, those from the blogging communities had some big questions about whether TV was the right medium for a local news in the twenty first century, and those of us with a television background had some reservations about how to make the service commercially viable. But that he came and listened and wants a dialogue and a debate is something I haven't experienced before and that he left saying how much he valued the ambition and enthusiasm he had found in the city has to be good for the creative community.

Last Friday 28th and Saturday 29th January I was at the Creative Careers Festival at the MAC in Birmingham. This was a great opportunity for young people interested in, you guessed it, 'Creative Careers'. Visitors to the MAC could indulge in a hands on workshop-style set-up, with companies such as Reel Access, Channel 4 Talent, Punch Records & First Light Films available to answer any questions and show students how the experts do it.

 

 

This was a perfect chance for WeVee to be seen by a wider audience and target those students interested in film and editing. Feedback was brilliant and news of the First Light competition spread hard and fast (http://projectplatform.org.uk/2011/01/29/wevee-competition/) - If you are under 25 and fancy having a go at creating a WeVee to be shown at Odeon, Leicester Sq, London at this year's First Light Awards- click here!

Visit WeVee to see the WeVees created at our most recent school workshops and the Creative Careers Festival. If you'd like WeVee to visit your school or college for a half day workshop, contact us on info@wevee.co.uk.

 

In Cahoots producers were at BETT in force for much of the show. This year's show guide tells visitors 'it's all about value, efficiency, sustainability and improved learning outcomes'. After days of demonstrations and talks, I'm not so sure. I think that it's still all about content, the successful software hits a note with teachers and schools, but the super successful at BETT have in common serving brilliant content in ever more innovative environments. We're all about brilliant content and seizing the opportunities these platforms are providing. Over the days, we have had productive and extremely positive meetings with some of  the 'household names' from the show. So, what do we predict for 2011? Well, more emphasis than ever on rich media within learning platforms. BETT remains exciting and verges on the exhausting and that's how learning through ICT should be too.

We've all been at conferences where there just isn't enough time in the day to network or to have the opportunity to debate the keynote presentations. At In Cahoots, we've been looking at ways of extending the debate beyond the walls of a conference through utilising online platforms for delegates to comment and reflect both before, during and after an event.

 

Last September we worked with EECERA 2010, creating a conference without walls for over 800 international delegates. This annual conference of early years professionals and academics was now in its 20th year and they wanted to extend the debate back to people's home countries. The conference was held at Birmingham University and organised by CREC, the Centre for Research in Early Childhood.

 

Extending the 4-day conference and engaging delegates for many months, we invited conversation through the EECERA voices blog for delegates before, during and after the event. During the event, delegates were invited to comment to support more informed conversations on the conference days. Delegates used twitter to comment and reflect during the conference and this conversation was filtered for all to see through a Twitterfall at the event and displayed as a widget on the homepage of the blog. 

We filmed each of the keynote speakers, these were live vision mixed and added to the EECERA voices site within the conference days ready for comment and further debate. This also meant delegates had something to take home other than just the conference pack.

 

Between scheduled events and speeches, our digital team were on hand to engage with the huge number of delegates, capture their immediate reflections and show them the benefits of the EECERA site.

 

As the Christmas holidays draw near, we bring to you a project that has been a very exciting and special one for us this year.

Back in January saw the launch of WeVee. 12 months in the planning and hours of delving through the hidden treasures of video archive, this was an ambitious project bringing together a range of moving image archive holders with a bespoke digital platform build – the aim to open up archive moving image collections to new audiences, online. For some of our archive partners, this was going to a first, as a lot of their footage has been previously unavailable to view online. Our main challenges... there were a few... ensuring the integrity of the archive content was maintained, whilst creating an appeal in the content for a younger audience.
 
We wanted WeVee to be much much more than just a place to watch archive footage - it's been done before. We wanted to see what new meanings people could bring to the archive given the opportunity of using a simple edit tool and a bank of music tracks to play with. So, WeVee's unique moving image archive mash-up tool was born. Essentially, WeVee allows you to explore clips of old film and video archive footage, view these online, edit them to music and create short mash-ups to share via facebook, blog sites or email. We all love looking through old photographs but now more and more video footage from days gone by is becoming available digitally. This for me takes reminiscing to a new level allowing us to experience the voices and sounds from the past and ultimately bring history to life.

 
So what can you see on WeVee, well we’ve got footage from across the West Midlands region, from as early as 1901 right through to yesterday. It includings the local celebrations for the Queen’s coronation in 1953, Malcolm X on the streets of Smethwick, Sir Alf Ramsey coaching the English football squad in the 1970s, and experiences of workers at the Cadbury’s factory in Bournville – to name a few. During the year we’ve added themes of footage including ‘Let’s vote’ – election activity from the past and ‘WeVee kicks off’ – yes you’ve got it, a world cup frenzy of football related clips. And just added this week, a range of Christmas clips.
 
WeVee has ben developed in collaboration with Clusta, a digital agency based in Birmingham, and the project has enabled significant learning between both of our teams.

The video archive clips have come from a range of partners and we’d like to say a big thank you to all the archive holders that have supported this project during 2010, especially the Media Archive for Central England and Staffordshire Film Archive whose treasure trove of old video reels and tapes never ceases to excite me.

 
It’s been a thoroughly exciting year for WeVee – we’ve enjoyed all the invitations to talk about the project and the many school workshops we’ve run (more about those on the WeVee blog). Here’s to more WeVee fun and discovery in 2011.
 
We hope you enjoy our 'Happy Christmas' mash-up on the WeVee Gallery page. And if you fancy creating your own Christmas video message to share with colleagues, friends and families – have a go yourself at www.wevee.co.uk 

Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas and New Year, from all at In Cahoots. 

WeVee has been supported by Screen West Midlands through the UK FIlm Council Digital Film and Archive Fund.

 

 

(Charlotte, Foxy, Giuliano, me)

It's official Christmas is here...well it is in Brummagem anyway!!

The local Radio station, BRMB, believed that there wasn't enough Christmas Spirit in the area so set themselves and the general public to task with the mission of 'Saving Christmas Spirit'. To do this the spearhead of the campaign was to release a Christmas single and what is more Christmassy than being charitable, so the proceeds would go to the Acorns Children's Hospice.

Adding a little twist to the single was that it was to have an Xfactor style, with the general public being invited to come and audition to appear on the single. Over 200 people auditioned and out of those 32 were invited to lay down some lyrics.

Here at In Cahoots we wanted to get in some of the festive action and said we'd make the music video for them and so we have!!

With the launch of the single (and video) being held at the Bull Ring on the 4th December, when we took on the task at the beginning of November we were immediately up against a tight deadline. The making of the video included filming and editing with only a rough version of the track to work on but with the support of some Elves (who clearly have magical powers) and two very up for it Morning DJ's (Foxy & Giuliano) who quickly took on the roles of Liam Gallagher and Brian Harvey, what could go wrong!

This is the BRMB launch with an expectant Birmingham crowd.

and if you don't feel festive after watching this then your name's Ebenezer:

You can download the tune here for only 79p and remember its for a really good cause:

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/brummie -christmas-spirit/id407949635

 

 

 

Birmingham Education Authority approached us with an idea; they wanted to present the Partition of India in 1947 in an interactive and informative way that would engage young people. What came from this was ‘Partition Remembered’, an interactive DVD ROM that is being used in secondary schools across Birmingham since the start of term.

Using a mixture of interactive maps, photos, archive film, old news reels and interviews we chart the political and personal accounts of how the affects of Partition have echoed through time, even to this day.

Very early on in the project we secured access to Imperial War Museums archive footage and newsreel material from the time. This was a huge advantage as the backbone of the DVD ROM is made up of 9 interviews, from people of varying cultures and religions all affected by partition, which we could now illustrate with top quality archive material from the time.

The quality of the archive material was superb and in some cases we were working with full Technicolor film footage actually taken from 1947. Knowing this I really wanted to show it off and tried to use as much of it as I could. In the end, it proved a useful tool when illustrating key political figures from the time as well as the hardship people spoke about in their interviews.

The project was aimed a children in KS3/4 (aged 11-16) with a range of lesson plans built around the content of the DVD ROM. We knew this was one of histories more unspoken moments (even with my Bangladeshi heritage I had limited knowledge of Partition going into the project!) so the idea was to empower the learners and place them in the roles of ‘historians’ discovering and learning about this specific period in time. We collaborated with local design company, Two Thirds Design, to help bring the DVD’s look and feel to life.