I live blogged this fringe event on 29th September, one of a series of meetings being hosted in the Fringe of all the party conferences.

Immediately after the session, I also made an Audioboo with some immediate thoughts and some reflections about being at the Fringe of a Party conference.

12:34 The Creative Industries are a ‘key’ sector at the heart of the recovery, says Jonathan Kestenbaum and we need to understand how they can make a contribution and some of the opportunities and risks we face.

12:36 Peter Bazalgette

Opens with remarks about RAI and Berlusconi. Involving the BBC in too much politics is a mistake. Parties all have a policy on the BBC. PB Supports Bradshaw on top-slicing of the BBC. But top-slicing needs to go into quality, not tired regional news.

“There is no digital dividend” – most media companies don’t see what theor business model is anymore. This is a big problem.

“We need as much ‘nudge’ as ‘fudge’” on the management of digital rights.

12:40 Needs better balance between ‘pay’ and ‘free’. ITV is commercially challenged. Product placement is marginal but does improve the position for advertisers. Medium term prospects for TV uncertain. Bur longer term it will work.

Professional content will always be attractive to advertisers – this won’t change. Training is a major issue, he says and it’s getting worse.

12:43 Richard Wilson – TIGA

Games sector makes an important contribution to the economy and is very export focused. Important role to play.

In the games sector qualifications are higher (80% at degree level) and average salaries are higher than other sectors at £30k.
Sector is growing globally but contracting in the UK. Poor supply of staff is the issue. Need incentives.

12:50 Miranda Sawyer

Public Money is often a hindrance to progress. But there is a role for public investment in the arts. We tend to under value our capabilities in this. Example of Liverpool as the Capital of Culture – drove investment in the city. Public money is needed in education and in big projects. Public money can be used to attract private investment and stimulate the economy. But it’s also about stimulating well-being.

12:53 Ben Bradshaw

The assumption is that the creative industries are re-shaping the economy. He thinks this is true. Every fringe event at this conference on creative industries has been ‘packed out’. Hears the pleas for support from people like Richard Wilson.

12:56 Creative industries are ‘not a luxury’, they are central to the economy and to our heritage. Museums very important also.

But how do we defend our creative value in a global economy? How can we make sure artists get compensated for – £180m a year ‘lost’ through illegal file-sharing. Digital Britain bill will reflect the unity of the musicians who made announcements last week. It’s an important issue. Bill will be brought forward in this Parliament.

Universal broadband access is an important aspect of the bill – this is something that the market will not provide – he says 40% of the country can’t get it. Needs to go further than 2 MBbps – need universal NGA through fixed-line levy. We need to understand what support there may be for local news – re-use of digital switchover money – BBC won’t get it anyway.

13:02 Training opportunities are key to the Government’s approach to Digital Britain – society wins and so do individuals who will be trained.

Culture is not a ‘luxury add-on’ – they contribute to the economy £1 spent of culture comes back as £5 in economic contribution

Now moving over to Q&A

Colin Tweedie – Governor of University of the Creative Arts. Vitality of the creative universities – they are worried by the potential cuts.
Q re product development and merging the Film Council and Games Council.
Q from Gary Townsend from Skillset. Future jobs in creative industries; need to think of supply of new talent but what about CPD for the existing workforce?

Sawyer says that the more ‘modern’ universities will demonstrate their value over time. A law degree from Oxford is one thing but it’s a bit of a stereotype – so dpn’t worry. Quality will out.
Bradshaw says that Universities will continue to be funded and they are capable of identifying the courses needed. New skills will come through – media studies not as ‘airy fairy’ as they used to be.
13:12 PB says training of ‘high-level’ graduates (not apprentices). HEFCE’s in meltdown and meanwhile Skillset is being cut.

Q re ‘cutting off’ illegal file-sharing from a woman from Ofcom – hierarchy of sanctions
Q from a writer and producer (Carol Haymann?) re rights deals on digital broadcasts

13:15 Bradshaw – hierarchy of sanctions will come into force needs to be funded by rights holders. PB says “it will never work unless we do a ‘nudge’ at the same time”.

Bradshaw says it’s an education job as well. Wilson says pirated games are running at 3 pirate copies per 1 gane sold in some cases.

Broadcasters need to be held accountable says Carol Haymann (radio producer and writer). We generate little money from repeats on BBC7 for example.
13:20 Sophie Jones from Channel 4. About C4’s role – Digital Britain is ‘bang-on’ about the importance of C4 public ownership to preserve support of new digital companies.
Nick Hull from 118118 – we’ve spent years trying to offer services at a reasonable price over mobile and have failed. How can creative producers do that?
Wilson asked to comment on 118118 question. A lot of games businesses would like to ‘self-publish’; broadly optimistic about business models for content suppliers.
PB mentions Moor’s Law. But there’s “Less’ Law” – which is that as content proliferates lower revenues result.
Sawyer says ‘free model’ will kill newspapers.
Bradshaw sums up – the market cannot guarantee all – BBC is a good thing but it needs to be more sensitive and recognise its effect on the whole media landscape. BBC governance structure doesn’t work. Much private sector activity benefits from the economies of scale of the BBC. But we need to re-assert the legitimacy of the BBC ‘with every generation’.

[13:30] Meeting closed.

Amplified were invited to join Tuttle in Barcelona on the 18 September 09 and Podcamp on the 19 September. Steve Lawson and Lucy Windmill went on a little SoMeWe adventure…

I arrived in Barcelona on Thursday and spent the day walking around the city, down la Ramblas, to the port, across to the beach… It was a little too breezy for the beach but a number of determined Brits were there, spread-eagled across their towels (“I will get a tan”). Next I walked to ‘Gotica’ (the old Gothic area) which is gorgeous, all winding cobbled streets and little art shops and boutiques, coffee shops and bars set up in hidden court yards. In the evening I had a beer and a little BCN tweetathon as @solobasssteve Lawson had missed his flight and was due to be speaking at Barcelona Tuttle on Friday morning (I’m not much of a public speaker myself!). He managed to get an early flight out on Friday with easyjet (via Twitter – impressed) and I met up with 2 other Barcelona SoMeWe weekenders from out of town – @StefaanLesage from Belgium and @moof for tapas e vino and lots of talking…

Friday it was off to @citilab in the West of the city (Cornella) for Barcelona Tuttle organised by @cataspanglish (Chris Pinchen, who invited us to Barcelona when he came to the Amp09 Midlands event). We met a bunch of amazing people from all different sectors with the common interest of pioneering social media – in education, government, the health service – quite a few PhDs in there! We also met the couple behind @catavino – their mission is to get the vineyard world online (and they organise Twitter wine tasting – very cool). We have a few videos and pics to post up soon.

Tuttle was held at the Citilab – what a fantastic place! I was in venue heaven imaging what we could do with the space. It’s huge!! It’s modern, it’s spacious, it’s flexible and it’s got wi-fi… we need this in London! It’s also doing some great projects of course; Citilab-Cornellà is a workspace dedicated to training and research on new technologies and social innovation, an entrepreneurial hub. And we like it.

Later in the afternoon we did some sightseeing with @moof and @stefaanlesage. We saw the Sagrada Família, a massive, privately-funded Catholic church that has been under construction since 1882 and will not be finished until at least 2026 – but you can walk around inside with the construction going on. (We had a little giggle about the Doozers). It really is spectacular… a Gaudi piece – so intricate and inspired, almost too much to take in from the ground.

We then headed off to the centre to meet @cataspanglish and @anafmora for an evening of more food, wine and laughter (language based! Not sure I will reveal that here – Steve can!).

Up early for Podcamp BCN on Saturday 19th; meeting place confusion and bus driver mistaking 9am with 9pm aside, we arrived in el Masnou. The simultaneous translation was excellent (and necessary!).

Steve did a 45 min slot on Amplified – our boy did good! (more invitations please!). It seemed to go down really well – and he certainly kept the translator on her toes (in fact did they have to change over at half time?!).

I wrote a few blogs on what I saw at Podcamp – some written after the port tasting before lunch and the wine tasting courtesy of @catavino – what a treat. Coming to an Amplified event near you soon – we hope!

Our new friend Stefaan Lesage on Educational podcasting (www.devia.be)

Kids are using PSP/podcasts all the time – so why not use them for educational purposes?

At Podcamp Barcelona, Stefaan outlined the advantages of podcasts: with ear phones on you can get much closer to your customer (and shut out everything else). They’re mobile, you are not time bound… Commuters can maximise their time by learning something.

But are people really learning by using podcasts? Research seems to support this (he says).

Stefaan believes there are 2 approaches to learning by podcast – passive or active. The active approach he suggests goes a step further; let the students record things, conduct interviews, go on trips, research their interests, create… This makes sense to me, they’d probably learn much more this way as they’re developing their own personal motivation to learn. Can teachers let go though?

Stefaan outlined a few podcast projects in education that he knows of:

• Mees podcast is a Dutch project taking place in a Belgian school. 5th graders record a half hour session every Thursday, telling jokes, riddles, things they have learnt at school.
• Stanford University runs an iPhone programming course, by recording all their sessions and putting it all on the net for anyone to use.
• Radio Lingua Network is popular in Spain for learning languages. Short courses ‘1 minute Catalan, 1 min Russian’ work really well. You learn a phrase in one minute and you can revisit the podcast, and use it whenever you want. They have started to enhance their offering with additional resources to support learning by podast.

Of course Podcasting is not limited to school or class. You can learn how to make better video, colour correcting, importing information. For example:

• IzzyVideo: how to shoot, edit, produce better video
• Screencasts online: a weekly podcast of Mac tutorials www.screencastsonline.com

Stefaan produces a weekly episode each month, with 2500 downloads each month. He thinks teachers in Belgium are a too scared of making mistakes to use Podcasting but Stefaan believes that by making mistakes, learning becomes bi-directional.

‘The world needs talent – it’s time to use technology to improve education’ Stefaan finishes. The other Podcampers seem to agree; it is time for a ‘different kind of university’… We have the technology now; but we need to change the mindset in teachers before we can move forward. (Seems to be a running theme).

This time last year, I was involved in my first experiment to ‘amplify’ an event.

Of course, we didn’t call it that then – Amplified was still a very much at the planning stages, and I don’t think it had a name, but a group of us from Tuttle and Creative Coffee who were already involved with the festival put together a team to use social media tools to capture as much of it as we could.

Nokia kindly supplied us with the hardware we needed – a bevvy of Qik-enabled smart-phones that allowed us to stream video live to the web, to post to twitter, to take photos and upload them to flickr, and in the case of Mike Radcliffe AKA ArtBizness, to film a mini documentary series about camping at a festival with a new-born baby.

We were all fairly green with the technology – Christian Payne – Documentally – was to a large part our inspiration in how to do video reportage with a camera-phone, but we each found our own tone, and took to the task of getting the best of what was going captured. I gathered a few interviews that I’m really proud of – this one with Frank Schaeffer of the Huffington Post, this one with Michael Franti and…

The digital footprint of our social media output was pretty huge, all of it without any official promotion by the festival who, like most big organisations, didn’t really get the value in this kind of decentralised first-person reportage and its place in facilitating conversations around the event. At least, not until after the festival

This year we’re going back, only with the accumulated widsom and error of the last year, with a strategy for amplification, with a much greater degree of awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of the various tools, and of course a whole bunch of new technology, not least of all the wonderful Audioboo app for iPhone, allowing us to capture high-quality audio interviews. If you want to follow what’s going on, the festival twitter stream is @greenbelt, the hashtag on twitter will be #GB09 and on flickr/blogs etc. it’ll be #greenbelt09. Keep an eye on the front page of the website over the festival weekend, for the filtered best of what we come up with!

Photo Credit Phil Campbell

This is Penny Jackson’s vox pop from Amp 09 at TigerTiger. For those of you listening on your MP3 players the podcast has been arranged in to chapters so you can dip in and out of what interests you. The chapter order follows the subjects people discussed and are; Books, Film, Soap Box, Digital Britain and User Generated content. Penny didn’t manage to get round to all 44 topics so apologies for those missed out but it does give a taster for the quality and energy of the conversations.

The general question Penny asked was what would you like amplified from what you have been discussing and/or what one tweet would you make.

It’s actually a fair call.  Shirky has probably been in social media longer than most of the people on the Digital Britain Steering Committee and he’s certainly done a lot more to convince businesses and government officials alike of the value of new media.  But Shirky himself is an academic, and he’s not as connected to the British technology business scene as he’d need to be to really deliver on a costed, and tactical Digital Britain report.

But the Amplified collective are connected to British business and the social media, technology and creative scene.  We are the kind of people who should be participating in this kind of decision making because we collectively have experience across a wide range of sectors and we can cost projects, connect with providers or services and think creatively about how to solve access and participation problems.  We make decisions about the values and problems associated with interfaces, protocols and infrastrcture every day.  We mediate connectivity and we filter for meaning.

In short, the Amplified community are probably the best qualified group of industry professionals to advise on digital policy in Britain today.

But we weren’t asked to contribute prior to the publishing of the Interim Report at all.  And where we have been asked to respond – as all British residents and citizens have been given the option to respond – it is in writing to the Digital Britain team, or by participating in TED-style Digital Britain summit events across the UK in April and May.

If Amplified’s ambition is to make the UK into the most connected (and perhaps connective) place on the planet, then we need to be involved in the decision making process here because we actually know what is going on.  We’re not a bunch of disconnected researchers and policy wonks, but creators, entrepreneurs and networkers who can best advise on how to pull off a strategy that will actually result in a genuinely Digital Britain.

I’m suggesting that Amplified set up some topics in the regional events in February and May (and in between) that can actually help solve universal access to broadband services affordably and efficiently, and that focus investment on social media technologies and services that will assist the British economy.  Let’s show them how it’s done.

In Euan’s “piss ups in breweries” post, I completely agree when he says:

“I believe that with the increased communications available to us through the web we have the potential to invent whole new ways of running businesses.”

Reading the post I started thinking about two things, the first is an “old” world business example of that kind of management style, and the other is the current book I’m halfway through reading. Let me explain.

Some while ago back in the early 90s I was working on a project with W. L. Gore & Associates. This is the company started in 1958 by Bill Gore, who had previously been working on Teflon at Dupont, but saw an opportunity to apply fluorocarbon polymer, and especially polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) technology in different applications. Although they make a whole variety of industrial cable, sealant and medical products, they are best know for their GORE-TEX® fabrics. However, the thing that fascinated me was that an International corporation with over 8000 employees and over $2Bn in sales could be organized in such an unconventional way. Instead of a conventional command and control organization (with what Euan described as managers and conscripts), they have a team-based, flat lattice organization that fosters personal initiative. There are no traditional organizational charts, no chains of command, nor predetermined channels of communication. Although Bill Gore died back in 1986, new hires are inducted in to the culture of the organization by videos of Bill explaining his guiding principles, which are:

• Fairness to each other and everyone with whom we come in contact
• Freedom to encourage, help, and allow other associates to grow in knowledge, skill, and scope of responsibility
• The ability to make one’s own commitments and keep them
• Consultation with other associates before undertaking actions that could impact the reputation of the company

People inside the company explain how it works with almost religious zeal, but in my experience, the companies that manage to communicate their beliefs and objectives across the whole organization are always more successful. Their literature describes the way the company works like this:

“Everyone can quickly earn the credibility to define and drive projects. Sponsors help associates chart a course in the organization that will offer personal fulfillment while maximizing their contribution to the enterprise. Leaders may be appointed, but are defined by ‘followership.’ More often, leaders emerge naturally by demonstrating special knowledge, skill, or experience that advances a business objective.”

While I was working with them I could see how effective this was first hand. For any given decision, there tended to be more people involved in the process, with more time involved reaching a decision, but then once made, the implementation of the idea was much quicker than in a conventional company, because everyone was on board and had bought in to the objectives of what was trying to be achieved. At the time I thought “why aren’t more companies organized this way?”

I’m halfway through reading Tribes by Seth Godin – a “must read” in my opinion. This covers the same territory that Euan touches on when he talks about employees as volunteers rather than conscripts. In Seth’s terms, we’re living in a period when leaders can more easily emerge at all levels in an organization, or in their customer and partner community. They have followers, who can quickly self organize in to a Tribe. We’ve just had a great example of how quickly a tribe can self organize with Twitter in just a few days with the Motrin Moms campaign (see the original ad, and this article if this one has passed you by). The whole premise of Seth’s book is that the Web can do amazing things, and allow the possibility that real leadership can come from anyone who is passionate about something, no matter where they are in their organization’s traditional hierarchy. Seth’s book is very much a call to action, to make you think about the opportunities for leading your fellow colleagues, customers, readers, whatever.

So having seen that this kind of approach could work for a major company, even before the world of web 2.0 and social media, I’m even more convinced that Seth’s right. How the current landscape is going to facilitate leaders and tribes emerging to challenge the conventional hierarchies of larger organizations would make another good discussion topic for Amplified08.

If, as I do, you believe that business is about using collective energy to do something and get paid for it then any way of engaging that energy is legitimate. We have been “extracting”, “exploiting”, and “sweating” our “assets” for long enough – how do you do things when you have to entice people to get involved and make your businesses sticky enough to retain smart people who can increasingly move elsewhere or do their own thing?

I often use a quote from the management guru Peter Drucker to get across the problem:

In a knowledge economy there are no such things as conscripts – there are only volunteers. The trouble is we have trained our managers to manage conscripts.

But do you end up with a mess when you have a bunch of volunteers? Do people suddenly turn into misbehaving imbeciles when the constraint of command and control is removed?

I believe that with the increased communications available to us through the web we have the potential to invent whole new ways of running businesses. The energy attracted by the various groups which have formed the basis for Amplified is testimony to the willingness to congregate round ideas and smart people. Can we work out how to do more with this energy? Could we run businesses in ways more appropriate to this new environment? 

Could we run a piss up in a brewery?

by @joannejacobs
Welcome to the third newsletter for Amplified08, with our event only two weeks away!  The finer details of sessions and resources at the venue are now becoming clearer.  We have a very active team of people all doing different things to help make this event something to remember, and with an ever-growing waiting list of participants, there’s a responsibility to ensure that every opportunity to participate is realised.

This edition of the Amplified08 newsletter focuses on what we need for the day, and on the kinds of things that YOU can do help make Amplified08 a success.  We have a couple of sessions for the day given a bit more detail, as well as a list of groups represented at Amplifed08.

What’s happening and what’s needed
by @loudmouthman

We’re in the process of collating resources so we can stream as many sessions as possible online during the event.  Phil Campbell has agreed to provide us with his ‘Ammo Boxes‘ which he assembled for use at PodcampUK, and we’re now trying to work out how to courier these across.  But we could always do with a few more microphones and webcams, so if anyone else is willing to provide these at the event, we may be able to hook these up to the backbone at NESTA, leaving the wireless bandwidth free for much tweeting, blogging and idea sharing at the event.  Please let @loudmouthman know if you have any tech you can provide for us at the event.

The public wifi access available at NESTA can support Flash sites and Second life, so we’re planning to have the event accessible through SL.  However, we are aware that the bandwidth may fill up fairly quickly so we’re talking to some possible providers of additional public bandwidth at the event.  Again, if you or your business contexts are prepared to support Amplified08 in providing more bandwidth, please let us know.

Finally, we are keen to reward people for their fast action in registering and participating in this event.  If you have technology products or services, gizmos, gadgets and other marketing goodies that you’re prepared to donate to Amplified08 either as part of the ’showbag’ participants get on arrival, or as a door prize at the event, please could you get in touch?  We promise to be very grateful indeed!

The important stuff: Food and drinks
by @joannejacobs and @rohan_london

Rohan from NESTA has confirmed that NESTA will be providing tea and coffee and bickies on arrival at NESTA at 3:30pm, and that there will indeed be beer, wine, juice and nibblies from 6-8pm.  After the event concludes, there’s also been a general suggestion of retiring to a pub somewhere for further drinks and perhaps even the odd spot of dinner.  We haven’t settled on a venue for the after-party yet, but stay tuned for more on that…

Session Focus: Cockroach Economics – Credit-crunch strategy, open chat suggestion
by James Cherkoff

Paul Graham, super-hacker and founder of the Silicon Valley VC Y-Combinator recently wrote about recession. “Fortunately the way to make a startup recession-proof is to do exactly what you should do anyway: run it as cheaply as possible.  For years I’ve been telling founders that the surest route to success is to be the cockroaches of the corporate world.  The immediate cause of death in a startup is always running out of money. The cheaper your company is to operate, the harder it is to kill.”

Is the cockroach-approach the right way ahead?

James’s blog on this issue.

Session Focus: Bretton Woods 2.0 – how social media and open source collaboration can assist the governance and regulation of financial markets and society
by Paul Massey

This weekend, the G20, World Bank, UN and IMF are meeting to discuss ways out of the current financial crisis.   The meeting is billed as the start of a process of institutional reform; a Bretton Woods .   Amongst the possible roadmaps, Robert Zoellick, the World Bank President, has suggested “a Facebook for multilateral economic diplomacy“.   The statement demonstrates how fundamental social media has become to our lives.   However, is Robert Zoellick right and is the world ready for Bretton Woods 2.0?  This session will discuss the potential of converging technologies, collaborative social media and open source to tackle the converging social, economic and environmental challenges of C21.

Could Facebook be a useful model or is the Holy Grail an open source kernel, lying hidden in Cyberspace, waiting to render multilateral reform?   Hopefully after the session we can connect with Mr. Zoellick and provide perspectives from social media practitioners in the UK.

Bretton Woods – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system
Zoellick: Break Up the Group of Seven – Business Week article

* Editor’s note: I’m still looking for more sessions to be elaborated in these newsletters.  3 more chances, folks, so get your descriptions in now!


Some of the groups participating in Amplified08
by @joannejacobs
Some people have been asking who is participating in Amplified08 and what groups they come from.  You can now view the names of the people who will be attending at the EventBrite page.  As for the gorups, this is by no means a full list but it’s a start.  We’re happy to profile more groups in these newsletters if you’re prepared to submit your details!

Creative Coffee Club: http://creativecoffeeclub.com/
Tuttle Club (Social Media Cafe): http://tuttleclub.wordpress.com/
Social Media Camp: http://www.socialmediacamp.co.uk/
Social Media Mafia: http://socialmediamafia.com/
Minibar: http://www.meetup.com/minibar/calendar/8229093/?eventId=8229093&action=detail
Facebook developer Garage: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5282952746
2Gether08: http://2gether08.com/
Mobile Geeks of London: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2821560179
London Wiki Wednesday: http://www.socialtext.net/wikiwed/index.cgi?london
chinwag: http://www.chinwag.com/
One Media: http://www.one-media.org/
Fresh Networks: http://www.freshnetworks.com/
Social Innovation Camp: http://www.sicamp.org/
Likemind: http://likemind.us

And that concludes Newsletter 3. Please keep submitting your session focus details to us, and we’ll be happy to add these to the content for the next edition.

Well it’s been a blindingly fast start for Amplified08 with all tickets for the event going in about 5 days. If you have registered and now think you won’t be able to go please let us know as there is now a waiting list for people who want to attend.  If you didn’t get a place or if you can’t be part of proceedings though, please be comforted: we plan to live stream as many sessions from the event that we can, and you will be able to follow the back-channel through twitter.  And on that note, we can now say that the official twitter hashtag for the event is #amp08.  You probably guessed that anyway, but we thought it’d be better if at least one formal space made that clear.

Thanks to all those who provided feedback on the first newsletter, and to all those who have offered to add content in to the next editions.  I’m hoping to get two of these out every week.  Today’s edition focuses on the session that @anniemole has registered as a topic for further explanation, as well as some commentary from David Tebbut on the focus of sessions.  Plus there’s some guidelines for participation on the day as well as a basic structure of sessions and the venue.  So let’s get to it….

Venue and Schedule

First of all, you can find details of our venue at NESTA on our wiki.

We have essentially 5 separate rooms and one larger conference room which for break-out sessions we can also use for at least 4 if not 5 separate conversations.  There’s also corridors and reception areas that can be used for sessions where necessary.  And we plan on having 3 sets of breakout sessions, so we have room for about 25-30 sessions throughout the event.  It’s up to you to plan ahead for what you would like to discuss and what you would like to prepare for sessions.  We’re allocating 40 minutes to each breakout session, and we don’t want these to be presentations, but rather, conversations. By all means register your interest in hosting a session, and hosts should be prepared to provoke conversation, but it’s not about one person presenting.  See below for participation guidelines, but the objective is for all participants to have a chance to contribute to discussion.

Our schedule is as follows:
3.30 – Arrive and registration
4.00 – Whole group meets to introduce the event and general announcements
4.30 – 1st Breakout Sessions
5.10 – BREAK
5.20 – 2nd Breakout Sessions
6.00 – BREAK
6.10 – Whole group session to feedback on sessions and to plan for Amplified09
6.40 – BREAK
6.50 – 3rd Breakout Sessions
7.30 – BREAK
7.40 – Whole group session to feedback on sessions and to close
8.00 – CLOSE

For those who want to hang about or go to the pub after the event (or join us there if you didn’t score a ticket or can’t make the timing) we’ll be publishing details of where to meet in coming weeks.

Participation guidelines

Once again, Amplified08 is designed to be an opportunity to amplify ideas by bringing together people from different social networks and with differing skill-sets.  This way we can share our projects, theories and products across networks and plan ahead for collaborative projects at Amplified09 and Amplified2010.  But in order to achieve that information sharing and collaboration, we felt it was important to come up with some guidelines for participation. This is by no means an exhaustive list, nor is it going to be policed.  It’s also open to your own suggestions for amendment, clarification and expansion.  But it’s a start.

• Two Ears, One Mouth: we ask that your listening to contributing ratio be to listen at least twice as much as you contribute.  Unless there’s only two people in a session this is always possible
• Good, Bad, Interesting, Next: We would love you to think about what’s good, what’s bad and what’s interesting about your session and see if you can articulate that either collectively or individually.  Then if you can have a plan for what comes next that will give us the building blocks for further action.
• #amp08: If you’re tweeting, can you please tag all posts with #amp08.  This makes it easier for us to track conversations during and after the event.
• 1 tweet: If everyone who attends sessions – digitally or physically – can sum up their understandings or response to each session with 1 tweet, this will capture a live zeitgeist of the event.  There’s a bit of controversy over how we hashtag this (see the Amplified08 blog), so feel free to add your commentary.  We may even have to put it to a vote!
• Step Outside your Comfort Zone: Please don’t just join sessions because they are run by people you know.  Try and break out of your current networks and exchange ideas with new people, and join sessions because you find the topics interesting and feel you would like to contribute.  That doesn’t mean you need expertise in a field; anyone who wants to contribute ideas should feel welcome to do so.

Session Focus: The Future of the Book

Annie Mole comes from the old skool “I love reading – Physical books are wonderful – Kill all e-books” Luddite approach & Billy Abbott is more of a “e-readers look really interesting I want to see how they can enhance my reading” school of thought.  And Chris Meades as Director of if: book London has the practical experience of talking to & working with publishers and authors on the Future of the Book.

We will lead a session looking at some real examples of what’s been going on in this field from an EU and global perspective which should help to open discussions and we’ll be collecting others examples of these technologies & “future of reading and writing” initiatives.

Some ideas for topics to talk about:

• What is the future for the traditional paper book? How will ebooks effect them? What new technologies are there that can push the old skool book & make it even more valuable or make it obsolete?
• What is the future of the ebook? How will they develop over the coming years? What are the pros and cons of their adoption over paper books?
• What is the future of reading? How will the increase in the usage of mobile devices affect the use of  books (both paper and ‘e’)?
• What can we as consumers and creators of books, stories, expreriences & content do to stay current with the trends in books? What should publishers be doing with their IPs? How can authors leverage new technologies to expandtheir readerships?

At the end of the session we’d like to have a record of a bunch of ideas of how we think things are going, what we could and should be doing to stay on top of the changes in books, and how these ideas could lead to publishing projects & challenges for us all.

Annie Mole – http://london-underground.blogspot.com
Billy Abbott -  http://cowfish.org.uk/blog/
Chris Meade – http://www.futureofthebook.org.uk/ http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/

Context is everything!

David Tebbutt contacted me this week, and he made an important point about Amplified08.  Here’s some of what he said:

“The discussion is strongly flavoured with advocacy and what works and what doesn’t, but I think that much depends on context. Perhaps that will fall out naturally from the groups represented. But I have a sneaky feeling it won’t, unless it’s encouraged”.

I couldn’t agree more.  Context in terms of the technology/method of communication, the business or service oriented environment in which communication technologies are being used, and the socio-political and economic environments in whcih communication is taking place, can all impact on any methodologies, products or practices which emerge from Amplified08 sessions.  We need to be wary of coming up with too many hard-and-fast rules for technologies or communities, without clearly articulating the contexts where any rules apply.

David has said he is still evolving his thinking on this and he’s said he would like to put something together for us after the event on this, so I’m hopeful that may happen!