In case you did not visit the Picnic’06 Cross Media Week in Amsterdam last week, the keynote speeches are now available online: http://www.crossmediaweek.org/.
The theme of the conference was cross media, which is all about the integration of offline and online content. According to Joseph Jaffe, author of The 30 Second Spot, as well as many other speakers one of the key trends in media land is that the online world is moving to offline content and the offline world is moving to online content. In other words, we are no longer focussing on individual channels separately but the experience as a whole. This is necessary because Jaffe argued that the days of cheap TV are over. Actual costs to acquire 30 seconds time of a consumer is at the same level as before the TV.

John de Mol (see earlier post), Simon Guild (director of MTV Networks Europe) and Gary Carter (chief creative officer at FMX) were all discussing in their keynotes how they needed to become more creative in order to not only reach but also connect and effect people. I felt to me that they were more into a “broadcasting on all frequencies” mode than really connecting and effecting me, but that can be my impression. Simon Guild for example showed commercials that belonged to post-modern surrealist art. But one of the feelings I have with surrealist art is schizophrenia. It does not help me find my identity or meaning, on the contrary it overloads me so many with different images and different meanings that I feel I get lost. It misses a good story.
John Underkoffler, an ex alumni of MIT Media Lab and advisor to Stephen Spielberg for the movie Minority Report, spoke about narrative generation. To create Minority Report, they first created a world, a universe, 50 years in the future. He explained how they analyzed technology and trends and how they created a consistent, believable world with these concepts. If you create such a world before you start on the script, Underkoffler explained, the narrative will emerge as a logical consequence of the events that can start to happen in such a story world. I think this is approach makes a lot of sense for experience design. In fact, this technique of world building is already used by many companies although with different levels of sophistication.
A strong recurrent theme in the conference was also User-generated Content (UGC). Terms like Web 2.0, YouTube, Myspace and social networking were popping up everywhere. Lorraine Twohill (Google), John de Mol (Endemol), Simon Guild (MTV Networks), Dan Gillmor (Center for Citizen Media) and Craig Newmark (Craiglist) were are emphasizing that the role of consumers is changing and the traditional boundary between producers and consumers is blurring. The prosumer, Alvin Toffler wrote about in his book Future Shock in the 1970s, is emerging.

The trend of user-generated content goes much further than content alone. On the first day of conference sessions, there was an interesting track on virtual worlds and real lives. Philip Rosedale, CEO of LindenLabs, the company behind Second Life, a virtual online world, gave an interesting talk about the phenomena that are taking place in Second Life. Rock concerts by Suzanne Vega, companies opening up branches in Second Life, people making their living producing virtual clothing etc. After Rosedale’s talk, Andrew McGregor of Text 100, a technology PR agency spoke about how they opened an office in Second Life and are promoting avantar-based marketing. Other speakers were Sampo Karjalainen (Habbo hotel, virtual hotel for teenagers), Yme Bosma (Eccky virtual baby using MSN) and Friedrich Kirschner (Machinima, a product to create movies from games).

All in all this was an interesting conference with plenty of side tracks, workshops and networking sessions. But rather than listening to talks or reading about it, the best way to learn more is to participate and experience it. So sign up for Second Life, publish your movies on YouTube, play alternate reality games and blog about what you feel in social networks…