Malmö, 24-25 August 2011. Videos are available on 23Video
"Designers are the interface between humanity and progress."
Chinese youth born in Open Door Era. 1972–first entrepreneur. Rapid income growth. 1992-2010: Boom. Largest car market. WalMarts. Cities grow rapidly. Largest migration in history country->city. +2600% DGP in Schenzen
All media launched 97-98. Your consumption determined by where you were then. Chinese microblog started spring 2010. Now 200 million users.
Start of revolution, youth wanted to be different. Matured now. Asking "what do I want?". More focus on myself. Searching identity. Creative culture growing. Creativity driving force for defining identity. Youth idols used to be about being like the idol. Now about being yourself. Who am I? New culture tribes. Driven by geeks and grassroots leaders. Empowered by socmed.
Rising living cost. 100+ years to pay back loans. Competitive job market. Less trust on govt. Great firewall. Cencorship. Environment. Industry scandals.
Young ppl feel they can make a change. Social activism. Challenging authority with socmed. Participation counts. Meaning of life? Individuals seek meaning.
Smart phones are mainstream. Phone before PC. 400+ million get on Internet through just phone. Never used on PC. Old media habits such as search are uncommon. Apps change expectations. Instant gratification. Buy cheap, install, use, delete. Everything should come easy and cheap.
Brands play important role creating identity. Critical mindset. Learning to filter info. More active. People learn value of participation. Consumption evolution.
What if movable type moved from China to Europe earlier? Go beyond the idea that ideas come to people. "Species" of ideas move like animal species.
China has tough ecosystem. Copying is the "natural" way. Need mutation for survival/adapting. Competition different in China. Must differentiate to distinguish from crowd. Successful business in China started as copycat, and mutated to something else.
We are all cyborgs. Tech is on us all the time.
Humans want to explore spaces we are not made for being in. External evolution through tools enables us to go beyond regular evolutionary processes. Our brains are changing. Increased amount of information changes ways of remembering and sorting it. We construct filters to aid the brain. A problem with tech is it eventually turns against you. Becomes old. Hinders you. Must always get new tech. Loop.
Private/public space blurs. We temporarily negotiate private space in the public.
Online self is becoming primary. You curate your image. Better than real-life self. Social grooming.
Common error is trying to emulate reality. Your phone will become a remote for reality. Soon we will be "computing" without knowing it.
1. Kirby Ferguson, Everything is a Remix
Creativity viewed as "of the Gods". We use words like "talent". Creativity percieved as a higher achievement. Picture of "creative genius" prevails. Genius creates from within without outer influence. Moment of enlightenment myth.
Steps of creativity:
- Copy. Learn the language of a culture. Bob Dylan started doing covers.
- Transform. Adapt something that already exists. Edison adjusted the original lightbulb patent.
- Combine. Fit other's work together to make new. Einstein did not invent E, M or C. Tim Berners Lee did not invent Hypertext, "just" the protocol.
Example video shows scenes from Star Wars juxtaposed with identical scenes from older movies and TV series.
Humans sensitive to loss. Two obstacles: ideas are property, the lone creator. Ideas contain ideas. Where does an idea end and another begin?
Distributed first feature movie on TPB: Nasty Old People. People started remixing movie on YouTube. Happy! First live screening in Vladivostok, one week after release. People organized movie events.
New movie: Granny's Dancing on the Table. Crowd sourced script writing on Facebook. People mix in their own life stories and identity. We need each other's stories.
Book called "Karriärmammans dotter" ended on a cliffhanger with choices for where the story could go. Wanted to let readers finish the story. Afraid to get poor material, but actually got well written new chapters for the book. Unni became a director for the book. Met with a core group of fans over dinner to discuss. Finished the book together via Google Docs. Fans provided the enthusiasm that Unni felt she lacked.
Q: How to engage people?
A: Don't set high expectations. It's OK if your idea is not complete. Invite people to share what they have, no matter how polished. Set up a goal to aim for. Pieces of content should be small and easy to describe. Managable and specific. Distinguish between crowd sourcing and collaboration.
Q: Size of starting material to be able to invite?
A: Unni had half a book and was already well known writer. That helped. Collabs saw opportunity to contribute to something great.
Q: Should I pay my crowd?
A: Be clear on what you recieve for contributing. Crowd don't work for profit, they work for the cause, but if you make money off their work they want somthing in return. Credits, shares.
Start with what is not broken. Disruptive thinking is about changing current processes, not solving problems.
Crowdfunding word <10 yrs old, but concept a lot older. We have new tools that makes it easier.
Key to crowd sourcing is enabling people to feel part of something.
- Crowd sourcing. We work for progress.
- Crowdfunding. We contribute with money for progress.
- Equity crowdfunding. We contribute with money in return for shares.
A new class of people who want to:
- Be involved
- Be useful
- Feel part of...
Will work as ambassadors for you. Money raised is a positive side effect. Building a crowd is the real winning.
2. Simon Klose, TPB AFK
Made a film about TPB. Raised $50.000+ in one month. Huge interest.
I like buying organic food from local grocer because I know who grew the food I eat. Makes me feel good. I believe people similarly want to know who is behind the media they consume. People are aware.
Went to documentary film festival to sell the film. People there had never heard of TPB, the greatest film distributor in history. Luke warm reception. "Why would my audience want to see a film about Swedish hackers?".
Turned to crowd funding on Kickstarter. Focus on short campaign. Keep up people's interest. Set an end date based on TPB court case. Clear financing ladder. $10 gets you a link to the film (costs nothing). $500 = complete kit and credits in the film. Got the banner on TPB front page for 3 days, linking to Kickstarter. Blog with Flattr for raising money.
Money was nice, but positive feedback was better. Huge energy boost to see the support.
TPB shared their community. TPB open without registration, but still have 5.000.000+ registered users. FU attitude of TPB captures attitude of a generation. The TPB community want to contribute to this type of project.
3. Britta Riley, Windowfarms
Britta's (Swedish) grandfather inspiration for Window Farms project.
Urban agriculture movement. Vertical farming. Some produce lose nutrition in transport. High tech farming in cities can solve that.
Cause of idea gets power from people loving to have plants nearby. Farming fundamentally human.
Why concentrate farming? We could farm at home. Rethink the concept of a window. 3 yrs into project we have viable prototypes in windows all over world. People can download instructions. Commonly available material.
Heart strings and purse strings. Financing of project a problem. Turned to Kickstarter. Appeal to the heart. Greater good. Campaign closed at end of year. Good timing; people want to give to charity for tax write-offs. Also, Christmas spirit. Tricky to appeal to heart again. Next funding drive appealed to the purse. You are getting a good deal vs. you are doing a good deed.
Q (to Simon): Has crowd funding affected your objectivity?
A: I'm a film maker; I don't believe in objective film making.
(Show of hands; majority of audience have seen broadcast online, almost nobody on traditional TV.)
We broadcast in the people's language. E.g. in parts of Africa, English is official language, but people speak Swahili. We speak Swahili.
Collective viewing was the norm; on public squares, in homes, in restaurants. New scenario emerged; single viewing on computers. People no longer rely on a single point of information. They use multiple sources to form their own picture of events. How does Al Jazeera stay relevant? It's about trust. People trust people. We give regular people a voice.
You are your own media. People are following this conference because of you. Everyone is a reporter. Participatory culture. Participation becomes a virtuous circle. Al Jazeera publish user generated video. Others reacted by sending in more video. Participation generates participation.
Tunisia started with Sidi Bouzid. After suicide, trending hashtag was #sidibouzid. Socmed enabled people to discuss the event. Revolution was over before traditional news broadcasting could react. The revolution was televised. You were just watching the wrong channel.
What we learned from Tunisia was; people lose focus on important events when broadcasts are interrupted by entertainment. For Egypt revolution we decided to let people watch live online, uninterrupted. The people of Egypt had also learned from Tunisia. Strategy of sending video to Al Jazeera to aid the revolution.
(Video summary of Egyptian Revolution)
All clips were recorded by regular people, not reporters. People were documenting their own history, telling their own story, with their own voice. The #hashtag has become one of the most powerful tools we have today. They let people engage around a common subject, across political/social/geographical borders.
(info - noise) + context = accurate reporting.
You can't just take, you have to give back. Al Jazeera set up Twitter accounts for micro reporting. Created live blog. People don't want to see same material repeated, they want the latest news. Effect was that Al Jazeera dominated all relevant keywords online. Al Jazeera is most retweeted news network. The audience trust what is published.
High availability. You can watch Al Jazeera on any device, on lots of channels online.
Because we are open with our content, partner companies are open with their platforms. E.g. YouTube put up banner ads promoting Al Jazeera news videos. YouTube handle load balancing and hardware. Al Jazeera publish under Creative Commons. A way of building a community.
US newspapers started asking for Al Jazeera English. Higher trust than US news networks. Al Jazeera started #DemandAlJazeera campaign. Grassroots in US arranged meetups for people to discuss media.
Win the trust of your community.
Telling the truth is hard. Not telling the truth is harder. You must stand up for the truth, even if it's only 140 characters at a time.
Q: How do you verify facts in fast-updating sources?
A: We have a team dedicated to this. Looking at landmarks, accents, phone numbers et cetera. Can we trust this source? Key is also to get there fast. Get people to the scene when you believe something needs to be reported. We do the same fact checking as usual, just a lot faster.
Q: Comparing to polarized media in the US, how do you deal with objectivity?
A: We do it the Al Jazeera way. We have ethics that we stick to. Also, we are not commercial. We do not have to make a profit.
Q: How did you get involved in Al Jazeera?
A: I've been there for five years. After 9/11 a felt mobile technology could make a change in the world. Joined Al Jazeera because could identify with their values. Saw potential to make a change.
Q: How do you handle...
A: Be flexible. We do have a strategy, but we are prepared to change. Try to recruit citizen journalists. Hand out FlipCams. Also a risk for the people. Gives govts a means to identify dissidents.
Q: You focus on being first on the story. What's the five year plan?
A: We have teams everywhere so we can be early on scene globally. Broadcast in several languages. When we can't be there we rely on citizen reporting.
Q: Editorial work?
A: We pass on to news room, they make descicion on what is broadcast. Some material too strong to show. Some is duplicate. Otherwise try to broadcast everything.