Round up of my NMK events

While at NMK as Editor, I gradually (and unexpectedly) became the developer and organiser of many of its regular events.

As NMK is a publicly-funded organisation that exists for the benefit of the digital media industries, in order to fulfil its accessibility remit, reports of these events (and conferences) were also produced by me and posted on the website.

I hope these reports have been, and to some extent continue to be, useful for practitioners, researchers and students of digital media.

They’re also historical records of a group of very interesting discussions and debates that happened at a time when the UK digital economy finally emerged from the long, nuclear winter of the first dotcom crash.

The reports are linked to at the end of every event page listed below, with the following exceptions…

Reports for Beers & Innovation numbers 5 and 6 (+) are available here on my blog. There is no report for Beers & Innovation 4 but part of the event was captured on this video by Ian Forrester of BBC Backstage and others have blogged about it.

EVENTS I DEVELOPED AND PROGRAMMED:

Charities: Making Digital Gains – 26th May 2005

http://nmk.co.uk/event/2005/4/4/charities-making-digital-gains-nmk


Blogging: A Real Conversation? – 28th June 2005

http://www.nmk.co.uk/event/2005/5/8/blogging-a-real-conversation-nmk


New Directions In Search – 8th September 2005

http://nmk.co.uk/event/2005/4/26/new-directions-in-search-nmk

User Content: The Real Deal? – 8th November 2005

http://www.nmk.co.uk/event/2005/9/29/user-content-the-real-deal-nmk

Beers & Innovation 2: User Generated Content – 30th March 2006

http://www.nmk.co.uk/event/2006/2/24/beers-innovation-2-user-generated-content-nmk

Beers & Innovation 3: Mash Ups & Web Services – 27th April 2006

http://www.nmk.co.uk/event/2006/3/30/beers-innovation-3-web-services-mash-ups-nmk

Beers & Innovation 4: RSS Frontiers – 12th September 2006

http://www.nmk.co.uk/event/2006/6/20/beers-innovation-4-rss-frontiers-nmk

Beers & Innovation 5: Aggregators & Upsetters – 17th October 2006

http://www.nmk.co.uk/event/2006/9/14/beers-innovation-5-aggregators-upsetters-nmk

Beers & Innovation 6: Social By Design – 14th November 2006

http://www.nmk.co.uk/event/2006/10/2/beers-innovation-6-social-by-design-nmk

Beers & Innovation 7: Do Agencies Innovate? – 30th January 2007

http://www.nmk.co.uk/event/2006/11/14/beers-and-innovation-7-do-agencies-innovate-nmk

(with input from Zoe Black)

CO-DEVELOPED & PROGRAMMED WITH NICK WATT OF NMK:

In The City Interactive – 7th June 2005

http://www.nmk.co.uk/event/2005/4/6/in-the-city-interactive-with-nmk

(also had conference steering committee input)

Rethinking Digital Branding – 10th October 2005

http://www.nmk.co.uk/event/2005/1/18/rethinking-digital-branding-nmk

Beers & Innovation 1: UK Start Up Culture – 9th February 2006

http://www.nmk.co.uk/event/2005/11/24/beers-innovation-nmk

(with thanks to James Governor and Tom Coates)

Content 2.0 – conference 6th June 2006

http://www.nmk.co.uk/event/2006/2/14/content-2-0-nmk

Content 2.0 website
(also had conference steering committee input)

In The City – Manchester music industry conference, 30 Sept-2nd Oct 2005
(co-programmed 3 digital panels and a keynote)

In the City 2005: mPod The New iPod?

http://nmk.co.uk/article/2006/4/17/in-the-city-2005-mpod-the-new-ipod

In The City 2005: Digital Creativity & A&R (Ralph Simon keynote)

http://nmk.co.uk/article/2006/4/17/in-the-city-digital-creativity-a-r

In the City 2005: Tomorrow People

http://nmk.co.uk/article/2006/4/17/in-the-city-2005-tomorrow-people

In the City 2005: The Digital High St

http://nmk.co.uk/article/2006/4/17/in-the-city-2005-the-digital-high-st

CO-DEVELOPED & PROGRAMMED WITH EXTERNAL PRODUCER HILARY KELSH:

New Directions In Mobile – 3rd October 2006

http://www.nmk.co.uk/event/2006/7/3/new-directions-in-mobile-nmk

—————-

During my time at NMK (Dec 2004 – Oct 2006) we also held many further events that I wasn’t involved in developmentally, but I helped market and promote them via editorial, social media platforms, attending external events and general outreach to the UK scene and beyond.

I’m listing them here as much for my own reference as anybody else’s

[NB. Some internal links within the pages above are broken as the NMK website has been redesigned since I left and the URL structure was changed, ie. persistent URLs were not maintained]

Jobs at NMK

My former employer NMK - based at the University of Westminster – has three roles available all at once.

They are currently seeking:

A Web Editor

A Community Manager

A Product & PR Manager

The closing date for submitting applications is 10th November 2006.

That was then, this is now…

Keeping established patterns intact, my report on the first Beers & Innovation has arrived 6 months after the fact.

The night was a great foundational event to the evolving series, as we heard from Skype‘s Saul Klein and Matt Ogle of Last.fm on how their businesses had evolved, and the challenges facing UK-based tech entrepreneurs and start-ups.

As for thorny issues raised and unresolved threads left hanging, take your pick:

VCs, angels and bootstrapping….

Saul Klein:

“There’s a lot of benefits to be had from not having a lot of funding early on, and the VCs can be your best critics”

Matt Ogle said that their angel investors had similar mindsets to them so they were able to grow more organically. He also praised affiliate programmes as excellent as they had enabled Last.fm’s growth.

Government support for innovation & start-ups

Saul had strong views on this point. He said the government’s role was zero. The BBC is a negative presence, he added. It takes talent out of the market and cannibalises media. The BBC creates a service industry around itself and is quite narrow.

Matt Locke, Head Of Innovation at BBC New Media disagreed. He spoke of the BBC Innovation Labs which provide “money and time to develop ideas.” Of 170 new ideas submitted, the BBC took forward 29 in the Labs.

Global or local?

Tom Coates noted that the English language makes us more permeable to US services, while Saul reckoned that

“media needs to be more local. Communications or search businesses are horizontal and can be more international”

Stuff to think about at every juncture. But that was 6 months ago. Good grief! So what, if anything, has changed?

Innovative start-ups need networks & expertise more than capital

In the lexicon of headlines, this is a low for journalists, bloggers and me personally.

And yes I’m on holiday, but this just came through, and I thought it was worth posting. It’s a press release from NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts in the UK).

It’s so hot I’m posting it on the stroke of midnight (with aforesaid clunky headline), just as the press release embargo ends but a nanosecond before the carriage turns into a pumpkin

Their headline is equally un-zingy in its literalness.

“Business support vital to bridging “equity gap”, says NESTA chief executive”

But hark at the content:

“The UK’s innovative start-ups require greater assistance in becoming “investment-ready”, NESTA chief executive, Jonathan Kestenbaum said today. Speaking in response to a new Library House report into the “equity gap” in the UK innovation economy, Kestenbaum commented:

“The debate around the so-called “equity gap” has raged for sometime and is likely to continue to do so. However, more importantly, this report points to the emerging consensus of an “investor-readiness gap”, especially for innovative start-up businesses. These enterprises often lack the business acumen and sense of the market to effectively commercialise their concepts and the crucial issue is therefore not one of the equity availability but of accessing equity.”

“Access to capital is only one of the critical ingredients required for embryonic businesses. Access to networks, mentors, role models and expertise is often more important than capital.”

I think Mr Kestenbaum might be onto something… he should come to the next Beers & Innovation on 14th September.

In case you’re none the wiser about NESTA, they are:

“working to increase the UK’s capacity for innovation, investing in all stages of the innovation process, backing new ideas and funding new ventures that stimulate entrepreneurship. It is the largest single source of early stage financing in the UK, and combines this investment with the provision of high quality mentoring and networking support for innovative business start-ups.”

And FYI, NESTA are currently reviewing their strategy.

Now, where’s that carriage?

[8th December update: NESTA have relaunched their website and the Innovation Gap report published in October 2006 can be downloaded from here]

New media awards with social impact

It's a relief to know that (sometimes) there's more to awards ceremonies than glitz and revenue-driven one-upmanship.

The good people who recently brought us cyberpunk legend and net activist Bruce Sterling uncut in a pub in Belgravia (with podcast) are also running an awards event which you can nominate in – but this Wednesday 31st May is the deadline for nominations!

I'm talking about the New Statesman New Media Awards, and if you're quick you could still nip in there and make a nomination.

Innovation, usability & efficiency

According to their site:

"The theme of this year's awards is The Power of Ideas – with a special emphasis on innovation, usability and efficiency. New media can have a positive effect by pushing boundaries and making information widely accessible.

"We are seeking nominations for any UK digital, web or mobile technology project that is creating positive change. It’s free to nominate and you can nominate as many projects as you like! Simply fill out our short, online nomination form."

"The New Media Awards celebrate those UK new media projects that benefit society, government or democracy."

The nominations so far are pretty interesting, but maybe you have something to add…

BBC Backstage – public media mash up

Bringing the long tail of publicly-funded content into play for others to use and build-upon for non-commercial purposes is part of the long-term rationale of the BBC's Backstage Project.

Launched in May 2005, BBC Backstage opens up BBC content for the developer network – in order to encourage innovation and support new talent. Their blog can be found here.

Tom Loosemore, Head of Strategic Innovation at BBC New Media, will be talking about the BBC Backstage project and community building more generally - and taking your questions – at the next NMK Beers & Innovation night on Thurdsay 27th April.

He may also be joined by an external developer who has created an interesting prototype by mashing-up BBC content with external content. We'll keep you updated on that front…

Tickets For Beers & Innovation 3: Web Services & Mash-Ups can be booked here.