Mohamed Nanabhay's Blog

The good folks at X|Media|Lab have posted my Media '08 slide deck online.

| View | Upload your own

Kevin Anderson blogged my session - his commentary will provide some context for some of the more visual slides.

You can also find the other great presentations from Media '08 here.

Inspired by Robin Hammond's Digital News Affair feed of feeds, I've whipped up a quick aggregation of blog posts and Flickr photos from the Media '08 conference.

You can check it out here.

It's based on Technorati tags so if you're not pinging Technorati drop me a note and I'll add your blog feed in directly.

What can we learn from the business experiences of digital/tech companies trying to introduce their product in new markets? Well in China there was a pattern of failure amongst Web Companies (Ebay, Yahoo...). Even Google has gone from being a market leader to having just a fraction of the share of Baidu.com (now has 80%)

What mistakes have these companies made? Largely design issues it seems. Chinese sites have blinking lights, bright colours and lots of navigation and an incredible amount of information. If the page looks bare ("simple") people will think there isn't anything on it and move on. People are happy to click through but not happy to type.

The big problems though are :

• localisation/partnerships
• top executives are entrepreneurs
• Western companies just can't bend the rules like domestic companies can.

Having better technology isn't the only thing since if you come into China someone will figure out how to replicate and even do it better. Jonathon showed a screenshot of a site that looks exactly like Facebook but was in Chinese...

Money quote :"If you're thinking of coming to China, don't. There are much more fun ways to lose money"

Off the bat Kevin wins the award for the largest presentation ever - nearly 6 gigabytes!

He kicks it off saying it's about community, the medium and tools. He says that if you aren't actually playing in this new media space you can't create content for it. Kevin runs a quick pop quiz asking

1. Who owns a game console?
2. Who has a personal profile?
3. Who has a blog?
4. Who subscribes to an RSS feed or Twitters?
5. Created video and uploaded to YouTube?

His point? We all know how to surf the web and get e-mail and given that you're equipped to live in the digital world. If you're not able to create digital content then you're not equipped to be working in this digital world...

Vicky started the session with two videos highlighting user-submitted media that the BBC made use of in an interesting way:

• Burma Crisis: Citizen journalists were writing an "alternative Narrative" to official propaganda in Burma.
• Floods in the UK in 2007 were the biggest story that BBC Interactive Covered. Received thousands of photos and hundreds of video. This was showcased on a Google Map were coverage was embedded.

  Her interactive team consists of 13 journalists who work 24/7 and are dedicated to multiple BBC channels and platforms. They receive pictures/videos and then sift, verify and authenticate them against established journalistic standards. They then decide if these pictures could be used on the BBC platform. To ensure quality you need to invest - this isn't a way to cut costs.

  She refers to interesting research that was done for the BBC on trust and authority regarding user-contributed content. Around 1000 people were asked what they thought of user-generated content. The findings?

  • The public is in favour of it but are in favour of it being vetted first from someone.

  • A large number of people understood user-generated content and participation - but many didn't know how to participate.
  • 1/5 people polled have contributed to a news event in a fairly traditional manner - e-mail or phone in.

  Those are pretty encouraging statistics...