Trends and Truisms Day Three: The Delivery Technology Is the Message/The Power Of Cross Media Story Telling
So here we are at day three of this experiment.
I have gotten some good feedback, but I can tell from my analytics that there are hundreds more people that are coming to this blog than there are leaving comments, why is this?
Don’t you want your voice to be heard?
Let’s help shape the future together! If you like what I am writing, add to it. If you hate what I am saying, ask me to change it, or write your own trend or truism and I promise I will post it.
Don’t forget the rules of this experiment!!!
…and now for DAY THREE
It comes as no surprise to many that various types of media are continuing to converge. What some seem to forget is the fact we must change the way we plan media and market products across these various morphing channels.
The importance of telling an effective story across various media outlets has never been more crucial; it has also never been more difficult.
Fans of Henry Jenkins are probably familiar with the notion of Hardware Divergence. While this concept is nothing new (well, it was new with Jenkins, but the book Convergence Culture is already a few years old), it is just beginning to become a reality for media/marketing practitioners.
No longer is one piece of video content appropriate for all devices capable of delivering video. Now more than ever, we must now consider the difference between video purposed for consumption via the PC versus video for mobile devices versus video for TV/DVD etc. and what the correct format is for each.
This type of fragmentation begs the questions, do we need people dedicated to video planning (see my post Audio Killed The Radio Planner) to ensure the content is appropriate for the delivery technology.
Marshall Mcluhan said, “the medium is the message” and while this was a revolutionary statement for the time, we are now in an era where, the delivery technology is the message.
Tags: marshall mcluhan, henry jenkins, radio, video, convergence culture, hardware divergence, mobile
Jan 04, 2008
I work in learning technology so the context is probably different to a lot of visitors to your site, but we are presented with similar challenges when people come to us with content in an older format (powerpoint, pdfs or paper based)and ask for ways of making it appeal to a wider audience. However we can get 50 slides where it is difficult to find a story in the first place or one slide which portrays a powerful message.
To provide independence to the creators of the learning we help them in finding appropriate tools e.g. a design tool and we create a template which they can use to quickly upload and embed a flash video.
If you can afford device adaptability assistance both in technical form and guidance as to whether a device may be suitable it should result in better learning payback or a message delivered in a more entertaining way. However if faced with budget constraints I would opt for a better written script rather than level of technical video assistance.
Another emerging trend in learning is that it appears to be developed in beta then opened up to the audience to adapt and improve – which affects whatever the purpose was of the learning in the first place, maybe changes the story completely. This is a bit long winded sorry, but hopefully there are some parallels. Sharing of knowledge of design and/or conversion tools is really helpful – in learning technology, Jane Hart has been doing great work on – http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/janehart.html
Jan 04, 2008
Nicola
Thanks for the amazing comment! Yes this is very relevant and I love the fact that you have brought in parallels from outside of the direct industry in which I practice.
At the end of the day we are dealing with communication, and communication tools are essential to the learning process, so I completely understand the parallel you drew here.
I am very interested in how new media tools can be used for the education process, and am actually working on a project related to this theme. Let’s stay in touch and I can fill you in when it is more solidified!
Thanks again for taking part in the conversation.
Jan 05, 2008
Sure, that would be great, I’ll try and pull out some new media links from ed world e.g. http://blog.podagogy.com/, http://cogdogblog.com/ are a couple of my current favourite blogs.
to help them get going, the technology learning curve is perceived as very steep ! So there is a definite market there too for quick solutions.
It seems like in 2007 where new media was being implemented that KM and eLearning practitioners joined forces and it seems to be spreading further, seems to be doing the same projects (I personally had that happen,I got budget for a project then found a bunch of people in KM also starting the same project so we joined forces) and talking about the same ideas.
Wikis, RSS etc are growing in learning corporately but still people with non-technical skills are looking for wizards (applications or people
Please do keep in touch, your project sounds very interesting.
Nicola