The Writer As Digital Immigrant | Patrick Collings

the writer as digital immigrant creative writing master class patrick collings 25 August 2009

former foreign correspondent pioneer in the south african internet partner in sagacite brand agency working both the business and creative side of branding author of the brand architect blog recipient of brand leadership award i am a digital immigrant

image by tim morgan

image by bernardo borghetti

the digital landscape image by trey ratcliff

let’s set the scene

Note: Video of Digital Mad Men

web 3.0 web 2 Photo by Stig Nygaard

Note: Video highlighting the growth of social media

image by jeff turner

the ﬂow, not the contours Note: The following slides indicate how changing applications serve similar digital needs over time

must understand our own landscape photo by glado trouchky

1.5bn | 0.3% Note: South Africa’s share of global internet connectivity is .3% of 1.5 billion

51m | 10% Note: South Africa accounts for 10% of Africa’s connectivity

12m | 0.03% Note: The number of active blogs and the percentage from South Africa

340m | 0.5% Note: Readers of blogs and the percentage who read South African blogs

9.5% | 96% Note: Internet connectivity in South Africa versus percentage of adults owning a cell phone

some ﬁnal observations on the landscape

Photo by Trey Ratcliff Note: Internet a combination of the big and the small

Note: Video of Faris Yakob talking about recombinant culture

photo by Oliver Wilke crowdsourcing

smaller, more mature Photo by Akbar Simonse

camera, action Photo by Wen Zhang

as a society we are becoming more visual “video beats pictures beats text” - trendwatching.com 2008 report

what sort of numbers are we talking about

five billion videos serves each month by youtube 44 percent of all online video consumption in the U.S.A.

Cisco: By 2013 Video Will Be 90 Percent of All Consumer IP Trafﬁc and 64 Percent of Mobile

a digital lubricant

today, everyone can be a director

video clip of user generated polo “commercial”

But it is not only the directors who are going to

what we need to consider now are the communication channels and models available to brand managers increasingly becoming a home to branded entertainment

but not everyone is happy with the concept of branded entertainment Photo by Darwin Bell

what about the news media

monetize it

TV Ads

“Google is not the ﬁrst company to confuse a large audience with an attractive business model” Financial Times, 20 August 2009

user generated and premium content will that increasingly be the model?

stop the Photo by Ed Schipul presses

years from now, people will look at the new media business model and say it “happened” in the recession of 2008 / 2009

Photo by Vanessa Pike-Russell what started as a trickle

Miami Herald into third restructuring New York Sun closes aft New York Times Will Cut years Salaries; Washington Post to Offer Buyouts When newspapers fold Ad Declines in Mass Media US newspaper crisis deepens Seen as More Than Just Economic Christian Science Monitor abandons print edition Rocky Mountain News Folds Amid Ad Slump Hearst Plans to Slash, Sell or Shut Paper in Bay Area Hearst Shuts Down a Seattle Paper Gannett slashing dividend to preserve cash Washington Post Net Plunges Seattle Paper Advances Plans Cincinnati Post folds to Turn Into Online-Only Blender Magazine to Go Publication Online Only

not only in the US, and not only newspapers

those abandoning print either headed to...

Photo by Kirk

not coming back

1 the print business model was already under long-term threat from digital 2 great expense in returning to traditional print model 3 “recessionary push” will lead to changed habits and rituals

abandoning print saves 50% costs, but ...

online advertising not enough to sustain traditional news operations

? defining questions

“it is possible to charge for content”

photo by D Barefoot the rise of the bloggers

America’s Photo by Jacob Botter newest profession

1,700,000 Note: Number of people in US making money from blogging

452,000 Note: Number of people in US earning their primary income from blogging

100,000 = $75,000 Note: Rule of thumb that 100,000 users translates into annual ad income of USD 75,000

$75 - $200 Note: What people are charging for writing a blog

$45,000 - $90,000 Note: What people are earning for blogging for a corporate

1% >$200,000 Note: One percent of bloggers earning more than USD 200,000

journalists bloggers Note: rise of bloggers, drop of journalists in Washington photo by matthew bradley

is trust the new slingshot Note: People increasingly trusting blogs rather than media organizations photo by Jennifer Hayes

business model changing ofﬂine, not only online

perhaps the internet is not such a safe place for traditional print media escaping the photo by Kyriakos recession

digital doesn’t just mean the web Photo by Rienk Jan Schurer

the kindle isn’t alone

new business models are rapidly emerging

expect to see early adoption by higher eduction

what can history teach us

remember when cell phones phoned

before text messages

before they took pictures

before they recorded video

before the applications

do you remember before

? similar path for the e-reader

subscription models

the new textbook

colour is coming

so is video

and competitors

prices are falling

new ad models are emerging

“I ﬁnd it hard to believe that the primary way of reading newspapers 10-plus years from now is going to be on printed paper.”

our virtual reality

virtuality is increasingly our present and future Photo by Jerry Charlotte Miller

we have been preparing for virtuality for some time

in our philosophy Jean Baudrillard (1929 - 2007)

in our literature & films

our children brought virtuality home

we trade in currencies that we never actually hold

we immerse ourselves in the game

second life introduced the reality of virtual worlds to many adults

video clip of sony home virtual world

virtual worlds were the next evolution of the internet

14!000!000 800!000 they came from september 2006 to june 2008, the number of second life members grew from 800,000 to 14,000,000

80!000 10!000 they played from september 2006 to february 2009, the number of simultaneous second life users grew from 10,000 to 80,000

35!000!000 15!000!000 they paid in the space of 42 months the average value of transactions per month on second life went from $15m to nearly $35m

64!000 44!600 they profited in february 2009 over 64,000 people had a positive linden dollar ﬂow, up from 44,600 in september 2007

32 | 45 average age % female

great virtual land rush philips c|net adidas mercedes bmw dell mazda microsoft reuters sony bmg vodafone l’oreal ibm mtv

what went wrong?

limited understanding + flawed strategy + rushed implementation is always going to end in tears

goes on

3 to take out

original, evolving, crowdsourced stories

Note: Video promoting Wagner James Au’s book

virtual stories with real consequences

the rise of the avatar

some are detailed

of 26 million and counting

unique avatars and within games

Ray Winstone

John Malkovich Anthony Hopkins Angelina Jolie

avatars are child’s play

0 1,5 3,0 4,5 6,0 webkinz 6,0 clubpenguin 4,7 zwinky 4,4 neopets 3,6 imvu 2,4 barbiegirls 1,8 gaia 1,3 0,6 habbo 0,6 redlightcenter kaneva 0,6 second life 0,5 unique US visitors in Sept 07, in millions

look east...

340 m i l l i o n accounts

virtuality is a third of transmotion Photo by Chad Nicholson

the second is transmedia

the third is augmented reality

Note: Augmented reality campaign in South Africa

“One of the things our grandchildren will ﬁnd quaintest about us is that we distinguish the digital from the real, the virtual from the real. In the future, that will become literally impossible. The distinction between cyberspace and that which isn’t cyberspace is going to be unimaginable” William Gibson

Patrick Collings patrick@sagacite.co.za +27 (0)83 616 0967

The Writer As Digital Immigrant | Patrick Collings

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Notes on slide 1

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