SWIM 2010 in Saragoza

For young students aiming to launch their career in the audiovisual sector, it is particularly essential to ‘face’  the challenges of a new media business environment that is permanently fueled by the ongoing digital revolution.

More than 50 European undergraduate students took part in the 3rd edition of the seminar ‘SWIM in the Digital World’ from 27 May to 13 June 2010, at San Jorge University in Zaragoza (Spain). In order to find practical solutions for real world problems in digital media busines, the seminar combined case studies and accompanying lectures by renowned tutors from across Europe.

DLP Review: Exploring Media Economics

Two weeks ago, etma launched the second cycle of it’s media management online training in Strasbourg with students  coming from 9 countries from across Europe (mostly professionals from the Film and TV sector). From 15 to 19 May, the participants had the chance to expand their view beyond the usual scope by meeting peers, professional practitioners from media companies and experienced academics in a one week introductory session on ‘media management’.

Thomas Mai explains shifts in the film industry

Discovery Investigation’s Ed Hersh, SVP of Strategic Planning, kicked off the session with an inspiring keynote on the transformation of the media industry and the central role of story-telling as well as high quality content for broadcasters and film production companies.

MIPTV 2010 Review: Total Convergence and Digital Urban Entertainment

Apart from the major aim to bring ‘buyers and exhibitors’ together, this year’s MIPTV again offered lots of insightful presentations with inspiring views on today’s fast evolving patterns of media consumption.

Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in Cannes

One central theme was certainly ‘connected audiences’, providing an explanation for the increasing popularity of everything that has to do with ‘social’. Kevin Slavin (Area Code Entertainment LLC), for example, pointed out that the connection of users brings us back to where entertainment originally came from: theatres and cinemas, where people usually never went alone. The ‘laugh track’ of sitcoms was to compensate this lack of social experience in TV, but social media obviously do this job much better.

Just scanning the news …

While doing our twitter posts, I took care not to fuel the marketing engine of Apple too much by mentioning the iPAD all the time. But after its launch in the U.S. it’s perhaps time to follow up on that. I was asking myself: is this just a huge ‘media craze’ tending to become some kind of selffulfilling prophecy? But that’s probably just because I never held an iPAD in my own hands up to now. At least it seems to redefine the term ‘usability’ for the masses and reduces the computer to what it was originally supposed to be: a seemingly simple yet elegant I/O device. Now it sets out to invade the netbook market, and perhaps other segments as well. As for the future of Steve Jobs’ latest child, the AppStore download figures and market research results by Gartner suggest considerable growth potential for tablet PCs (to some degree our commonsense seems to confirm these predictions).

Image by ajstarks via Flickr

But there were other issues in the news fighting for my attention as well, such as the researchers from KIT in Karlsruhe who developed the first 3D stealth cloak some weeks ago. Will the price for applying this technology develop just as the price of computing capacity decreased in the past? Questions upon questions!

Thinking Ahead: Film, Television and the unprecedented Media Revolution

“I’m more worried about the 500 million or so people on Facebook versus the 2 million on Fox” (CNN President Jon Klein in March 2010)

Our first media management programme is about to come to an end and we believe it’s time to strike a balance. What have we achieved? Were the objectives met? Is there anything to improve? Having been responsible for organizing this first academic year, I feel obliged and privileged to explore these questions and to illustrate our inspiring journey through the realms of a media economy that is undergoing unmatched change amidst an unprecedented media revolution.