conference circuit again: digital creativity?
OK, so whilst I’ve been relatively quite on the blogosphere, I have been out spreading the word of slingshot in other places.
Last Friday saw not one but two conference appearances (what can I say, I’m like a travelliing troubador, singing the songs of the sling). In the morning I was at the London Media Summitt where I got to debate Content, Cash and Creativity with Reuter’s “Head of Innovation” and the aliterating nemesis of the UK digital media scene Azeem Azhar
One of the more interesting questions was about how one can use new technologies and new business models to better harness creativity. It’s a question that tends to stump most creative business entrepeneurs, but there are interesting examples of it out there.
Here is one: StarWreck – a collaborative creative phenomenon which would have been unthinkable in the pre-social media era. The transformative effect of MySpace on the garage band (a melee my brother has just joined); as is the collaborative journalism/discussion of the blogosphere itself: see the high scholarship and wit being applied to shopping by the VisaDiarist and her peers.
Any others people can think of?
But that was just the mornings conference. In the afternoon, I was speaking, with the gorgeous Mr. Gary Love at the BFI’s Young Talent week, part of the London Film Festival. We told war stories, including this one, from our experience on Sugarhouse Lane, and it all seemed to go down quite well. Almost as well as the vino tinto at the reception at the end of that day of speaking. Well what can I say, one gets a dry throat…
November 5th, 2006 at 23:36
Update: also did a fun Q&A at the Tractor Films / Film London East Event this Saturday at the Rio Cinema in Hackney. Alongside the always thoughtful Marc Boothe and the always unpredictable Maggie Ellis.
Anyone who was there, and had questions please do feel free to use the blog to continue our discussions -
November 7th, 2006 at 17:16
Hi Arvind
Good to hear what you’ve been up to.
This has to be the most exciting time in film since the Lumiere brothers had folk running out of a theatre convinced a train was about to flatten them (this may be an urban myth, but you get my point).
Film buffs might pine for the nouvelle vague of the hollywood of the early 70s, but now anyone who can beg, borrow or-well, beg or borrow- a digital camera can make something and get it out there, and that has to be a good thing. Most of it won’t be great, but the good stuff is coming from a wider, more truly global pool than ever before, and that’s got to be a good thing.
Just realised that I don’t really have a point to this ramble-just that these are exciting times and thank your God of choice that Slingshot are making it happen in the UK!
November 10th, 2006 at 00:42
Mr. Lemon! Welcome to the slingblog. Nice to see you – to those who don’t know, David Lemon is a fine writer and, to the point, a slingshot writer, whose script of FAINTHEART he, and we, are slaving over at the moment.
(well not at the moment, obviously, ath this precise moment we are on the slingblog, but you get the picture)