Special Edition Digital People - XlMedialLab Key Speakers

1 - John Penney - Executive Vice President, Strategy & Business Development, Starz, LLC (Los Angeles)
2 - Scott Halcomb - International Business Development Director, SystemK (Japan)
3 - Gotham Chopra - Media Entrepreneur: Co-founder of Liquid Comics; Advisor to Current.tv; Multi-award winning journalist and documentary filmmaker (Los Angeles)
4 - Ralph Simon - Founder of the modern mobile entertainment industry; Chairman Emeritus and Founder of Mobile Entertainment Forum; Co-founder of Zomba Music Group (London)
5 - Amin Zoufounoun - Director, Corporate Development, Google (Mountain View)

XMediaLab will take place at the Sydney Opera House from June 18-20.  For further information, including profiles of each speaker, and to purhcase tickets please click here

John Penney - Executive Vice President, Strategy & Business Development, Starz, LLC (Los Angeles)

'Highlight your 3 key areas where the digital industry will evolve In the coming years'

1 - Business Models -- From an entertainment content perspective -- whether traditional programming or new interactive forms -- the next five years will be defined by a move towards more well-defined monetisation schemes for content as producers and distributors embrace the ability to connect more directly with consumers, and vice versa through digital pathways. 

Initial content related business models have either focused on advertising supported approaches or transactional ones.  But in the coming years hybrids of both, in addition to subscription and micro-payment driven models will proliferate to the advantage of producers, packagers & marketers, distributors, and, most importantly, consumers. 

Deeper and more predictable business models around payments for content will stand to enhance the opportunity of both hardware manufacturers and distributors to capitalize on the increasingly "always connected" consumer paradigm that we now see evidenced around the world. 

This always connected environment, tied with ever greater usage of social networks, will deliver a rich entertainment content distribution ecosystem that should serve traditional and new content players alike.

2    Usability -- With processing speeds, bandwidth, and storage costs crossing over to near commoditization price points, ever greater attention will be paid to the usability of software, hardware, and digital services so that consumers are less and less challenged by the UI limitations of devices that often make it hard to perform even basic tasks.  Software and hardware ergonomics as well as industrial design will become ever more potent ingredients defining successful software, hardware, and services. 

Touch screens and natural language input will come into their own as truly intuitive ways to interact with the network and all the information and communications potential contained in the Cloud.  Computational devices that will be able to more seamlessly bridge natural language human communications will be embedded throughout the human manufactured environment including in homes, cars, offices, and all manner of venues.  This will make it easier to access information and communicate at the location where maximum impact from that information or communication can be achieved.

3   Digital waste - Based on ever faster innovation cycles around digital hardware and increasingly lower price points, the trend towards nearly disposable hardware-- PCs, mobile phones, gadgets, cameras, etc. will continue.  The digital industries will increasingly need to focus on the mountains of waste created daily from the disposal of old, recently obsolete, non-usable, non-transferable computer, mobile phone, and gadget hardware. 

Many foresee extreme environmental stress produced by this ever-increasing waste stream in both the developed and developing economies.  It's hard to imagine who feels good about throwing away or recycling an 18 month old cell phone or camera.  The inherent discomfort we all feel about this needs to be converted into a call for action on the part of hardware manufacturers to create devices that support our living in a more balanced relationship to the natural world.

Scott Halcomb - International Business Development Director, SystemK (Japan)

'Highlight 3 key areas where the digital industry will evolve In the coming years'

The Internet has undeniably changed the media industry forever. Digital distribution has altered expectations of media and the way people consume it. Digital industries are evolving and media is changing from something that is passively consumed to something that is intimately interacted with. The early signs of this are evident across the Internet. Interactivity is apparent in traditional digital media, new media experiences and by the means which brands communicate with consumers.

Traditional types of media: images, audio and video have mostly been an inactive means of experiencing the Internet. For the most part users passively look, listen and watch. Granted, commenting systems have been present for years, but only recently with the social web movement have these traditional media types become interactive. Sharing and ranking systems put the potential of reach in the user's hands. The media becomes more important because it is backed by real life friends and family. The more people that share, comment and vote up the content, the more personalized it becomes. Personalized content is more valued and will be firmly situated in the emerging social web.

How these personalized interactive media experiences may look is difficult to predict. In Japan, Nicovideo.jp, a popular Youtube like service, allows users to place their comments directly on top of the video they are commenting on. These comments, sometimes hundreds upon hundreds, scroll across the video as it plays, creating a personalized commentary track. Web services like Animoto.com, which creates professional quality slideshow videos from user's pictures and movies, is already an indication that personalized media is popular. Its only a matter of time before a collaborative photo editing web service appears allowing multiple users to edit a single picture, adding fun text and icons. One user can make a change and surprise another when they login and see it. Its this interactivity of traditional media that will be ever present on the future Internet.

Augmented reality is a new digital medium that has evolved from the interactive potential of the Internet. It combines the physical world with the digital world for an entirely new experience. Although this technology has been a thing of science fiction for years, only recently have main stream applications become available. Software for mobile phones, like Layar, allow users to see what digital media is around them. Overlaid on the phone's camera perspective, depending on where the user faces, are pictures, movies, audio, text information and 3D objects. Things like audio and text are not new but the interactive experience that augmented reality provides is quite revolutionary.

Last year in Japan the worlds first CD was debuted via augmented reality. In the week leading up to the album's release users could visit select spots around Japan to automatically trigger audio previews on their phones. Augmented reality also embraces 3D. When pointed at the spot where a building was or will be, a 3D renderings of architecture displayed on the phone's screen can serve several purposes. A 3D version of the Berlin wall shown at scale allows the user to experience the impact that the structure had back when it was standing. Real estate companies are using the medium to preview buildings to clients before they are ever built. A visit to the construction site will show how tall the building actually stands and how it will look in its surroundings. Because a medium like Layar is aware of its user's current location it can provide unique interactive experiences and location specific content. These targeted, interactive experiences are extremely engaging and although the medium is in its infancy there will definitely be great growth.

For the most part augmented reality content is created by brands for users. This is a clear indication that companies are realizing the power these interactive experiences have on their consumers. Much of online advertising is completely ignored, most Internet users having grown oblivious to banners. But brands are embracing new technologies and the potential of interactive experiences. Through interactivity, targeted consumers go from oblivious of marketing, to actively engaged in a company's message.

Through augmented reality brands are already creating experiences like interactive games and 3D demonstrations. Apple recently announced support for interactive advertising on their iPhone OS that takes interactive ads to a new level. Soon, across the web, there will also be interactive product placement. Similar to how Youtube users can often purchase the songs from videos they watch, brands can embed the ability for interactive purchasing of items from videos. Clicking or touching a hat, shirt, book or other item that appears in a video can provide the user with a purchasing opportunity. The bottom line is: the more involved the user is the better.

Gotham Chopra - Media Entrepreneur: Co-founder of Liquid Comics; Advisor to Current.tv; Multi-award winning journalist and documentary filmmaker (Los Angeles)

'Highlight 3 key areas where the digital industry will evolve In the coming years'

1. Publishing: This of course is already happening but I think increasing, especially as it relates to comics and graphic novels, we'll see a gradual move toward mobile comics. Companies will also push the envelope when it comes to how to make these narrative really live on digital devices, so each panel and piece of art is telling its own story.

2. News and Information: Big news agencies and their massive infrastructures will become increasingly irrelevant and too far removed from what's actually happening on the ground. Consumers will essentially create their own feeds to inform them as to what is happening where.

3. Creators - will in essence build their own networks, piggy backing and pirating existing online infrastructures and curating available content. More people may watch Joe Six-pack's online channel than tune into Fox's broadcast one. People will aggregate around certain parts of the online digital world while other parts will become either virtual ghost towns or seedy neighborhoods where shady visitors indulge in their own taboos.

- Founder of the modern mobile entertainment industry; Chairman Emeritus and Founder of Mobile Entertainment Forum; Co-founder of Zomba Music Group (London)

'Highlight 3 key areas where the digital industry will evolve In the coming years'

1 -  Mobile smartphones and mobile lifestyles - With mobile phone ownership nudging 4.4bn subscribers in 2011, the impact of the mobile (also known as "Mobilology") upon all aspects of modern living will continue to be very substantial.   During the rest of 2010, a total of 1.1bn mobile phones will be ssold across the world.  This staggering number of new devices will range from the entry level basic mobile phone that comes with music, messaging and voice for as little as $20-$30, to the high end smartphone with touchscreen and instant linkage to social networking sites suych as Facebook, Twitter and any manner of RSS feeds. 

A very substantial number of these new mobile devices are going to include mobile internet, and allowing surfing and using the web anywhere, anytime there is a mobile signal. If one looks at the dramatic development of applications for the iPhone over the past 12 months.  Today there are over 200,000 applications for your iPhone.  Google and their Android platform have also seen rapid deployment and growth and mobile phones bearing this operationg platform is linked directly in to Google and their amazing search capabilities. 

The iPad is another device using wireless that will change the way people live their lives and more pertinently, their 'mobile lifestyles'.  Imagine playing a Wii early in the morning for your fitness regime, whilst your mobile phone gives you a high level cardiac readout from your chest and pings it to your doctor.  Never get lost again as your mobile satnav and colloquial content is brought to you.  This is the start of a whole new generation of interfaces and usages that offer extraordinary opportunity for smart and original thinkers in Australia's software and mobile applications space.
 
2.  Social networking and access - The unstoppable global growth in social networking platforms, sites and engines  across all countries will continue with all new forms of crowdsourcing, emerging.  However, the gating factor will be "access" - one is going to need "access" to the sites, platforms, private areas, that social networking brings in its fabric. How has Facebook seen their user base grow to some 450m subscribers in just on 2-3 years - an amazing achievement.  What is the secret to their leadership and "architectural" thinking for social networking.  It is clear that social networking and its offshoots - social music ( a la iTunes and the like) , social broadcasting - blogs and tweets to an ever widening numbes of millions of users/people, social localised activity - location based user experiences - are core spokes of the new social networking wheels that drive and ever greater number of users world wide. 

This phenomenon is breeding the most amazing usage numbers and visual and web experiences, and allowing disparate yet interested groups to connect and maintain connection - whether this is the myriad numbers of groups around the World Cup, to global bird watchers who help each other in seeking out where to spot hard to find bird species, or simply instant messaging and the quiet revolution that Blackberry's successful BBM app is fomenting.  What is going to happen to quality journalism in an age where the "freemium" seems to be acceptable currency. 

The Murdoch men, Rupert and James, have both spoken of etsablishing an "access" wall to get to their newspaper content.  They argue that quality journalism and journalists will be able to get a fee paying audience and loyalty of continuing use.  This paywall notion is one that is going to resonate big in the coming weeks - it is all about access.  If you pay your cable bill, you will have "access" to a range of programming in your payment band.  Similarly, the very issue of  "access" and how it should be levied or imposed, is going to be a big question as cross-platform media consumption blurs traditional media boundaries.
 
 
3.  Enhanced search and alternate realities  - The speed and accuracy of search is going to improve significantly and with it will come sophisticated alternative reality content that is juxtaposed against a search result(s). If Google maintain their dominance of the world of search above the 75% level they seem to currently have, and yet, continue to innovate new platform products at a dizzying speed  the range of search and data driven decision making will grow.  Many have been surprised at the steady and less flashy growth of Microsoft's search engine, Bing.  Whilst still way behind Google and Yahoo and msn.com, they are making progress and showing good growth.  With the plethora of data that is used and woven into our daily digital lives we are going to become more demanding ofd rapid search results, and will also allow brands in whose authenticity we believe, to have "access" to us/me.  Nokia is doing some ground-breaking work in the area of alternate rality. 

When the Finnish mobile phone leader bought Navtech, the California mapping company, they saw the potential of developing a whole suite of intelligent mapping that could be woven into a strong localised capability - and in doing so, have satnav bring places, products and retailers to you, in your area, in your node of colloquial relevance.  Their research labs in Helsinki and north Finland are developing some amazing new directions in the marriage of mapping and usage experience using visual recognition and visual search cues. 

This is a mobile phone feature that somehow seems like science fiction - but it is not, and in fact it is as real as some of the startling developments in Mobile Health and how mobile phones use machine-to-machine language to talk to each toher and search through diagnostic signs of the patient or indisposed.  With chip sets becoming ever more powerful and also using some of the advances of nano technologies, a whole new user experience that will bring intuitive, smart interaction with your smartphone and device like an iPad, these ideas will be common place in the next 6-12 months.

Amin Zoufounoun - Director, Corporate Development, Google (Mountain View)

'Highlight 3 key areas where the digital industry will evolve In the coming years'

1. Mobile.  The mobile web is at its infancy and it will evolve greatly over the coming years.  Devices will continue to become smarter and more PC-like but because they are always with us and know our location, we will see products and services that were not possible before.

2. Move to the cloud.  Offline and localized computing will all go into the cloud.  We will be able to interact with all of our (synced)  data and applications using any device, anytime. 

3. Personalization.  Search, advertising, communication, social networking and virtually everything else will become more personalized and tailored to each user.  There will be a shift from mass, "blind" marketing, data presentation and interaction to a more personalized experience.

XMediaLab will take place at the Sydney Opera House from June 18-20.  For further information, including profiles of each speaker, and to purhcase tickets please click here