Battle of Big Thinking part 4: Music discovery, Broadband and content; Nibble
Wednesday saw the APG’s Battle of Big Thinking. The fourth session covered big media ideas. In my view it was the weakest session of the five.
Speaker: Abigail Thomas, head of strategic development, ABC
Topic: What does the National Broadband Network mean for the future of content?
Her argument:
Of the 15 presentations at Battle of Big Thinking, this was the only one I missed (ironically enough because I was doing a phone interview with an ABC radio station).
Asking around afterwards, there were two schools of thought : Those who thought the presentation style was poor but the content was okay, and those who simply found it poor.
With the caveat that these are others’ views and I didn’t speak to everyone, the consensus appeared to be that it would have been an interesting vision of the future of the internet in, say, 1998, with the prediction that people would play games, talk to their friends and watch videos.
My take out: Considering the usual lead that the ABC takes on new media, this was a disappointment or at the very leats a missed opportunity
Speaker: Richard Slatter, Co-founder, We Are Hunted
Topic: The music filter of the future
Quote: “How do you retain customers in your environment? The answer is discovery.”
His argument:
Slatter talked the audience through We Are Hunted, which Mumbrella wrote about when it launched last year.
The music site operates by tracking social media sentiment about emerging songs and offering a real time chart of the 99 emerging tracks.
His talk focused on the importance in online of helping users with discovery, particularly to overcome information overload. The site also helps users find the nine other pieces of emerging music they may like, based on their tastes.
He also argued that the importance of discovery to brands is that it taps into impluse, which is when consumers are likely to spend the most easily
My take out: Combined with a couple of references to discovery at Adtech, discovery is a key issue which is about to become a hot topic
Speaker: Keren Moran, Spring In Alaska/ George Krones NAK Factory
Topic: Nibble – Visualising data and social interactions
Quote: “We believe the means to cope with information overload should and will reside on your mobile phone.”
Their argument:
The pair said that with the flood of personal information, comes a need to organise it and turn it into a social object in its own right.
Their idea – Nibble – would see an application that would reside on phones and develop according to the information it found. It would aggregate, sort, correlate, interpret and visualise that information, they said.
The result would be an individual Nibble creature for each user. Heavy internet users might have creatures with more tentacles, while more eyes might signal somethign else. It would change colour according to mood.
My take out: The idea is a bit like a Tamagotchi based on your own life, but I wouldn’t see it as more than an iPhone app curiosity. I suspect that if they’d been in the Dragon’s Den they’d have been thrown out.
My vote: Richard Slatter
Audience winner – Richard Slatter, 46%, second Nibble, Third Abigail Thomas
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Completely agree – ABC lady had a great topic but despite their good work on the Gallipoli site, was uninspired, (imagine if I was Barry from the bush etc). The Nibble idea really caught my interest until they produced the creature things, which turned a potentially neat way of analysing your mobile phone interactions into some teenage fad.
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