Events as digital narrative

My BCU colleague Andrew Dubber has already written a great deal about his process for “Aftershock”. Aftershock focuses on music creation, with the Internet material being understood as its own text, and just as important as the finished record. The final record presents us with a writerly text: authored, mediated, packaged and complete, but the Internet part of the project is much less defined, much more open to interpretation, and is also open to comment and direct interaction.

This process can work for news just as well as it does for music, and indeed already does if you think about the way in which stories evolve over a series of days through a cycle of “breaking news” to considered and in depth analytical features. That’s something that news organisations are already doing quite well, especially when they live blog some sort of news event (Over by Over cricket live blogs which might inform a final piece, or political live blogs are good examples here). The difference perhaps between Dubber’s approach to Aftershock and the media approach to live-blogging of stories is that Aftershock seems much looser, and to encourage ephemeral production and vignettes in a way that a “live blog” situation does not. Aftershock is very much a “capture everything” approach, whereas a news liveblog is a more deliberate professional discourse.

So my submission to the gSxSW hack would be to move to a publish then filter (Shirky, 2008) approach:

• let the journalists capture what they see in a very raw style;
• let the audience interact with that if they wish;
• see what the audience reacts to the most;
• finally, repackage the raw material for a different audience that prefers the writerly, polished text (this is the equivalent of the “record” as an artefact at the end of Aftershock).

Casestudy: Fused at SxSW 2010

Fused are music, style, art, and youth culture media publishers, based in the UK. For the past few years Fused have led the West Midlands regional delegation to the music strand of the South By South West conference in Austin, Texas; each year Kerry and Dave, Fused’s owners, capture audio, video and photography to document their trip; each year the material lies untouched for several months after the trip. As a result very little ends up used within their magazine and other projects.

The Solution – The Fused Podcast

I asked Fused to free themselves up from thinking in terms of printed editions of the magazine, and start to think of immediate, live documentation of what they see and hear at events. I asked them to publish, and then filter their material. Additionally I suggested that their magazine shouldn’t be limited to print, and could exist in other forms. I designed a workflow for live-blogging of activity, and then for filtering content to produce a magazine style audio package called The Fused Podcast. The project was experimental, and as such I didn’t want to commit Fused to a podcast in the long term. I based the initial podcast series around South By South West; this allowed the podcast to have a natural end point, so that Fused were not tied to audio production indefinitely.

Immediacy, Relevancy and Work Flow

I was determined for material to be used quickly, not left on the shelf for months. I undertook an audit of the equipment available to Fused for the project. iPhones, netbooks and Flip cameras all allow media files to be shared online quickly and effectively. I set up a Posterous blog – which can be updated via email – as a space for content to be uploaded to with immediacy. The Posterous blog would become a raw, unedited, timeline of events, published as and when Fused were able to record them; it would also allow viewers to comment on material as it was captured. From the perspective of the audience, this would provide a useful, immediate, scrapbook account of the trip. However, looked at from the perspective of a media producer, it could also be seen as an edit script – and one with the added bonus of audience interaction during production. I brought together a team of radio students from the second year of Birmingham City University’s BA (Hons) Media & Communication programme and asked them to produce an edited audio package based on the content that Fused were delivering. There would be no script – just the raw material sent down the line, and a timeline built on the Posterous blog: first publish, then filter.

Enabled by the Internet, Fused produced media in Texas, and made it immediately available to the production team in Birmingham; as Fused went to bed in the USA, we awoke in the UK – as they got up in the morning, we were uploading a polished account of their previous day. In addition to Posterous we used the web based “cloud” storage and file management system Dropbox, so that Fused could send larger files to the production team. We produced three podcast episodes of Fused’s trip before they arrived home – a fantastic achievement when we consider that their 2009 material was first used in our pilot podcast episode a whole year after it was captured.

Technologies & Web 2.0 services used in the project

• Apple iPhone
• Flip video camera
• Netbook computer (PC based)
• Apple iMac and MacBook Pro
• WiFi networks
• Mobile networks
• Adobe Audition
• Garageband
• Dropbox
• Posterous

Project Outcomes

Some aspects of the project were not wholly successful. Fused had unanticipated issues connecting to wireless Internet in Austin (in previous years, this had not been an issue) which meant content uploads were not as immediate as we had hoped. Fused used Dropbox more frequently than Posterous, which reduced the opportunity for social interaction around the draft content. However, the project was successful in that, using free web services and the recording devices which Fused already had available, we produced three well-received podcast episodes that captured a flavour of their trip.

In summary

The workflow in this process worked remarkably well, but it did rely upon reliable access to good Internet connections. Posterous could be replaced by any platform that allows video, photographs and audio to be uploaded quickly and then encoded on a server (not on the phone). The process relies heavily upon those recording the event to really buy into a “record everything” philosophy. The more interaction with an audience you can get through the blog, the more interesting this approach might become.

Next questions

• How do you best use viewer interaction in the production of the final text? Do you use that in a social way to help pick parts of the final report? Or do you still take an editorial view of that yourself?
• The separation of editors from the producers (by distance in this case) requires the editors to engage with the content at the same level as any other reader of the blog, which is an interesting thing to explore in more depth.

This project was part of the “Working Neighbourhood Fund – Stimulating Demand Programme 2009/11 – Web 2.0 Presence” package of support being delivered on behalf of Digital Birmingham and Birmingham City Council.

Megaphone image CC larimdame

A lot of the conversations I’ve had during the Digital Champions project have started with a blank piece of paper and the question: “how can we promote ourselves using social media?”. In a lot of cases it’s a tricky one to answer not because it’s a hard question but because it’s the wrong question.

Now this is where you might think I’m going to go off on one about discourse, and start talking about “conversation” and how brands “don’t get social media because they want to broadcast not engage”. Not today, though those points are often valid. There are two problems with asking “how can we promote ourselves using social media?”: the question is too limited in its scope and is also leapfrogging over a number of other more fundamental questions.

Scope

Social media marketing briefs often seem to make the same mistakes that briefs about e-marketing used to (and still do) make, namely seeing it as one thing that is done over here while all the other stuff happens over there. Newness often has a sense of otherness, and so can become ring-fenced in our thinking as something entirely novel and discreet. This is the sort of thinking that leads to a social media campaign which doesn’t get further than “we’re doing a bit of Twitter”. Campaigns that are about doing a bit of Twitter tend to be the campaigns that look wrong, for example the classic Twitter account that pumps out links to press releases or items in the product category and doesn’t do the “conversation” thing. So, what’s needed is a brief that sees social media not as the thing that we have to do but a set of processes, tools, protocols and methods that might be used in any number of campaigns in any number of ways. We’re talking holism. Social media can be pretty effective if it’s used in an holistic manner within wider promotional tactics, but placed outside of the context of other campaigns it often becomes burdensome or gimmicky.

Start at the beginning

The other issue is that “how can we promote ourselves using social media?” skips to the end of a thought process without picking up key bits of contextual information along the way. I’ve found the need to rewind partners to more basic questions:

• “What have we actually got to say?”
• “Who do we want to speak to?”
• “Why do they care about what we want to say anyway?”

And those questions are pretty hard. They don’t look it, but they are, especially if the brief lacks that holism I’ve been talking about. I hate to drop the “b” word but these are some pretty fundamental brand questions, and if the brand lacks clarity they can be hard to address without pulling a long way back. In a client-consultant relationship that may be too far back for all concerned – too far back for the client’s budget, too far back for the consultant’s expertise.

This might help us to understand why the world is full of shallow social media campaigns that didn’t seem to work, perhaps:

• the client didn’t ask the right questions and the consultant didn’t challenge the client
• the budget didn’t allow the ideas to be thought through fully
• the consultant is good with tools, but lacks the confidence to be conceptual and think about brand

(There are other reasons of course for things failing to click. This example assumes that the client has initiated the project themselves, rather than having social media marketing pitched to them pro-actively by a consultant).

Over the coming weeks as I wind the Digital Champions project to a close I’ll be returning to these questions and themes in a little more depth as I unpick some of the case studies from the project. Along the way we’ll pick up on some ideas Dubber has discussed here previously but spin them in a different direction. We’ll also discuss some other ideas from digital culture theory to explain what I’ve been up to for the past year. If that’s your thing (and I know it is) then make sure you’re subscribed to our RSS feed. In the meantime,  if you have any thoughts or observations that will help to sharpen my thinking, they’re always most welcome in the comments below.

This project was part of the “Working Neighbourhood Fund – Stimulating Demand Programme 2009/11 – Web 2.0 Presence” package of support being delivered on behalf of Digital Birmingham and Birmingham City Council.

The event is this coming Wednesday, 8th September, (8pm, Old Joint Stock theatre) and features our own Jez Collins, no doubt talking about Birmingham’s popular music heritage or music as culture. It’s a ticketed event, so do book if you would like to come along.

This project was part of the “Working Neighbourhood Fund – Stimulating Demand Programme 2009/11 – Web 2.0 Presence” package of support being delivered on behalf of Digital Birmingham and Birmingham City Council.

Before the workshop element of the event, I gave a short presentation outlining the project, and giving ten ideas for using social media within small and medium sized businesses. The presentation is below, but you may wish to view it on slideshare where you can also view my presenter notes.

This project was part of the “Working Neighbourhood Fund – Stimulating Demand Programme 2009/11 – Web 2.0 Presence” package of support being delivered on behalf of Digital Birmingham and Birmingham City Council.

What I will be doing

The project builds on our experiences in our recent project, the AHRC Knowledge Transfer Fellowship in New Strategies for Radio and Music Organisations. I will be demonstrating simple uses of technologies that could make a difference to companies. We will prototype new ideas for our partners, using simple and accessible technologies that could help to make life easier, open up new opportunities, or speak to different audiences. The prototypes will be informed by our research and teaching activities within Birmingham School of Media.

Why I’m doing it

My project’s aims are to demonstrate the usefulness of Internet technologies, especially social media technologies, to a wide range of business sectors; the wider project aims include innovation and business growth. My job-title, and the name used at Digital Birmingham, for this project is “Digital Champion”. I won’t be using that title an awful lot, firstly because modesty won’t allow and secondly because the real champions will be the companies I partner with. My project aims to stimulate and create something new in a wide cross-section of companies, and then to communicate this process to a wider business community; my partners in the project will be the true Digital Champions, inspiring their friends, their staff, and their business rivals to try something new.

Creating Demand

When I worked in industry, people would often come to me with a good idea that was a little vague and needed to be shaped. I had no way of helping them to form that idea without charging for my time, and their budget would mean that they only had one chance to get it right. Often good ideas would never get started because I couldn’t afford to invest time and companies couldn’t afford to risk money. I hope that the time I spend with my partners will provide a space for some innovation or change to happen that would not otherwise occur. My project will take the early risk, and leave the partner with something more formed and considered which they can then use as the basis of a new, commercial, partnership with a local firm. Successful projects will stimulate demand whether that be finding an agency to write code that’s above and beyond my skills and remit; hiring a social media consultant to take a role in developing more content; or working with audio and video producers on podcast content.

What I’m looking for

I’m looking for partnerships across the city, in all sectors of our business community, who might benefit from this project. They might wish to be a prototype partner, or might just wish to attend one of our forthcoming events for some inspiration. Do please leave a comment below, or email me (jon.hickman [at] bcu.ac.uk).

I have a number of companies I am specifically looking for, these include:

• a T-shirt screen printing company
• a professional services company with a well developed CSR programme
• a company with a branch office overseas

This project was part of the “Working Neighbourhood Fund – Stimulating Demand Programme 2009/11 – Web 2.0 Presence” package of support being delivered on behalf of Digital Birmingham and Birmingham City Council.