“Creative Minds United Against Global Warming” was the slogan I wrote on last year’s Christmas cards, I never thought it would become a competition, with a juicy prize of 500.000 euros..
Born from the union of the Dutch Postcode Lottery and PICNIC network, the same organization behind the Cross Media Week, the Green Challenge is a competition to create a product or a service to help fight climate change. The idea must be realizable on the market within two years. In addition to the prize money, the winner will receive expert coaching and support for the implementation of the idea.
Deadline for entries is August 30
Help save the world!

Technorati Tags: Call for papers, cross media, event, pervasive games

H-Play, a sub-branch of H-Farm, italian cluster of media creation studios, has organized a urban game set in Venice called The Ruyi - GPS antennas and locative devices are just a tiny element in solving a big mystery layered with cultural references to the always beautiful city of Venice. The christening is December the 1st 2007.

After discovering the attempt made by Sky Vivo to produce participatory television in Italy, I kept thinking that was nothing new, and I remembered reading a post by Robin Good, one of my favorite blogs, in 2005 about Nessuno TV, wonderful italian experiment of participatory channel, dating back to 2002, 4 year earlier than Al Gore’s Current TV.
In this post, Robin Good describes a “virtual talk show” presented by Nessuno TV, with real guests in the studio and other guests on screens inside the studio interacting via webcam. The program was broadcasted in streaming and on satellite TV at the same time.
What I am trying to point out is how grassroots production most of the time leads the way for mainstream communication, and, like in Maurizio Costanzo’s case, how can we preserve the potential of the new communication methods so that they promote better communication, better understanding, a more democratic approach to media, and avoid cross media to be used just as a gimmick to add a novelty flavor to an otherwise very conventional approach to television.

Sky Vivo, italian satellite tv, is going to launch this July the first (? if I am wrong please correct me) officially cross media program, entitled “Stella: are you ready to change?”. One of the more venerable talk show conductors in Italy, Maurizio Costanzo, is going to moderate a daily talk show featuring every day via webcam connection four italian families, interacting with guests and stars in studio.
The conversation will also be influenced by spectators from home, via sms, email and the Stella web portal. Sms will be visually present in the studio through projection on a large luminous sphere in the middle of the studio.
The broadcast will be also available later on in streaming.
While the information structure might sound “young”, in fact the themes treated, like the debate on stamina cells and embryos (this is a hot theme in Italy, check out the lovely activist game of Molle Industria), safety on the streets, precarious work etc, seem to be addressing an older audience.

Costanzo himself, age 69? 71?, an institution in Italian television since 25 years, is hardly as cool and young as the network tries to portray him. Maybe this is the only way to introduce innovative forms of communication in an “old-fashioned” country such as Italy. I wonder how the situation like is in Spain, Portugal, Greece, and other countries where “institutions”, like in Italy, tend to slow down change and innovation.

Technorati Tags: iTV, Web 2.0