Very strange conference this Picnic conference - after months of network building on the picnic network site, and very cool network features, like when you see to each event the profiles of the other participants, I was almost hoping you could rank the presentations, before and afterwards. The apparently chaotic organization made so that at each meeting you would meet completely different people (ok, I was missing the main conference, there must have been a stable group there). Anyway, that really felt the social network come alive, the natural emergence of the popular, and the spontaneous aggregation.
I still wonder if that strong feeling of “2.0″ has been only a side effect of a slightly messy although charming organization or a planned strategy to give that “In” feeling. In the latter case, wow.

Technorati Tags: conference, cross media, event, Web 2.0

In spite of the warning provided by Christy/cross-mediaentertainment.com last year, I did go to Cross Media Week, mostly because all the side events were free and open to grant-less cross media buffs like me (thank you Picnic) - I followed very interesting presentations about virtual worlds, social networks, online journalism, iTV and advertising, environmental activism, but still the “core” of the conference seemed to be some sort of gravitational void, with many interesting people talking about many interesting things (all the talks are now available at the Picnic website), but often forgetting to even mention cross media.
It is clearly important to promote the concept of “cross media”, even just as a buzzword, among the professionals, although it was very clear almost nobody had actually a reflection on the topic; I guess in Europe the term “cross media” is still interpreted as some futuristic pitch or just another word for repurposing - I wonder what the dutch cross media gurus Monique de Haas and Jak Boumans say about that.

Anyway, in my humble opinion, the Cross Media Week aroused much interest without actually saying what is cross media, from the point of view of structure, production, or business models (actually there is a presentation today about business models, will post about it later); this is why I am going back to Amsterdam next month to the workshop Crossmedia Games @ Cinekid to explain all about it OK, some of it.

Technorati Tags: conference, cross media, event, futuristic, iTV, social networks, virtual worlds

Still at the Cross Media Week, interesting talk today to about social networks and open ID. While waiting for the ideal open ID to use everywhere without worrying about your personal data being stolen by terrorists etc., they were proposing to connect all social networks, so that it would be possible to : federate - have a friend on another network follow my content like it was on his;
synch - make the content visible in the same way from platform to platform;
move - move from one platform to the other very easily;
after this, the talk became too technical for me and I stopped understanding.
What I got, is that : social networks, like cross media, are fighting too to find common standards for more fluid communication. Technical convergence, personalization, and transferability are the main issues. The idea of an open ID, or digital identity, was fascinating, as was the concept of “shared secret”, that reminded me of secret societies where hundreds of thousands could mix with the crowd and still be connected although not personally acquainted (I think free masons and similar), an uncanny thought when related to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.
By the way, here you can see Twitter co-founder Biz Stone (who looks exactly like my friend Alvise, ciao Alvise )

Technorati Tags: conference, cross media, social networks, Web 2.0

Create your own locative game and organize it at the second edition of the “Come out &Play” festival in Amsterdam, within the Cross Media Week (September 21-29)
Games of the previous edition included spy games, sonic pong (! I have to ask how they did that!) make your own picture puzzle and conquer the city making phone calls.
These are great times for creative people…

Technorati Tags: Call for papers, conferences, cross media, locative games