We Are Q Inc.

This year, The Banff World Television festival and nextMedia Banff 2010 was a combined event. Digital media, new media and TV sessions and parties filled 3 world wind days! Luckily I still had time to squeeze in a visit to the Banff Hot Springs (so nice). Now that I’m back from Banff, I can reflect on the event.

Follow my twitter stream of the event here.

The quality of the sessions was high, many were insightful and interesting. This year, because of the combined event, I spent a bit more time attending the TV sessions which expanded my thinking on storytelling and the cross-over from the narrative we know to the branding of the narrative that will be more and more transparent and pervasive. Given the medias’ pandemonium on the demise of TV, branded content seems to be the destiny of both the red and the blue pills.

A few sessions really stood out for me. An interview with Ricky Gervais – if you have the chance to see this man speak don’t miss it. Matt Mason‘s presentation on media and piracy was an excellent framing of the issues related to piracy. His book The Pirate’s Dilemma is a recommended read and a great continuation of what Lawrence Lessig started.

Faris Yakob: Stuff That Doesn’t Work Yet was a treat. His talk, albeit a bit silly at start, drew me in by the way he framed and articulated the gravitas (love using that word) of the media moment we’re in. Yakob lead me to Henry Jenkins, MIT Professor, media scholar.

Henry Jenkins is the author of several books including Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture and Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. His point of view of today in media is insightful. He says:

On participatory culture: A world governed by participatory culture has the potential to be much more diverse in a world controlled by a small number of media producers. As average people develop the ability to tell their stories, we’re seeing different perspectives emerge. We’re seeing different groups gain representation, we’re seeing groups challenge the dominant media images that have been constructed for their lives. And the challenge for those of us caring about social justice issues is to make sure that these tools get into the hands of those people who have been the most oppressed and most dispossessed to get their stories out and get their stories into circulation.  As we expand who has the power to tell stories, we have the potential to tell stories that grab our imagination, to touch our hearts, that come not from entertainment infrastructure but from some average citizen who’s reality has never been depicted on the screen before. And I think that’s the real excitement of our present moment of media change.

Explaining the concept of convergence media: Every story, every brand, every image, every relationship plays itself out across a maximum amount of media channels. The information system is converged, it’s integrated. We carry pieces of media with us all through the system. And that’s being shaped top down by decisions made in corporate boardrooms and bottom up by decisions made in teenagers’ bedrooms. In other words it’s shaped by the integration of the media industry so the same company may own interest in all media platforms and it’s shaped by teenagers wanting the media where they want it, how they want it, in the form they want it, when they want it. And they’re willing to take it illegally if it’s not available to them legally. Those two pressures are working together to create a much more integrated media sector than we’ve seen before.

For more on Henry Jenkins, check out the video below.

Thanks to Mark Greenspan, Amy Davies and the entire team at nextMEDIA and Banff 2010 for a great conference!