Man Is The Media.
Reflections On New Media Days #newmediadays
November 17th, 2009 by Martin
Here are a few personal reflections on New Media Days that ended a few hours ago. I should add that I of course only had partial experience as I couldn’t be everywhere. Also, full disclosure, Issuu (of which I am a co-founder) is sponsoring the conference, but these are my personal remarks as just an average participant.
- The venue (Koncerthuset) was excellent. Worked really well with the many different studios and the small corners for more intimate sessions.
- The program had great variety and more than a few top media people.
- Staff, tech and wifi worked excellent.
- The branding and marketing of the conference was impressive.
- Very well executed, except for the opening session(s) that was too long with no break (any conference organizer should know about The Learning Meeting. Hire Ib Ravn as a consultant).
It should be no surprise, given the conference’s title, that this conference is about media. There were quite a few techies craving more technology. I recommend you go to Reboot instead, but you probably did already.
There were also quite a few negative voices about this being old media rather than new media. I don’t think it’s the conference’s intention to be cutting edge, but rather to give media professionals an overview of where the market is going. As someone who keep up with the state of innovation in new media, I didn’t learn much new, but it was still great to see some of the big Kahunas and listen to argumentation from the biggest media companies in the country (which, at times, is scary business).
What I found annoying was that many of the presentations were heavily self-promoting. Of course you can rely on media people to put themselves front and center, but it got too much at times. Maybe because (some of?) the speakers weren’t paid? I was both impressed and sad watching my hero Shane Smith of Vice do a heavily branded tour de force of Vice’s many media outlets with practically no learning or pointers attached; maybe except the very ungrounded claim that they had no clue what they were doing.
But what really bothered me, and this is not owed to the organizers, was several demonstrations of very poor presentation skills. And from media professionals! The worst example was Julia Dimambro of Cherry Media who presented a few slides with loads of bullets and speed talked like a true champion. And to make matters worse, the footer revealed she had done the same presentation over half a year ago somewhere in Norway! Death by PowerPoint in action.
The Award show was pretty great, although people we’re perhaps a bit too tired after a long day. It was a pleasant surprise to see it hosted by Mikkel Munch-Fals, and the overly progressive choice of music performed by Giana Factory and Mouritz/Hørslev Project was a treat. The best service, Spotify, won the award but had no one present to accept it. I’ve never seen a company get so massive mention throughout a conference without being present or a sponsor.
I was happy to hear that Spotify may come to Denmark soon, although the following day Koda said that they had rejected the offer from Spotify. Probably it’s just Spotify nurturing the pressure from the public that thrives already. As a member of Koda myself I say take the best offer you can get. Spotify is available in Denmark through French and Finnish proxies, or friends abroad, and Danish artists are missing out the longer we wait.
Another highlight was Michael Wolff’s aggressive epitaph for newspapers, where self-proclaimed old media and newspaper man Martin Krasnik was clearly provoked.
In conclusion a great conference that did what I expected it to do. Next year I’d like to see some more surprising panels with a bolder mix of people and professions; and perhaps a little more cutting edge with less old media people (such as it were with the Free vs. Fee session that did nothing for me regardless of the very important topic). And I’m hoping to see every single media and technology spokespeople from the major political parties; not that New Media Days hadn’t tried, as their great opening satire demonstrated.
Also read my post from earlier today, about the ebook session that briefly talks about the coming role of publishing in the digital medial landscape.
