bits and pieces between festivals and unfestivals
It's 3 a.m. in the morning outside Blue Blazer pub. As I smoke, drunk female programmer speaks to drunk movie director about actress X, among many things: I love her! She's fucking brilliant, fucking brilliant. I mean she... acts!
The official promotional movie of the Film Festival (to happen in June next year, not August), playing on screens in pubs and streets, misspells Julie Delpy's name as Delphy when presenting her Two Days in Paris movie. Each time I see it I can't believe it's been running like that for weeks.
At the tvunfestival07, I hear from Zattoo that tests and even usage proved users don't mind the ads. I can't for the life of me get why advertisers would find that sexy. I don't mind the ads, of course, because I know that they allow me to get some service or content for free. But it's obvious that I give the ads no attention. Why isn't that scary for those paying?
London and Edinburgh citizens certainly have a lot of coins to carry around and a rich lifestyle, as they afford to lose those coins. In London, I often come across pennies in the street, up to the 20 coin. Then Edinburgh may be even richer, for it was here that I found a 50p and, this very morning, a whole pound. Looking forward to GBP 2 and, for that matter, banknotes.
On a different note, how can such a rich nation still have separate taps for cold and hot water? It is highly inconvenient and it feels barbaric. Can I trade finding coins on the street for the amazing single water tap that the rest of the developed countries use?
One more thing bathroom-related and I'm done with this mundane line people hardly ever address: UK loo compliance is not about learning to flush their door handle up the wall, but about learning to flush any of the many types of door handles up the wall.
To go back to the tvunfestival, being here involved an opportunity to launch an idea, to introduce a product/ service, or to bring about a debate. However, I decided not to, as my theme of interest is simply too far out in the future: online TV consumption influencing (offline) TV content production. I believe such a relation will start forming and, together with better broadband penetration, it may take us closer to a TV consumption model of demand and offer, influenced by viewers in more ways than present remote controls and audience meters--so outdated, by the way.
This would happen in the next few years. Are we to address, influence, and shape it now? I would've said so until I realised that most of the attendants today are geeks and generally care about technology regardless of content, production, and consumption--quite abstract. To make it even sadder, the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival going on in a different part of town right now consists of TV people that choose to ignore online and its technologies altogether. So I haven't really got one single person to talk to. Or do I? I may discover tomorrow, as I walk over to the other side of the moon.
That perception (frustration?) aside, the coolest stuff so far (3 p.m. local) that's not springing from the mind of a friend of mine seems to have been Tioti, the new one-stop destination for all your online TV, to be launched next Friday. I wonder if I'm gonna watch more TV as more quality programs get online.
Meanwhile, I noticed that Blogger has a new button for embedding video in posts, just files uploads an d no URL (like they have for photos), and my first impressions are that a. certain users will be happy to share homemade videos provided they're not on YouTube already or in the not-so-rare situation where YouTube doesn't embed so well in Blogger and b. I hoped, before clicking it, that there'll be precisely a case of YouTube-Blogger integration (silly me!) including a search function. Maybe later.
Also, I checked QOOP, which allows you to create and send real postcards by using photos you have stored online already. In my case, I integrated with Flickr and thought it'd be so cool to send family and friends a real postcard from a website by using my photos. It costs, of course, function of format and quantity, at least, but you may able to benefit of the send-one-for-free offer.
My overall impression of the tvunfestival07 as it approaches its end with the presentation of Sclipo (whose owner owns no TV set, ha!), is that of a badly organised conference (except equipment and catering) that brought together too few people and scattered them into too many rooms without properly teaching them how to erase their past conferencing experiences/ to unconference if you wish. A last shot at fun, at least, may come out of the PowerPoint Karaoke.
Update, October 18th 2007: OK, the latter was fun, though I'm not sure why it qualified for that day other than being the sort of thing (geek fun?) a conference wouldn't accept in its schedule. Tioti didn't launch when announced. And then, a second better look at QOOP and I learned it's only for US right now. What worked that day very well was meeting new people, whether at the tvunfestival or a nearby pub. I will post separately about the TV festival experience next day, and my love's presentation at the tvunfestival.
Update, November 30th 2007: I read on Ian's blog that Sarah Mines, BBC Backstage PR, whom I met and enjoyed in a pub during the unfestival has started blogging.
The official promotional movie of the Film Festival (to happen in June next year, not August), playing on screens in pubs and streets, misspells Julie Delpy's name as Delphy when presenting her Two Days in Paris movie. Each time I see it I can't believe it's been running like that for weeks.
At the tvunfestival07, I hear from Zattoo that tests and even usage proved users don't mind the ads. I can't for the life of me get why advertisers would find that sexy. I don't mind the ads, of course, because I know that they allow me to get some service or content for free. But it's obvious that I give the ads no attention. Why isn't that scary for those paying?
London and Edinburgh citizens certainly have a lot of coins to carry around and a rich lifestyle, as they afford to lose those coins. In London, I often come across pennies in the street, up to the 20 coin. Then Edinburgh may be even richer, for it was here that I found a 50p and, this very morning, a whole pound. Looking forward to GBP 2 and, for that matter, banknotes.
On a different note, how can such a rich nation still have separate taps for cold and hot water? It is highly inconvenient and it feels barbaric. Can I trade finding coins on the street for the amazing single water tap that the rest of the developed countries use?
One more thing bathroom-related and I'm done with this mundane line people hardly ever address: UK loo compliance is not about learning to flush their door handle up the wall, but about learning to flush any of the many types of door handles up the wall.
To go back to the tvunfestival, being here involved an opportunity to launch an idea, to introduce a product/ service, or to bring about a debate. However, I decided not to, as my theme of interest is simply too far out in the future: online TV consumption influencing (offline) TV content production. I believe such a relation will start forming and, together with better broadband penetration, it may take us closer to a TV consumption model of demand and offer, influenced by viewers in more ways than present remote controls and audience meters--so outdated, by the way.
This would happen in the next few years. Are we to address, influence, and shape it now? I would've said so until I realised that most of the attendants today are geeks and generally care about technology regardless of content, production, and consumption--quite abstract. To make it even sadder, the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival going on in a different part of town right now consists of TV people that choose to ignore online and its technologies altogether. So I haven't really got one single person to talk to. Or do I? I may discover tomorrow, as I walk over to the other side of the moon.
That perception (frustration?) aside, the coolest stuff so far (3 p.m. local) that's not springing from the mind of a friend of mine seems to have been Tioti, the new one-stop destination for all your online TV, to be launched next Friday. I wonder if I'm gonna watch more TV as more quality programs get online.
Meanwhile, I noticed that Blogger has a new button for embedding video in posts, just files uploads an d no URL (like they have for photos), and my first impressions are that a. certain users will be happy to share homemade videos provided they're not on YouTube already or in the not-so-rare situation where YouTube doesn't embed so well in Blogger and b. I hoped, before clicking it, that there'll be precisely a case of YouTube-Blogger integration (silly me!) including a search function. Maybe later.
Also, I checked QOOP, which allows you to create and send real postcards by using photos you have stored online already. In my case, I integrated with Flickr and thought it'd be so cool to send family and friends a real postcard from a website by using my photos. It costs, of course, function of format and quantity, at least, but you may able to benefit of the send-one-for-free offer.
My overall impression of the tvunfestival07 as it approaches its end with the presentation of Sclipo (whose owner owns no TV set, ha!), is that of a badly organised conference (except equipment and catering) that brought together too few people and scattered them into too many rooms without properly teaching them how to erase their past conferencing experiences/ to unconference if you wish. A last shot at fun, at least, may come out of the PowerPoint Karaoke.
Update, October 18th 2007: OK, the latter was fun, though I'm not sure why it qualified for that day other than being the sort of thing (geek fun?) a conference wouldn't accept in its schedule. Tioti didn't launch when announced. And then, a second better look at QOOP and I learned it's only for US right now. What worked that day very well was meeting new people, whether at the tvunfestival or a nearby pub. I will post separately about the TV festival experience next day, and my love's presentation at the tvunfestival.
Update, November 30th 2007: I read on Ian's blog that Sarah Mines, BBC Backstage PR, whom I met and enjoyed in a pub during the unfestival has started blogging.
Labels: couch potato, far and away
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Banknotes are fairly rare, but it even happens as advertising, sometimes.
Now that is brilliant. Fucking brilliant :)
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