Just got back from UGtv, crashed on the couch and have just woken up to Open University classics. How to give yourself jetlag without ever getting on a plane...
Basically it was reasonably well attended with a few interesting speakers (and good catering too). I was hoping to hear about innovative image and film creation based on partnerships between production, broadcast and audience players. In the end, most talks and their associated questions were largely to do with how cheap UGtv is... More later if I can muster the enthusiasm.
The obligatory YouTube videos and Flickr photo set
Comments (3)
In retrospect, I'm not sure a panel discussion is the right format. There are so many perspectives and the issues are relatively complicated. The result is that the group discussion ends up being a disheartening mess (with money-talk dominating).
Next time I think we might do something like BarCamp (http://barcamp.org/BarCampLondon). Anyone who comes will be invited to give a short presentation on their approach/project/perspective. If you want to discuss it, you discuss it one-to-one after the event.
My mum (bless her) baked the cakes. My fiance and I iced them. The letters spelled out UGTV '06. They should have been laid out to make that easy to read, rather than a big jumble of text.
Posted by Andy Bell | July 24, 2006 10:12 AM
Posted on July 24, 2006 10:12
Hi Andy,
Gosh, I hope I didn't seem unfair in my comments. Certainly no need to apologise for what was on balance a pretty cool event.
I guess my disappointment was partially my own fault as I have a bad habit of setting my expectations high.
The other factor to mention is that we co-created the event we deserved. The speakers were responding to the audience and had it wanted to, the audience could have taken the debate in a new direction.
Format-wise it would be great to have a forum where industry experts and the digerati could discuss in a deeper (or at least longer) way the issues of the day. I felt like I would have quite liked a few of the questioners, myself included, to be have been able to pursue the discussion rather than just have one or two stabs at it.
Just some thoughts...
Oh, and I did love those cakes, who made them, and what was the significance of the letters?
All the best,
Dug
Posted by Dug | July 22, 2006 8:15 PM
Posted on July 22, 2006 20:15
Hey Dug,
Thanks for your comments, and thanks for coming.
I agree, the event was disappointingly money focused. We had hoped to get people thinking creatively about the possibilities of user-generated TV. This is why we exhibited the washing machine and why we had self-generated cakes. The original version of the talk from Mint had much more about creative concepts for user-generated TV (which is one approach to bringing the focus back to users) but we cut it down as we didn't want to hog the stage at our own event.
Also, I totally take your point about the 'Thanks to Flickr' slide. We knew it wasn't right but we had run out of time. The only excuse is too many late nights getting the event organised. Next time we will do better.
When / if we organise another event, we are keen to have a session on rights. And we've learnt a whole lot from organising UGTV '06, so next time we will be able to focus the event's direction more effectively.
Cheerio,
Andy
Posted by Andy Bell | July 22, 2006 8:06 PM
Posted on July 22, 2006 20:06