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c&binet hits the headlines

Valerie | 09 Nov 2009, 16:17

It’s only been two weeks since the inaugural c&binet forum and the widespread media coverage generated in the build up, during and post event indicates that interest has certainly not died down. 

Although much of the media spotlight was on Lord Mandelson’s announcement in which he introduced tough new measures to combat persistent illegal filesharing, there were a number of other themes that also came through in the numerous pieces of print, online and blog coverage and indeed, via the live Twitterfeed, where, at one stage, #cabinetforum trended at number three in the top 10 most popular Twitter tags.

Media headlines from Government committed to upholding copyright laws to “c&binet conference: Advertising the key” and “c@binet Forum showed that the UK games industry is leading the way in creativity and in business innovation” illustrate the diversity of discussions that took place during the three days, which ranged from the IP and copyright debate to the future of TV and new business models.

There was overriding consensus on the exciting opportunities afforded by the shifting landscape in which “content is king” and “consumers are in control” in this new digital world. As the Guardian reported, Simon Fuller argued that there is still room for many players in the emerging digital media market, whilst Ariadne Capital’s Julie Meyer proclaimed that “content is the new software”, a welcome message surely for many.

The #cabinetforum twitter feed is perhaps even more revealing in understanding reaction to the event and the issues discussed from the audience and those following in cyberspace. Feedback ranged from “c&binet: looks like the place to be today” to “user/audience generated content - live. Interesting to hear” and “c&binet, an historic event, one we need 2 build on - internationalising the big challenge & big opportunity”. It was also good to hear that “Twitter was a great part of #cabinetforum” – it hopefully provided a platform for enabling open and honest discussion in addition to the live updates from the event, enabling people from as far afield as Vietnam and India to listen and participate in the event.

To quote Gamesbrief, c&binet was certainly an excellent start at getting the creative industries to talk to each other about new ways of collaborating and the lessons learned will no doubt pave the way for further discussion about the future of c&binet and its evolving agenda.

Media & blog coverage:

Two weeks until the ‘Cabinet Forum’...
Creative Times, published 15.10.09
http://www.creativetimes.co.uk/news/two-weeks-until-the-cabinet-forum

Coutts backs C&binet
Music Week, published: 20.10.09
http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1038969&c=1

Strike one to c&binet proposals
Music Week, published 07.11.09
http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1039067

c&binet conference: Advertising the key, says Highfield
Media Week, published: 27.10.09 – 1:23pm
http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/news/948573/C-binet-conference-Advertising-key-says-Highfield/

C&binet Conference: Government committed to upholding copyright laws
Media Week, published: 27.10.09 – 2:45pm
http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/News/MostEmailed/948588/C-binet-conference-Government-committed-upholding-copyright-laws/

@ c&binet: Creative Industries So Far Divided On The Way Ahead
PaidContent, published: 27.10.09 – 6.15 am
http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-cbinet-creative-industries-so-far-divided-on-the-way-ahead/

@c&binet: Free Content Must Pack a Paid Punch
PaidContent, published: 27.10.09 – 8:29pm
http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-cbinet-free-content-must-pack-a-paid-punch/

@ c&binet: Vivendi Wants UK ‘Three-Strikes’, Mandelson Announcement Due Wednesday
PaidContent, published: 27.10.09 – 2:45pm
http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-cabinet-vivendi-wants-uk-three-strikes-mandelson-announcement-due-wedn/

Consider charging for iPlayer, says ex-BBC executive Ashley Highfield
Guardian, published: 27.10.09 – 1:56pm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/27/charge-iplayer-ex-bbc-man

David Lammy calls for pan-European approach to copyright protection
Guardian, published: 27.10.09 – 4:50pm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/27/david-lammy-copyright-piracy-europe

EMI’s Leoni-Sceti Calls For ‘Three Strikes’ Law
Billboard, published: 27.10.09
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3icf13d4806aba58dec4e5c162c3a49ff1

Government calls on Europe to clear up copyright
Music Week, published: 27.10.09 - 10:10am
http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1039020&c=1

The promise of Creative Britain
Wired UK, published: 27.10.09
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2009-10/27/the-promise-of-creative-britain.aspx

Vivendi head calls for ‘three-strikes’ rule to tackle UK filesharers
Guardian,published: 27.10.09 - 12:07pm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/27/vivendi-file-sharing-levy

Vivendi CEO says IPO an option for NBC Universal
Reuters, published: 27.10.09 – 7:19pm BJT
http://cn.reuters.com/article/companyNewsEng/idCNLR40433320091027

c&binet conference: Mandelson reveals ‘three strikes’ rule on illegal downloading
Media Week, published: 28.10.09
http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/News/MostEmailed/948962/C-binet-conference-Mandelson-reveals-three-strikes-rule-illegal-downloading/

Cabinet Forum showed that the UK games industry is leading the way in creativity and in business innovation
Games Brief, published: 28.10.09
http://www.gamesbrief.com/2009/10/cabinet-forum-showed-that-the-uk-games-industry-is-leading-the-way-in-creativity-and-particularly-in-business-innovation/

Content is king in digital age, says Simon Fuller
Guardian, published: 28.10.09 – 07:21 am
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/28/simon-fuller

Costs would exceed savings on Mandelson plan, ISPs say - and streaming companies not eager either
Guardian – Technology Blog, published: 28.10.09
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/oct/28/costs-piracy-filesharing-mandelson

Julie Meyer: “Content is the New Software”
Real Business, published: 28.10.09
http://www.realbusiness.co.uk/news/finance-and-banking/5711591/julie-meyer-content-is-the-new-software.thtml

Mandelson puts ‘three strikes’ internet plan in motion
ZD Net, published: 28.10.09 – 05:38 pm
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,1000000097,39843951,00.htm

Music boss: Mandelson is wrong on internet pirates
Times Online, published: 28.10.09
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6894090.ece

Net Pirates to be ‘disconnected’
BBC, published: 28.10.09
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8328820.stm

TV of the future ‘will predict what you want to watch’
Telegraph, published: 28.10.09 – 8:00 am
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/6447391/TV-of-the-future-will-predict-what-you-want-to-watch.html

UK Will Urge EC To Legalise Mashups, Format-Shifting, Content Sharing
PaidContent, published: 28.10.09 – 12.48 pm
http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-uk-will-urge-ec-to-legalise-mashups-format-shifting-content-sharing/

Cost of Mandelson plan would come to more than savings
Broadband Expert, published: 29.10.09
http://www.broadband-expert.co.uk/blog/broadband-news/cost-of-mandelson-plan-would-come-to-more-than-savings/775021

Government to protect ‘creative’ contractors
Brookson, published: 29.10.09
http://www.brookson.co.uk/news-and-press/19432518/government-to-protect-creative-contractors.aspx

Illegal downloaders face web ban
Press Association, published: 29.10.09
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5iKGD0NALk_5SbufCB4iVJZ7ItQaQ

Is the internet heading for a midlife crisis as it hits its 40th birthday?SC Magazine
SC Magazine, published: 29.10.09
http://www.scmagazineuk.com/Is-the-internet-heading-for-a-midlife-crisis-as-it-hits-its-40th-birthday/article/156440/

JP Rangaswami on Lord Mandelson’s piracy plans
Telegraph, published: 29.10.09
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/shanerichmond/100004091/jp-rangaswami-on-lord-mandelsons-piracy-plans/

Mandelson delivers on three-strikes warning. But will it make Pirates pay, or drive them underground?
Daily Mail, published: 29.10.09
http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/28333/mandelson-delivers-three-strikes-warning

Peter Mandelson goes to war on web pirates
Daily Mail, published: 29.10.09
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1223718/Peter-Mandelson-goes-war-web-pirates.html

Saving local journalism: some thoughts ahead of C&binet
Onlinejournalism Blog, published: 29.10.09
http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2009/10/29/saving-local-journalism-some-thoughts-ahead-of-cbinet/

TalkTalk Threatens Legal Action Over Mandelson’s File-Sharing Strategy
eWeek Europe, published: 29.10.09
http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/talktalk-threatens-legal-action-over-mandelson-s-file-sharing-strategy-2272

C&binet fever
Nameless Freerange Creatives, published: 26.10.09
http://blog.nameless.co.uk/

C&binet Commentary
Nameless Freerange Creatives, published: 26.10.09
http://blog.nameless.co.uk/

C&binet Creative Infrastructure Thoughts
Nameless Freerange Creatives, published: 26.10.09
http://blog.nameless.co.uk/

Disruption and curiosity: #outofthecloset unconference
Pervasive Media Studio, published: 28.10.09
http://www.pmstudio.co.uk/news/2009/10/28/disruption-and-curiosity-outofthecloset-unconference

A c&binet unconference
Nameless Freerange Creatives, published: 29.10.09
http://blog.nameless.co.uk/

c&binet forum - summary of discussions from the first morning

C&binet | 27 Oct 2009, 13:39

A call to unleash the full extent of Europe’s creative potential ended this morning’s session – one that began by addressing as unproductive the ‘deafness and shouting’ around piracy that has dominated discussion up to now.

Creative Industries minister Siôn Simon, Dame Gail Rebuck of Random House and Chris Clarke of Sapient Nitro debated the shades of grey between the polarised opinion, with a consensus emerging on the necessity of moving forward on a range of fronts – new business models, acceptance of consumer’s mindsets, and proportionate action to protect rights holders.

Vivendi’s Jean-Bernard Levy, interviewed by Amanda Andrews, set out how his company is successfully straddling the content production and distribution worlds, declared the album not dead and dropped a teaser for things to come – gaming guitar heroes exchanging virtual axes for virtual decks with DJ Hero.

Wired’s David Rowan then drew out visions for the near future from the Creative Infrastructure panel – all-seeing, all-knowing TV that responds like a Wii, protective walls around creative businesses coming crashing down, and sexed-up meta data.

The rights issue returned, with Ashley Highfield contrasting the easy march of technological progress against the complexity of liberating content for future exploitation. That before David Rowan asked if piracy isn’t dead in the face of the opportunities opening up for creative leaders prepared to take risks and sail into choppy waters.

As a curtain-raiser for Lord Mandelson’s speech tomorrow, intellectual property minister David Lammy had a dream of a clear, fair and reasonable future where ‘freedom of access is not the same as access for free.’

Odile Quintin, the EU Director General for Education and Culture closed this morning’s session with a call for greater partnerships between the creative industries and educators to unleash the full extent of Europe’s creative potential.

The response so far to the event from the online community has been tremendous, with #cabinetforum trending at one point during the session.

Many thanks. Stay with us for Elio Leoni-Scetifrom EMI Music restarting proceedings before discussions on Free Content and Scale, Risk and Investment.

Creativity and Commerce

Valerie | 12 Oct 2009, 17:10

C&binet ambassador comment: Patrick McKenna, Chief Executive of Ingenious Media, a leading investor in the creative industries.

Creativity and commerce often make uneasy bedfellows.  Here, in an interview first published in HOUSE magazine, Patrick McKenna talks about how we need to get entrepreneurial business talent and creative talent working better together.

“Creative talent is highly mobile and UK creative talent is particularly attractive to global companies. Whilst this isn’t a bad thing in itself, we must build greater business capacity within our own creative industries so that the UK can benefit from the commercial opportunities generated by our writers, producers, musicians and other artists”.

The relationship between art and commerce has always been fraught.  Business and creative people are often motivated by quite different impulses. There doesn’t have to be conflict of course.  Having worked with some of the biggest names in the creative world – from rock stars to theatre directors – I know from long personal experience just how rewarding, enjoyable and productive good partnerships can be when you get the essentials of the relationship right.

The UK has always had a strong entrepreneurial culture to complement the strength of its artistic culture.  This combination of attributes reflecting two different forms of creativity has often proved beneficial in helping to fuse the needs of art and commerce. 

In small businesses the benefits of matching such different skill-sets are usually obvious.  However it’s often not so obvious when it comes to bigger businesses.  Here there is frequently a gulf of understanding and trust to bridge - between finance and investment on one side, and creativity on the other. 

As a young partner in one of the major accounting firms I could see the growing importance of talent to business and therefore took a very conscious decision to learn everything possible about the entertainment world - how the relevant bits of the legal system worked, how the commercial side of things worked, and most importantly how the creative process itself worked. I read up on all the technical stuff and but also spent time with some very talented individuals from film, theatre, music and television learning about their aspirations and concerns.  After that it was much easier for me to talk business with artists, managers and entertainment entrepreneurs so as to understand what was important to them and so help them to attain their commercial objectives.

Partnership is the key, particularly in an ever more competitive and complex media environment.  First there is the initial partnership between the creative artist and the entrepreneur.  Later on, when the entrepreneur wants to grow the business, another kind of partnership is called for – a partnership between the entrepreneur and a more experienced businessman or woman, someone for example who has a mastery of the financial markets.

The most successful partnerships are the ones that link a truly creative person – whether artistically or entrepreneurially creative - with a strong business person. It’s a waste of time, frankly, to expect a creative genius to become a skilled business type as well.  And conversely, a businessman or woman can never really become a truly creative person in the fullest sense, meaning someone with exceptional flair and originality. Of course we can all learn more about each other’s strengths and skill-sets, and it’s important to make this effort to get mutual recognition and respect.  But there are clear limitations on both sides. 
Entrepreneurs are visionaries who generally thrive in relationships with experienced business talent.  They tend to have very similar characteristics to creative and artistic people.  But it is a mistake to assume that all entrepreneurs are necessarily good at business. 

At the Really Useful Group my relationship with Andrew Lloyd Webber was essentially a marriage of creative and business skills – a kind of model partnership.  As long as there is clear empathy, real understanding and mutual respect for each other’s talents and abilities, then there’s no limit to what can be achieved.  This arrangement allows the individual with extraordinary creative talent to be able to concentrate completely on being creative, knowing that the money and business side of things is being taken care of.

This is not to say that creative people shouldn’t be interested in commerce – far from it.  What it means is that creative individuals in such partnerships are freer to focus on what they are best at and most interested in.

Everything we do at Ingenious is fundamentally based on this idea of partnership – it’s all about acting as a bridge between media and creativity on one side, and business and finance on the other.  We try to be sympathetic to the insights and needs of both parties.  Much of it is to do with that word experience. You need to have an exceptionally deep knowledge and understanding of progressive media and the creative economy to understand its particular “box-office” risk characteristics, to be able to execute this bridge-building function successfully.

Partnership is a two way street of course.  Sometimes creative people are not necessarily keen on full collaboration, influenced perhaps by their earlier choices of business or investment partner.  But for things to work to mutual advantage, partners on the creative side do need to be engaged with the commercial process, which means understanding the requirements of financiers as well as managing the expectations of the other partners.

People with creative talent are often shielded from the expectations of business by their relationships with managers or entrepreneurial partners, and this is no bad thing.  In such cases it is absolutely necessary for the entrepreneur to be able to balance the needs and expectations of all the interested parties.  This in turn means that they have to be more sophisticated in their interactions with the world of finance.

Building strong partnerships between business and creativity ultimately provides artists and their managers with more options. It helps them build better and bigger platforms on which to show off their talent, allows them to retain greater control over their “IP” and thereby hold onto a bigger slice of the commercial pie.
One common ingredient to success in the games, publishing, television, music and film industries, is of course great people. This may sound obvious but believe me spotting talent, whether creative or entrepreneurial talent, is by no means easy.  You can become a business hero in the entertainment world almost overnight if you can successfully identify and align yourself with an extraordinary new talent. But it’s easy to get it wrong.

All countries have their own distinctive cultures.  We are awash with creative talent in the UK, but we don’t have a culture of taking the creative industries seriously as businesses, unlike the USA.  This goes back to the education system.  There’s a lot of emphasis these days in our great art colleges on getting creative people to learn about the basics of business and entrepreneurship.  What I don’t see much of is evidence of students in business schools and on finance courses at universities being taught about the distinctive characteristics of the media and cultural industries and of the creative process.

It’s not surprising therefore that top quality business talent is rarely attracted to the creative economy sector.  There are business graduates out there who are well educated, have a choice about what kind of business to go into but generally don’t choose the creative industries because they see them as being uncertain, more about luck than judgment, or generally “flaky”, with the rewards going predominantly to “the creatives”. 

In the UK we need more investors, financiers and business folk to understand the creative process.  There is still a big gulf, generally speaking, between the worlds of creativity on the one hand, and finance and business on the other.  This is damaging to the overall prospects of the creative economy.  From an investor point of view, it is clear to me that if business people were more engaged in the creative process, understood it better and could see it working up close and personal early on, they would stand a better chance of recognising good business and investment opportunities.
 
Creative talent is highly mobile and UK creative talent is particularly attractive to global companies. Whilst this isn’t a bad thing in itself, we must build greater business capacity within our own creative industries so that the UK can benefit from the commercial opportunities generated by our writers, producers, musicians and other artists.  We should aim to retain more of the economic ownership of UK creativity, rather than seeing so much of the commercial upside disappearing to the USA and elsewhere.

To do that we need to build creative industry business capacity in the UK. The way to do that is by starting with small and medium-sized businesses, helping them with business and management expertise, helping them to grow sustainably and persuading them not to sell out to the first trade buyer who comes along. 

We also need to educate the financial and wider business communities to have a better understanding of the business opportunities being generated by the exciting new world of digital media.  There’s been a lot of talk about value destruction and collapsing business models, but there are also some fantastic opportunities out there if you know how to recognize them.

If we can make progress on these fronts we have the possibility of establishing a virtuous circle, where great creativity is matched by great business talent, which is matched by sustainable investment, which in turn helps generate profits and attracts better people and yet more investment, and so on.  This is a prize worth aiming for!

£1m venture capital launch for West Midlands creative businesses

Valerie | 24 Sep 2009, 10:26

C&binet comment: Thomas Dillon, Chairman, Creative Advantage Fund, Birmingham

Today is an exciting day for me as Chairman of Creative Advantage Fund (CAF) with the launch of a new £1 million round of investment in the creative industries of the West Midlands. We support c&binet and see the project as an opportunity not only to communicate with creative business in the digital space, but also to evangelise for the role of public venture capital in the creative sector.

Since it was set up in 2000 –by Birmingham City Council and West Midlands Arts (now part of the Arts Council), with additional moneys from the regional development agency, the European Regional Development Fund and the private sector – CAF has invested over £1.3 million in creative businesses, helping Midlands-based SMEs like Hotbed Media Ltd. and Maverick Television establish themselves among the leading independent TV production companies outside London. Today we are opening up a new fund with up to £1 million being made available to small and medium sized enterprises.

CAF’s objective is to bridge the “equity gap”, addressing market failure in the provision of risk capital to SMEs in the creative sector.  With the support of Birmingham City Council, we are now actively seeking investment opportunities in our region in the range £75,000 to £150,000. Any West Midlands-based creative SME’s with an interest should contact us at enquiries@creativeadvantagefund.co.uk

CAF uses the DCMS definition of creative industries, namely “those activities which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property”. Past investments have included film, TV, theatre, educational services, toy design and software. We have gathered a great deal of experience in the practicalities of investment in the sector and work sympathetically with creative businesses to help them prepare themselves for investment (so-called “investment readiness”). We usually appoint a non-executive director to the board of the investee company. This director supports and counsels the business, a service which adds value beyond the mere provision of cash.

CAF was born from the idea that those forms of creative activity that express themselves through business are best supported by shared risk-taking, not grant-giving. Venture capital is a long-term game, but our experience is that public venture capital is an effective and low-cost method of supporting innovation. We are looking forward with excitement to finding and supporting a new generation of creative entrepreneurs in the West Midlands.

With access to finance a key theme of next month’s c&binet forum, I will be following the debate closely and will be looking to share what we have learned with CAF whenever possible.

Vodafone rebrand puts the consumer first

Valerie | 22 Sep 2009, 10:33

Vodafone has announced plans to revamp its brand and marketing, part of its biggest shift in brand strategy in four years.

The mobile-phone giant is replacing its “Make the most of now” tag line after four years in favour of “Power to you” as it prepares to launch a suite of new services to capitalise on the growing popularity of the mobile internet, highlighting the increasing shift of power away from brands towards consumer led engagement.

Speaking to the Times, chief executive Vittorio Colao said of the new brand identity:

“It is not the brand talking anymore and telling the customer what to do. It is the customer who will decide. I am trying to steer the whole company in this direction… It really means that Vodafone puts the customer at the centre of what we do.”

Having fallen behind rival O2 and dropping to third place after T-Mobile UK and Orange recently announced their merger, Vodafone’s challenge ahead will be to find new revenue streams in order to capitalise on a new breed of net savvy Smartphone users.

This autumn the company will launch an open platform that lets any developer create and sell software applications that can be downloaded to mobiles, recognising the success Apple has seen selling 65,000 applications from games to travel news more than 1.5 billion times and creating a new revenue stream for handset manufacturers above and beyond the initial sale of a handset.

Indeed, Vodafone has its sights firmly set on monetisation – Colao believes that by becoming a virtual kiosk, the company will be able to charge small amounts for small purchases.

“Every day we charge 1 cent, 2 cents for a text messages billions and billions of times,” he said. “Customers trust us to do it in a proper way. We are secure and we have big customer care operations that can deal with problems if they arise.”

As newspaper publishers try to work out how they can make their business pay in a digital world, it appears that Vodafone may have the answer for now in diversifying and offering new and exciting services to secure that all important customer loyalty.

Guardian Tech Media Invest 100: creative talent doing well despite the recession

Valerie | 07 Sep 2009, 21:16

SlicethePie, Playfish and Seatwave are just some of the companies to be featured in the Guardian Tech Media Invest 100, a list compiled for the first time of the top 100 players in today’s tech media space.

Picked for their innovation and creativity over the past year in areas as diverse as mobile applications, racing games and music recognition, the list of companies to watch indicates that despite the credit crunch, the UK entertainment and media market remains a hotbed of innovation, with growth expected again after 2010, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, when the UK will be brought within $2bn (£1.2bn) of Europe’s largest entertainment and media market, Germany by 2013.

Unsurprisingly, of the trends that are expected to be big this year, social networking and microblogging are singled out to remain strong growth areas on the back of the success of Twitter. The report also highlights companies like Tweetmeme, a third party Twitter application and iDesktop.tv, which helps with searching and watching YouTube videos who are also finding success, riding on the waves generated by existing business models.

Of the investment climate, William Stevens, founder of Europe Unlimited, the business consultancy that organises the top 100, warns of both the difficult market and investment conditions but is nevertheless optimistic about the quality of international startups across Europe, “especially within industries such as tech media that have lower investment needs.“

Despite figures from the British Venture Capital Association showing that investments made by private equity and venture capital firms into UK technology and media companies generally fell from £2.8bn in 2007 to £265m in 2008, the companies listed in the Tech Media Invest 100 are clearly testament to the fact that an innovative idea can find support. Indeed, the overriding message appears to be “perseverance pays”.

Erik Jorgensen, an Intel Capital investment manager, and one of the board members said:

“For those companies with proven business models and very good prospects, it is not too difficult to raise venture financing”.