But if it wants to follow on from the iPhone then it has to extend what’s gone before. It’s going to have to fill the space as advertised and provide some desktop-like features. To occupy the sub-notebook/netbook world, it’s going to need a bit more functionality than a mobile phone. It’s revealing that I’m writing this on an iPhone but will upload it from the desktop where I feel I have more control.

Screen size

When web browsing I’m expecting to get the full desktop version of every website, unless a page has specific browser detection this already happens with the iPhone. But on the desktop I expect to have extended ways to deal with the content, of which plugins and background processes are a big part. Will Apple allow me to install a Delicious plugin or chop and change between 2 – 3 apps running at once? Will I be able to have my web code open in one programme and the site I’m working on in another? Better yet, will they let me install an alternative browser, one with a wealth of extensions already developed? All very doubtful.

Size of the market

Currently I see good uses for the iPad in business and education. Imagine the delivery person using it to find your house, or the hospital doctor pulling up digital X-Rays, or the classes with lessons tailored to individual students with content delivered at a suitable pace and level.

If marketed and priced right, I can even see it becoming the next big gaming device at Christmas. Evidence suggests major games developers are already switching to the platform. But what will take the iPad into the mass market?

Essential or extravagance?

With the iPod and iPhone, Apple were entering established markets where demand for the product type was already developed. With the iPad it’s different since most consumers won’t have heard of a tablet, let alone be convinced of why they need one.

The boundary between creating and consuming could be what makes the difference here.

The adaptable device

The genius behind this device is that Apple haven’t bowed to the pressures of the rumour mill. They haven’t created an overcomplicated piece of hardware full of whizz-bang features (OK, it could’ve had a camera). The genius of Johnny Ive and co. is that they didn’t tinker with a winning formula. It looks like an oversized iPhone. This leaves the software people to work from a solid foundation and build features into later updates that match developer and consumer needs (sorry guys, not necessarily ‘wants’).

Another genius move is that Apple haven’t cornered themselves too much with the possibilities for this device, meaning that everyone interested has their own thoughts and hopes for what it can do. Software driven products like the iPad have a huge potential to capture the imagination.

So if anyone’s listening and if this post can be at all useful, I’d be interested to hear your ideas on what you’d like to see it do.

Crowdfunding works in a variety of ways but is difficult to set up legally. A research project for the Open Society Institute couldn’t come up with a way for it to work.

Charles describes himself as a ‘corrupted social scientist’. His talk was designed to cover how to finance ventures. There are four conventional ways: venture capital, angel investors, family loans and loan finance.

Loan finance is under used. There’s a fixation on venture capital (VC) in the tech world. VC is problematic. Venture capitalists insist on preference stock, different from ordinary stock. They usually want extra rights and extra protections, they’re taking a risk yes, but anyone else investing in your business do to, for example friends and family. Why should venture capitalist’s be different?

Venture capitalists will lure you with high valuations for your business. But they completely screw with your corporate governance and articles. For Trampoline their articles became 12 times longer once venture capitalists became involved. You also suddenly have to hire lawyers, of course there are bills associated. Venture capitalists also use stealth control.

There are all kinds of agendas that are connected with VC fund life-cycles. You’re tied into the life-cycle of the VC fund. He’s not saying venture capitalists are bad, but there’s not enough discussion of their drawbacks. The recession and what’s happened over the last couple of years has had affects that some people think means VC funding won’t exist in the same format in five years time. They’re investing in fewer and larger deals. They’re focussing on seed and post-breakeven businesses. This leaves a large swathe of businesses not covered by VC.

What is crowdfunding?

The name comes by applying the concept of ‘crowdsourcing’ to that of money. It’s based around using the internet to build a much larger group of private investors. It’s a shift to a much more transparent form of investment (normal VC is very secretive). With crowdfunding everything goes into the public domain.

The concept of crowdfunding came from the early years of the 90s. The first wave started with the music industry. Sellaband.com and BandStocks.com are examples of crowdfunding. An artist puts themselves on the site and fans get a share of the proceeds if they make money. This works well in the film and music sectors where fan bases already exist.

The second wave (of which KickStarter.com in New York is one) was in the non-profit world.

The third wave was based on journalism. Conventional journalism was in decline. Spot.us is a site where journalists pitch ideas.

Trampoline started with VC funding and raised $6m in 2007. They realised it wasn’t a good time to bring in VC funding so they looked for alternative ways to do it. They spoke to their solicitors about crowdfunding, but lawyers don’t like innovation. The legal sector is based on precedent, their solicitors simply said crowdfunding is illegal.

Instead, they found a lawyer who wasn’t dismissive. Francis Irvine does work with the Open Rights Group, he likes innovation. After two months of scratching their heads, they found a legal way to do crowdfunding. They set themselves a £1m target to raise within a year. They’re doing it in a few tranches, they’ve closed their first and the second will close in the Spring.

This method of funding is not mainstream yet, but it will be. However it’s not for the faint hearted.

Benefits

They’re not victims to the VC fund life-cycle. They have a much bigger pool of influential people (investors) that will make them successful (Trampoline is only just seeing the benefits of this). Some would think having so many investors/voices would be a nightmare? However, arguing with investors is good, it challenges your ideas.

It’s not widely known, but the UK Government runs an Enterprise Investment Scheme which is unbelievably good. Wealthy people get 20% written off their tax bill and are covered for 60% of ther investment if the company goes bust.

The FSA is a nightmare though. If you get it wrong you are personally liable (not the company). It’s not easy to get started, you need to work your networks hard, do due diligence and speak to a lot of people. The Trampoline website has a few case studies. However you won’t find any content inviting people to invest on their site, they have to stay within the law.

Questions

Q. There seems to be a bias towards rich people. In the FSA regulations, if you’re seeking investment you can’t advertise it to the world (this protects the grannys). The FSA says you need to be a high-net-worth individual or a sophisticated investor to do it, but Charles how do you do it?

A. It’s illegal with a private company to incite people to invest. However, journalists can say anything they want. Journalists are your friends. You still need a website, but Trampoline’s is full of case studies. There are still exclusions: high-net-worth means £300,000 in net assets not including their main residence. You can tell these people or someone who works in the finance industry (a ‘sophisticated’ investor) that you’re looking for investment. But even if you tell them, you still can’t give them a business plan. You have to set up a labyrinthine system to get them to the next step towards investment. Sellaband and BandStocks are not selling equity, trampoline are the first to do this.

Q. What type of person are we talking about as an investor? Who invests in you?

A. There are two categories. Either 3rd or 4th levels down in their network or friends (friends of friends). Also, people who’ve read about them in TechCrunch or some other publication, they’re often semi professional tech investors.

We traditionally assume that PLCs float their shares on the stock exchange, really they can give their shares to anyone, Charles is looking at ways to reverse engineer a public company to be crowdfunded.

Andrew Shoben of Greyworld

It doesn’t take much for humans to creatve a narrative. Andrew shows off his work called Trace, at Hampton Court. The point was for people to go in and lose themselves, not to find the centre. Inside there are fragments of sound designed to add to the feeling.

The next project he showed is one they’ve just finished called ‘Words‘. Andrew likes his work to be known as public art, not sound art or any other name you put on it. The BBC came to his company asking for a project and Words was the result. It was designed to see how much a word weighs, e.g. Does the word’s length add to its weight? People were given a box at the installation. As they walk through the box begins to glow, as you walk around the space you realise there are lots of words. You realise in the space you can hear other peoples words (through headphones), words that they’ve left hanging in space. New meanings emerge between your own words and someone elses, they create a third meaning. This project was inspired by the lyrics of David Bowie.

Q. How do you come up with ideas?

They usually come up with them in the space where it will be displayed. The BBC are quite adventurous, but often push the boundaries into technologies that are still developing and may not be able to support the original artistic vision. This project was designed to be rock solid in current technology. It works on computer tracking through visual sensors. Technically it’s not clever, but it’s fulfilling the artistic vision fully. One guy who experienced it said it’s like walking through someone elses dream.

Eva Rucki of Troika

She focusses on the boundaries of technology and design.

One project took a portable projector that was used to display mobile phone text messages on street signs and random objects. Warner Bros. wanted to use it for a concert for the band The Streets. During the concert people didn’t understand what was going on because there were multiple projections. The projectors were trained on any surface, even members of the crowd. They found thst if you restrict people to a format, in this instance a text message, they are much more likely to respond and send texts. The blank canvas scares people.

BA ‘All The Time In The World’

They created an unconventional world clock for British Airways at Terminal 5 (Heathrow). It shows times across the world but by smaller city not the capitals. The idea is to get people travelling in their minds. They wanted to push typefaces, they used electroluminescent material. Their display is very adaptable, they wanted to give it a human touch, it can display caps, small caps, joined up etc. It’s beautiful.

BA Cloud

Individually controllable flip dots, magnetic components. The installation was to be hung in the space between escalators. They compared the space to an aircraft takeoff. It used 7km of wires inside. One of the most rewarding parts of the project: because it was art all the engineers and construction workers who put it in place were cynical, but as soon as it was switched on people started to take pictures and send them to their families, this was important since the art was connecting with people straight away.

Onedotzero

Installaton photo shoot. Was an interesting challenge. Troika’s brainstorming process can be random, it doesn’t work to just sit around a table without any ideas, people must come with them and discuss. Their idea was zoetropes. They figured out they could use different spacings between letters to bring different words into focus at different frequencies. This project is featured in the Decode exhibition.

Newtron virus

Uses the drop detector in the MacBook. Brilliant (however if you want to ‘infect’ your computer and have Snow Leopard, at time of writing you’ll still have to wait). Find out more about the Newtron virus.

Enrico Tessarin of New Treatment

He started by mostly talking about Sophia’s diary, a series on Bebo. However, New Treatment are known for an unfinished project called Block X. Cordless show is a project they started a year ago taking a new approach. Sophia’s diary needed a trailer to get funding from brands. They found Sophia was  compelling to the audience because she was average. Lots of teenagers could sympathise with her. Daily video diaries. The story was directed by the audience, she asks a dilemma on the Friday, then what the audeince wanted happened on the Monday.

Block X

Hammer (the horror people) approached him. It’s another online series. The project is still in development. Some ideas for interactivity include: Secret content to your mobile phone; lots of options for game play; augmented reality games. Advertising is really important to this guy. He wants to incorporate brand selling into a made up CCTV control room which is also part of the website interface, e.g. A room sponsored by Ikea?

How do you survive in a world where big brands no longer invest in web shows? Answer, could be a format like the Cordless show. It’s pretty much T4 for the web. Done on an extremely low budget. The show developed a reputation, 30,000 hits per month. Advertisers can’t ignore that. What the Cordless show unique is their branding and interactivity. “The peoples vote” feature on the site. Create your own profile and vote for your favourite performer. A few universities asked for a live version, this brought in money since people will pay for a live performance. After momentum built they got funding from the BBC.

In any web project the first question Enrico asks is why did you choose the web as the medium? If it’s only because you can’t find the funding elsewhere, there’s no point. It’s telling that the BBC and Channel 4 require an interactive plan for any new series or documentary.

Questions

Q. Will interactivity with film go any further than it has?

The methods of interaction are very different. Inevitably it will all converge. It only depends on how traceable human behaviour is, that’s where the money is going to be. It depends on the target audience, it’s generational. Young people don’t necessarily watch TV anymore. Cinema will stay as it is. The future is definately interactive. Now that we have computers and networks that can transmit a different film for each cinema screen, there’s potential for more tailored content. The big issue is where you draw the line between an interactive and passive experience. A big thing that’s happening is the semantic web (woohoo, someone mentioned it – this probably links in with the Words project).

Q. Does the message get lost? Are there other pressures from technology and commercial considerations?

(This question was mostly aimed at Enrico since he was adamant that a new project must be get financial backing from advertising). Block X, although highly commercially orientated, the story was very important. Enrico was keen to stress if the story doesn’t stay, he’s prepared not to make his project. Is it art or ‘advertainment’? He’s looking at real world considerations. He runs a company and has to pay wages. However, big brands try to influence content shot by shot. Even as a producer you have to swallow hard.

Q. What about the economics on the web, don’t people expect things to be free?

Bebo made the first web series called Kate Modern. However Bebo Originals has shut down because they couldn’t find advertisers to support them. (Personally I don’t think enough was said about funding models other than advertising. What about paying for the service? What about content in closed networks distribution channels such as iTunes?)

To start, you may be surprised that every university doesn’t have a CMS already, this fact alone should provide some evidence of the wrangling that occurs when just trying to get such a project off the ground.

I totally agree with Patrick, a CMS should not represent loss of control. In fact, it offers freedom from mundane web editing for the downtrodden Web Provider (university speak for ‘person who edits web pages’). However I think discussing implementation of institutional content management systems by purely referring to how it changes the web doesn’t cover the whole story. Staff changes have to be considered too.

Traditionally the role of web provider within the institution could often be seen as that of hobbyist. The role would generally fall either to someone with good content or good technical knowledge (although people with both sets of knowledge did exist, I think they were in the minority). When the legislation changed in 2001, with the introduction of SENDA (Special Educational Needs and Disability Act), institutions across the country moved to introduce stronger regulation to their content production. Codes of practice were tightened, in-house training courses became a requirement; the age of the ‘hobbyist’ was coming to an end.

Welcome to the age of content management. On the face of it, content management represents a well-balanced system, it separates all of the aspects of web publishing, giving control to the various experts. The marketing department gets an overall control of branding, computer services gets control of the code output and the faculty gets control of the content. Just as it should be. However, by removing the coding function of the web provider role, the institution must guard against losing the pockets of excellent practice that have developed and (more importantly) losing good will amongst staff.

Downgrading a job by removing the technical aspect can have an effect on the job classification (and potentially pay scale) of an unexpectedly large percentage of employees. It is especially true in the divisional university that change on this scale is the only catalyst to finding out the true size and appearance of the web provider community.

Also, the web stirs up passionate arguments because it represents a window of communication, an identity, for even the smallest research project. Compromise (or dictatorship from marketing/computer services) must arise for change to progress when seeking to fundamentally alter the method groups within the institution use to present themselves on the web.

It has always been difficult for me to marry up the world of institutional web publishing and the world of web evangelist. I take both seriously. Although of course there is some overlap in their objectives, the evangelist’s main aim defaults to ensuring standards whilst the institution’s main aims are content, content, content – with a quick turnaround (as Patrick states). Good content management strikes a balance between both of these requirements. Therefore for the purposes of timeliness and compliance with the law, some form of content management is in the future of every university.

Implementing a content management system in an organisation as diverse as a university can be a detailed job. No matter what status quo you find in many parts of the institution, you’ll always find one section where content collection, storage or publishing requirements are vastly different to the rest. For example, the computing school wants to protect its ability to impress their tech savvy audience with tailored functionality and (b)leading edge features; the management school must meet the expectations of an audience ranging from post A-Level to business executive; central services such as finance all require tailored electronic systems (often with a web interface) that allow them to communicate with stakeholders. To each of these sections the CMS represents potential loss of control and change to business processes within the office. To some that’s scary stuff.

I don’t pretend to have the answers, all I can say is that I know this situation requires big helpings of change (and expectation) management. This is because in my experience one of the best ways to upset a group of people is to be perceived to be ‘taking away’ their website. I also know, to truly meet the business requirements of this kind of institution requires a good team of researchers and implementers. Generally the definition, understanding and solving of the issues that arise can only be achieved with the collaboration of experts, even if one of these experts is a lowly web provider.

• The @media 2007 podcasts have been released (for the first day anyway).
• Snook.ca posted a piece about Co.mments. Anyone who knows me will understand that anything that aids keeping track of stuff must be a good thing.
• The Simpsons Movie website is totally flash based (boo), but totally fun (yay). Still under development (all locations except Mo’s Tavern are ‘coming soon’ – a phrase I dislike) but what’s there has a good quirky feel to it. On the downside I haven’t managed to register (I guess a problem with my network connection?) and downloading the mobile screensavers seems to only be an option available to people in the US. Does this fit with anyone else’s experience?
• Rebtel.com are offering free – yes *free* – international mobile-to-mobile calls (land-line handsets must have a display). It’s a new application of VoIP and a nifty way around the problem of not having a VoIP ready gadget, required by networks such as Skype. Rebtel seems more convenient than the rest, but what’s the line quality like? I haven’t tried this service yet and my only experience of VoIP was back in 2001 while at Uni (trying to save money on phone calls home), suffice to say the line drop-outs were so numerous I gave up. I have high hopes about this tho…
• Thanks Phil for pointing this out, Photosynth & Seadragon. This kind of technology opens up a world of possibility.
• Found these at the wireless festival, really fun, Music Monster.

My reasons? I thought the O2 Wireless Festival (London) was excellent (some stomping headline acts); I get excited and draw people’s attention to the new ‘theO2′ advert whenever it appears on TV; and (while I’m on it) I have nothing bad to say about theO2 itself – although that might have something to do with a few freebies they’ve dished out as part of their PR campaign ;)

Let the cleverly targeted campaign continue!