Berlin’s Tech Scene Offers Hope to Economy - NYTimes.com

Berlin’s Tech Scene Offers Hope to Economy - NYTimes.com:


Really impressed by the some of the recent start-ups in Berlin which are not copies of Silicon Valley. Berlin seems to be doing more than Amsterdam in putting their start-ups into an international context.

The sun gave some spectacular skies on the way back from Picnic festival on the north side of Amsterdam today.

IBC-2011 Now dark for another year

Had an amazing 5 days recording some 5 hours of interviews at IBC 2011. I'm currently editing the material into interviews explaining the major changes coming to the connected home of the near future. I feel that IBC now stands for Integrated Back Channel, or Inspiring Broadband Content rather than International Broadcasting Convention. Broadcast is now only part of a much wider media environment. Whilst it remains important (and leading) for news, sports, current affairs and live events, we've now reached a point where on-demand for other types of factual content (e.g. documentaries) has become equally important. I was amazed at how many stands had dismissed 3D as a flash in the pan for broadcast/broadband, with most companies talking about their second screen offering instead. 


I am increasing disappointed with the printed trade press that cover IBC. It's almost all advertorial and rehashed press releases. IBC Daily News was shoved in your hands each morning. I used to keep it because there was some useful analysis. But now it's all PR spin which has already been sent to me. IBCTVNews is much of the same - it's TV to keep the stand-holders happy and it's classic example of an archived broadcast on the web with no metadata to help you find it again. And why would you want to embed it on another site? That would be stealing wouldn't it? So, after 5 days of frantic scrambling to get stuff on the cable system in Amsterdam hotels and on screens in the RAI, they pull the switch until 7 September 2012.

Ben Hammersley's Message in Hilversum

I've been to several NPOX festivals in Hilversum, but this year, the fifth, was one of the best. It may also be the last. NPO is the Dutch Public Broadcasting organisation and is currently going through a crisis as it tries to downsize its budget in accordance with new government legislation. Of course, the first thing to collapse are most forms of creativity as apparent from the new public broadcasting autumn schedules. The number of cheap talk shows is frightening. Discussions are all about jobs and money, rather than how can the public broadcasters get closer to the people that pay for it all. The public. 


I've noted in this blog before that the new media law, drawn up by the NPO and the Dutch government clearly defines the relationships between the broadcasters and the government, but it makes programme makers in Hilversum even less responsible to the public. Whereas in the UK, there is a BBC Trust which conducts open consultations with the public (such as reviewing networks or programming), in the Netherlands it is assumed that the public is represented through the broadcasting societies, which are now, in effect, production companies with a political or religious colour/bias. The problem is that most of the Dutch population is not a member of these broadcasting societies and there is never any public discussion about the role public broadcasting should play. The current right of centre government clearly wants to reduce the influence of the public broadcasters in Dutch society, which it perceives as a being inherently biased towards the left. 


Which brings me back to NPOX. Held in a newly built theatre in Hilversum, it was more of a reality check rather than a festival. The thousands of freelancers in Hilversum are only beginning to realise that they are going to bear the brunt of the cutbacks. Effectively there is an exodus of talent leaving town for Amsterdam or further afield.


The keynote came from British tech journalist and war correspondent Ben Hammersley. He points out that a lot of confusion in broadcast and related industries is because those in power now were educated before 1989. Not only was that year a pivotal point when the Iron Curtain broke down, it was also the year that the Internet really went public. In 1989, CERN was the largest Internet node in Europe, and Tim Berners-Lee saw an opportunity to join hypertext with the Internet. After that date, there was a fundamental change in the way people collaborate. They think as a network rather than in the heirachy of their predecessors. It explains why many of those managers in their 50's and 60's don't understand social media or how they are going to integrate these new platforms of expression into traditional radio and TV. Ben highlights a recent survey in the US which finds that 95% of under 25 year olds are using another device while consuming traditional radio and/or TV.


I like Ben's talk because towards the end he highlights what's needed - a new form of storytelling but also a different way of organising productions - more along the lines of the way Hollywood develops films. He explains that as editor at large of Wired they made a map of the dot.com area of London. It turned out that in Shoreditch there were more companies than people, simply because people were working on a project basis, bringing together the best talent for the job and then moving on when it was over. This approach is completely alien to the broadcast companies in Hilversum where the survival of the company and its heirachy through the subsidy model seems to be more important than the programmes that are produced. There are some exceptions, it's true, but I don't think it's going to be enough to fulfil Hilversum's ambition of being one of the creative capitals of Europe by the year 2020. Holland's commercial production industry certainly understands how to build cross-media services and integrate these into game shows. But when it comes to factual production - making content with a high public value, you can count the creative talent on the fingers of one hand. 


I asked Ben about this after his talk. You can find his response at around 44 minutes in.

Rethinking Detroit compared to Amsterdam

Been looking at the future of niche publishing (where niche can still mean millions of people). I think it is better defined as media that is not afraid to focus and drill down beyond the PR hype and spin. It is also media that follow-ups. We're not there yet. I note that magazines like Forbes don't integrate their  video stories into articles. But I do like the way they compile collections of material into dossiers. I was particularly intrigued with the dossier they made on Detroit, because the city is about the size of Amsterdam now and facing similar challenges with innovation. Sounds like Detroit has a plan rather than just ambition.

Preparing for Hurricane Irene

This NASA video from the Space Station makes me hope and pray for those I know who are in Irene's path. Will radio play a role this time, I wonder?

Oh what a difference a few years makes

Coming up on the second anniversary of James Murdoch's famous blast at the BBC during the Edinburgh TV festival and the MacTaggart lecture. Rereading the first page is ironic enough. James looked rather uncomfortable then, reading from two autocue screens and trying to sound natural. Murdoch described UK broadcasting as "the Addams Family of world media", comparing it unfavourably with the industries in Germany, France and India and complaining about the "astonishing" burden of regulation placed on BSkyB, the pay-TV giant he was running at the time. The Media Guardian has luckily curated the whole lot, and the BBC's reply.

Heathkit - We're back - sort of

Heathkit say they're getting back into producing kits, although somehow I doubt these will be build-it-yourself shortwave radio and transmitter kits that I recall from they heyday of international sound broadcasting. They weren't that well known for state-of-the-art design though in the 1970's. I like their slogan though - REAL WORLD, HANDS-ON LEARNING FOR TOMORROW'S JOBS. I remember a company in California bought the rights to technical manuals a few years back, but I can't imagine they made much money from that. 


It's true that there seems to be little in the way of educational kits to interest the budding hardware engineer of tomorrow. Tip of the hat to Spanish telecoms engineer Jose V Gavila, who seems to have more where that photo came from.

Future of Libraries

 

Spent a fascinating afternoon in the Dutch Royal Library in the Hague. Like the British Library they keep one copy of most books, although in this case the book has to be in Dutch or about the Netherlands. It seems such a shame that this collection isn't connected to the vast audio and video archives in Hilversum, also financed by public money. This is crying out for a cross-media approach. They also seem to spend an enormous amount of money paying publishers for the rights to loan out a book. Never understood this myself. Isn't the library offering publishers a free archiving service? Do authors benefit somewhere?...so many questions.

IBC Free Sale Extended

Are they being generous or is this a fire sale? Wonder if the extra two days will make much difference to the numbers. Personally, I don't think so. Those on holiday will be back next week.

Berlin Wall remembered

Today's definitely a day to be in Berlin and visit the Stasi Musuem in former East Berlin. It's the anniversary of the start of the building of the Berlin Wall. Boy, was that a bad idea. Great infographics in the MorgenPost It was eery to discover my own name in the files. Apparently because I was working for Western international broadcasters, I was a NATO agent.

Al Jazeera and the Arab awakening - Listening Post - Al Jazeera English

Al Jazeera and the Arab awakening - Listening Post - Al Jazeera English

Very interesting interview with Al Jazeera, Wadah Khanfar.

Explaining the collapse - and the growing anger in society

Rather worrying if the unrest in several European cities is linked to what Geoffrey West is talking about in this presentation. I fear he may be right. Why doesn't mainstream media do more to explain - and then in the form of intelligent debate with people like West instead of the pundits looking for publicity.

Why Cities Grow, Corporations Die and Life Gets Faster

Very interesting talk putting the growth of cities into perspective. Beautiful timelapse photo sequence at the start, with a brilliant, considered talk by Geoffrey West immediately afterwards. Grab a coffee and be both worried but also inspired.

Astra 1N Blasts Off

So the new Astra 1N satellite seems to be safely on it's way into orbit after a successful launch earlier today (0052 CET) from the French Guiana Space Centre on board an Ariane 5 ECA rocket. The satellite will distribute digital and HDTV services in Europe. It will first provide interim replacement capacity at 28.2 degrees east [serving the UK market]. Then it will be moved to 19.2 degrees east, where it will mainly serve the German, French and Spanish markets.

Astra 1N has 52 Ku-band transponders on board.

Transport of Delight - a personal discovery

Arrived too early for an appointment on a glorious day in Amsterdam. Since we haven't been blessed with this much sun in a long time, I took a stroll south of the former Olympic Stadium in the direction of some beautiful houseboats moored along the side of a small lake.

That's when I did a double-take. Wasn't that a Viennese tram stop by the side of what looked like a disused railway track? Yes, it definitely was. Stuck on a lamp-post nearby was a clue, in the form of a tram timetable for the Amsterdam Historic TramLine. It seems they have no less than 7 kms of track, most of it running through the Amsterdam Woods area in the South of Amsterdam and Amstelveen. They have vintage trams for various European cities, including ones I recognise from Vienna and Prague. Actually the website doesn't do anything like justice to what they have collected. And the site goes crazy if you try to select the English option. I guess the volunteers have better things to do - like running a tram service.



View Larger Map

They maintain a regular service throughout the summer and certain holidays. But the reason I have never discovered this before is simply that it's a Sunday only service and I have never been to that part of Amsterdam on a Sunday, except for the Labor Day weekend BBQ from the American Business Club. Must make a note to make a date - and take the camera. They charge 4 Euro for a round-trip or 10 Euro for a day-pass. That must be the best bargain in Amsterdam, bearing in mind parking in the city centre now costs a staggering 55 Euro a day. Google Streetview allows you follow the tracks from Amstelveen as it snakes northward and eventually into Amsterdam Haarlemermeer station. It seems that a few of the vintage vehicles also ride through the city centre on Line 20 on Sunday afternoons. They charge real money and give out real tickets. Which is a welcome relief to the new fangled RFID cards which are now used on all public transport.

CN Broadcasting - The Onion for Tech? FAIL

I started to get a most peculiar Newsletter from a company called China Broadcasting which claims to be my gateway into Chinese media. It's mainly reporting about telecoms and broadcast equipment, so I believe they got my name from the IBC Exhibition in Amsterdam. I think someone is trying to see whether they can made a trade magazine by using translation robots. Er, no you can't. May be they are trying the make the Onion out of tech news? I don't think that's the plan.

I just love some of the articles they come up with.

This example from June is a classic still on line, where we get a completely incomprehensible article.

"And whole the intersection of solution and provider, billows get up science and technology merge development of industry, have very deep understanding to the intersection of chip and technical autonomous innovation with the intersection of ground and broadcast and three network."


I can't imagine the original article in Mandarin was of much use.


I'd given up on them until another Newsletter arrived today. I was struck by the illustration of China Broadcasting Corporation article with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's exploding pizza logo. Had a Chinese company stolen the logo? Clicking through all the links in the Newsletter actually took me to different unrelated stories...so fail on content. And a quick use of the "untrustworthy" Google search engine, shows me that China Broadcasting Corporation doesn't use the CBC logo above, or anything resembling it. 

So, if this is the standard of their articles, imagine what they could do with your advertisement. Obviously a publication to avoid.

Weird to hear the Orfordness transmitter operated by Babcock in the UK relaying Dutch public broadcasting's Radio 1 channel. This is because of the problems affecting two FM towers in the Netherlands, both of which were affected by unrelated fires three week ago. Sound's to me like the feed is using two sets of audio compression, perhaps the increase the range while using lower power than the BBC used to use. I'm guessing 250 kW. Had it on in the car while travelling round the Netherlands today. Frankly, FM reception sounded a lot better than this muddy AM signal around The Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht. Strong, but nothing more than an emergency. You'd think if it was important to Radio 1 audibility that they would be announcing it frequently on air. Er, no. Wonder how long it will last?

Songifying Science

I wonder what would happen if you were to Songify some great TED talks.

Why is DAB+ said to be underperforming in Australia?

What were they expecting? Digital radio has been an evolution not a revolution everywhere. And always hybrid...not just DAB+ but a combination of platforms.