Nico Macdonald Reporting

Blueprint Big Breakfast: Simon Jenkins, 21 June 2006

Simon Jenkins is a polymath, able to reflect in an informed and lucid way on subjects as diverse as publishing and Weblogging, the steam engine and car culture, crime and government, broadcasting and architecture.

The latter was the subject of his after breakfast speech-let at Smiths of Smithfield, close to the London Architecture Biennale HQ. Jenkins believes that architects' egos drive them to create big, standalone 'point' buildings, and as many as possible as, of course, architects think their work is beautiful. They are supported and encouraged by planners, particularly if they can design formats with high commercial return, and supported by local and national government. Jenkins's historic bete noir is Richard Seifert, and on the government side George Brown, who allowed Conrad Hilton build on Hyde Park. Today's bete noirs are Rogers and Foster, with Ken Livingstone (advised by Rogers) wielding his princely writ from his South Bank palace -- but with his eye on a Manhattan skyline as his mayoral legacy.

Jenkins argues that the ability to build big has changed the nature of the city, from one in which buildings (other than churches) could only be seen from the street to one in which they are visible across the city. He particularly objects to point buildings, which speckle and despoil the view of the city. 'If you must build big then cluster these buildings', he argues. His other objection to big buildings is their poor relationship to the street and to human scale. He cites Centrepoint and Victoria's Stag Place in evidence, and notes that in most cities residents and tourists are attracted to the low-rise and older quarters. Fort Worth and even New York are cited in evidence. 'People don't relate to glass towers'. Paris and Rome have deliberately resisted big buildings in their centres and forced them to the periphery. (In Paris the Tour Montparnasse is an exception.)

But he is not against density. He notes that Victorian terraces are the acme of dense housing, and wouldn't object to London's mews being pulled down to increase housing density.

He observes that the arguments around big buildings had moved towards the idea of clustering, but that consensus had been lost, and now London planning is dictated on from the GLA building and Whitehall. Hence the need to polarise the issues and fight every instance of poor planning, from Covent Garden to Leadenhall Market and beyond.

It is hard not to see Jenkins as overly nostalgic and in love with the past. In response to a request for concrete suggestions about how we would create tomorrow's historic buildings he had little to say, other than that there were many good 'infill' buildings in districts such as Covent Garden that related to the street and to human scale.

Nor is he really able to explain the dynamics he so eloquently illustrates, other than to note the impact of building technology. Perhaps part of the problem is the poverty of rational and problem-solving discussion around city architecture, which focuses on aesthetics and, at best, materials but considers neither urban integration nor the function and internal design of buildings. On the former point Jenkins notes that architectural models present buildings from above (the architect-god's eye view), and on the latter they try to exclude people (a building's 'users') from photographs of the finished work.

There is also a strong case to be made for ambition. While Jenkins notes that dictators love (grand) architecture (see Deyan Sudjic's book 'The Edifice Complex: How the Rich and Powerful Shape the World'), it is also a symbol of countries that have a positive and humanistic view of the future, such as post-Revolutionary Russia or the US in the early twentieth century. Perhaps Livingstone fits the (populist) dictator mould, but any country or city that believes in itself, in progress and in the future will create buildings and cities that have scale and impact. The more worrying characteristic of London and the UK in the noughties is how wary we are about making an impact on the environment or doing anything at scale.

We Media fringe event, 3 May 2006 (London)

The We Media fringe event this week was an example of poor event programming and the arrogance of some (self-appointed) members of the citizen journalism crowd.

[Image from noodlepie]

The 'official' We Media Global Forum: The Power of Trust has been taking place this week between BBC Television Centre and the Reuters Building in Canary Wharf. Noting that it was expensive to attend, Robin Hamman (who runs the cybersoc.com resource) proposed a We Media fringe event [initial link], which took place at 01zero-one in Soho, London.

As someone who had wanted to attend the We Media Global Forum, I was interested in attending. An interesting crowd turned up, and a different one from those at other 01zero-one-hosted events, some of which I have programmed with InSync. However, the dearth of information about the  event on cybersoc.com should have alerted me to the lack of programming that had gone into the event. While there were some useful contributions from the presenters (see below) the key lessons from the event were about this model of programming.

The event started half an hour late and then went on for the best part of three hours. There was little context about the objectives or content of the We Media conference for which this was a fringe event. Most of the presenters weren't involved in the We Media Global Forum, and most of them just 'did their thing' anyway and didn't attempt to relate their presentations to the Forum, so the notion of it being a 'fringe' event was notional. Alan Connor [not Conner], the event 'maitre d'' (as he was styled), was very engaging but also failed to provide any context or attempt to tie the talks back to the themes of the Forum. From Hamman's final comments it was clear he had had even less involvement in programming the event. "This whole thing has been quite a strange experience for me", he concluded. And for this audience member too.

There is something of a vogue for 'self-organising' events, from the extensively considered Policy Unplugged 'open space' model to the leaderless Barcamp approach (see Barcamp London, which at its present rate won't happen "sometime in June/July"). But too often this seems to be an excuse for not creating well-considered and -designed events. Hamman was clear that he didn't have much time to put the event together given his day job as a Community Producer for BBC English Regions, but even with this limited level of input this event could have been better.

It is not entirely Hamman's fault that many of the speakers failed to address the supposed themes of the event, or willfully spoke for more time than they were allotted. However, it is a bit much to hope that eight speakers will all stick to their five minutes, and the over-runs multiply. The irony is that for all the 'citizen journalism', 'coming up from the streets', 'empowering the demos' rhetoric that pervades these discussions, speakers who don't stick to time clearly aren't interested in engaging with the responses of their peers -- let alone with the people for who they supposedly advocate.

Not only did they fail to engage with their peers, but I noticed a number of speakers having private conversations at the back of the room while the other speakers were presenting. For all of Suw Charman's legitimate comments on the mis-match at the Forum between what was on the stage and what was happening on IRC, I will bet the speakers and panelist there either listened to one another or discreetly left the room rather than rudely distracting from the presentations. (And at least IRC, snide as it often is, doesn't audibly interrupt presentations.)

For much of the Fringe event, many of the attendees were also chatting at the back of the meeting area, again demonstrating the disingenuous nature of their advocacy of media democracy. The embrace of this outlook by organisations such as the BBC and Reuters has given some of its advocates a particular sense of importance -- and a license to behave rudely. New Labour politicians exhibit a similar contempt for the people they supposedly champion, but at least they were elected, and they have the good grace to be polite.

Another slightly surreal aspect of the event was the number of people filming and photographing the activities, writing Weblog posts, and recording interviews with one another. This slightly obsessive activity gave it even more of a feeling of being insular and detached.

Key points from the presenters:

Dr Chris Yapp, Head of Public Sector Innovation, Microsoft: Koji Kobayashi, future head of NEC, coined term 'convergence' in 1962, and convergnence has finally arrived. [See note on 1977 announcement on the integration of computers and communications technologies on NEC Group History site, 1964-1977 .] IT was about labour substitution. No longer about access but also about contribution. UK creativity has the possibility to help ensure people are creating content that is relevant to them. [I was a little unclear about the last point.] If we get it right this city/country has the possibility of empowering the world. Focus on the 2012 Olympics. "We can change the world. You are going to do it!"

Suw Charman, Executive Director, Open Rights Group: [Charman was an online curator for the conference but critical of it] There was a mis-match between what was on the stage at the Forum and what was happening on IRC. The BBC and Reuters on stage were very smug. How can you have a conference about citizen journalism with one citizen journalists attending? "Let's kick some arse tomorrow, for the sake of my sanity". [During the discussion] You can't buy a community and then exploit it. This is harder than it looks! Giving back is the source of the success of Flickr or Friendster.

Ben Metcalfe, Project Lead for backstage.bbc.co.uk [speaking in a personal capacity, discussed his concerns about the BBC considering putting adverts on the international Web site]. There is a danger of content becoming advert-friendly, including content generated for home users. Will the revenue come back to the content that drives the ads? What about user-generated content? 

Michael Tippett, founder of NowPublic.com: NowPublic is a site to which anyone can contribute, and it is easy to use the content on your site. [His demo of the interface for commenting material was impressive.] We have 2,000 people contributing [?] from the affected area of Hurricane Katrina. [During the discussion] We are trying to create a person-to-person news channel.

Tim Ireland, online marketing expert and activist who blogs at bloggerheads.com: [Discussed the importance of search engine optimisation. Update: see his comments below.] In comparison to personal home pages, Weblogs allow people to represent themselves a paragraph at a time, and through what other people say. It is important to understand the value of permalinks, comments and trackback -- and particularly the blogroll -- for promoting your Weblog. A small community of Weblog posters can influence many readers. Often bloggers stories  are becoming the story. I can get the top search result for such a story because bloggerheads.com already had the reputation. For instance, if you search for Vote Labour you will get backingblair.com. "If you want to vote Labour, we give you a f***ing good reason not to".

Paul Evans, who manages a project called Councillor.info [and works for Poptel Technology Ltd.]: We are [involved in?] training councillors, some of who think you can turn the Internet off. We need a network of bloggers who bring policy issues to the masses, and get around the media. [See an outline of his talk on his site.]

Neil Dixon, creator of BritCaster.com: Blogging is over. I am a podcaster!

A political blogger who goes by the name of 'Guido Fawkes': I started this Weblog as a result of despair with 'Fiskers' writing longer articles taking apart other articles. The key is having good writing, vs Tim's emphasis on search engine optimisation. As a result of publications lifting copy from me, I started the Press Plagiarist of the Year Award, which lead people to start paying me.

In conclusion...

I won't reflect extensively on the talks. There were many interesting ideas, stories and examples, albethey largely unrelated to the Forum. It was interesting to learn from Tim Ireland how easy it was to gain presence in the search space, though unfortunate in his case as his politics are so unoriginal, poorly argued, and bile-driven.

We sorely need more thoughtful, well-programmed (and -organised) reflection on themes such as media democracy, and we also need to avoid taking for granted their value.

Lawrence Lessig, 27 May 2004 (London)

On 27 May Stanford lawyer-activist Lawrence Lessig spoke at the Royal Geographic Society in London as part of the LIFT Festival. I was an adviser to LIFT on this talk.

I was pleased that Lessig had developed the examples of the kind of creative activities that were being restricted by the current IP system, as his cases had become a little repetitive. He showed lovely examples from Dog Kennel Hill School in the UK (which I learned he had only visited the day before), and a great 'remix' of Peanuts characters dancing to Teenage Fanclub (or something similar). Unfortunately he is still touting contributions to the 'Bush in 30 Seconds' project, which are generally patronising and stupid, and likely to unnecessarily put some people off supporting the Creative Commons initiative.

He is one of the most inspiring speakers around. His presentation was brilliantly coordinated with his talk, elegantly integrated his AV assets, and rounded off with a soap box call to arms. Perhaps because someone was signing his talk, he spoke very slowly and deliberately, which added to the impact of his delivery.

A nice point he made in the 'rip, mix, burn' discussion was that "culture is not delivered in final form", reflecting the design world discussion about adaptive design. However, he over-emphasises the contrast between today's consumer/editor youths and the older generation, as if we have always been couch potatoes and never 'flipped' our cultural artifacts into creative activity. He did make a nice point about creative activity, saying that it encouraged people to think critically. "People who thought they knew what they thought find that when they have to write out their arguments that they sometimes don't make sense", he said.

Lessig is a true hero in the network society, and is pretty unimpeachable. (In fact, the level of applause was a bit too 'celebrity' for me.) But his attitude towards the great unwashed is a little worrying. "In the US we have no political discourse", he argued. "Fox News calls itself 'fair and balanced', and most people who watch it think it is. We are pathologically pathetic, a bovine culture." By 'we' he clearly didn't mean himself, or this audience. In his discussion about 'us and them' he noted that he expected the audience saw themselves as 'us'. "The thing that is standing in the way [of intelligent political discourse] is a bunch of legal rules", he concluded.

Wrong. What is standing in the way is a lack of big ideas, and uninspiring opposition politicians. (Anyone for Kerry? Or Howard?) As I noted in my Register article 'The future of Weblogging' there is no comparison between the intellectual-property-based suppression of political debate today and the wholesale suppression seen Britain at the time of the Chartists (or the Soviet Union, etc). Lessig over-eggs the legal and IP issues, and I guess this is to be expected given his trajectory. This is where his rhetorical approach feels a little odd. Making a call to arms speech about intellectual property law in a public lecture (along with the audience's adulation) felt a little odd. In an age when no one trusts politicians, intellectual property lawyers can become our knights on white chargers.

32nd AIGA-ED London: 'Service Design' – April 2003 (London)

'Service Design' AIGA Experience Design London – Wednesday 23 April 2003 (Design Council, London)

[This report based on notes taken during the event, but should not be directly cited. I also programmed and chaired the event.]

From the event introduction: The things organisations create are becoming increasingly intangible and complex, and people's interaction with them take place through multiple 'interfaces' and over time. These interactions will shape their overall quality of experience, and from their point-of-view the organisation may be the product (as has long been the case in intangible services such as banking). This is the realm of service design. At this event we will ask: how can designers go beyond the creation of just one interface to consider the design of an entire service? How can they convince clients they should extend their role? How can services be prototyped and their success measured? What are the key approaches for service design, and can a (pattern) language be developed?

Bill Hollins

Undertakes management consultancy for Direction Consultants

80% of people work in the service sector. Service design can be tangible and intangible. There is a level of service in all products.

With services production and consumption happen at the same time, thus only 11% of services are exportable. Setup in manufacturing 47% of cost, less in service design. Services can't be stored, thus need to consider demand management. ‘Just in time’ works even better in service sector. Capital inputs don't complain, but people complain when they end up queuing.

Why don't people realise you can design services? [Notes there is a British Standard for service design.] In manufacturing everyone knows what design is (even if they do it badly). But in services many people say you can't design things. In services only one fifth of companies had a written process [not clear if for designing or running services]. People don't write down what they are going to design.

Three-quarters of main reasons for service failure are rooted in poor market research. Almost half do none. Research by “attending cocktail parties is not adequate” is not adequate.

We have a problem: make the new standard the state of the art, or dumb it down? And how can we get people to use it?

In the discussion Hollins cited Alcatel as a good exponent of service design. He also added that standards can't make up for bad products (citing British Leyland). He described service design as an ethos, and a process that ensures you don't miss a step.

Kevin Gavaghan

Specialist in innovation and the development of break-through processes to make creativity work in big businesses and government

“I spent a lot of my life unconsciously taking part in design activities.”

First Direct: we didn't know we were doing service design, just a stepped up version of [something else].

What is service design? It is the highest margin area of design. Why is it becoming more important? Because we are becoming wealthier.

How well equipped are design/ers? Not educated in the broader context. They look only at specifications, not the emerging needs. How to convince clients of their new role? Not a chance. Every ad agency I have ever dealt with want to talk about strategy.

Teaching and learning design? Health, education, criminal justice are key issues for government and we have to get them right. If you are looking where to make your next quid [get into this area].

First Direct story: We used design companies extensively but couldn't find any that spanned the skills we needed. Seeking to put man/woman and machines together. Had to bring together many different systems and bridge them together with a screen on the top, so that people could talk to the customer as if they knew their entire situation. Business design matched the technology design matched the people design. Return on investment got the attention of the board.

Lessons:

• Need a vision, not a strategy, needs someone who really cares about something, dramatic change.
• How do the leaders get formed? Not the management but the [people who make things happen].
• Out of that came an ideology, a common system of ideas, which informed our strategy. When it came to the design brief we knew who we were. Importance of creating an equitable distribution of the wealth.

[Discussed South African project to train black accountants.]

People who call themselves designers are going to have to give the people who call themselves MBAs “a bloody good kicking”. They can only work out what the problem is [and draw some funky chart]. “I would have 10 designers to four management consultants.”

How do people who call themselves designers see. How do they 'feel' what is going on. How do they communicate it to people who 'see'? Maybe we need to work in partnerships.

I am currently designing a design university (the acme of the design process).

Mammoth change after WWI. In Germany one radical solution was the National Socialists. And another was the Bauhaus. How much of what we see now resulted from that.

Processes are important but they are frameworks. How are you going to change your reading when you think about the opportunities of service? If you don't read and provoke yourself "If the answer is design magazines, Stop. If it is the FT that is a start."

[Discussion not summarised.]

Live|work

London-based company focusing on service design, through commercial services projects for clients and research. [Web site]

We are the only company saying we are a service design company. There are no service design buyers, no one is trained to do it. We need to develop the offer, initially through teaching [and developing a language]. Marketing something intangible is problematic.

Moving from designing products to designing services, and service envy. Driving forces: 71% of economy by GDP is services; technology is moving to services (such as Microsoft with .NET); communication technology makes services easier (First Direct was made possible through telecoms technology); services are not a single hit, but about relationships; ecology: making the use of finite resources more sustainable.

Service ecologies: how to move from a [chain] to a value net? For instance Amazon, where once we were just buyers, but are now recommenders and sellers?

Why design services? For people: to create delightful, useful and sustainable services. For the planet: [encourage the move] from acquisition of goods to [intangible values such as emotion].

Services envy: communicating who you are through your services. (Teens spending more on texts than they did on sweets.)

Building a discipline:

• Designing for many actors
• Mapping the value net
• Understanding value exchange
• Enabling relationships
• Designing for use over time: a service is never finished when it is launched, and needs to change over time
• Prototyping service experiences: how to give quick and easy expressions

Projects

ViVi: focus on model-making of services: Experience Prototypes. How do you start services, how do you live with them, how do you stop them? Idea of the postcard to start it. Get CD after a year with all the entire collection. Leaving messages for the owner of the album. [Notes on project not clear.]

Dream: wake-up call is most popular voice service. How about recording dreams? Turns out people are a bit stressed out by being woken up like that. How to tell someone it is OK to hang up?

Loome: wanted to design an emotional flip. Experience prototype was to write to all the companies who had my data. Much of what came back was hand-written. I can do the one thing no one else can do: aggregate it. But companies put lots of hurdles in place to prevent you getting the data.

In the discussion Alistair Jeffs asked if products obsolete and everything is services? Live|work noted that Orange was more important than Nokia, and that lot of service companies becoming commodified. Tamara Giltsoff asked how you incentivise people to input into the service, and how to create desire. Live|work suggested making them an actor, using laws and business structures. Luke Skrebowski asked if they had found clients who you can partner with, and if they had been able to get into the business schools. IDEO was noted as a partner.

The Blueprint Sessions: Product designer of the Year - 23 February 2004 (London)

[These are based on notes taken during the event, but should not be directly cited.]

The Blueprint Sessions is Blueprint magazine’s first venture in to awards, and cover interior design, architecture, product and graphic design. They are organised over four events at the RSA in London, with the audience submitting a ballot at the end of the evening after advocates had made the case for each finalist. For the product design awards, held on Monday 23 February, they were Tord Boontje (advocated by product designers Carl Clerkin and Will Warren).

Richard Seymour chaired the event and noted that the awards were not just about “do I like what I see” but “who has achieved the most in the last year”, their contribution to the design industry, boosting the importance and understanding of design, including its ability to “speak to manufacturing” (“let’s not shy away from it, design is a commercial act” he challenged). All these designers start from what people want.

Advocating Tord Boontje Carl Clerkin and Will Warren observed that he was good at creating new products before people knew they wanted them, and that his designs lead the fashion, and are subsequently imitated by mass retailers. One example of his work they showed was a network of lights that were computer numerical controlled (CNC) to create flower shapes.

The Apple design team in general and Jonathan Ive in particular were advocated by Stephen Fry, who although noting that “I am not someone from the design world” showed greater understanding of product design than many commentators in this area.

Elaborating the background to Ive’s work he observed that the CPU is the most important feature of our lives in terms of products. No one ever had at their disposal such power, and access to people and ideas. Almost every major advance in home computing had been made by Apple, or appeared first on the Macintosh. Ive’s team, he argued, has created design that pleased the shareholders. (Later he observed that only three in every 100 computers sold is an Apple.)

His understanding of product design was illustrated by his comparison of the iMac and a Bugatti, where the functional elements such as the hood were both styled and aerodynamic. On the iPod he referred to the “shameless glamour of the mirrored backside”, and of the iPod Mini said “it is something you just drool about... It is like a stiffy-test... Beyond your intellectual reach”.

Discussing the G5 desktop he noted Ive’s move from his ‘toilet phase’ (porcelain-like finishes) to his ‘nutmeg grater-cum-Remington shaver foil phase’. It is as if they are bench-machined prototypes that you show the boss [and then go straight intp manufacturing].

More broadly he noted these products’ “fitness to culture from which they spring”, and the instant imitations they inspire.

Marcel Wanders was advocated by Louise-Anne Comeau, who began arguing that we should celebrate Wanders not for his objects, but for his approach. “He starts with the ambition to create an emotion, a lasting touch, rather than a lasting object”. He “doesn’t seek to innovate, but to sit back and listen”, continuously asking ‘Why?’ And ‘Why not?’

He believes that what objects need are new connections, and that designs require someone’s [action] to complete a process. They are a beginning and not an end. In one project she showed his investigations into the nature of glass, in which he had asked ‘Why does something that is fluid so rarely feel fluid?’.

He also asks ‘What is really design, or good design?’ and ‘Why does [taste] change between generations?’.

Seymour facilitated a panel discussion, initially asking if it is even possible to even compare these people’s work. Marcel appears like Damien Hirst compared to the Apple team, said Fry, but they both address the same issues of aesthetics, delight, and sensuousness – “something you want to touch, stroke, and lick”.

Are beautiful things based on nature?, speculated Seymour. Fry contended that this wasn’t the case, and that we put our stamp on [things from nature]. We don’t just re-order them but are engaged in “firing them in the crucible of not just our imagination but our factories” [many of his references were to pottery]. This is what the Enlightenment and humanism is all about. Out-doing God and saying to him ‘we’ll show you!’.

The panel also discussed design vs craft, meta-products (Seymour asking “how much delight can we get from things that aren’t physical”), and the degree to which design was “about creating an emotional bond, the enduring delight of using the object”. Fry noted that some older cars have non-functional beauty, and that sometimes beauty is functional. He speculated about the possibility of designing things that had redundancy [though he didn’t use this term], which could be damaged but continue working at some level.

In the open discussion, Vicky Richardson [who shortly takes up the editorship of Blueprint] asked whether Ive could be counterposed to the other designers as he is about the future, where the other designers were about reflection, and imperfections in society. Louise-Anne noted that you can look at progress in many ways, not just increased functionality.

Nico Macdonald noted that we should learn from what designers do right, and wrong. For instance the button mouse is a mistake. The original mouse had three buttons, probably one too many, but two button is better for interaction. We should be realistic about Apple. He added that aesthetics is becoming more important, and helps usability, as Psychology of Everyday Things author Don Norman notes in his new book [Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things]. Is there a danger of designers creating comfort blankets for people?, he asked. He also advocated more emphasis on interaction design, separately or as an element of product design, and for the design of systems (noting Syemour’s enquiry about how much delight can we get from things that aren’t physical). This kind of design is what makes the iPod-iTunes-iTunes store combination so successful, and is the key to [Transport for London’s] Oyster card. In response Seymour noted that you can’t separate interaction design from objects. On the subject of ‘comfort blankets’ he challenged that “if this is childhood, give me childhood”.

Richard Eisermann [Design Council Director of Design and Innovation] noted that there is no such thing as a perfection in the future. Services can’t be embodied without objects: the Oyster card is still key to a physical system. It is only then that we get to talk about sustainability.

Seymour concluded that the world was getting increasingly dislocated and [complex], and that we are as close to the Renaissance as we have been [comment not properly recorded].

Winners of all the Blueprint Sessions awards will be announced later this week.

spiked: The Future Of Energy – 19 February 2004 (London)

Seminar introduction: the UK government’s recent White Paper ‘Our Energy Future: Creating a Low-Carbon Economy’ proposes to cut greenhouse gas emissions more radically than is proposed by the Kyoto Protocol. Further development of nuclear power is not on the agenda, and alternative energy sources such as wind power are often championed instead. What balance should be struck between emission reduction and future energy production?

Information on panelists can be found on the spiked events page.

These notes have not been checked against recording of the event or with the presenters, and comments should not be directly cited. However, they are based on notes taken at the time, and will convey the general and specific sentiments of the presenters and audience contributors.

John Lawton
Climate change is the biggest danger we face today
We can’t afford to burn fossil fuels at all, as CO2 stays in the atmosphere for a long time
The nuclear option was ‘parked’ due to political difficulties, but there will be no alternatives to nuclear for next 30 years
There are no simple options. Gas still produces CO2, and increases Britain’s reliance on imports. Renewables: wind farms are not sufficient and people don’t want them in their back yard, biomass-fulled power stations may require GM crops to fuel them and people are hostile to GMOs.
The impact of global warming won’t just be better weather in the UK, but will be seen in more extreme weather events, and a rising sea level.

Chris Anastasi
Is there a problem? Some people still believe that we are just in a period of natural environmental change. The real issue is how we manage risk. We mustn’t discount those who don’t aren’t convinced about climate change.
We have had 100% security of supply in electricity to date, but will only have 20% one generation from now.
On balance government not doing enough to address our situation. And it only focuses on industry, avoiding the domestic sector and transportation.
Will we be successful in addressing climate change? Even if we succeed things will be uncomfortable, and if we don’t… I don’t want to leave that kind of legacy to my grandchildren.

Joe Kaplinsky
The key issue is the rise of risk aversion, for instance in the energy sector around nuclear power, which developed through the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl incidents. In fact in the meantime nuclear power has become safer. People on the political right have become more concerned about nuclear proliferation and terrorism [and hence turned against some aspects of the nuclear industry].
With respect to solutions there is a sense of autarky [in US] and hostility to possibilities of international cooperation in energy production and distribution.
With other new solutions the discussion of risk comes to the fore earlier than in the past.
The global warming discussion is conducted in a risk averse framework. We need to step back from the crisis frame of mind, and move away from ‘cut emissions now’ response.
The hostility to large scale engineering will have an impact on some solutions, such as creating sea barriers [such as the Thames Barrier]. These [non-short term solutions] are seen as a distraction. We need a less risk averse approach, and a more public debate.

Chair Helene Guldbeg lead a short discussion with the panellists. Lawton noted that we need to do more research so we can reduce uncertainties. Anastasi [on the short- and mid-term options] that he didn’t want to take the risk, but wanted to “get on with it now”. Kaplinsky argued that the best way to ensure energy efficiencies is to encourage economic growth, as this would lead to, for instance, renewal of our housing stock with more energy efficient homes. He added that it doesn’t matter what technological solutions we come up with as risk aversion will still strike. We have to deal with this first.

Key points from the audience contributions. These are grouped by theme, and may not be in the order made. Where people gave them I have noted names, but spelling may be incorrect:

We have had warming in past, and ice age. How much of the impact is human-created? (Contributor not noted.) Not believing in global warming is like not believing in evolution because there is an ‘alternative theory’. (Liz Smith)

Why don’t we see this as an exciting challenge, not something to worry about? (Ceri Dingle) Would the Victorians have been as fearful about an equivalent problem? Has any society ever sat around and discussed standing still, or going backwards [as our society does today)? (Jennie Bristow) No one is talking about doing less, but doing things differently. (Contributor not noted.)

What about improving things for other people [in the developing world] and for us? (Nico Macdonald) [A proposed] economic benefit is a lot more motivating. (Rob Lyons)

Reclaiming land and growing was seen as possible in sixteenth century Holland. (Paul Reeves) We are told we need energy for economic growth, but economic growth (beyond the basics) doesn’t appear to bring happiness. (Terence Bendixson) No wonder people are unhappy with all this hand-wringing going on! (Daniel Ben-Ami)

The solutions proposed seem very parochial. We need ambitious solutions. (Contributor not noted.) We should look at energy generation on the moon [where it won’t lead to climate change] and have the power beamed back to earth. (JJ Charles)

Summing up: Lawton noted that we are in uncharted climactic territory compared to the 500 million years of human history we have mapped. Anastasi that it is not about morals but choices we need to make. Kaplinsky that if you are risk averse you won’t pursue ‘non-sure thing’ solutions. Optimism raises questions about our bigger future, for instance in space [with the idea of inhabiting other planets]. The worst case scenarios are assumed when this subject is discussed. The terms of the discussion – addiction, moralism – make society incapable of responding.

Oxford Media Convention 2004: Philip Lowe, DG, EC Competition Directorate

Philip Lowe, Director General, Competition Directorate, European Commission 'Media Concentration & Convergence: Competition in Communications'

I should note that I find discussions of regulation dull at best, and this was a dull, civil servant-scripted speech. (And I know PowerPoint is out of favour but it does have some use, especially for poorer speeches, in helping the audience follow a talk structure.) What is most unsatisfactory is the idea that we have open and free markets yet Lowe has 600 staff in Brussels who spend their time working on the most banal issues, for which there is no clear intellectual basis for decision-making.

Trends identified by Lowe included the use of new technology to create new markets and the way that technology has made national level regulation impossible in many areas. He also discussed how new media markets might be monopolised by traditional players, or because key content remained bundled in established (often vertical) companies could be withheld from new players. The Directorate seek to prevent abuse of market power -- such as leveraging content to get into or bar entry to new media markets -- to the detriment of consumers. However, he observed that where business models and economics won't support two competitors there is no point forcing the creation of another competitor, citing the Sky Italy case.

One of the Directorate's objectives is to preserve some degree of restriction of use of intellectual property rights, thus allowing product development and innovation. I would have been interested to know where he sees this innovation taking place.

Finally, he asked whether Internet activities fall within the definition of broadcasting (but didn't suggest an answer this question) and noted that the Directorate was also address spam, electronic piracy and counterfeiting. He argued that the Directorate needed to be informed not just by competitors ('who are complaining') but by consumers and (other) people who are interested. There was no elaboration on how consumers might inform them, or why this was desirable.

[This posting is not checked against a record of the talk. The discussion is not included.]

Oxford Media Convention 2004: OFCOM; PSB and the Producer

'OFCOM; PSB and the Producer: How Best to Ensure Creativity and Innovation in UK Production?'

Chair: Mark Lawson, BBC broadcaster and Guardian columnist
Speakers:
Tim Gardam, ex-Channel 4
Peter Bazalgette, Chair, Endemol UK
Jonathan Hewes, Deputy Chief Executive, Wall to Wall

I should preface my report by noting that I am not au fait with the broadcast media and television production industries and that there was a lot of 'context' that panelists expected the attendees to have. That said the chair didn't do a great job of setting the context, though he was otherwise excellent.

In his introductory remarks Gardam noted that if you liberalise the market in one area you find new problems in another. He asked how we could keep up the quality of shows, and compared 'Matt's Old Masters', which would not be funded by an international co-producer but was quirky and imaginative, with 'The Voice', a "blended smoothy" that will be much easier to get financed. The latter show was made by Endemol and Baz (as he is known) reacted to Gardam's comments in a sparring manner. (Current Channel 4 head honcho Mark Thompson was also in the audience and responded to Gardam's points more seriously.)

Bazalgette endorsed Ofcom's Ed Richards who in his Royal Television Society keynote argued for plurality. He argued that:

• Money should go to the best: if you tell broadcasters to make public service broadcast shows independents will follow the money, citing Restoration as a case in point
  
• Diversity of voice and supply: noting that you could see the whole thing as a battle between spectrum owners and talent
  
• Talent should be rewarded: observing that private capital has gone into Hatrick and the former Chrysalis
  

He added that intellectual property rights are being defeated by technology in music, and may happen in TV too. In conclusion he noted that Carter had talked about distribution for 85% of his speech and content for 15%, and questioned Ofcom's commitment to content. (We must find a better term for 'content'.)

Hewes noted that he had found that good editorial innovation is good business, and that the most innovative shows -- such as The House franchise -- have been the most popular. He reported that Wall to Wall could be a proper business as it has a business base: "talented people don't make good programmes if they are in a company that is struggling to survive". In conclusion he noted that it was a rather dispiriting idea that public service broadcasts can't be engaging.

The discussion focused on whether creativity quickly become repetitive. 'Baz' argued that the issue was whether commissioning editors were looking for new ideas. On the commercial pressure to milk formats Hewes noted that things work if they are re-invented, not repeated, and that their reluctance to do things again has been helped by being a stable business. Gardam commented, in the spirit of Goebels, that when you hear 'creativity and innovation' from the mouths of politicians he reaches for his machine gun. He noted the importance of having people in television who have a sense of purpose. (My instinct is that many of these issues can't be resolved at the level of business models, charters, and regulation. And inspiring society produces great culture, and also demands it. How do we create that?)

There was much discussion of the idea of an Arts Council of the Air. Baz argued for using the institutions we have and not creating another bureaucracy. ("God save us!") Change the purpose of the BBC using the charter renewal process and put the money in the existing institutions, he suggested. Later he noted of this idea that the "BBC and Channel 4 are organisations with a soul" and by comparison the "Arts Council model is an under-fueled, low octane thing". Mark Thomspon added that the Arts Council model would be too diffuse and rootless: how would they plug into our broader cultural life? he asked.

As the discussion was opened up Lawson, the most recognisable if not the most powerful person in the room, asked people "no matter how famous you think you are can you please identify yourself!" Quite right. Nevertheless he did name the powerful people who wanted to speak -- Mark Thompson, Jane Root -- rather than force them to say who they were.

Baz noted that there is no shortage of creative ideas, just of money to pay for them, and that the premise is different now we have unlimited spectrum. Mark Thompson of Channel 4 agreed with Baz that 'money should go to the best ideas' but asked: what is best, and who decides? noting that best is different depending on your objectives.

In his concluding comments Baz argued that it is a fantastic moment to be involved in the industry, with new technology possibilities, the BBC charter renewal, and the public service broadcasting charter review. "If we want to do something we can". Hewes agreed that the new world can only be good for independents.

Oxford Media Convention 2004: Stephen Carter

Stephen Carter, Chief Executive, Ofcom 'Ofcom Markets for Society'

Spoke about the move "from [an] economy of command in spectrum to an economy of demand" where Ofcom would be "acting as a steward to prevent us losing the things that citizens value". Considers Ofcom to be pro-market and light-touch, avoiding the 'something must be done' approach (for instance in broadband access) which tends to lead to heavy-handed government intervention. (Ofcom approval of light-tough regulated rural WiFi is interesting.)

Discussing broadband noted that coverage and take-up are often confused. Argued that we need to see "liquid bandwidth as seen in Far East". His colleague Adam Singer talks about disposable broadband that will enable networked households and innovation. He is keen to see more 'upstream' competition for ISPs so they can create additive margin through product innovation and marketing (as has happened with DTV), rather than moving around the margin at the level of infrastructure. This is very encouraging, though ISPs don't show much stomach or head for innovation. He considers broadband, always-on, and VoIP to be "a suite of convenience products" that mirror what we do already. Rather he wants to create a framework that creates a likelihood of continually innovative investment.

Argues that the digital switchover should sit alongside the Olympics as a grand project. His other comments and broadcast weren't of great interest but he ended on an interesting question: are we at the inflection point for content creation, as we were with content delivery? and talked about dealing with content in the context of many devices including the iPod, DVD, and Playstation. He also asked if in television commissioning was too centralised and relied on same talent, and looked at the role of independent producers in this sector.

He concluded by stating the Ofcom was independent, non-political, and unashamedly technocratic. It also seems to be pretty tech-savvy, which is good.

[This posting is not checked against a record of the talk. The discussion is not included.]

WSIS Day Four, PM: What will we remember?

The Summit began to wind down this afternoon, though elements of it continue tomorrow.

The concluding Summit plenary included: Report from multi-stakeholder events (I think I went to one of those), Adoption of the Declaration of Principles, Adoption of the Plan of Action, Arrangements for the Tunis phase of the Summit, and Adoption of the report of the Geneva phase of the Summit.

In strict planning and bureaucratic terms this all makes complete sense. But I couldn't help feeling that the participants were trying to give shape to a blancmange. The multi-stakeholder events I had attended -- the World Electronic Media Forum -- reported back, but as I have noted its recommendations were drafted somewhat haphazardly. Shockingly, my recommendations hadn't made it into the top five, which were:

1. There is no conflict between hardware and software: pipelines and content
   
2. Radio is the key new media of information society in the developing world
   
3. The Web is worldwide, but its success is in organising people at the local level (hence the importance of WiFi for using the Web in people's language)
   
4. The Web allows for the promotion of local cultures globally
   
5. Editorial independence and training of journalists is important
   

The other reports I followed were of the platitudinous kind I have previously described. It is quite therapautic to listen to them, but there is nothing to snap you out of your trance, nothing that makes you see things differently. However, the business statement did make me sit up and listen. Business was 'represented' at WSIS by the Coordinating Committee of Business Interlocutors (CCBI) and its spokesperson sounded like a hard-nosed business type. But at least he had some definite requirements. He began by noting that an information society requires investment, creativity and innovation (hadn't heard the last two concepts for a few days) as well as:

1. Intellectual property rights protection
   
2. Stable and predictable legal systems
   
3. Trade liberalisation
   
4. Technology neutrality, and
   
5. A regulatory framework which promotes competition and fosters entrepreneurship
   

The CCBI also stated that the idea of Internet governance was a misnomer, and argued that the current decentralised model, in which there is no central locus, is one of the best features of the Internet.

I didn't follow the whole of the final plenary, and from what I did I wonder how clear we will be about the Summit's conclusions when the fog clears. Instead I visited the ICT4D exhibition, which was somewhat more tangible than the Summit presentations. Although it was focused on development the exhibition included a stand showcasing some interesting technology and design innovations from NTT DoCoMo and Panasonic. The HP stand was well-considered, and showed its products and services in the context of government and development work. HP's research lab in Bangalore is also working on interface design concepts for non- and partially-literate people. The geeky highlight of the exhibition was the NeXT computer Tim Berners-Lee used at CERN, which became the first Web server. (It was filched from the Science Museum in London, where it is on permanent display in the Digitopolis section of the Wellcome Wing.)

In the evening I took the train to Lausanne to see some friends for dinner. The 50 minute journey was so pleasant it seemed to take much less time. The carriages were well-apppointed, clean and comfortable, the ride was smooth, departure and arrival were punctual, and the staff professional. I was reminded that when we set our minds to a project and devote our energies for the benefit of our fellow men we can create wonderful and ambitious things that work well and are pleasurable to experience. That is how we should approach the development of information and communication technologies.

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Look out for articles on the Summit in spiked-online and possibly Guardian Online.

Next conference reporting will be from Pixel Raiders at Sheffield Hallam University April 6-8, 2004 and CHI2004 in Vienna, April 24-29, 2004.