Marcus Barber’s Presentation from the V21 Digital Conference in Melbourne is available

‘ve just spent a delightful day learning about digital issues at the v21 Digital Conference at the State Library and my presentation at that conference is now available at the link below. My all too brief summary of presentations is also provided

Sessions have covered Branding, Blogging, case studies, education & health; future of digital, legal implications, payment options and methods for engaging with end users – a very informative day and well done to everyone who presented. Special kudos goes out to the #V21 committee in Melbourne for pulling this all together

Marcus Barber’s View of Digital – From Clever to Wise

The day kicked off with Rick Chen from Pozible discussing crowdfunding, the essence for a good campaign and how it is not a donation method, but a method for pre-sales.  Possibly taking his cue from many of the football sporting fraternity with the onset of long and bushy beards, Reactive’s Bradley Grinlinton discussed the challenges of opening an office overseas, in their case London, and the great reasons for doing so, along with some of the competitive challenges faced. I thought his insights were very generous to what could arguably be described as an audience of competitors!

Justin Hind from With Collective provided a look at a case study, Bond’s Baby Search contest and the way to hook in customers to a call to purchase through a hook to their own offspring using digital media. Morning tea was had and then I followed – you can download my presentation from the link above. In it I tackle the issue of how much we really trust digital, along with an urging for the outstanding brainpower in the room to stop focusing on the trivial and tackle big issues instead.  From TKM9, Mark Hodgens gave everyone a look at some interactive signage and ‘furniture’. There’s some very interesting work being done in this area to take the passing by audience from passive to ‘engaged’ and actively work/play with the media. In my work with one financial company I suggested using face recognition and NFC could be developed that immeditaely taps into a passer-by’s credit history and pops up an ad specific to them!

Prior to lunch, Sharyn Lowe from Flaunt Marketing gave us some terrific insights on blogging, highlighting the challenge for many in trying to make money from doing so, as well as a look at the case study of the Women with Drive site which is kind of like a curated ‘things you should know’ for their audience. The program post lunch had a few changes in timing and as listed we had a really good look at NFC (near field communication) technology and the established and emerging payments systems. Both Simon and Erik from Visual Jazz did a fine job of keeping what could have been a highly technical presentation, into one of pragmatic value. For those interested in listening to more on the Future of money, take a look at the ‘Future of…’ page where I chat with ABC’s Vicki Kerrigan

Bridie Mackay & Michael Woods relaxly bantered their way through a presentation to show us more about the Royal Children’s Hospital’s recently developed Create Learn Explore App. They showed that good useful apps don’t need to be tricked up show ponies, just things that work.  DMG’s Emily Rayner preceded Rick Gleave from Pandora. There was a pretty distinct difference between the two sides, not quite polar opposities of what each was trying to achieve and wide apart all the same. Being a regular Nova listener I’m surprised at DMG’s focus on discovering ‘talent’ as I figured in this day and age, that ought to be the job of the audience. I reckon there’s a clue from Justin Hind’s presentation about Bonds that DMG could run with. Pandora on the other hand showed that not only can basic tech not go according to plan, not all music aggregators are the same. Over 400 filters to match songs under their GENOME project is impressive. Parts of me fears ‘vanilla’ of all music and I chatted with Matt Hunt at Cummins Ross during a break about an alternative idea to ensure the concept stays lively.

Amir Ansari and Takis Diakoumis gave us a look at Open 2 Learn, the Open University collective’s take on MOOCs – the lads need to ensure that they acknowledge George Siemens and Stephen Downes in Canada who were on to MOOCs well before any of the University’s had a clue what they were. Downes in particular has written volumes on why some of the University’s approaches to MOOCs are doing so poorly – check him out at Downes.ca

Jason Healey from bwired joined Hall & Wilcox who rolled out two lawyers (Ben & James) for their presentation on IP issues & fair trading in the digital space. I suspect there was an awful lot learned during that session. A question I wanted to ask Ben regarding the STA case was why Google wasn’t pursued under the Ambush Marketing laws? The trio did well at covering a pretty broad topic base with just enough depth. They were followed by Tim Duggan from Sound Alliance who discussed the new term ‘Native Media’. I must say the concept does not have me ‘sold’ but it’s new enough and interesting enough to park in the ‘watch this space’ category. Whether it just becomes another piece of marketing hype, results will tell.

All up a very good day. Well done to the AIMIA committee in Melbourne for putting it together and many thanks to Gold Sponsor of the event August, for introducing me to AIMIA in the first instance