PLATFORM AGNOSTIC, FAST CONTEXT SWITCHING, WIRELESS ENABLED, DIGITAL

NATIVE

The hunt for the ...

We used to hunt the big FIVE …

We had limited space – only so many hours of television or radio and only so many newspaper columns

We had to know what was most popular and publish that. The rest, well, it ended up on the floor

We spent many hours debating who were the top politicians, the top celebrities? What were the biggest selling artists, the most popular celebrities.

Then someone called Anderson said …

All the rules change

What if we publish anything and everything (within ethical limits, of course) for everybody?

What if we allow users to reshape our products to suit them?

What if we do content instead of platforms? What if we publish 24 hours a day? What if we publish across the globe?

But, wait a second …

Is all of this relevant to us here in Africa?

Where are the digital consumers?

They are here right now, talking on their cellphones They are rapidly entering the online market and as

the costs of entry go down, they will do so more and more

What we have is the sort of strategic breathing space that American and European media houses did not have when they were hammered by the rise of online

NOW IS THE TIME TO ENGINEER CHANGE

PC and Internet usage in SA

Research prepared by Youth Dynamics, 2008

Telephone and cell access

Research prepared by Youth Dynamics, 2008

Traditional media usage

Research prepared by Youth Dynamics, 2008

Change 1: Fast context switching

“People my age tend to think that kids who are multiprocessing can’t be concentrating. That may not be true. Indeed, one of the things we noticed is that the attention span of the teens at PARC—often between 30 seconds and five minutes—parallels that of top managers, who operate in a world of fast context-switching. So the short attention spans of today’s kids may turn out to be far from dysfunctional for future work worlds.”

GROWING UP DIGITAL John Seely Brown

2. Thin-slicing

“Thin-slicing is not an exotic gift. It is a central part of what it means to be human. We thin-slice whenever we meet a new person, or have to make sense of something quickly or encounter a novel situation.” – Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink

3. Following the interest trail

As KT, an 18-year-old male from suburban California, describes: “I go to the most viewed page. . . . Mostly I want to know whatz up whatz cool, like what was funny on the Colbert Report yesterday, and it is just there, you can browse and look for stuff. Awesome!” Similarly, “When I start watching YouTube, I cannot stop. Each video takes me to another video. . . . It takes me to the author’s profile page. . . . I like to click on related videos that YouTube gives you on the side, you know what I mean. . . . There are always pointers to other videos.” KT, 18 yr old from suburban California quoted in

Media Ecologies - Lead Authors: Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura Robinson

4. Like, totally distracted?

5. Totally rewired free radicals

Are you organised enough for chaos?

This is how we used to design content production

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We must release creativity and energy

Community

AUDIENCE

MULTIMEDIACONTENT

PRODUCTION

INNOVATION

SOCIALLY NETWORKED

FAST

ADAPTABLE