Audio-only version is now available on my mobile app (the entire 2 hours); excerpt below. Enjoy:)))
Gerd Leonhard Talk at Repretel Costa Rica
This is a very nicely recorded video (thanks to the BBC NI and their fabulous studio in Belfast) and I cover a lot of ground as far as the future of media is concerned; one of my best talks on this topic, to date, imho:) Enjoy and share!
You can download the PDF with most of the slides here , or just browse my Slideshare channel. In this talk I cover most of the key topics such as 'the people formerly known as consumers', the shift from ownership to access, advertising becoming content, independence replaced by Interdependence, the end of attention monopolies, the social OS aka SoLoMo.
Special thanks to the BBC NI for making a great video and sharing it with me and everyone else. Also special thanks to Tiffany Shlain and her great work - be sure to watch 'Connected the Movie' asap!!
I was interviewed before my presentation at IAB NL's Mobile Inspiration Congress (see the PDF here), by Joris Heukelom (chairman of IAN Netherlands and Owner of MakerStreet). A good summary on many of the key issues that will impact the future of advertising, mobile and social.
This graph, below, reflects a growing trend and interesting phenomena that I have observed with many business that are impacted by the dramatically accelerating disruption brought on by digital technologies. For many incumbents, it may often look like 'things will be OK, regardless (i.e. we still sell a lot of XYZ - why worry)' but when a certain pivot point is actually reached (as below, in US newspaper ad revenues, around 2006), the entire business logic suddenly falls off the cliff, at which point it is often too late to still re-invent from a position of strength.
The lessons: foresight is crucial, and should be part of everyone's job. Look for likely change when your business is still doing well. Anticipate disruptions.
Roger Tagholm at Publishing Perspectives just published a nice review of the World eReading Congress in London, on Tuesday, where I had the pleasure of doing the opening keynote. The 6MB low-res PDF can be downloaded via this link: Download Ereading congress london gerd Leonhard (note: this is quick version, better resolution soon on Slideshare).
Here are the best snippets from Roger's review (and the rest of it is a good overview, as well!)
By Roger Tagholm
"Access not ownership, relationships not transactions and concerns over who owns the channel to market – these were some of the themes of the second World E-Reading Congress which began in London on Monday. Once again, organizers Terrapin had assembled a powerful line-up of speakers who provided a one-stop take on what is happening in the digital space. From “haptic technology” (from the Greek Haptikos, “pertaining to the sense of touch”) to “lean back” readers, this was also the place to get a jargon update and phrase fix.
Media Futurist Gerd Leonhard kicked things off. He believes the debate will soon be about access, not ownership and said that “for those over 30 it’s very hard to understand this switch. There will be some ownership, but it won’t grow. With music, iTunes sales are flat, but streaming is growing. It will happen with books. A Spotify for books will come. If a student wants 300 books, he’ll buy a three-year subscription”. Small examples of that already exist, but Leonhard means on a mass scale, such as that being contemplated in Brazil “where the government is looking to buy 100 million devices for students so they don’t have to buy the physical books”.
He believes there is more to the future than walled gardens and that “humans need meaning, not just cool technology. In the end, meaning is money. Apple has meaning, even though it is a totally walled garden — an oligopoly, a cult.” During the next three to five years he thinks we will see telemedia convergence. “The telecoms industry will realize that it will have to make deals with ISP operators to sell content — so that if you buy this SIM card, for example, you can get ten books.
“For the consumer, access to content will become much cheaper. We cannot force the consumer to pay the same for digital as physical. Technology owners reads more, so why penalize them? We need to innovate now to keep them.”
Sharing, he maintained, should be “non-negotiable. Sharing does not create economic damage.” Publishers must engage with their customers; attitudes to piracy must be rethought (“piracy happens when motivation meets opportunity”); and publishers must build value around content “because payment works if the context is right — if there is a reason, people will pay.”
Added note: "Duncan Edwards, President and CEO of Hearst Magazines International, took an entirely different view on pricing. “We have discovered that, because of the ease of use, people are prepared to pay as much — or even more — for the digital versions of our magazines.”
Really? Not sure that maybe that have just discovered their own desire to get as much as before, and found some willing fans - rest assured, this won't last. Look at iTunes and the music industry:) People will not continue to buy songs for €1 every time they are interested. Unsustainable, imho:=)
Today is a very big day for me. My new Kindle book "The Future of Content" just went online at Amazon, and is already gaining a lot of traction. You can view a very short video greeting about the book on my GerdTube channel (Youtube:)
Of course I would be very happy if you would consider buying the book for yourself (only $3.90, Kindle-only) but beyond that it would be really great if you could help me spread the word via rating and / or 'liking' the book on the Amazon.com page, tweeting about it or just forwarding this mail to some friends that may be interested.
As you probably know, I have published my last 3 books as free pdfs (which are quite popular) but really wanted to try something new with this book; after all reading on the Kindle is a much better experience than reading a PDF, and thus is, to quote Kevin Kelly, one of those "New Generatives" :)
"The future of content" will also be available in dead-tree-versions aka print, via my Lulu store, soon - please stay tuned. Happy reading!
Gerd Leonhard
(Media Futurist and CEO of The Futures Agency),
Basel / Switzerland
http://twitter.com/#!/gleonhard
My public Amazon / Kindle profile
(sharing all my book highlights there)
Update October 25 2011: this nice review may be helpful:
"I challenge you to expand your brain and read this book. What Gerd Leonhard is always doing is informing the global brain (or the collective brain) in ways that help us all get where we're trying to go. He builds the buildings in front of us.
This collection points toward several compelling answers for content creators. As a writer who is already swimming in the changing currents of "content," I found it intensely informative. Leonhard shores up my courage to continue embracing a digital world without DRM, and ebook prices "for the masses." He makes the all-important concept of curation crystal clear. If you are providing any kind of content in print or on the web, it's relevant. If you want to stay on the front edge of content creation and publishing, it's basic. I'm making this book mandatory reading for my epublishing circles"
Amazon Kindle German Store
Amazon Kindle French Store
Amazon Kindle UK Store
ABOUT "THE FUTURE OF CONTENT"
Futurist Gerd Leonhard has been writing about the future of content i.e. music, film, TV, books, newspapers, games etc, since 1998. He has published 4 books on this topic, 2 of them on music (The Future of Music, with David Kusek, and Music 2.0). For the past 10 years Leonhard has been deeply involved with many clients in various sectors of the content industry, in something like 17 countries, and it’s been a great experience, he says. “I have learned a lot, I have listened a lot, I have talked even more (most likely:) and I think I have grown to really understand the issues that face the content industries - and the creators, themselves - in the switch from physical to digital media.”
This Kindle book is a highly curated collection of the most important essays and blog posts Leonhard has written on this topic, and even though some of it was written as far back as 2007 - “I believe it still holds water years later. I have tried to only include the pieces that have real teeth. Please note that the original date of each piece is shown here in order to allow for contextual orientation.” Leonhard’s intent to publish this via the amazing Amazon Kindle platform, exclusively, and at a very low price, is to make these ideas and concepts as widely available as possible while still trying to be an example of what digital, paperless distribution can look like, going forward.
Here are both parts (90 minutes plus 35 minutes) of my keynote speech on The Future of Content at Colombia 3.0 October 7 2011 see http://www.colombiatrespuntocero.com
The panel discussion afterwards can be viewed here, as well (all in Spanish). Note: even though I am actually presenting in English the overdup is Spanish and very much in the foreground. I will try and get an English version, as well - stay tuned.
files.me.com/gleonhard/gi5dw0 has the PDF with the slides using during the talk (i.e. most of them) Thanks to MINTIC for making this video available. For more context read http://www.mintic.gov.co/index.php/mn-news/469-20111008gerd
Related: check out my new Kindle book "The Future of Content"
El suizo GerlLeonhard, líder futurólogo experto en modelos de comercio electrónico, medios de comunicación e innovación fue el encargado del cierre de la Primera Cumbre Nacional de Contenidos Digitales, Colombia 3.0, realizada por el Ministerio TIC entre el 5 y el 8 de octubre. Después de cuatro días de análisis en los que se reunieron emprendedores, inversionistas, animadores, desarrolladores de aplicación y representantes de la industria de los contenidos digitales del mundo terminó Colombia 3.0. En la cumbre participaron 30 conferencistas nacionales y 50 internacionales, quienes se reunieron en 14 eventos simultáneos.Las distintas actividades y conferencias fueron seguidas en línea en 23 ciudades del país y 15 países. De igual manera se tuvo la participación de Siggraph, una asociación mundial de animación gráfica y técnicas interactivas, espacio en que 19 expertos en animación compartieron sus experiencias exitosas en las firmas más importantes del mundo de esta industria. Bogotá 7 de octubre de 2011.En su intervención GerlLeonhard, realizó un detallado análisis de los cambios que han sufrido los medios tradicionales al migrar a los medios sociales como Facebook, Twitter y otras redes sociales. Además,Leonhard anotó que en la actualidad se vive una cultura de la banda ancha y son los “prosumidores”, consumidores activos, los que producen contenidos digitales.
Mencionó el experto suizo que el mundo digital está regido por la relevancia y no solamente por la distribución, según Leonhard, los contenidos digitales deben ser depurados antes de ser distribuidos a los distintos públicos y subrayó que la nueva economía digital que se está viviendo en la actualidad debe iniciarse desde Internet y especialmente desde los dispositivos móviles. Anotó también Leonhard, que el usuario es quien genera los contenidos digitales en la actualidad através de distintos dispositivos móviles. En su intervención, señaló además que la tendencia actual se desarrolla a través de lo móvil, lo social y lo local. Ademásindicó, en este sentido,que para el 2015se esperaque 7.1 trillones de dispositivos móviles sean usados en el mundo.
Riffing off Kevin Kelly's theme in this short video, I comment on what is this trend means for creators, curators, publishers and consumers. This video is part of a new series of short videos I filmed in Switzerland, this summer (all between 5-10 minutes) - visit my Youtube channel to get updates when they go live.
Ran across this hilarious yet made-me-think video via a great piece on the future of print at Crunchgear.com - take a look.
Here. Poynter.org has some good comments. Futureof.biz source. Stateofthemedia.org
Advertising bounces back - but not for print - and online leads along with LocalTV (US)
Radical move of audiences to the Internet: chew on this.
BetaTales's John Einar Sandvand did a short but concise interview with me, during my engagement at Future Media Days Norway (Oslo), November 16, 2010 (see the slides / pdf, here). A snippet:
"One of the most important trends is the transformation from a Copy Economy to Access Economy. Traditionally media business models have been based on selling copies of content: A printed newspaper, a book, a DVD, a music record, even a digital copy of a song. That model is about to disappear, claims Leonhard. He compares Internet to a giant copy machine. Selling “copies” is a model of the past. Instead the entire world shifts to a world of access. If you are in the media industry you better get used to this. It is a whole new industry...." Read more.
This is a good one - loads of information in here, and pretty well recorded. More details and PDF with all slides, here. Enjoy and spread the word. Subscribe to my video RSS feed, here, if you want (download all videos directly to iTunes, watch on your iPod etc).
This is the first part of the official video of my talk at ICTQatar, on December 6, 2010. The PDF download (6MB) is here: Gerd @ ICT Qatar talk low res
Here is some context via Zawya.com: "Gerd Leonhard Predicts a Radically Different Future for the Media and Content Industries: "In the content industries, we are going from selling copies, whether physical or digital such as books and CDs, to selling access, such as bundled music offerings where music is included in internet access. This is painful if you made money selling paper or plastic, but it is as inevitable as the switch from horse-drawn carriage to the railroad. And there is lots of new money to be made in selling access to the content-clouds," said Leonhard. "Without a doubt, data is the new oil. Over 4 billion connected users willgenerate zetabytes of data, every single day, by commenting, rating, tagging, forwarding, uploading and sharing content. Every marketer, every brand, every telco and every mobile operator will want to get to this data, and be allowed to use it," he said. "The consumer will be more powerful than ever before, and - just like oil - many difficult situations will arise from the use, such as the discovery, the mining, and the refining of data. In any case, data will emerge as the most important asset of the next decade."
Keynote Speaker, Think-Tank Leader, Futurist, Author & Strategist, Idea Curator, some say Iconoclast | Heretic, CEO TheFuturesAgency, Visiting Prof FDC Brazil, Green Futurist
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