Last week we invited 30 professional media enthusiasts, i.e. representatives from the Danish media business, for a networking brainstorm session. The end product was an unprecedented 25 pages of condensed inspiration and wake-up calls for this year’s conference. We’ve officially labelled the event ‘New Media Days Kick-Off’ and it’s become an invaluable annual feedback for us when aiming to meet – and go beyond – your conference expectations.

This year the majority of feedback confirms our notion that you, the guests, have grown weary of the usual suspects on stage, the redundant talks of how old media is dying and the lean-back conference experience in general. There’s an obvious craving for that exceptionally new and different perspective on future roads to follow – and there’s a go-getter will to rise from the executive chair and seek it out yourselves.

We edited together this video from the Kick-Off that gives a rough idea of where we’ll be focusing our organizing efforts the coming months (interviews are in Danish and no subs yet):

We love it. The feedback doesn’t alter our basic conference ambitions dramatically but sensing so strongly the enthusiasm for something unusual makes planning for this year’s conference way more fun and inspiring.

While we piece together the conference puzzle keep an eye on these pages for program updates and more. And get your ticket here while they last. We tend to run out a month before the opening act.

So we’ve decided to LIKE people more in this blog! Not just by way of hand signals, but with the aid of words, pictures, video and all kinds of media types we can fit into this space.

We can’t think of a better way to kick-start this public liking, than by announcing our new project manager at New Media Days, Didde Elnif. She hasn’t even settled behind the desk yet and we like her already!

Didde is 29yo and experienced journalist by trade, but certainly not one for resting on the vocational laurels. Gaining new knowledge is an absolute must and new media insight is a particular passion of hers – as is photography, genuine networking and giving a damn about the state of things. Didde is fireworks about to go off in our offices and shower you with inspiration. We like! And that’s why she’s our new head of programming come June 1st.

Enough corporate ranting, let’s pass the QWERTY to Didde:

How did you end up in media?
It all began in a tent outside a store selling scout gear. I was playing the part of myself – a young student looking for somewhere to live – in the Danish comedy show ‘Gintberg Show Off’. Somehow that got me hired as runner in DR… and one thing led to another – suddenly I found myself studying at Danish School of Journalism.

What do you love about your (new) job?
That I can do exactly what I’m most interested in: Look for the most visionary movements in modern media, help shake up the gloomy part of the industry and hopefully inspire some innovative development. And of course working together with a fantastic team of likeminded that live and breathe new media.

Life outside of work?
Outside work? What do you mean…?
Okay – though I sometimes forget it, there is in fact a life outside work. And that’s when it becomes obvious, that I’m a music addict, foodie by heart and always in dialogue both offline and online about development of the media business, journalism, photography, technology, gadgets… I’m a bit of a geek – I know.

Where do we find you online?
Tweeting: http://twitter.com/Elnif
Networking: http://facebook.com/Elnif and http://linkedin.com/in/Elnif
Listening: http://last.fm/user/eddi_delfin
Registering: http://flickr.com/Elnif

In case you haven’t heard SXSW is one of the world’s most fascinating festivals on technology, film and music and unfolds across ten days. Let me tell you it’s intense!

All of downtown Austin is included and the city, sizzling with energy and hospitality, gradually becomes the setting for various subcultures: First the techies and nerds arrive armed with iPhones and statement T-shirts, to be followed by the movie geeks alongside A-list film celebrities, and finally the musicians take over town with their big tattoos and even bigger sunglasses.

With it’s tribal tendencies and temporary community structure, SXSW is as close to cultism as Burning Man and for an overwhelmed first timer like me it takes a while to crack the cultural code, cut through the esotericism and learn from the veterans. Insomnia, adaptation and endurance are keys to survival, but once you’re in, you never want to leave!

SXSW is (perhaps too) big and with 881,400 gross square feet of conference space and a programme of around 20 parallel tracks it’s all about choices! I’d like to share three great choices I made:

SOMETHING IS WRONG!
Jaron Lanier is one of the pioneers of virtual reality, a computer scientist, a visual artist, a composer and an author. Not only is he a peculiar mix of different disciplines, his stage presence is also quirky, unique – and very convincing.

At SXSW he opened with a tune on a homemade woodwind instrument and then turned his ‘no slides, no script’ presentation into a harsh critique on our ways of using technology today.

Lanier sees the organization of “the web” as a repetition of the Hollywood studio system with few, monopolistic players making money by opening and closing gates between people. He also raises a concern for the youth growing up with documenting everything on Facebook, his point beeing that ”in order to grow up you have to do some strategic forgetting of yourself.”

A WEB ENTERTAINER TAKES IT AWAY
One of the more curious elements of SXSW was the charismatic online performance artist, composer and humorist Ze Frank. He is a playful innovator on the internet and his projects have a quiet charm to them. I was very inspired by the way he creates personal reflection by using existing internet services in creative ways.

Among other entertaining things Ze Frank borrowed a 25–year-old woman’s Facebook account for a week but I was especially moved by his project “Chillout Song”: Ze Frank received an email from a woman named Laura, who had recently moved to a new city for a new job. She was overwhelmed with anxiety and asked him to write her a song to help her calm (the f***) down. With a little help from his online friends he responded with this ‘audio hug’

For a brief summary of his SXSW talk, you should check out this video.

VIRTUAL WORLD, NEW REALITY
In the end I managed to sneak into some of the film screenings, and one movie in particular blew me away: Life 2.0 – a documentary following a group of four people whose lives a dramatically transformed by 3D virtual community Second Life.

With a hypnotizing cinematography and an slow paced suspense to it, Life 2.0 tells the stories of a 30-year-old man living the life of 11-year-old girl Ayya in Second Life, the virtual lovers Blunty and Amie that are married to someone else IRL, and finally of Asri, an African-American businesswoman who’s virtual business is being illegally copied, which forces her to sue the responsible person IRL.

More than an examination of a technology, the film is an intimate, poetic drama about people who look to a virtual world in search of something they are missing IRL. Second Life might be old news for most of us however this take on virtual reality is original.

Size and geography aside, New Media Days and SXSW share an interest in discussing and showcasing how human shapes technology and vice versa, so you might wanna look out for a bit of that Southern SXSW touch in our 2010 programme!

Now the time has come to look forward and for us to plan for New Media Days 10. It’s a most exciting time of year for us: Far out ideas of form and content that will shape the final event are still on Post-Its and being bounced back and forth on a daily basis. Nothing seems impossible… and as you know it’s all about savoring that moment.

Many ideas come from your feedback, others are unrealized concepts surfacing from office drawers or brand new thoughts sparked by overflowing RSS readers. But we know there’s something we’re missing. There always is.

A change in media consumption, a promising business model, an exciting start-up or service, a great conference networking model, another conference to be inspired by or anything great that has caught your attention. Let us know – and help us shape New Media Days 10!

Please tell us what inspires you, here on the blog or anywhere you feel like it:

twitter.com/newmediadays
facebook.com/newmediadays
inspiration@newmediadays.dk

Oh yes, and we’ll soon change the graphics on this site to get everybody in the 2010 mindset. Stay tuned. Booting up…

Sadly none of the available layers contain data related to climate issues. Why is that? And isn’t it obvious that such a layer should be developed and promoted for COP15, the international climate change negotiations taking place in Copenhagen this December?

Instead of far-fetched city make-up like temporary windmills why not enhance what’s already here and let the citizens of the web inform each other of sustainable initiatives in Copenhagen? I’m talking about augmenting reality and creating a virtual layer of existing data for everyone (with an enabled mobile phone) to access anywhere in the city.

Below are some ideas, but before you read the rest of this photo-illustrated manifesto take a look at the short introduction video to the Layar Reality Browser:

The following are screenshots of the Layar application at work in the streets of Copenhagen today. The layers applied work fine and as far as I see the data could easily be about climate change – but it isn’t yet.

Location: Frederiksberg Allé. This layer shows the distance to the nearest hotel with rooms available. A climate layer could perhaps tell of the street itself; of how trees planted along both sides absorb Co2 and how the Commune of Frederiksberg is rolling out plans to make public areas greener and bring down the carbon footprint. (Don’t know if it is, but the layer would know.)

Location: Gammel Kongevej. This layer shows where I can buy my groceries, but it fails to tell me that right on the opposite corner is Egefeld, the largest (and only) all-organic supermarket in Copenhagen (Frederiksberg.) A climate layer would have a link to Wikipedia telling you how much organic farming benefits the overall climate as opposed to ordinary farming. And if you aimed your mobile phone 90 degrees to the left you’d discover Irma, the Danish supermarket chain that last week broke it’s own world record with a monthly organic sales ratio of 34,3%.

Location: Axel Torv. In the evening this 50 meter tall Ferris wheel lights up the sky – and burns how many thousand kW an hour?! Cheap hotel rooms are all good, but a climate layer should inform the curious onlooker that the city of Copenhagen has just licensed this non-sustainable ride to stay until January. Conscious climate representatives should take a 13 minute ride in the metro instead.

Location: Langelinie. Oh look, a little stranded mermaid! We usually don’t get mermaids this far north… Could it be that climate change is heavily affecting temperature in the oceans and impacting ecosystems too rapidly for marine life to adjust in their natural habitat? Hundreds of photos are taken with mobile phones each day at this very spot. Why not augment reality and give the fairy tale a different spin for a change?

Plenty of ideas. So who’s going to make it happen using the Layar API and data already floating around the World Wide Web?

Btw, this post is part of Blog Action Day for climate change. Check it out at

MORE STUFF ABOUT AUGMENTED REALITY:
IntoMobile: Layar, the first mobile augmented reality browser

Video: Bruce Sterling on the raw possibility of augmented reality

Video: Cool AR music video project by Lost Valentinos

Video: LEGO Augmented Reality Kiosk

And remember: In 2 days (October 2nd at noon CET) the ticket price goes up by 500 DKK. No reason to pay more than necessary – register now!

At New Media Days 09 we’re excited to welcome on stage:

JULIAN ASSANGE (AUS) tends to keep out of the limelight and spend his time backstage maintaining the democratic free flow of information.

He will join us at New Media Days 09 as spokesperson (and unconfirmed co-founder) of Wikileaks: “A multi-jurisdictional organization to protect internal dissidents, whistleblowers, journalists and bloggers who face legal or other threats related to publishing.” An initiative Time Magazine has proclaimed “could become as important a journalistic tool as the Freedom of Information Act” and the Ars Electronica Festival recently presented with an Award of Distinction.

Julian Assange’s bio at Wikileaks is an exciting read. I’ll highlight some passages:

– Born in Australia to a touring theatre family, Julian attended 37 schools and 6 universities.
– He studied mathematics, philosophy and neuroscience.
– As a teenager he became Australia’s most famous ethical computer hacker.
– He was instrumental in introducing the internet to Australia and co-founded Australia’s first free speech ISP.
– A prolific programmer and consultant for many open-source projects, his software software is used by most large organizations and is inside every Apple computer.
– He has broken stories in most major venues, travelled extensively and has been a subject of several books and documentaries.

MICHAEL WOLFF (USA) is over journalism, as one reporter of L.A. Times puts it. Nevertheless he is a journalist himself, a media columnist for Vanity Fair, television commentator on CNBC and author of several books.

But in 2007 he founded Newser.com: “A news aggregator with brains that selects the best news stories from hundreds of sources all over the web, read them for you, and summarize them in two succinct, sharply written paragraphs or less.” This put him solidly in the business of putting newspapers out of business.

Newser is a fast-growing service in the US and has unsurprisingly inflamed the news media struggling to make ends meet. It is challenging traditional business models and ruthlessly reordering the work of fellow journalists – but is it in fact the future of news media?

Wolff’s latest book The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch is a unique portrait of the News Corp CEO who gave 50 hours of exclusive interviews – and later raised objections about the publication.

I’m betting this session will generate questions from the audience.

LARS BASTHOLM (DK) received high praise for his talk on the future of digital marketing at New Media Days 2007. We’re very happy to once again welcome Lars on stage in 2009. This time in his new position as Chief Digital Creative Officer at Ogilvy North America.

As the Ogilvy press release confirms, Bastholm is a considerable asset for the company and also for New Media Days 09:

“Lars has been working in the interactive marketing industry for over 12 years. After starting up Grey Interactive in Scandinavia, he joined Framfab in Copenhagen, Denmark as Creative Director. There he worked on some of the world’s most recognized brands, including Nike, LEGO, Sprite and Carlsberg.”

“The Chief Jurist for the 2009 Cannes Cyber Lions, Lars is one of the most highly awarded and recognized digital creative executives in the industry with three Cyber Lions Grand Prix’s of his own. Before joining Ogilvy, he spent four-years at AKQA, most recently as Co-Chief Creative Officer where he was key to winning interactive assignments for Coke, Smirnoff and Motorola.”

Expect the seats for this presentation to disappear faster than the revenue streams of print media.

Here are some outtakes from their official bios. Find out more from their speaker profiles in our archive – and be sure to get your conference tickets while they last!

CLAY SHIRKY divides his time between consulting, teaching, and writing on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies.

His consulting practice is focused on the rise of decentralized technologies such as peer-to-peer, web services, and wireless networks that provide alternatives to the wired client/server infrastructure that characterizes the Web.

In addition to his consulting work, Mr. Shirky is an adjunct professor in NYU’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), where he teaches courses on the interrelated effects of social and technological network topology — how our networks shape culture and vice-versa.

Mr. Shirky frequently speaks on emerging technologies at a variety of forums and organizations. His writings are archived at shirky.com, and he currently runs the N.E.C. mailing list for his writings on networks, economics, and culture.

JULIA DIMAMBRO has spent the last 12 years in new media and digital communications and 7 years specifically in mobile entertainment.

In 2003 Julia set up Cherry Media to enable brands and consumer-orientated aggregators to reach, acquire, engage and retain a receptive, high-spending and loyal client base.

The company’s Cherrysauce operation is recognised as an industry leader in the field of erotic mobile entertainment, winning numerous awards.

She has been voted one of the top 50 most influential executives in mobile entertainment 3 years running as well as one of the top 50 women in mobile two years running.

Julia is also a regular speaker and writer on the strategies, innovations and challenges of mobile erotica and adult entertainment.

SHANE SMITH is one of the founders of Vice magazine and the President of Vice’s media empire.

In 1994, along with Suroosh Alvi, he helped start a small Montreal punk zine which would soon grow into the first ever free worldwide youth-culture monthly, with 22 international editions and a global circulation of over one million.

Under Shane’s direction, the company has expanded into a wide array of new territories. There’s Vice’s music wing, Vice Records, Vice Books and Vice has also pushed into the worlds of marketing and movie production with its own in-house ad agency, Virtue.

Since 2007 VBS.tv has been Vice’s internet broadband network and an online video counterpart to the magazine’s cutting-edge journalism and cultural commentary.

Shane enjoys cold white wine and long, bubbly baths—preferably in tandem.

Vint Cerf (USA, Google) is a true pioneer from back when the Internet was a strategic brainchild of the US Defense.

30 years ago Vint was instrumental in designing the basic architecture of the Internet: The TCP/IP-protocols. Since then he has been lecturing on computer science while leading development of networked communications that we today take for granted.

Presently this “Father of The Internet” serves as vice president & Chief Internet Evangelist at Google and continues to advance the technological foundation of media. One thing that Vint Cerf is passionately advocating is the adoption of IPv6, the next-generation Internet Protocol that will support our ever increasing online needs.

New Media Days is pleased to have Vint Cerf as our keynote in 2009 sharing his understanding of the future of media technology.

Genevieve Bell (AUS, Intel) conducts her work on the front line of innovation.

Holding a doctorate degree in anthropology she studies how media is used and perceived among individuals across the globe before turning the research into action as director of Intel’s User Experience Group: A diversified R&D team focusing on consumer-centric product innovation in Intel’s consumer electronics business.

Furthermore Genevieve Bell carries the honorary title of Intel Fellow for her technical leadership and outstanding contributions to the company and the industry.

Judging from the amount of ideas and perspectives that Genevieve has suggested for her talk, we’re in for a roller-coaster session of insights into the secrets of the media consumer.

Rob Spence (CAN, Eyeborg) adds another dimension to the term ‘personal media’.

Himself a one-eyed filmmaker and his friend an unemployed engineer, they decided to turn two misfortunes into an advantage with the aid of technology: Embedding a video camera and a transmitter in Rob Spence’s prosthetic eye and make media history.

Not only is the camera perspective in Spence’s recordings unique, but the Eyeborg Project also significantly widens the perspectives on human-technology interaction. Sensation and curiosity aside, the project is most likely a sign of times to come, when our bodies can be technologically augmented in seamless and beneficial ways so far only described in science fiction.

Hang tight for more speakers to be announced right here!

Videos:

Vint Cerf about the future of the Internet

Genevieve Bell at Web 2.o Expo, NY

Rob Spence on the Today Show

Rest assured however, that the conference crew and content is just as focused on new media innovation as it ever was – and as of today we’re open for conference registration too. This year our venue will be Copenhagen’s new pride; Jean Nouvel’s Concert Hall in DR Byen.

We’re very excited to finally show you what we’ve been creating for the past months here at newmediadays.dk. The basic premise of our rebuild was to honor the 5 years of knowledge springing from past New Media Days. So we designed our archives to be intuitively searchable, facilitating our video material the best way possible.

Together with the blog – this alternating stream of conference news and linked arguments – and the conference part of the website, we hope that our visitors take some time to explore the flavor of New Media Days.

The great people behind our tasty new design are e-Types. Here’s what they have to say about the design:

“Like NMD we love new media. From being utter print nerds, scorning this thing they called “the internets,” e-Types has over the years embraced all things web-ish. And really, tech stuff aside, there is not that much of a stretch from designing for paper to designing for bits and pixels. In the end, its about new ways of seeing, communicating, sharing and creating.”

“Designing the website and identity, we wanted to reflect not only the mentality of the people who work around the clock to put the conference together, but also the mentality of the web itself. Dynamic and ever-changing, abstract and playful, the logo was designed to be hacked, pulled apart, mutated and remixed – because we believe it is in the mix of cultures, minds and ideas the true value of the internet is to be found. Potentially world-changing, definitely mind-altering NMD is truly golden!”

So there you have it: As much as we like latte, our new conference identity color is really GOLD! If you’re not quite convinced, secure your ticket for New Media Days 2009 and be prepared for showers of really sparkling Pantone colors. And exceptionally fantastic speakers! And some latte.

As with all things web, our site has built in room for improvement and we have plenty of nifty features scheduled ahead. Please don’t hesitate to comment on our flaws or fabulousness – here on the blog, on twitter, facebook or by good old e-mail

Jon Lund and his Google search results point to the fact that some people now find they spend less time blogging, because they’re busy with Facebook. Others, for instance Morten Remmer, find that the microblogging trend (Twitter, Jaiku etc.) also has little to offer in view of Facebook’s status wall. So is Facebook the only personal, output channel we need? And how long before Mr. Zuckerberg launches World of Facecraft to quell the advances of online gaming too?

Few would disagree that the blog as a communication platform has lost its overall news value during the past 2-3 years, but measuring up a coffin seems a bit rash. When weblogs started to gain popularity in the late 90s it was because the platform offered an easy-to-use interface for sharing opinions. Since then multiple formats of personal, online expression have emerged to compete for the user’s attention and some of these certainly fit a broader portion of web users better than the blog ever did.

Facebook is a unique example of this change; a university experiment becoming an indispensable, worldwide hub of services bridging microblogging (Status wall), webmail (Inbox), calendar (Events), pictures (Photos), commercial websites (Pages), casual gaming (Applications) not to mention personal details on every person, you want to stay in touch with (Friends.)

Facebook’s nose for market direction + guts to revitalize their product in spite of customer satisfaction is deserving of respect. Most people now get their need for online expression satisfied right within one URL. Facebook is the mall of social web apps. Who would ask for anything more?

Eventually most of us will. Parking our online attention with Facebook is easy and comforting in a fragmented media landscape, but special interest content and services we’ll look for outside; in the rough. I love the status feed, but don’t count on it for the well-argued opinions or detailed research that I find in some blog posts. I often flick through photos of my Facebook friends, but go to Flickr or Google when searching for specific motifs. Facebook is a convenient constellation of services, but every one is done better elsewhere.

Take Twitter. (In my view Twitter (“What are you doing?”) should switch catchphrase with FB (“What’s on your mind?”) and make both fit better.) If I want nice-to-know information about my friends’ whereabouts or concerns, I consult Facebook. If I want to stay on top of news from around the world, I go to Twitter – or actually Twitter runs on my desktop all the time; a constant flow of (mostly) relevant news that I wouldn’t want to be without.

The nature of your Twitter flow is also fully customizable. It simply depends on whom you choose to follow. I only have a handful of duplicates from my Facebook friends list on Twitter and consequently get two very different feeds: One work related (Twitter) and one personal (FB). I think Twitter does microblogging better than Facebook, but at the end of the day I would like to have them both, as they fill different needs.

All in all it’s great that Facebook is taking some steam off the blogosphere and the twittersphere; fragmentation in this respect is not a bad thing and will hopefully lead to blogs regaining some lost authority, while Twitter continues to provide for a different kind of public sphere communication – as opposed to personal.

This is not arguing for an elitist quality-purification of blogs, tweets and other non-FB services, but simply saying that perhaps the Facebook Monster isn’t so much killing off other services as helping them crystallize their strengths – like Myspace is now synonymous with music.

Is this naïve and overly simplistic? Or perhaps just stating the obvious?

Related:
New Media Blog: Lifestreaming – Connecting the social dots

The Bivings Report: Facebook’s Challenges in Going Global

PR 2.0: (ebook) The Art and Science of Blogger Relations

Promo Magazine: Casual Games, Serious Marketing