Skillset Blog

There’s nothing like e-books to get a publishing debate going.

For those not in the know, e-books were hailed in the last millenium as the future of digital publishing… and yet this “revolution” never materialised. Why? For several reasons. From the lack of a satisfactory device with which to read them, to functionality that didn’t wholly fulfill reader demands.

The buzz has been growing online - and in print - around e-books again. Sara Lloyd, Head of Digital Publishing at Pan Macmillan, recently posted an article on The Digitalist (in several parts) that she has written for the US journal Library Trends. In it she provides an articulate description and analysis of how publishers got to where they are now and what they should be thinking about doing for the future, with e-books as one part of a digital future.

I urge you to read this. It gathers together a whole heap of thoughts from conferences, the press and blogosphere on what the digital present and future might look like for publishers. Titled “A book publisher’s manifesto for the 21st century” it provides a summary for the specialist and non-specialist alike.

But how do we seize this opportunity, react as an industry and make it happen? Do we have the right skills in place to do this? Perhaps not. Sara mentions the role of Google and Amazon in the revolution. Here are - shock, horror - non-publishing companies that have the resources, technologies, market knowledge and skills base to seek out these opportunities and find a way to make it happen. They don’t respect any industry-imposed boundaries of who does what.

How can book publishers respond? Get skilled up - and fast. Develop a skills manifesto to match the publisher’s manifesto. Ensure publishers have the strategic and technical skills required to track, understand, and respond to the changing markets - whether working in-house or with external partners - to deliver digital books or content any way a customer wants.

If you are reading this whilst nodding sagely at the mention of skills, why don’t you join one of our publishing focus groups in June? We’re organising a range of groups to cover the different the different sectors. Contact me to find out more about the who, what, where and when: suzannea@skillset.org.

All going swimmingly by all accounts, around 50 students through the doors and through the first round of pitching. We’ve had overwhelmingly positive feedback from the students with all but one indicating they enjoyed the day!

The main learning takeaways for students seem to be that they recognise the need to always have your audience in mind when developing ideas, that they also recognise the importance of taking on board feedback and suggestions to improve their ideas (not ruin them!) and interestingly the realisation for some that the way you present your work can have just as much effect as how good it is when presenting to a commissioner.

It sounds like its been a great couple of days with much learnt all round.

Roll on Round Two!

At last week’s Periodical Publishers Association Magazines 2008 conference, the revered/reviled (delete as appropriate) former Blair spin-doctor, Derek Draper, took part in a session named “The Personality of the Perfect Editor: What Can Psychology Tell Us?”

He took the delegates through a psychometric profiling test (supplied courtesy of Psychologies Magazine) and much fun was had by all, as we sent our answers through to a real-time SMS server, which showed the live results during the session (it’s not often you are instructed to keep your mobiles ON during a conference).

Adapted from Daniel Nettle’s book, Personality: What Makes You the Way You Are, the test identifies a “Big Five” of personality dimensions:

1. Extroversion (”Wanderers”) - ambitious and motivated by recognition and acclaim, enjoy a level of unpredictability in life and work
2. Neuroticism (”Worriers”) - pay attention to detail, work hard and spot potential problems, which keeps you awake at night, but makes you driven and likely to be successful
3. Conscientiousness (”Controllers”) - efficient, organised, consistent and successful, you like a structured environment but don’t respond so well to change
4. Agreeableness (”Empathisers”) - thrive in the caring professions, but may sideline yourself in supporting others
5. Openness (”Poets”) - successful in the creative industries as you think - and use - language in a different way, but could be seen to have strange or irrational beliefs.

Most people demonstrate a tendency towards one or two of these dimensions. But what did our group of magazine editors score high on? Well, there were a lot of “Controllers”, “Wanderers” and “Worriers”. The general consensus was that as an editor, you are the one that has to maintain the quality and vision for the publication, but have to influence, and depend on, a team of staff to help deliver that vision on time and in profit.

There were some inherent contradictions in some of the findings: can you really like an unpredictable work life, but prefer to be in a structured environment? One thing was clear from the session: being an editor is a tough, challenging and lonely job, where you need a multitude of skills to be effective. However, the reward of a successful magazine with a great team of staff running it, makes it all worthwhile.

Derek is a BT MIND journalist of the year. You can find more advice on his website  

Between education and industry, obviously. Nick was speaking to a mixed audience of industry practitioners, lecturers and students at Games:Edu and gave out some pretty good advice for brokering relationships between education and industry.

Nick (and Rare) is keen to see more people doing it, ‘evangelising’ about games, engaging with academics and students.

Two sections then, first up, advice for developers thinking about talking to universities:

+ if asked for content advice make sure you think about the whole industry and not just your own company
+ graduates are not just cheap labour
+ don’t just focus on the top five - cast your net wide and you may get lucky
+ helping courses develop may pay off further down the line with top quality staff and ideas fed into your studio
+ avoid hard sell lectures students are interested in proper lectures on proper subjects - this will attract far more interest that a talk on how wonderful your working environment it
+ tell the truth to students (about crunch etc) new employees finding this out the hard way may leave your studio
+ it is hard for one studio to visit every courses - so collaboration is going to be necessary
+ academics don’t bite!

And some advice for academics:

+ some developers will try and treat you like an assembly line
question all the advice your given and look for the core patterns in all the contact you have with multiple developers
+ don’t try to fill a single developer’s needs - core skills are forever and will serve the students better than specific skills with specific tools
+ students should cast their net wide and look for as many opportunities as possible.
+ developers don’t bite! - but you need to consider things from their perspective and understand the pressures created by working in the games business

I think if everyone follows these nuggets, we’ll be halfway to sorting out this whole issue, and will have more games courses working in partnership with the games industry, and focusing us all on what is needed to keep pushing the industry forward.

I’ve been to Manchester (didn’t stay for the football though) for Games:Edu and was intending to post live from the event, unfortunately, an unscrupulous wireless provider was unwilling to part with a connection for less that £350.

However - here are my thoughts on (must stress) Matt’s own thoughts which are not in any way representative of either Evolution or SCEE.

Matt’s morning session raised an interesting point, in highlighting attitudes towards games courses in industry alongside some of the more rabid musings of the mainstream press. In identifying the classic entertainment cycle (experienced by books, films, rock and roll and TV) of formation, damnation, acceptance and celebration.

Looking at this, and games themselves seem to be hovering in between damnation and acceptance, it strikes me that the games industry itself is guilty of applying this cycle to games courses.

Read the rest of this post »

Suzanne Ashley, Skillset’s brand new Publishing Sector Manager, and the newest author on the Skillset blog.

Suzanne will be keeping us informed and intrigued by goings on in the publishing sector and you can keep track of Suzanne’s posts, or follow the brand new publishing category to keep up to date.

Beijing’s Olympic Games will open on Friday August 8, 2008, at 8pm local time.  In the marketing and media sectors there is ferocious activity as companies race to prepare.  But as Universal McCann discuss in a recent paper, in many respects this race would be happening even without the Olympics as China’s marketing infrastructure is in a big hurry to meet the demands of a wealthier, more educated, media and brand savvy consumer base.  Its just that the Olympics is focusing every-ones minds, raising the ante ten-fold.

This will be the Technology Games.  3G telephony, WIFI and IPTV in and outside China will open new viewership and opportunities to leap frog what we have experienced in the past.  Companies are jealousy protecting their plans to avoid ambush and how much international and Chinese companies will spend in national media remains to be seen.  Manpreet Singh, CEO at Universal McCann, reckons media expenditure will grow more than 24% this year, television spend by 50%, with CCTV, the national broadcaster and right holder, the big winner.  Online media spends will double to about US$2million, accompanied by a huge explosion in user generated content where China clearly leads the world.  Television viewing in China will increase 20%-40%, but the Olympics will be bad news for program platforms such as soaps, serials and drama with audiences set to fall 5%-13%.

Online audiences will grow.  Sina.com, the largest Chinese language infotainment web portal, reported that during the FIFA World Cup 3.4 million comments and reports were generated.  China leads the world in sheer numbers of blogs, with 42 million compared to the US at 27 million.

UM have also recently published a very interesting comparative study of social media trends such as blogs are a main stream media world wide and a collective rival to traditional media - China has the largest blogging community in the world, with the 42 million bloggers mentioned earlier, 73% have read a blog, 45% have started a blog.

And in Wired this month, one of their top ten business trends is ‘China: the next Global Innovator’, on a sharp spur to innovation.  US Venture Capitalists committed 1.4 billion to Chinese companies alone last year, ‘made in China’ fastly changing to ‘invented in China’.

So lots more going on than just the Olympics, as predicted.  

And I am off to re-visit Philip Dodd…..

I’ve been meaning to do this update for a few days - but that has been useful to run this topic by a few people. My interest has been sparked by attending a BSAC event on Monday night in the West End, which focused on new models of funding for the games industry, and ways in which developers in particular can access investment, without having to sign exclusive deals with publishers.

BSAC’s involvement was to suggest that the games industry can learn a thing or two from films and the ideas of slate and portfolio funding, better bonding practises, and other financial safeguards, to ensure that investors get their money back whether a game is a hit or not.

In addition there was a theme (I expect to do with the presence of Tiga) of empowering developers by giving them less restrictive partnerships with financiers - ie someone who is interested in return on investment, not on the content of the game.

So - it seems one of the key challenges for games companies going forward will be raising finance for games. This is something that has traditionally involved successfully pitching ideas to publishers but will now include convincing investment bankers to take a percentage stake in a company or property.

There are a few companies doing this already but are the skills needed for this financial world present already in games, or will they need to be developed?

Read the rest of this post »

Swifter, higher, stronger; the Olympic motto, as established by Baron de Coubertin.

Last night a number of leading lights in different industry gazed into the crystal ball and tried to predict what the creative media industry might look like in 2012, and what skills and jobs will be needed too.

BBC Sport, Pearson, PA, Ascent Media, radio professionals, photographers - all came together to give their views. Skillset is the

Read the rest of this post »

As reported earlier, we have been looking at the issues facing the creative media industry through the lens of Engineering and Technologists. As a result, we are now looking for a consultant to help:

- Examine and describe the engineering needs of the different sub-sectors of the creative media industry

- Examine and describe existing Engineering qualifications and accreditation that the industry currently use

- Examine the embryonic MITC scheme being rolled out in Australia and describe its relevancy for the Creative Media sector

- Discuss with the wider stakeholder group (including international partners) and create an analysis of context and fit with global work

- If appropriate, create a detailed project plan to implement MITC (or equivalent)

- Examine, and if appropriate, source further sustainable funding to carry out implementation.

The full tender document can be found here - Tender Specification - so feel free to send this to anyone you think might be appropriate.