The Edinburgh TV Un-Festival kicked off in fine style last weekend. Once the introductions were out the way and people has filled out a spot out on the make shift schedule. It was straight into sessions. Each session was unique and well attended by people.
Because of the Un-conference nature of the event, the schedule would shift and change over the day. At one point the room names were hacked into famous British actors sayings, from Buffy Characters. Some of our favourite sessions included,
Jonathan Tweed showing the 大象传媒 iplayer Facebook application from Hackday
Zattoo showing a legal alternative for online live TV
Licorice Film showing a possible future for interactive Drama and storytelling.
George Wright's announcement of TV Backstage, which incurred some very challenging questions around the future of Interactive TV.
Paul Pod from Tape it off the Internet with his LOLCat inspired presentation
Trusted places.com for sponsorship of the event and showing user generated content can sit next to professional video.
George Wright and Netgem on the future of Hybrid Interactive TV
Ian Clarke showing what's possible once you have a complete robust peer 2 peer network.
Hannu from ThinkMathmantics on Storytelling and Alternative Reality Gaming
Backstage also from the event titled "Is TV dead?"
If you really want the full details of what happened in each session its worth checking out and Kevin Anderson's blog posts which read like a blow by blow of what happened and what was said. Fantastic reading but also quite scary how fast people can really type.
Jemima Kiss agrees with everyone that the event was great . This was reflected on Sunday by only Rosie Brown being the only person with a real TV background on stage during the discussions.
Sunday's session was titled . It was always on the cards that we would bring part of the un-festival to the main tv festival but this worked better that first imagined. The discussion quickly turned to how to describe the opportunities to TV people, and many ideas and views were banded around by the quite large crowd which turned up to the session.
The latest backstage podcast is now live 鈥 you can listen to it here
Or download the MP3 file directly from here
鈥淎t the inaugural backstage TV Unfestival in Edinburgh this year, Matthew Cashmore chaired a panel discussion entitled Is TV Dead. He was joined on the panel by
鈥 Brian Butterworth from UKFree.tv
鈥 Ewan Spence of The Podcast Network
鈥 Michael Sparks with the 大象传媒 R&D
鈥 George Wright with the 大象传媒 interactive TV.鈥
Kevin Anderson of Guardian fame blogged
Is was actually really interesting 鈥 and in the end the conclusion was that if stories where strong, then TV was as strong as ever...
Alongside and at the TV un-festival, there are some unknown names. Some of those names are fake or when put in google generate almost no results.
From
A darknet is a private virtual network where users connect only to people they trust. Typically such networks are small, often with fewer than 10 users each. In its most general meaning, a darknet can be any type of closed, private group of people communicating, but the name is most often used specifically for file sharing networks.
When used to describe a file sharing network, the term is often used as a synonym for "friend-to-friend" - both describing networks where direct connections are only established between trusted friends. However, "darknet" can also be used in a broader sense to describe any private file sharing network. The most widespread file sharing networks, such as Kazaa, are not darknets, since peers will communicate with anybody else on the network. Popular darknet software includes Nullsoft's WASTE and Freenet. The current version of Freenet, unlike typical darknets, is capable of supporting potentially millions of users using an application of small world theory.
Ian Clarke is one of the most famous Darknet people. He wrote the mentioned above Freenet, worked on Joost's P2P system, and now is working on , a user generated news website.
Paul Pod runs a site called (tioti.com) which sits right in the grey area. It uses Public and Private Torrents which point to sometimes questionable content. But not stopping there, Paul has a bunch of other clever things up his sleeves which he may be showing off at Edinburgh too.
Other Darknet people are more shy and although there will be a couple of Torrent site owners at the event. They may or may not present, but there presence will be felt.
There are clear signs of innovation happening in the darknets, and we're certainly in for an education.
The event is only 1 week away now and its . There is also a for all to fill with ideas and thoughts.
It was a very wet morning but that didn't stop around 20 people turning out to let the 大象传媒 know exactly what they thought of its use of DRM in iPlayer.
We've pulled those comments together and made a special podcast which you can download from here;
There are also some photos from the even which you can see here
"As an exclusive podcast offering you can hear Ben Lavender who came up with the idea for the iPlayer - though he's no longer with the 大象传媒 - talked to Peter Brown of the Free Software Foundation one of the groups behind the protest"
Ashley Highfield (Head of 大象传媒 Future Media and Technology) has replied to the points raised by the Defective by Design DRM protests. Ashley was happy for his answers to be published and has taken the issues seriously.
With less that 2 weeks till the Edinburgh TV Un-Festival, we're starting to see a range of interesting speakers signing up. Hugh from had a very interesting proposal for a talk about Machinima as a artform for making films using computer games. Hazel and Jon from are hacking reality and the notion of narrative with a whole new genre of game called Alternative Reality Gaming. While Michela from talks about open-sourcing film to the masses.
All interesting talks which you wouldn't see on a schedule of TV festival but all directly related to the future of TV and Media.
Its not too late to and also now there is for those going to the event.
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