Ultraband – high speed broadband for Nottingham city?

This week I went to hear a presentation in Nottingham by a project a little closer to actuality that the recent 2012 Design Capital bid I recently blogged about.

Ultraband is a public sector non-profit partnership led by Connected Nottingham whose current mission is to create a high-speed broadband ring hooked around central institutes in Nottingham (including Broadway and Biocity).  The network will enable businesses with high speed broadband needs, particularly in the media industries around Nottingham’s Lace Market, to access high fibre pipes to ail the curent creaking, high capacity broadband network which will be essential for the productivity of businesses in the future.

According to a survey they conducted which you can still fill out online (and you probably should as they’re basing their findings on just 23 responses currently) 71% of Lace Market businesses were unhappy with their internet, and had problems with bandwith and connectivity that prevented service delivery – including outsourcing rendering projects.

If the Lace Market wants to become a creative hub, competing with the net access offering of other European regions like MediaCity Salford, Amsterdam and Paris is essential.

The service would be operated on a non-project co-operative basis, which is how many Scandinavian high speed networks have been established.  However it’s subject to approval of an EMDA bid which could become a longwinded process.  Director Peter Goodwin was keen to point out that if we didn’t reach a decision on moving forward within a year the opportunity would be lost and with it competitive advantage for Nottingham.

I don’t know too much about this kind of technology and the pros and cons, but from speaking to others it would seem that high-speed is available already – though price may be an inhibitor.  A rep from BT was also vocal about a network run by “over enthusiastic amateurs” – assuring us it’s not about the fibre in the ground which already exists but the support and connectivity provided by the service provider.

With Virgin’s announcement of a rollout of 50Mb high speed broadband for the very affordable £51 month,  I’m still left confused as to whether we are missing out on an opportunity to do something radical that addresses a market failure (which is, or should be, after all the point of Regional Development Agency money) or whether the market is actually already advancing in serving the needs of the few for whom ‘big pipe’ access is an imperative.

Yet any infrastructure that makes Nottingham more appealing to incoming investors and retains the high tech businesses we have could be crucial in survival.  But what is it we need most right now in the recession – the telecoms networks or the business networks?

Ultraband are also keen to raise awareness and garner views about the project in the inner-city Nottingham business community.  A blog strategy perhaps?

EM Media Producers Forum 20th Nov – Uncovering Digital Distribution

It’s unusual that an event on cross-platform and digital distribution takes place on my doorstep, and more so in the very lovely surroundings of The Walk Cafe, Nottingham’s creative-friendly answer to The Ritz for tea and cake served with a knowing old fashioned charm.  And so to The Producers Forum, part of a series of events aimed at East Midlands film, tv and digital producers organised by screen agency EM Media.

A gathering of a few dozen producers – mainly film types but a few advertisers, games developers and consultants too – discussed the changing nature of distribution in the digital age.  Lisa Trnovski (2am Films) and David Shear (Revolver) discussed their new horror Brit Flick Mum and Dad – apparently the first film to be released simultaneously on all formats – cinema, TV, DVD, digital download and pay-per-view -(although I seem to remember the same claims levied about Road to Guantanamo) which has caused some consternation amongst indie cinemas who see digital as cannibalising their pay-to-see local business – including the present Chair of Nottingham’s Broadway cinema.

Shear claims the strategy makes sense for the indie distributor in allowing one ‘hit’ to promote the film in all formats to achieve significant scale from a small promotion budget – and allows the producer to get paid quicker.   Landmark deals from big studios like Harry Potter’s simultaneous cinema launch with Sky on pay-per-view (ONLY $50!) are closing the typical 16 week cinema to DVD/digital window.  Yet it’s small indies who are able, partly through necessity, to push the envelope in developing innovative and immediate forms of distribution – particularly for niche audience films.

Up next, Joel Kemp from Outso, a true success story of redundant ex-Climax studio developers making good by moving into outsourcing and recently the creation of virtual worlds, including Home for Sony Playstation.  MixM8 is their own in development virtual world for music, where artists can create fan zones, give live concerts, and even create unique MP3 tracks and virtual items for sale.  They’ve already got the ultra-hip Scroobius Pip and War Child on board. This is an exciting development and opens up genre and sector specific activities within virtual worlds (which are currently something of a scrum ground for unfocused selling of tit-tat and hard to target consumers) which is quite possibly the (long-term) future of social networking.

I was somewhat disappointed by the general discussion from the panel (which also included Michel Peters from Content Republic, Jason Burrows from Together Agency and Suzanne Alizart from EM Media) which took a somewhat narrow film-maker focus as to the limited possibilities of self-distribution.  It’s a subject I’m currently researching for my Masters, but Michel Peters in particularly adamantly believed there was little possibility in producers to self-distribute and aggregation was the way forward – believing that even all the major UK cinema chains working together would be unlikely to yield a profitable digital distribution business as a web-based model needs to have global scale and negotiate at least rights across a continent.

This certainly seems to have been the case so far with the music industry where major retailers have failed to launch viable digital businesses.  Yet I felt the panel failed to grasp that digital does mean direct contact with your customers, where aggregating data can be a long-play but can lead to greater independence and sustainability.  I certainly know from my days at an indie TV producer than we were able to sustain a seven figure e-commerce business through early investment in online through creating our own community.

Jason Burrows believed the challenge is maintaining interest in the ‘information economy’ where the new buzz and product finds it harder than ever to get noticed – guerilla tactics are needed to reach the multi-tasking generations.

Andrew Cooper, chair of Broadway, believes we need to capitalise on the ‘zeitgeist’ Nottingham now has for film makers – where some producers claim they can noticed more becuase they are from Nottingham, in much the same way bands from Sheffield benefit from the ripple effect of The Arctic Monkeys et al.

I found the discussion high level and useful, but the network needs to start bringing together other senior media practitioners other than film people to move the discussion up a gear to get really interesting.

But of course, most importantly, cake…

Em Media cake

EM media cake going...

EM Media cake going..going...

Going Apprentice at High Growth Coaching weekend

Last weekend I had an intensive time on a training course. I’m doing a Chartered Management Institute High Growth Coaching Diploma, which is being run by Exponential as part of a programme sponsored by the East Midlands Development Agency’s High Growth Programme to support regional businesses with potential. I was hoping for a bit of a jolly in a nice hotel in Northamptonshire, but of course our public-funded sponsors duly put us to our paces in a 48-hour workathon not unlike an episode of “The Apprentice”.

Placed in a five-person team, we had a series of challenging business modelling exercises to grow a telecoms company, competing with three other teams for market domination. That in itself was a spreadsheet-from-hell exercise, but as the Board of Directors we had to set our code of conduct and strategy. Sesssions were fast-placed and taxing, but half-way through John the course leader announced that as this was a coaching programme, we’d be tested on how true we were to our strategy and conduct – not solely on the bottom-line. The challenge was keeping our nerve and balancing strategic and human relationships with operational ‘get it out the door’ delivery.

Fortunately, my team got on very well – we were blessed with a wealth of experience in marketing, operations and technology from Diane, Mike, John and Adrian – quite literally, as one of the team was a Reverend. As the least skilled member of the team, I was duly elected MD and it put me through my paces (as the youngest coach on the course by the best part of a decade), and tested my mettle in establishing collaborative leadership and focusing on our goals.

We actually had a lot of fun. And we came back with the booty – we won the greatest market share, greatest profit (*grins smugly*). And we were voted the top team who stuck to our conduct and strategy. Woop! I think the key to our success was having shared goals – and I learnt a lot from the course as to how clients need to have a shraed focus, values and to continual evaluate what they are trying to achieve and measuring performance. Having a good sense of humour and fun, being amendable and flexible in attitude, also helped a lot. We benefited from diversity in experiences within our team and it made me recognise that in this context, very much away from the creative industries bubble I work in, my approach was actual quite innovative, risk-taking and radical compared to my peers from more steady-state industries.  The yin-yang combination in this kind of bootstrapping environment is a lot stronger than mono-cultures many businesses (especially creative ones) envelope themselves in.

I enjoyed our winning bottle of wine at home, after two crashed wedding parties, a muddy walk thorugh the country and sauna later. Shame to let those lovely facilities go to waste…