Maxys Max Media and Entertainment

About the Event

It is forecast over 90% of future Internet traffic will be video - covering everything from entertainment and advertising to health and education.

Australians now spend more time online than watching television and as we know media is increasingly fragmented. Today customer attention is scarce - you have an average 12.5 seconds on a website to capture attention and generate a call to action.

This group discusses developing effective digital media communications - from clients all the way to vendor solutions.

Each month commencing at 5PM sharp and running for an hour we'll hold an informative but social meetup group bringing together a wide mix of people covering film and video professionals; actors, presenters, sales, advertising and marketing people, Internet technologists, investors and clients.

Each month we'll have short presentations/ interview followed by short Q&A, drinks and offline social networking.
This month

We've all suffered "death by Powerpoint".
This months CLIVE-ALIVE event will focus on "effective online communication" and creating engaging content.

Our special guest speakers this month will be -

* Rose Fulete, National Advertising Sales Manager, CMPMedica (www.mydr.com.au)
* Scott Maxworthy, CEO Max Media and Entertainment & Chris Schwager, Creative Director RidgeFilms
* Jo Wilton - Professional Presenter
* Andrew Brain, General Manager, Virtual Communications - a clients perspective

Connection Addiction - pull out the plug

Don't you hate it if you're talking to someone and they take a call or worse receive and reply to a text.  You're better to concentrate on the task at hand and let the message go through to the keeper.

Anyway, I'm due for a new phone and have been thinking about a Crackberry (Blackberry) so that I can check emails all the time. On the other hand all this technology is increasingly intrusive to our lives. 

My question is how much value does instant messaging really add to corporate communications? 

I read yesterday that there is an increasing number of people who, when they first wake up of a morning check their computers or phones for messages - even before a pee and a cup of coffee - "I'm not alone!" I cry but then I realise I've got "Connection Addiction!" - YOU KNOW that one message that has to be replied to in an instant.

When you think about it - what a load of crapola!

How do we deal with this constant flow of information?  Are new skill sets required?

"Shallow rivers run fast, think strategic" I hear my dad say.

I look around my office - I currently have four screens on my desk - two for each computer - my laptop and my desktop - geez I'm in deeper than I thought! 

1. One has my Skype account,
2. TweetDeck (Twitter client) and Woopra live web tracking,
3. my emails (multiple accounts)
4. my web browser

Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr and all that other social connection stuff are accessed through the day - they run from early morning till late.

It's madness but I suppose that's the business I'm in - it's no wonder it's a challenge for most businesses to comprehend and implement.  It's not like a 9-5 shop.

I wonder what would happen if I just suddenly turned them all off or took back control  

• limiting emails to 2 or 3 x 1 hour sessions a day - setting up auto reply to let senders know you'll get back within 24 hours or to call if urgent. 
• Twitter at periodic coffee breaks.  (the water cooler metaphor)
• Facebook to social times (the pub metaphor)

What would the prospects and clients think?  How would it impact sales?  Would more important work get done?

I know from my pub and call centre management days that response time is very important but what about web businesses?

So anyway we'll see - brb - the phones ringing!

Interested in your thoughts?

From a marketing point of view  businesses are increasing looking at the Internet to increase brand awareness, communicate and get closer to their customers and increase service performance whilst lowering overheads.

The Internet marketing mix covers everything from website design, search engine optiminisation (SEO), to blogging, banner advertising, Internet video to online social technologies such as Facebook.

For many businesses at the moment many online social communities feel a bit like small islands or countries seemingly not connected or if they are, the migration (visa rules), are not seamless/ user friendly/ aware.

In the future we will see a move from this individual island perspective ("I'm on Facebook" and "I'm on Twitter" statement) towards a greater seamless integration (interoperability) of adaptive open social technologies - ie single user login and unified messaging portal - many devices > one login > multiple feeds (in and out).

With that will come greater contextual advertising, derivative information and aggregated services, the linking of similar communities and interests and consequently a market rationalisation of base platforms.

Innovation will move up towards higher value services, more effective communication for the time poor and greater creative quality expression.

In the technographics ladder we will see the user type distribution curve move up as users become more technology conversant and literate ie "technacy"

For businesses now it means allocating resources and experimenting with these new communication channels.

As part of my personal photography journey I'm focusing on people > portraits > heads shots at the moment.  In these days of Facebook then a good photo makes significant difference.

Last week I added a new photo gallery to the maxys website to help in the management of photo shoot proofs.

I'll upload low resolution jpg and the models can short list images they want as hi-res jpg or RAW for their portfolios.

As part of the install of Gallery II I came across Cooliris and decided to test it.

Code copied and pasted here...

A minute or two later - 1st run failed.  My CMS( Joomla) is stripping out any script.  There's probably a checkbox in Joomla I can tick somewhere to override this BUT no time to look at this at the moment.

The other option is to create a bit of code plugin like I've done with other scripts - it's a bit technical and will have to wait til later or there's probably a Joomla Extension someone has already created and I can just plug and play it in.

I also add an add on to my Firefox browser - WOW, no that transforms they way we look at our photos.