I have spent many hours ‘on hold’ this week listening to Telstra’s selection of music waiting to get a problem with my home broadband service rectified. I changed to Big Pond about 2 years ago and when I get really pissed off with their call centre staff I comfort myself by comparing it to some of my previous horror experiences with Optus. But that’s really not good enough is it? Competition is meant to be about delivering the best service rather than competing for the worst.  I have threatened Big Pond call centre staff many times with” ” I’m now no longer under contract, I will sign up with another provider”. But when I get off the phone and think of what that would entail I generally go weak at the knees. I just don’t have the strength to endure four hours on hold as I work my way through call centre staff before finding one that has a clue, reciting my date of birth, user name and address multiple times, talking to that freaking voice recognition system yet again – and then there’s the general institutional incompetence which means they’re guaranteed to get something wrong at least twice.

Last week my broadband connection just started to spontaneously drop out for hours on end in the evenings, exactly the time of day I wanted to use it. One tech support guy referred me to an ‘Apple specialist’ when I told him I didn’t have a PC and gave me a phone number to call. When I dialed that number turned out he’d given me Apple tech support, not Big Pond Apple support. Sure, they’re going to be interested in my Big Pond cable modem! Another, after getting me to plug and unplug the modem at least three times, clear my browser cache then reboot my computer arranged a technician to come to my house the next day.  I breathed a sigh of relief as I was sure the heavy rain in the last week may have flooded some of the Telstra boxes in the street. Next day I came home early from work and waited till 8pm for a technician to arrive before dialling 133 933 yet again. I got an American accent that night and was told there was no record of my request for tech support (Does this mean that since the financial collapse Telstra is relocating call centres to the US rather than India? If so, they don’t seem to be talking to each other. When I quoted back the reference number for the tech callout she told me with a giggle that the technician had been booked for someone else, not me. The comedy of errors continued and I finally got a service call booked in for Monday. Meanwhile the system seems to have ’self healed’. Friends in the area also said they had had service interruptions so I suspect it was a network problem outside my home. Why can’t they tell me this? It’s not hard to communicate these things with your customers and we’d be greatful of an update even if it was a Big Pond tech twitter feed. Hell, your technical support staff might benefit from it for a start.

So to add insult to injury I had to get on the line to 133 933 again tonight to cancel the technician visit. When I booked the call I was informed that I had to phone through to cancel the booking, there is no email or other means of communication to call the whole thing off. There’s really got to be a better way guys and while the aloof ‘don’t talk to me’ corporate call centre strategy might keep bolshy customers in their place, as soon as something better comes along I’m off.  30 Mb/s on my cable modem keeps me happy for now while the thing works. When it doesn’t all I want is a clear line of communication that is easy, does not consume hours of my time and doesn’t make me listen to dreadful music. Give us a forum or a twitter feed or something where consumers can talk to each other and we can see the information that your call centre staff can see. If there’s an outage, tell me about it, just don’t leave me hanging on the line, it’s not that hard. Failing that I’m going to post to my blog, if anyone else is similarly frustrated, please don’t hold back.

Remember that amazing pair of documentaries ‘McLibel’ (1997, 2005) which told the inside story of the UK McDonald’s libel trial? McLibel director Franny Armstrong has moved on from McDonalds to take aim at inaction on climate change in her new project ‘Age of Stupid‘.  It’s part film and part internet-fueled activist campaign and will culminate in a series of live webcasts ‘The Stupid Show’  during what they call the ‘Copenhagen Un Climate Summit’ between the 7th and 18th December 2009.

Peter Broderick is a well known advocate of low budget digital filmmaking, direct distribution to audiences through event screenings and DVD sales. ‘Age of Stupid’ goes way beyond any of the examples I’ve heard Peter present and shows documentary makers what is possible by really embracing Web 2.0.There are a series of worldwide screenings being run in response to the demand of the audience and it premiered in Sydney at a solar powered cinema with live satellite links to Franny Armstrong and star Pete Postlethwaite. What’s evident is that http://ageofstupid.net is a place for a whole activist community to converse and organise around the themes of the film. And what’s really interesting is the way this community is being organised to fund future projects.  If you go to the ‘making of’ tab you can see that every line item in the budget of ‘The Stupid Show’ is listed for donations. The film was funded in this way raising over 850K pounds in donations via crowd-sourced investment.  This is one of the most sophisticated uses of the internet I’ve seen by any filmmakers and that includes the multi million dollar efforts of many of the Hollywood studios. If more filmmakers took the ‘Age of Stupid’ approach to their internet presence they’d attract much bigger audiences to their films.

I just bought an HD video camera from Big W for $148. Thank God the Flip phenomena of cheap flash card video cameras has finally crossed the Pacific from the US. Mine came directly from China, another brand variant but no doubt there will be others and the price point will continue to drop.

The ubiquity of cheap video cameras (Flips and webcams alike) is helping to fuel the explosion of online video content and some of the best material is being made by kids. While filmmaking is becoming just another skill in the communications arsenal, it doesn’t seem that games have got there yet. While games are being played more widely and on more platforms,  user created games haven’t yet taken off in a big way. But I think it’s only a matter of time before the educational value of making games reinvigorates the mathematics curriculum. Well, we can only hope.

This month’s ACM Communications journal profiles a tool that has been created at MIT to makes games creation more accessible. It’s called Scratch and it is certainly intuitive. The free software (Mac and Windows) can be downloaded and used to create simple 2D games using a modular, lego-brick-type programming interface. The complexity of computer programming languages has traditionally been a big barrier to entry for people who just want to create games. Scratch is designed to be used in the classroom and has the ability to incorporate customised artwork and the creators claim it works because it is   ‘tinkerable’, ’sociable’ and ‘meaningful’. The ability to publish games on the web and interact with an online community of users is obviously an important part of the educational experience.  15% of Scratch games are remixes and there is a Creative Commons attribution system designed to encourage this. It’s worth checking out the games remembering that many are the first explorations of school kids creating interactive media. If you’re after a bit more complex content you might want to move up to Game Salad. The drag and drop games creation tool now offers a $99 pathway to iphone application development and there are already a lot of these games available at the App Store. I can’t wait to see these tools being integrated into creative education programs and I’m beginning to work up a few ideas of my own. Also announced this week, free downloads of Unity 3D and the Unreal engine available. With all these options there’s no excuses anymore. Let’s make games!

Australian Director Andrew Traucki of Black Water fame is currently shooting his next low budget suspense feature The Reef. The crew have been shooting for 3 weeks on location in deep water and will be web streaming live from the set later this week: Thurs 5th November at 9:30am EST in Australia – put it in your diary now. You can follow the progress of the shoot on Andrew’s blog which he genuinely seems to be updating himself (when he can get out of the water) and the same goes for the twitter feed.  You need to sign up for the live stream by going to the film’s website which also hosts a trailer and some very scary shark footage.  Peter Jackson set tongues wagging a few years ago with his Kong is King series of vodcasts often on the set of King Kong as he was shooting it.  It was also interesting to follow the tweets of director Robert Luketic as he was shooting ‘The Ugly Truth’ recently and get some insight into the the process of Hollywood filmmaking. To witness the exchange of conversation between actors and key creatives on the team made you feel like you genuinely had a window into the process. The Reef is going to take this synchronicity one step further by streaming live video from the film set. It will be interesting to see how choreographed the experience is for the audience because my enduring memories of working on a film set is that there’s a lot of waiting around… but then again, I was rarely in a key creative role, so hopefully the web stream will put lots of focus on Andrew, the actors, cinematographer and other key people in the team. And keep a look out for a viral video campaign closer to the time of the film’s release. I blogged last year  about some of the great viral videos that appeared prior to the release of Black Water.  Meanwhile the YouTube Channel has some pretty recent updates promoting the live stream.

There’s certainly a groundswell of interest in emerging media from TV and radio broadcasters, telcos, converged media companies, digital agencies and even the  funding agencies. A lot has changed in three years and there is now much more openness to considering content propositions which aren’t limited to a single media platform or format. But I still sense a reticence from producers to embracing the full impact of the 360 degree media environment we now live in and alot of that has to do with how busy they are every day. There is a lot to be learned by immersing yourself in social networks, trawling the online world to discover the latest innovations in the field and learning the skills to make these new forms a reality. Building in the time to immerse yourself in this world can be tricky to fit into your everyday routine so we’re trying to address this by launching a new post grad program which is delivered on evenings and weekends. More information about our Multi Platform Content course can be found here on the LAMP site. No more ads now I promise.

I attended a conference run by the Australia Council and the ABC today called Revealing the Arts. OK, there’s a long way to go here, but it didn’t really come together and you got the feeling by the end of the day that the gap between the ‘geeks’ and the ‘luvvies’ is here to stay. Rights clearances, making money online, and paying for producing ancilliary content were discussed a lot at the expense of much thinking outside the square.  There was some lively discussion and one of the most salient points for me was ” if it doesn’t exist online it doesn’t exist”. While this comment obviously came from a geek (sorry it’s unattributed – I know it was a guy from Wikimedia who said it) it underlines the challenge that many institutions have in remaining relevant in a world where we increasingly rely on online services to keep us informed and connected at every moment.  There are huge challenges for national institutions and too often the focus is parochial rather than global. There are no easy answers but there is no excuse for burying our heads in the sand.

And while we’re nit picking, one extra-ordinary statement that got through without any challenge at all was ‘that you can’t make money on YouTube’. This isn’t an ad for Google but the YouTube Partnership program pays a percentage of advertising revenue to content creators and this scheme is well established. You can see YouTube’s top partners here. Well known YouTube directors such as Smosh and Fred have in excess of 300 million views of content on their channels and it is estimated they have each earned 6 figure sums from YouTube advertising income (actual amounts confidential under the partnership agreement). The ‘Will Video for Food’ blog has several citations which support this here. There are many business models if that’s what you’re looking for. But if you just want to get your stuff out there so people know you exist (and maybe then buy a ticket to your show or order your online merchandise) then you have to start giving something away. If you want to read any of the twitter discussion from today’s conference see #rtarts.

Late addition to this post:  I just picked up an email from a young guy I met at the SPAA Fringe Conference called Nick Carlton who has just posted this : You are not a filmmaker. Nick is one of Australia’s most successful online video entrepeneurs and at the age of 19 has garnered a large online audience for his Ozgirl property. Like the discussion today at Revealing the Arts he’s not hung up about being a ‘filmmaker’ or an ‘artist’ he just gets on with doing it. I for one admire that.

I’ve got to admit it, like a lot of iPhone and ipod Touch owners, I’m totally addicted to Flight Control. Like many addicts I can rationalise my addiction easily because this is an Australian game developed by Melbourne company Firemint.  I’m not wasting time, I’m just supporting good old Australian digital media know-how. I’m also locked in brutal competition with my 12 year old son and every day I fall a bit further behind. I’ve at least moved from being a ‘passenger’ to ‘cabin crew’ and I’m not far away from the flight deck now.  I’ve had a lot of fun playing this game and it’s helped pass the hours while sitting on a real international plane flight. Just thank the lord that I’m not in charge of real air traffic control.

Yesterday I attended the opening of Screen Worlds, a new exhibition space at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne. A massive crowd assembled to hear Ms Blanchett launch the show along with Victorian Premiere John Brumby. It’s a spectacular exhibition that profiles the development of film and television, games and interactive media with a big focus on Australian work. It’s an overdue refresh of the ACMI space at the Flinders St level which never really worked for me. The old space always looked empty and the technology tired and exhibits a bit long in the tooth. ACMI needs to be renewed pretty regularly as its design incorporates so many screens and technologies -with the pace of technological change it’s amost as if the building has a built in obsolesce. Screen Worlds does well in refreshing the invigorating the space and is brimming with the latest technologies, touch interface interactive video tables, screens of all shapes and sizes. It’s a very creatively put together show which somehow manages to incorporate the wizz bangery but focus on the content, the artistry and the fun of the business. Well worth getting along to see it if you’re in central Melbourne.

This has been a familiar refrain around my house all year and now I get it from my four year old after he’s blown a few tunes on the Ocarina and Tap Tapped out a few more on my iphone. It all started last November with a concerted campaign by my eleven year old to secure an ipod touch for Christmas. Santa held out this year and believe me there were tears. “It’s not fair, all of my friends have got one” was the next line of attack and when I consulted with other parents I found out it was all true. I didn’t buckle at the knees all at once, in fact I held out until his birthday in July which is a relatively tough stand given the life cycle of technological gadgetry. The ipod Touch is certainly a popular device and many hours are wiled away playing games, listening to music, watching videos and endlessly customising it’s look and feel. Needless to say it was jailbroken fairly early in its life cycle.

So Steve Job’s presentation this week bore few surprises for me about the success of the Touch as a games device. When I did my ring around of other parents earlier this year and found out how many local 11 and 12 year olds owned their own Touch I knew something was going on. The pace of this growth is pretty astounding as you can see in the statistics quoted in this Venturebeat article.

There are more than 50 million iPhones and iPod Touches in the market. That is within spitting distance of the 51 million Sony PSPs sold, which explains why Sony is launching the PSP Go model — a new and improved handheld game system with flash memory instead of a proprietary drive. And though the Apple platform is only two years old, it is more than half way to Nintendo’s 100 million-plus installed base of DS handhelds, which have reached that number after almost six years on the market.

And the sheer numbers of games and apps available for the Touch also blow Nintendo and Sony out of the water. By making the platform so open to independent developers they’ve ensured there are a huge range of apps available and some of them you even want to play.  The jury’s out to see if this new version of Genius makes it any easier to find good ones.

I have found myself getting particularly bored and irritated with evening television lately. Maybe I’m stating the obvious here but it’s not really getting any better is it? Is endlessly repeated programming meant to be so familiar it’s soothing and relaxing (snore!) or is it just designed so you have a better chance of programming the PVR? With the decline in TV advertising revenue this trend is probably only going to get worse as networks struggle to buy new content.  So, I’ve been going back to YouTube again in search of rivetting entertainment, careful of course to wear headphones so I don’t disturb TV addicts in the room. But I’ve been a bit disruptive since I discovered Channel 101 which tends to put me into fits of hysterical laughter.  The channel, which claims to be the ‘the unavoidable future of entertainment’, operates like a festival calling for submissions of short TV pilots (under 5 mins) every month which are then curated and screened to a live audience. The audience votes whether to make a show ‘prime time’, and if so, a second episode is greenlit. No extravagant claims of new business models for filmmakers I’m afraid. This is how they put it on their website:

For the creatives that participate, Channel 101 is where the rubber meets the road. The deadlines are unreasonable, the time limit is impossible, the pay is non existent and the judgment is blunt. The amount of ego and sense of entitlement with which you enter is exactly proportional to the amount of pain you’ll experience before you leave. Channel 101 is where you learn three things: How to fail, how to succeed, and finally, how there is no difference between the two. After all, the only thing as bad as being told your pilot failed is being told that your third episode was worse than your second. And the only thing as good as having the number one show is having a chance to come back with something new.

So what are the TV series worth checking out?  I must admit to being addicted to Ikea Heights, a soap which features characters who live out torrid lives totally within an Ikea warehouse store. There’s also a great restaurant saga, The Food, which gives Gordon Ramsay a run for his money and without nearly as much swearing. Channel 101 is a great concept and a fantastic example of audience filtered and selected content really working.

Gary Maddox in a recent article in Spectrum pointed to the continuing need to shift Australian filmmakers and screen agencies to a better appreciation of the audience.  Maybe an Australian Channel 101 is long overdue with filmmakers given the opportunity to get direct feedback from audiences on their ideas. Could we go further and scrap the bureaucracies altogether and institute regular screenings and online festivals which select the most audience friendly projects? But maybe this is a bad idea, maybe our bureaucracies are a rich source of creative material.  My idea for a Channel 101 pilot is not to set it within Ikea but within the hallowed halls of an Australian screen bureaucracy. Characters suffer daily angst as they struggle to interpret the intent of obscure policies, maintaining transparency and financial accountability at all times while deciding what it is an audience really needs. If it weren’t so true to life it might be funny.