A couple of weeks ago I ran a workshop for the leaders of The British Council’s East and West Africa teams. It was a really interesting morning looking at engagement with audiences in Africa via the web. There were too many of my preconceptions shattered during the research and our discussions to detail here, but in brief the web is forming an increasingly important component in the lives of (predominantly urban) young people across a number of countries.

I was impressed at the pragmatic, open-minded and cost-effective approach and this group exemplifies the work. WAPI (Words and Pictures) is a group for hip hop, graffiti and underground collaboration and expression:

WAPI events, piloted in Nairobi and recently extended to Dar Es Salaam, are a platform that makes it possible for visual and verbal artists in the underground to showcase their art (in words and/or pictures). We take the underground to mean the upcoming, the undiscovered, those who, by design or default, are not part of the mainstream. WAPI brings undiscovered talent to the fore for the discerning public through a regular (monthly) WAPI programme. WAPI also aspires to become a talent-spotting platform – the place where tomorrows best acts and today’s best-kept secrets are identified and enjoyed.

Rather than spending money creating a monolithic site and thereafter spending money on marketing, the BC have used free software (Facebook) to create a group. They moderate rather than control (which is of course appropriate to a self-defining community) and focus their efforts on supporting, celebrating and developing the ‘real world’ events. This is a refreshing approach.

One interesting point I learned was the prevalence of blogs within the WAPI participant community. It’s clear that once young people have access to the web and computers that there’s a rapid adoption of all relevant technologies – from mixing music, creating and publishing CDs, digital downloads and blogging.

One further benefit of FB is the access it provides to an international, supportive community of like-minded people.

It’s difficult to leave aside the pressing social and economic issues that the continent faces, but there’s a great deal of energy and hope here for a future for young people beyond the very real privations and less real preconceptions. I’m pleased to have come across this initiative – it’s certainly rounded my view of the web, communication and engagement.

Courtesy of The Unofficial Apple Weblog, we have hailed a ‘reinvention of the graphical novel’. I’m not sure that there’s much reinventing of the GN itself, but we’re certainly seeing some ‘non-video’ applications for those desirable little screens.

The site will explain better than I can the mix of animation, still, game play and community contribution (in story ideas, at least). There’s also a clear sign of the sponsorship opportunities here with the whole exploit being ‘brought to us’ in conjunction with Triumph (the manly motorbikes, I assume, not the bra company…).

I’ve noticed that with the greater accessibility of video playback devices we’re seeing a return to the slide show. One good example of late are the videos on InStyle magazine (click on videos). These use voice-overs and rostrum camera work (or “set to cheesey” slideshow transitions) to turn a set of ‘behind the scenes’ stills from a fashion shoot into a pretty neat 2-minute “video”.

My favourite recent discovery though – and enough to put a video ipod on to my ‘list of toys’ – are the photo essays by the Magnum photo agency – “Magnum in Motion“. These are just wonderful. Photojournalism at its best: depth, connection with the human condition, intimacy and empathy yet with an objective position. These are beautifully produced and – in the web versions – offer an ‘essay’ (interview, podcast, audio track), image slideshow and rich captioning. I watched Philip Jones Griffiths’ “Point and Shoot” piece three times – images, voice then captions. Riveting and moving.

This put me in mind of the glory days of the colour supplement and the recent exhibition at the Guardian Newsroom of Ian Berry’s work, developing the colour supplement as we once knew it. Ian Berry of course is a member of Magnum.

So, from graphic novels to Magmum in Motion, new twists and energy for ‘old’ communication mechanisms. Who’d have thought that those 2″ screens would be facilitating something other than blockbuster movie trailers and episodes of “Lost”…

Ajax Puts Web Ad Sales in Peril

I ran a couple of sessions for a major publisher the other day on new business models under ‘web2.0’ (or “the modern web” as I’m now taking to called the webinet: not sure what the ‘post-modern web’ will be, though…). Now isn’t the time to cover those new business models, rather I was thinking over the very real concern over the maintenance of the current ad sales revenues while the new options build up.

The Mediaweek article gives a good summary of the position and concerns, but overall is too ‘hands in the air’ for my liking. There’s an opportunity for media and retail property owners to work more closely with brands and advertisers to investigate the value points in the customer cycle and to then divvy up the proceeds accordingly.

The following quotation sums up “old think”:

Some buyers say that regardless of how the Web is sold, all that matters is that their clients’ ads are seen. “Everyone in our industry is very focused on scale and impressions,” said Alan Schanzer, managing partner, MEC Interaction. “Until we have real-time measurement of engagement for brand ads, I want to know that my target audience is spending time on a page that displays my ad.”

ie ‘never mind whether the ad converts to sales or actions – just so long as it’s waved in front of people’s eyes’.

If anything shows the unsustainability of our current model it’s a quote like this. We’ve measured hits and page impressions simply because we could, and build an inference of value and inference upon these metrics. There’s no substitute for sales information, though, and a combination of campaign-level ROI tracking and improved measures of “influence” will in time make page/hit tracking as antiquated as the belief, prior to anaesthetic, that the pain of the operation kept patients alive. Indeed.