Creative Economy | British Council India's Blog

UK speaker’s at Publishing Next conference August 23, 2011

Posted by rwituja in Young Creative Entrepreneur.
Tags: Creative Economy, digital, ebooks, future, literature, media, Publishing, smartphones, technology
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CinnamonTeal Publishing, a division of Dogears Print Media Pvt. Ltd, is organizing Publishing Next, a two-day Conference on the future of publishing on 16 and 17 September 2011 in Goa.

Publishing Next is being supported by the British Council who is actively involved in promoting creative entrepreneurship (www.britishcouncil.org.in/yce) in India through programmes that share the UK’s expertise and experience of developing the creative economy and by supporting ecologies within which it can flourish.

The UK speakers at the conference include:

Elin Haf Gruffydd, Director, Mercator Centre University of Aberystwyth

Elin is the Director of the Mercator Institute for Media, Languages and Culture, a research institute based at the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at Aberystwyth University that specialises in the fields of media, publishing, communication and translation, with a particular expertise in multilingual contexts. Elin is Senior Lecturer in Media and Creative Industries (undergraduate and postgraduate studies) and Director of Knowledge Transfer and Enterprise at the same department. Digital Creative Economy, is currently a strong research focus for Mercator and Elin is supervising several PhD projects in this field. Mercator is coordinator of the Minority Languages Media Research Network and is home to the Wales Literature Exchange (http://www.walesliterature.org) and Literature Across Frontiers (http://www.lit-across-frontiers.org/) and is one of the key partners in Mercator Network of Language Diversity Centres www.mercator-research.eu.

James Bridle, Owner and Director, Bookable

James pushes the boundaries of literature through creative technology. He is the director of Bookkake, a technology-led publisher of classic transgressive literature. He is also the developer of bkkeepr, a social reading application, and London Lit Plus, an open-source literary festival. He writes about literature and technology at http://booktwo.org, and has edited and written for numerous publications, online and off. James was one of the finalists of the UK YCE Publishing Award 2009.

Michael Bhaskar, Digital Publishing Director, Profile Books

Michael (www.michaelbhaskar.com) is currently Digital Publishing Director at leading independent publisher Profile Books (www.profilebooks.com). He is responsible for spearheading their digital strategy, ebook program and digital business development in creating new products and platforms. Whilst there he has produced games, apps and created a commercially successful digital publishing program. Previously Michael was Digital Editor at Macmillan, where he worked on their large and profitable ebooks program, a Facebook app and several iPhone apps amongst other innovative projects, and wrote for The Digitalist blog. Over the past few years Michael has written extensively on digital publishing. He regularly lectures at publishing university courses around the UK and has recently completed a paper for the journal Logos. He has worked at the literary agency Rogers, Coleridge and White, reviewed books at The Daily Telegraph and worked for an economics research firm, as well as building websites like www.quikqr.com, a 2-d barcode generator.

Oliver Brooks, Co-founder, Completelynovel

Oliver is the co-founder of a team made up of web technologists working in the book publishing space. They work on the following two projects: ValoBox.com (www.valobox.com) is a pay-as-you-go eReader powered by social commerce. The pay-as-you-go micro-purchase system means any part of a book can be accessed with a single click. The system is 100% HTML5 so can be used from any device with a web browser and the content can be anything you can put on a website (audio, video, games, and interactive elements). Social retail (peer-to-peer selling) eliminates the traditional expensive retailers. This means if a user shares a link or embeds a ValoBox in their website/feed or mobile app they will receive 25% of proceeds. The direct link means publishers get live analytics such as which parts of their books are most popular. CompletelyNovel.com (www.completelynovel.com) is a unique publishing hub combining a publishing community with powerful publishing tools such as print-on-demand and social media promotion. Authors and publishers can create, distribute and promote books and interact with their readers. The system is designed to make the complicated publishing process simple and affordable enough for anyone to use.

Gavin Summers, Digital Services Manager, Hodder Education

Gavin is the digital project manager for Hodder Education (www.hoddereducation.co.uk), a leading educational publisher in the UK working on a wide range of digital products, including online applications (e.g. Dynamic Learning and Practise Every Question), ebooks, interactive whiteboard materials and smartphone applications. As a side project, he is the founder of BookMachine , which in addition to building a valuable network of publishing professionals, is also an experiment in how movements can be created around a brand through creative use of social media tools.

Titash Neogi, Founder, Sievelogic Software

Titash won the India YCE Interactive 2011 award. He built Bibkosh (www.bibkosh.com) a knowledge curation platform that allows academics, students and professionals to create, curate knowledge and collaborate. He will be discussing the potential of http://themeefy.com as a marketing tool for publishers.

Prathibha Sastry, Head of Publications, Jinibooks (www.jinibooks.com) and Co-founder of JiniLabs (www.jinilabs.com)

Pratibha won the India YCE Screen award in 2008. At that point she was the Managing Director, Editor and Publisher of South Movie Scenes, a platform for the film and entertainment industry. She will be participating in the panel discussion Where is Digital Books Headed?

Creative Economy July 5, 2011

Posted by rwituja in Young Creative Entrepreneur.
Tags: advertising, architecture, Art, British Council, Creative Economy, creative industries, cultural economy, designer, Fashion, Interactive, make money, Music, Performing Arts, Publishing, software, trade and development, united nations
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Creative Industries was a term coined by the UK and its original definition formulated by the UK government in 1998 was ‘those industries which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have the potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property.’

With the intention to map the UK’s creative industries, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) had identified 13 creative sectors of economic and cultural activity that conformed to this definition. It included advertising, architecture, the art and antiques market, crafts, design, designer fashion, film, interactive leisure software, music, the performing arts, publishing, software and computer services, television and radio.

The creative industries are an expression of cultural as much as economic value. In addition to their ‘exchange value’, (which is how goods and services find the price level in the market), and their ‘functional value’ (determined by their use in real life), most products and services of the creative industries have ‘expressive value’, a measure of their cultural significance that may bear little relationship to how much they cost to make or how useful they are. This additional value may be of little consequence or long-term significance or it may be an expression of profound cultural importance but it is one of the key elements that differentiate the creative industries.

Many a times the aim to protect and promote particular aspects of the national culture, is not for their direct economic significance but as a means of projecting a clear and positive image internationally – what has been called the projection of ‘soft power’ (Introductory Guide to the Creative Industries).

The term creative economy first appeared in 2001 in the John Howkins’ book The Creative Economy: How People Make Money From Ideas According to him, “creativity is not new and neither is economics, but what is new is the nature and the extent of the relationship between them and how they combine to create extraordinary value and wealth”.

There is no unique definition of the creative economy. It is a subjective concept that is still being shaped. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development adopts the following definition of the creative economy:

The creative economy is an evolving concept based on creative assets potentially generating economic growth and development;
It can foster income generation, job creation and export earnings while promoting social inclusion, cultural diversity and human development;
It embraces economic, cultural and social aspects interacting with technology, intellectual property and tourism objectives;
It is a set of knowledge-based economic activities with a development dimension and cross-cutting linkages at macro and micro levels to the overall economy;
At the heart of the creative economy are the creative industries.

Tomb Raider, Hitman and TouchMagix April 21, 2011

Posted by British Council India in Young Creative Entrepreneur.
Tags: Albertay University, Anup Tapadia, Assyria games, British Council, British Council India, Cambridge, China, Columbia, computer video games, Creative Economy, creative industry, Digital City, Digital Goldfish, digital media, Dr.Simon, Dundee, Edinburgh, Hitman, Ian Livingston, Iguana, India, interactive entertainment, International Young Creative Interactive Entrepreneur, iPhone games, IShift, IYCE, London, Mediatonic, Mexico, Middlesbrough, Moving Brands, Paul Croft, PlayGen, Poland, RGA, Tag games, Teeside University, Tomb Raider, TouchMagix, Trampoline Systems, Twisted, UK, UKIE, Unit9, University of Edinburgh, Wired UK, yce
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Recently I was fortunate to be a part of the YCE awards arranged by British Council and was also lucky to be the winner of “International Young Creative Interactive Entrepreneur 2010” award in London. I feel along with the award, it was the journey that was quite exciting and here is a summary of my experience and thoughts of the tour.
On winning the national YCE awards, 12 winners from different countries like Poland, Columbia, China, India, Mexico and many more assembled in London to compete for the International YCE award and go on a 10 day creative industry road-trip in UK. This full trip was sponsored by British Council to promote cross border collaborations in creative economy.

On arriving in London on 13th, our first meeting was with Ian Livingston, who is regarded as founding fathers of interactive entertainment in UK. His company is well known for creation of game characters like “Tomb Raider” and “Hitman”. The key learning was how he took his hobby of traditional games to modern computer video games to create a successful venture. We also met the UKIE, the trade body for UK’s interactive entertainment industry on the same day.

After our presentation day, we had a some free time to explore London and places around. I also found some time to visit our customers in Cambridge and a few more companies who were intending to do business with TouchMagix in London. On 17th, some of us took an early train to Edinburgh so that we could explore the beautiful city. I met with Shadab, a friend of mine who was studying at University of Edinburgh. He showed me around the university and we were discussing the similarities and dissimilarities between the UK and Indian education systems. On 18th morning we headed out on a road trip to Albertay University in Dundee. I was quite amazed to see a college who was training talent for the interactive and gaming industry. This kind of education is unheard of in India. We visited their game development studios and got an overview of the type of courses that were being offered there. We met with some interesting companies in the area like Digital Goldfish, a start-up who develops iPhone games and Tag games which was a big company developing mobile and online games. After quite a busy day, we headed back to Edinburgh to catch a train to Middlesbrough.

On 19th morning, we visited the Teeside University, which was one of the highlights of the trip. Dr.Simon, the dean of School of Computing was kind enough to give us a tour of the university and the various activities that were happening out there. We met with some students who were part of an entrepreneurial fellowship program conducted by the university. This program was conducted to encourage creation of start-ups in interactive media space. We then visited a cluster called Digital City, which was a hub for many start-ups in interactive media. We met with founder of Assyria games, Twisted and Iguana who were based in the cluster.

After returning to London on 20th, we visited several digital agencies like RGA, Unit9, PlayGen, IShift, Trampoline Systems, Moving Brands to name a few. It was very interesting to way these companies were working to serve different niche needs of the growing interactive creative economy. There were wide range of target customers these companies were serving. PlayGen was a company who was specialized in making serious games especially for the government sector where as Moving Brands was a company who were helping brands connect with people through interactive media and fun. On 22nd we visited Wired UK the popular magazine which showcases latest innovations. We also met with Paul Croft from Mediatonic who design online games and work with large publishers to tailor and distribute their IP. The day ended with a networking event of people from digital media industry. Made some new friends there and also got a change to present our companies in brief.

Just to summarize, the whole trip was filled with great learnings and following were some key ones –

Interactive industry is evolving as a modern story telling mechanism.
Forming small and efficient teams is the way to start a business in game development.
Creating your own IP or riding on someone else’s IP is an important part of being in creative business.
Talent hunt problem is common everywhere. Universities like Albertay and Teeside are helping reduce those by imparting right training.
Interactive industry clusters are a neat way to create good companies who contribute towards creative economy.
UK market is a growing market for creative companies to work with.