Video - Poonacha Machaiah at TEDx Transmedia 2012 - ‘Purposeful Technology for Positive Change’
Poonacha Machaiah is the CEO of Qyuki, a social media startup founded by internationally acclaimed film director Shekhar Kapur and music composer AR Rahman.
After a 17-year career in the US, Poonacha returned to India to start ‘ABOVE - A Bunch Of Versatile Entrepreneurs.’ He set up operations in Bangalore, Singapore and Qatar to understand the influence of Indian, Chinese and Islamic cultures and build innovative solutions to address the intrinsic needs of the local markets.
At TEDx Transmedia 2012, Poonacha called for a heightened awareness of our environments, and one another, to build “purposeful technology” for social change.
Video - Alison Norrington at TEDx Transmedia 2012 - ‘Transmedia Storyworlds - Theme, Audience & Play’
Alison Norrington has more than 15 years of novel and playwriting experience, penning three bestselling novels, two stage plays and the first transmedia romcom. She is a creative producer, storyteller, consultant and educator in transmedia storytelling and founded storycentralDIGITAL & storycentralLABS, working closely with writers, studios, brands, broadcasters and publishers globally advising on strategic planning, incubating new entertainment IP, story architecture and cross-platform implementation.
At TEDx Transmedia 2012, Alison focused on a theory of playfulness within storytelling and how a story’s theme, genre and audience behaviours help shape strategy, active engagement and levels of immersion.
Alison’s website: http://www.storycentral.com
Short film featuring interviews with TEDx Transmedia 2012 speakers
Interviews with kids’ philosopher Øyvind Olsholt, transmedia storyteller Alison Norrington, games writer Rhianna Pratchett and TEDx Transmedia Curator, Nicoletta Iacobacci, all feature in this English-Italian short made at TEDx Transmedia 2012.
Transmedia is an ugly word for a beautiful concept. Entertainment that connects with us and responds to us across every digital device. With it you’ll engage a new audience. An audience that wants to participate and respond. You’ll wake them up. As we move towards transmedia, we move away from the old ‘trance media.’
“As a creative activist, your job is to wake up from your dream and make it real. And when you do, you will also wake up the audience from the 60 year trance of mass media and passive programming. Wake yourself, and awaken others.
“But you must understand that this is a collaborative process. It’s not a solo performance. To accomplish the task of storytelling across many platforms, you are going to need help.”
Robert Tercek, TEDx Transmedia 2012, Rome
In Hollywood, the film industry is taking it in the chin. With fewer movies being produced, bigger budgets being risked and distribution harder than ever to secure, an effective transmedia strategy poses a ripe solution. A feature film is one of the most logical formats from which to develop a transmedia play. And provides an ideal way of hedging its associated risk by extending both the fiscal life and legacy of the property.
Popular media consumes global pop culture and plants the seeds around which we socialize. So transmedia – with its many touch-points – promises to be the most powerful socialization tool we have. Because the medium is no longer the message. The new medium is us. We are the new medium. Eyeballs are not only our instruments for intake, they’re the new metrics for success. What we give our attention to grows stronger. What we “like” becomes more popular. So with all the new tools, everyone becomes powerful and has influence. And the global village lets like-minded people band together into communities that can effectively flex the muscle of their numbers.
Content with a distinct ethos, worldview or mission inspires community. If your story or your idea really stand for something, like-minded people will rally around it. In our case, we were all about questioning what we are being told, and seeking out the truth, so all of our content was dripping with that ethos. Community congeals around content, and with the right tools, transmedia extensions, memes and organization, that community can be activated to become a movement.
So much is possible as we enter the neuro-nano era, there is now an impending opportunity to use the technology responsibly by weaving it into our storytelling, and leveraging all its potential, to create truly transformative media that will change the world in ways we can only begin to imagine.
With cell phones and computers and soon glasses that bring us closer to becoming telepathic, hyper-sentient, hyper-connected beings, we are being given new ways to communicate, navigate, co-create and organize. We are in the wild west of the digital frontier where great tools are becoming available to us, and for the first time in history, the people truly have power.
With natural disasters happening everywhere we look, economies in turmoil, and rampant corruption among our leaders and institutions, we are teetering on the razor’s edge. Direct digital democracy is but a click away.
We are now in a position to use the massive appeal of the systems and the media we create to engage millions around our stories, ideas and missions. We can harness the power of transmedia to create cross-platform brands that spawn communities with the potential to create enormous value, and catalyze profound evolutionary change.
I mean, how many want to access the unused powers of our minds? Reach a higher state of consciousness? Experience real cultural and personal transformation? Because now, all that is possible.
We can make games that hone our telepathic powers, networks that help individuals start movements, apps that unlock our creativity, and movies that shift our consciousness.
