Convergence Conversation

The government's Digital Inclusion Unit "Manifesto for a Network Nation" has been released and it says that "home access to the Internet can make the difference between a child getting an 'A' and a 'C' at GCSE" which I'm sure will turn out to be true in our household, where no.1 son spent most of his last school year on Facebook instead of studying for his exams.  The manifesto has a simple goal:

Our ambition to make the UK the first nation where everyone can use the web.[From Home | Race Online 2012]

Why we should want everyone to use the web, when a great many people would rather access the information that they need via mobile phones or digital television, isn't really clear to me.  Surely the goal should be something meaningful in a context: More...

I find it equally amusing and depressing when I hear telcos speak, as they frequently do, about the secret to value creation being in their content strategy. For shareholders, perhaps that's true (I'm deeply skeptical), but for customers and society at large, clearly the greatest value created in communications is in enabling interactions and transactions, or as my friends at Telco 2.0 frame it, "removing friction."

So here's some friction. This morning I took my daughters to school, to find the headmaster and several other members of staff standing at the school gates holding hastily printed signs which read, "Unfortunately, we have to cancel school for all of year 1 and class 9 due to health and safety reasons." From what we could gather, there was a flood overnight, affecting classrooms in one section of the building. More...

Belgian Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne has announced a 30-step plan to put Belgium on the ICT map. This includes such things as ensuring every schoolchild owns a laptop starting when they are 6 years old and... encouraging FTTH.

There isn't much that's tangible for now, with the exception of one measure: every new building (residential or business) will, starting 2010, need to be equipped with fiber. For the rest, the minister is "confident in the market to bring FTTH and LTE".

Sounds like a certain amount of wishful thinking there. Having said that, if every country in Europe imposed for all new buildings to be fibered up and made it mandatory for all roadworks everywhere to include laying down telecom ducts, FTTH would be much cheaper to deploy and much faster to emerge... More...

The Government’s Digital Britain report rightly devotes a chapter to how you can “equip everyone to benefit” from the digital future.

Whilst much of the commentary around the report has focused on infrastructure, broadband speeds and protection of copyright online, the important issue of how to drive take-up has been somewhat overlooked.

Such an oversight would be dangerous. 

Without widespread take-up of broadband and the services which run over it, growth scenarios for the sector and the economy more widely will suffer. 

Without tackling the various and often complicated reasons for people choosing not to get “online”, there is also the risk that a significant section of the population miss out on the opportunities that the digital future offers them. 

Not an outcome that anyone would seek. More...

Oxbridge put lectures on iTunes

The news that Oxbridge will make lectures available on iTunes acts as further evidence that students are lazy creatures of habit. However it  also illustrates a rather important point too…the need for business development managers to embrace technological and social change, in order meet consumers changing expectations and needs.

For those tech savvy students enrolling at University as we speak, it may come as a shock that lectures have not been available via iTunes for time immemorial. Understanding how consumers consume so to speak is intrinsic to any business model. More...

 Phillip Sheldrake, Partner, Influence Crowd LLP, and ex-Chair of 'The Convergence Conversation',  explains when, where, and how the events take place - and why you should be involved.

ConvergenceConversation.com is the leading social networking site for those people working in the converging worlds of technology, media and telecoms. The website allows high level representatives from across the value chain to debate, discover and disagree on the ramifications of convergence. Since convergence impacts technology, content, distribution and the media, the website is continuously updated with fresh content on the latest news and opinions on everything under the convergence umbrella written by you, the experts in the field. More...

According to the latest UK Internet Access Report from the Office of National Statistics those students with home broadband access are likely to do better in their GCSEs.

This is not really surprising. Broadband provides students with access to a wealth of resources that previously were simply unavailable. It can aid independent learning by encouraging independent research and discovery, and increase collaboration not just within schools, but across schools, countries and continents. At its most effective, it can completely transform the learning experience.

In 2003 the BSG published a report highlighting the opportunities that broadband presented to the education sector in the UK, and the barriers against wider take-up and use within the education system. More...

Scientist have discovered that the world is in danger of running out of art & music, and unless we develop new ways of satisfying our cultural needs our children may be faced with a world without art or music.  Ludicrous idea isn’t it?  And of course not true.

But there are parallels; just as new technology will help us find energy from new sources, so technology will help us discover new culture, and I think that’s where the convergence conversations come in.

The conversations should let people with new ideas talk to people with great technologies and between them open up the new art mines! More...