Amplified Leicester

Request an invitation to the Amplified Leicester Celebration Event, 15 April 2010

Amplified Leicester welcomes Chris Meade and Toni Lebusque – Digital ways to tell short stories – Session 7, 28th January 2010

The session looked at content, and this week's workshop was led by Chris Meade and Toni Lebusque of if:book a think and do tank based in London exploring the potential of new media for creative readers and writers and the future of the book in the digital age.

Chris believes that the future of content is about short snippets of video, and drew our attention to the explosion of micro films available online. He talked about the ways people orchestrate the stories they tell about their communities, and Toni  illustrated this with a series of her own short video stories. The group explored the art of storyboarding and teamed up to create one minute shorts to be scripted for video.  Inspired by Chris and Toni's approach, some participants used their Flip cams to film materials there and then.

Ross uploaded some storyboards from his team:

Storyboard 1 

Storyboard 2

Toni's recommended  links:

www.100words.com

www.archive.org

Amplification Open Authorship – Session 7, 28th January 2010

This week's Amplification was Open Authorship; ease with creating content for immediate public consumption and modification. Armed with Flip cameras since last week the group spent some time sharing their homework of video footage. There was a broad range of content in some great short videos! We discussed the best way to shoot and edit video and talked about the knotty problem of placing videos of children in public online spaces. Follow the growing collection of videos here.

This was followed by a feedback session on the mini-project proposals. We could have spent all day discussing these fascinating ideas. The projects to be taken forward will be announced next week.

Amplification: Protovation – Session 6, 14th January 2010

The Amplified quality of 'Protovation' is defined as fearless innovation in carried out in rapid, iterative cycles. Peter Ford, Head of Commercial Design at De Montfort University, lead a highly energetic workshop where the participants were asked to think about form versus function. Prior to the session the group had been asked to bring along scissors, sellotape, cardboard and string, and after a brief talk on design and product research the tables were moved apart in preparation for a practical task set by Peter. The participants were then asked to work in small teams and build a bridge between the tables in around 15 minutes. The objective was to use rapid innovation and to incorporate both form and functionality into the model. The best bridge would need to achieve good design and be able to hold the weight of a brick. Every single design supported at least one brick, whilst some supported three. They then voted for the best design and the winning group were awarded the grand prize of a bag of toffees. Interestingly, the winning design (by Simon, Ken and Nduka) used no cardboard. More designs.

Flip Video by Nduka Onwuegbute

Amplified Leicester welcomes Toby Moores - Creativity and the Cool Curve - Session 6, 14th January 2010

We welcomed the participants back after the holidays and found them very eager to get started again. On the first session of 2010 we were joined by the CEO of Sleepydog and visiting professor of the IOCT at De Montfort University Toby Moores. Toby explained the logic behind the Cool Curve, the creative thinking technique he has developed as a result of his work at Sleepydog creating video games and TV content. The Cool Curve can be seen as a halo of ideas generated in the area between a person's comfort zone and the cool or radical. Sleepydog generates thousands of ideas which are then filtered to uncover the commercially viable few. Toby provided examples of successful ideas and people whose Cool Curve allows for the growth of technologies and markets.  He went on to emphase the importance of keeping communication open between the “three voices” at an event: the speaker, the professional observer, and the informed participant who often is not heard. He sees conversation as an important mechanism of trust and proposes that “coffee and conversation” should not be under estimated.

The Cool Curve - Toby Moores of Sleepydog.net from Toby Moores on Vimeo.

After Toby's talk  the group shared ideas on mini-projects and then Ash lead a practical tutorial on using the Flip video cameras provided to the group. They were shown how to edit and upload the footage and once Ash had got them up and running a few members filmed throughout the session catching some great footage of the workshop which followed. Follow their progress on the Amplified Leicester Participants' YouTube channel.

Curious about Amplified Leicester?

We've had a lot of enquiries from people curious to know what we're doing behind the scenes at Amplified Leicester. All will be revealed on Thursday 15th April 2010 when the new Phoenix Square Digital Media Centre will host a day of activities showcasing what we've been up to. Registration will be free of charge and available soon. Meanwhile, read about us here.