My Master's Thesis - Activism with Video Editing

Finally I have decided topic for my master's thesis! Last wednesday I did 1st presentation so now it's real and (hopefully) I'm going to graduate next christmas. So what's the idea? Working title is now 'Activism with Video Editing'.

My personal motivation behind my thesis' idea is that I've been editing television promos professionally for seven years. And while I think there's nothing wrong with entertainment promotion, there are times when I found myself thinking how could I utilize my skills to do something 'good'. Maybe to promote some concept I really deeply believe on.

Falling price of digital technology and the capacity to distribute information rapidly have created the conditions for millions of people to record and exchange moving images. And one important genre in this realm is video remix. To take existing material, edit it and that way communicate some new meaning. For example some fans are paying tributes with video remix to their favorite football players but also activists have found remix very powerful way to communicate political and other messages.

What I try to do with my thesis is to found out by analyzing some successful video remixes if there are some general elements etc. what makes video remix effective. And based on these findings and my former knowledge create 1-3 minutes long 'how to create effective video remix' video. My written part will be of course academic but I target how-to video for novice creators who just want some simple instructions for making effective video remixes.

It's a Party - Our MediaBizLab project

So as I've said before I'm on this one year MediaBizLab minor subject studies where we're creating new media services. Before christmas we formed groups and chose our projects. I was lucky because my media service idea of It's a party mobile application was chosen to be one of the projects which will be continued this spring. So I'm in this great group of four developing It's a party mobile application further. We have created new blog for It's a party so you can follow our development here.

Also our MediaBizLab crew made a visit to Copenhagen right at the start of the 2012. It was great! Here's one picture of one morning session where the teams had to describe the projects and their statuses. Also more information about our Copenhagen kickoff in It's a Party blog.

Photo credit goes to Lauri Hassi.

Products should be designed to get the job done

I read an article from Harvard Business Review about Marketing Malpractice. In article they say that thirty thousand new consumer products are launched each year. But over 90% of them fail. Harvard marketing professor Theodore Levitt used to tell his students, "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!".

Thing is marketers often solve the wrong problems, improving their products in ways that are irrelevant to their customers' needs. In my Superior EPG for Connected TVs (I need some name for that...) idea I simply try to solve customers problem choosing what channel to watch when he/she turns on TV. And that's it. Nothing more. But do it in superior way that hasn't been possible before connected TVs. So probably my service won't include social media connectivity, deep search functions, mobile app integration etc. because those are irrelevant to job I'm trying to solve and just make service bloated and more difficult to use.

So I think it's very important to remember products should be designed to do some particular job. To make people's lives easier. And when adding new features you should ask are those features really helping to do this job or actually just making things more difficult.

Business Model Canvas for my idea

Based on the concepts found from Alexander Osterwalder's book Business Model Generation we were supposed to develop a business model canvas for our ideas. So here's business model canvas for my Superior EPG for Connected TVs idea.

(Click on picture to see it larger)

Some further things we were supposed to consider.

Is there growth potential in the field you are in?

• Whatever people are saying TV watching is all-time high. So TV is far from dead. Truth is it's much more fragmented nowadays because we have more channels.
• Connected TVs are now niche but 2015 most TVs sold will be connected.

Is there $$ involved? Are your future competitors making money?

• There's lots of money involved if it's possible become THE PLACE where people first go when they turn on their TVs.

What is the consumer need for the service and how big is your potential market?

• Consumer need is to have the best and easiest to use EPG on the planet. Potential market is all people who own connected TVs.

Another media service idea - EPG that doesn't suck for connected TVs.

Generally EPGs (Electronic Program Guides) suck in televisions. Those are landmark of bad engineer driven user interface design. Why we can't have have great looking visual EPG with information, pictures and videos about TV programs? One reason is that with current technology it's been impossible to transfer anything else than TV programs name, short information and schedule data to EPG. Bad UI design is to blame the TV manufacturers.

Now we're seeing first phase of connected TVs in market. Samsung, Sony, LG and Google all have TV-sets/set top boxes available with internet connection and app framework. So theoretically anyone can create apps for these televisions. By 2015 almost every television sold will be connected.

What if we build superior EPG app for connected televisions? It must be very simple and it's only purpose is to show quickly and visually what's coming at the moment/next from different TV channels. Of course you could also look forward and backward for a week but it'd be targeted especially to what's coming now (+-2 hours) so it could be made visually very attractive.

Even traditional television is nowadays more complex with new channels coming almost monthly. Often when I sit down and turn on TV I have no idea what I'll watch and try to look something interesting from EPG. So If we could make superior EPG that people prefer over television's own text based and boring one it could become huge advertising medium and so on business.

My media service idea - refined

As an pre-assigment for MediaBizLab we had to generate some media service ideas. Now after first lecture we were ordered to refine our ideas. I decided to continue with my advanced web grocery store idea. I call it now grocery shopping 2.0. Main motivator for me is that everyone has to eat (except zombies), I hate shopping and therefore I'm big fan of web shopping. So here's my refined idea as SlideShare slides.

Manual of Me

In first MediaBizLab lecture we had to analyze ourselves based on Foursight analysis technique. My result was that I'm driver. Means I'm high ideator & high developer. So here are some points you should know when working with me.

• I usually have lots of ideas and if I get excited about some idea I might feel little bit aggressive to other people because I put so much energy to implementing it quickly. Just remind me that maybe we should think little bit deeper and I'll calm down. And I really value all opinions :)
• If you're more clarifier or developer I really need you because you slow me down and focus better on right problems and select what ideas we should really push forward.
• Clarifiers! If you need some implementing horsepower maybe I'm the right guy for your group.

I promise to remember my strengths and weaknesses to make most out of group work. And yes all the skills are really needed to make breakthrough innovations. Point taken.