This morning I had the awesome opportunity to listen to MIT’s Dr. Henry Jenkins [WikiPedia bio] head of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program and Convergence Culture Consortium [blog] speak on the topics of Transmedia Entertainment, Fan Culture and Brand Extensions. He also touched upon participatory culture, convergence culture and experiential marketing. It was a fascinating open forum with folks both senior and junior at Turner and I’m just saddened that we didn’t have longer than the allotted 90 minutes.
Henry is doing numerous forums and brainstorming sessions on campus today all borne out of a white paper, Fanning the Audience’s Flames: 10 Ways to Embrace and Cultivate Fan Cultures, and accompanying PowerPoint presentation. It was such an open forum, I think we barely made it into the first dozen pages/slides. Great conversation and discussion and all.
Some of my jotted notes:
- Hypersociality
- Astroturf
- Convergence
- Disintermediation
Intent to view, time spent viewing, active participation/discussion and social interaction all influenced by whether or not a television show or game becomes a social experience.
Literally “artificial grassroots”. I’d never heard it so succinctly explained.
Not so much a technological trend, but a cultural one. It’s really the flow of stories, ideas, information, community, brands and intellectual property across all media platforms.
Having parts of the story or different iterations of the narrative in different media enhances the entire experience.
Producers and creators going directly to fans, perhaps through iTunes/video iPods, instead of their normal distributor. Potentially, a cancelled show could then be marketed directly to fans, or first to fans before it makes the leap to network.
I’ve got some other notes on specific discussions and examples, but those are the key buzzwords I noted.
For more on Dr. Henry Jenkins:
- His books on Amazon
- A great podcast on games
- Forbes interview on the acceleration of change
- When Piracy Becomes Promotion
- Coming up next: Ambushed on “Donahue”!
Two are coming out later this year: Convergence Culture & Fans, Bloggers, And Gamers.
Another of Henry’s loves and field of research.
Excerpted from another interview.
Great article from 2004 that seems incredibly prescient now.
An old Salon piece that I read a few years back when it was linked from BoingBoing, I believe. Sit through the pre-roll ad if you’re not a paying Salon member. Henry discusses the video game industry and, again, seems like he has a crystal ball.
So much of his work interests me that I’m truly upset that I couldn’t tag along to all of his discussions throughout the day. I’m definitely buying a few of his books now.