Industry Solutions: Information & Communications Technologies: FutureMedia Conference Weighs Georgia&…

FutureMedia Conference Weighs Georgia's Potential as a Digital, Social, and Multi-Media Powerhouse

Georgia has the potential to become a global pioneer and leader in the future of media. To do so, it will require focus, determination and collaboration among universities, corporations, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and government to make it happen.

That was a principal conclusion of the recent day-long FutureMedia conference here, which focused on opportunities and challenges in the already burgeoning fields of digital, social, and multi media. Held in midtown Atlanta on Oct. 15, the gathering brought together some 260 people from as far off as Canada, Ireland, Scotland, South Korea and Singapore. Of the total attendees, more than half were representatives from industry

"There is an incredible opportunity ahead of us," said Greg Foster, a conference panelist and former partner at Atlanta's Noro-Moseley Partners venture capital firm. Pointing to the presence of top universities, major media companies and established startup-company support systems, he called Georgia a place of "sleeping giants. Shame on us if we cannot figure out how to ... come up with something pretty interesting."

Laurie Baird, a panelist who is director of technology partnerships for Turner Broadcasting, remarked that the very existence of the FutureMedia conference indicated "tremendous potential. It is about bringing the venture interests, the significant company interests and the significant academic talent together. We haven't done that as well as we should."

The FutureMedia conference, hosted by the Georgia Institute of Technology, was initiated by the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) and sponsored by Turner Broadcasting and Motorola, with numerous Georgia companies and government agencies acting as partners. The gathering was introduced by Renu Kulkarni, executive director of FutureMedia for Georgia Tech, who termed the conference the "start of an important conversation" about Georgia's future. She emphasized that the future of media is about evolving and, in some cases, radically changing how content is created, distributed and consumed.

In welcoming attendees, Georgia Tech President G.P. "Bud" Peterson called the gathering "a unique opportunity ... to position Georgia so that it can be a world leader for FutureMedia."

Digital, social, and multi media is a broad area that includes a multitude of digital, social, entertainment and other mediums offering varying degrees of online interactivity and community. These include such well-known examples as Facebook, Second Life, Twitter, World of Warcraft and YouTube. But other fast-emerging areas -- such as private cloud computing, augmented reality, immersive Internet, unicasting and more -- point to a field that's still in its infancy.

The day-long event included three principal speakers, extensive demonstrations of digital, social, and multi media technologies under development at Georgia Tech and in the Georgia startup community, and two expert panels who tackled issues involving the present and future of media.

"To my mind this period feels a lot like 1994 and 1995, when we were at the precipice of a large nexus of opportunity," said Benn Konsynski, a panel moderator, referring to the World Wide Web's early days. But, added Konsynski, who is George S. Craft Professor of Business Administration at Emory University, early web companies came mostly from the U.S. and Europe. The future of media phenomena is global, "so we've got a whole different competitive scenario."

Speakers and panelists offered a wealth of insights into the best approaches to harnessing the future media juggernaut.

Speaker Chris W. Klaus, a Atlanta entrepreneur who founded the virtual-community company Kaneva, noted that traditional media such as print and television are on the defensive in the face of the digital media explosion. He stressed "open innovation" approaches to the future of media, which include user generated created content, open challenges and open incubators.

At Atlanta-based Kaneva, a massively multiplayer online community, users create their own games and other content using tools supplied by the site, Klaus said. He also noted the growth of the open-challenge approach, in which even large corporations are increasingly offering prizes to online users who can solve a given company problem.

Klaus, a Georgia Tech alumnus who sold his successful Internet Security Systems company to IBM in 2006, praised existing startup incubators like the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) led by Stephen Fleming, vice provost of Georgia Tech's Enterprise Innovation Institute. But he also stressed the need for industry-based open incubators that place "lots of little bets" on fledgling companies too small to attract venture capitalists.

He identified mobile augmented reality - whereby homebuyers, for example, might receive information and street-level visuals of a given neighborhood on their cell phones - as a promising growth area. He also praised the quality of digital-media graduates from Georgia Tech and the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), and challenged Georgia entrepreneurs to come up with an innovative environment that would keep talent in the state.

"This area is going to get bigger and bigger in the next 10 years," he said. "You can try to fix old media, or you can just focus on new media."

Elizabeth Mynatt, director of the GVU Center at Georgia Tech, seconded open innovation as a model for future media growth. But she stressed the unpredictability of how people use technology in the real world, and the need for academia to study those trends.

"People do assemble technologies in crazy ways," she said. "They will take platforms designed for one thing - like first-person-shooter gaming -- and make cool movies and have fun parties and actually create documentaries. They repurpose media in novel and exciting ways."

An afternoon FutureMedia session at Georgia Tech's Technology Square offered demonstrations of university research, including innovative music technology, gesture navigation, augmented reality, and advanced high-speed network and mobile technologies. GTRI, GT-RNOC, Georgia Tech's GVU Center, and Georgia Electronic Design Center were among the many Georgia Tech groups that presented scores of demos to participants. More than 40 startup companies demonstrated new products and services.

An inspiring highlight of FutureMedia was speaker Ron Clark, founder of the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta, an educator who has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show and whose book on teaching is a New York Times bestseller. The energetic Clark, whose school uses cutting-edge classroom and digital techniques in educating urban youth, literally bounced between table tops as he demonstrated how he and his teachers keep students enthusiastic and on task.

Other speakers included Krishna Bharat, creator of Google News. Other academic panelists included Janet Murray, professor in Georgia Tech's School of Literature, Communication and Culture; Scott Shamp, director of the New Media Institute, University of Georgia, and Peter Weishar, a dean from SCAD. Other industry panelists included Paul Connolly, Cisco; Mark Randolph, Motorola Singapore; David Meredith, Music Intelligence Solutions, and Wright Steenrod, Chrysalis Ventures.

Partners included the Creative Coast Alliance, Georgia Department of Economic Development, Georgia Research Alliance, the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce, Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, the MIT Enterprise Forum of Atlanta, the New Media Institute at the University of Georgia, the Savannah College of Art and Design, the Technology Association of Georgia, the Technology Executives Roundtable, Venture Atlanta 09, and Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs.

Companies attending included Microsoft, Google, Motorola, Cisco, Turner, Pixar, Yahoo!, Research In Motion, Steelcase, Humana, Nvidia, Crawford Communications, Comcast, HP, Agilent Technologies and 21st Century Communications.

Academic Institutions involved included the University of Georgia, SCAD, Emory, some 20 different groups from Georgia Tech, Georgia State University, Georgia Gwinnett College, James Madison University and the University of Abertay in Scotland.

Venture-capital firms attending included Kinetic Ventures, Chrysalis Ventures, CEO Ventures, North of England Investment Agency, Atlanta Tech Angels and Collegiate Capital Management.

Media companies attending included Bloomberg Marketing, the Atlanta Business Chronicle, Tech Drawl and BLiNQ Media. Countries represented included the United States, Ireland, Scotland, Singapore and China.