Anna, Andi, DJ, Synthi
I had the honour of hosting this session with Hermann Gyr this morning. It was a great session and Peter Genild blogged it newmediatrends.fdim.dk:
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Post-lunch and head still reeling slightly after Herman Gyr’s mid-morning presentation in Room 3.There must have been at least two hundred people, crammed in what was a medium-sized classroom, and for half of us it was standing room only.There was a palpable buzz of anticipation, as Gyr took the stage.
He is a co-founder of the Enterprise Develepment Group in California, a consulting firm that specializes in strategy development and implementation for groups facing complex change. He alsoteaches a course,’The Discipline Of Innovation’, at Stanford Research Institute. I know this, because a lot of the management at Denmark’s Radio (where I work) have been taking this course, witha lot ofsucces, as far as I’ve seen.
Herman Gyr has also worked with management at the BBC - and he used this as a jumping-off point for this morning’s presentation. While pondering how the shift from analogue to digitalcould best be explained to and comprehended by a large media corporation, he came up with Anna, Andi, DJ and Synthi.
They are not persons or personae or archetypes, but descriptions of behavior patterns that we all possess. For instance, Anna (for analogue) is the behavior we exhibit, when all we want to do is lean back and be entertained. In other words, the classic behavior that all media expects from its audience.Anna is a behavior pattern that won’t go away in a digital age, far from it, but Anna have gotcompany from, let’s say, Andi (for analogue/digital). Andi isour playful, socialside, the side that wants to talk, tinker, and interact withpeople, with stories, and with stuff. DJ (or digital Joe) is the creative behavior that manifests itself in writing, blogging, photography, video editing and such - and finally Synthi (or synthesize) is our more altruistic side, theside thatcompels us to work, speak and actforcollective causes.
Well, all of these behavior patternspredates the digital age, of course, but Gyr’s point is that digital allowsall these behaviors to occur in the same place, and more or less at the same time, whereas in ‘the old days’ we often had to change our environmentto change the pattern.
To sum up: when in ‘Anna’ mode, youwant to watch a YouTube video. Halfway through that, youswitch to ‘Andi’ mode and rate the video or post a comment.Click to ‘DJ’ mode and upload your own video, andon to ‘Synthi’ mode where you may want to raise a big debate in the YouTube community about copyright issues.
And that is the big challenge facing old media these days, thatits audience have different needs and wants,according to which mode they’re currently in.They’re not just in ‘Anna’ mode anymore,andtheir needs in any of the other modes have to be fulfilled, if old media want to stay relevant.
Well, sorry but this short sum-up doesn’t really give due credit to Herman Gyr’s presentation. There were lots more. At the end of the day you had to be there, I guess…
Note from Jon Lund: In the days around New Media Days 06 elleven guest bloggers are joining us here at at the New Media Trends weblog. This piece is brought to you from Peter Genild
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(Via .)