Conference Recap: #SMEU11

Unruly campaign manager Arber Pllana (@arberp) reflects on last week's Streaming Media Conference in London. 

The Streaming media Conference kicked off with a keynote from director of consumer platforms and devices at Virgin Media, Ian Mecklenburgh.

We were given a guided tour through Virgin Media’s entry into over-the-top (OTT) services in the form of their new TiVo set-top box.

The keyword for the whole of the talk was 'simplicity'. Simplicity for users to them was all about accepting that a connected TV will always be a poor PC substitute, instead a connected TV should serve to add intelligence to your fundamentally TV based experience by adding all the clever stuff it can do in the background.  

Virgin’s TiVo service has several viewer metrics in place that help each box learn and develop a "personality" by responding to what you like to watch, how you rate the content you have seen and what you have searched for, according to Virgin Media quarter of channel views on TiVo came from outside the standard EPG indicating that people have also started to shifted further away from scheduled shows and catch-up features and are moving towards a search and discovery lead TV experiences, much more a kin to on-line behaviours and they want to encourage this migration by helping to “surface” relevant content that your TiVo box thinks you would be interested in via the side bars and suggestions.  

What Virgin are trying to do it seems is extend our relationship with our TVs by going beyond focusing on improving EPGs or shoving ever larger hard-drives into the boxes (although the fact the TiVo comes with a 1TB hard drive was mentioned more than once). Instead they want to focus on the new behaviours that can be cultivated through connected TVs and start introducing a more genuinely personalised TV format. 

There was also a glint of co-operation between Virgin Media and other content providers as Ian Mecklenburgh went on to explain that the TiVo service was not a walled garden but “ had paths leading out from within it” to other  sources like iPlayer, YouTube and very soon Spotify if the 10ft PowerPoint slide behind him was anything to go by.

Another interesting concept was how the TiVo boxes could be used to create platforms for local TV or local services like the Met Police as each box becomes a unique hub for a home linking it to either a community through its geo-location or helping people connect with communities they no longer live near, other developments could include box to box sharing allowing one user to access programs they have saved at home from someone else box. 

Virgin Media are also looking to branch out into other devices, but have no desire to re-invent the wheel as shown by the fact they have built their entire system on top of the existing TiVo platform rather they see the value in using existing technology for its own purposes, another great example to illustrate this approach was how they propose on using iPhone's native speech to text software as part of their upcoming iPhone app, allowing people more flexibility with how they choose to interact with the TiVo box instead of just creating a remote app. 

A new challenge that they also seem keen to tackle is how they can integrate with social networks and begin translating all the different measurements for what viewers like to watch so that they can then pull in an even larger pool of data. This means build in a framework to "translate" what a like on facebook or a +1 on google+ equates within their own internal voting system or “TiVo thumbs”. 

But possibly their biggest hurdle to the "any screen, anywhere" ideal is dealing with the right holders for the content they are delivering. There seems to be a lot of red tape on what you can and can’t do with other people's content, streaming to an iPad is allowed but streaming to the same iPad through a mobile network and you would fall fowl of DRM laws, Ian Mecklenburgh finished with the sobering point that it is now these rights issues and not technological limitations that will stall this rapidly growing sector more than anything else.

Geriatric1927 on Silver Surfers

Early this week, I was very excited to have the opportunity to meet up with 82 year old YouTuber Peter Oakley, aka Geriatric1927, a true online celebrity with more than eight million views to his name. You can read about my meeting with him in our previous post, Lunch with a YouTube Legend: Geriatric1927. During our meeting we had a very interesting discussion about how brands can communicate with silver surfers online, and his views on driving and the elderly.

How Brands Can Communicate with Silver Surfers

To begin, I ask Peter whether brands should be giving older people access to services and opportunities online, or whether it’s not appropriate for the older age group. Peter’s response is that though there aren’t as many older people online as there could be, ‘for those that are comfortable using the internet, it’s good that they are starting to have these choices, because they could make life easier’. So, if a brand is offering a service online, what is the best way for them to help older people to discover and use that service? He points out that while older people may be comfortable with what they know online, ‘anything different will start to introduce a Fear Factor – so brands must make sure they can communicate the way the service is to be used simply and clearly ... a good way to do this is through a simple and straightforward how to video, with large clear screen images so that the steps can be followed simply, one at a time. Using online video automatically filters the audience down to only those people who are already comfortable using the internet, and therefore are unlikely to be confused by the content, as long as it is straightforward’.

A Case In Point from the DVLA

‘This is a five star example’, Peter says, explaining that although the video is complex enough to intimidate people who aren’t already online, ‘it is practical and does a very good job of showing clearly and simply how to go about the process for people who are already using the internet’.

Driving for the Elderly

The DVLA video leads the conversation on to a discussion about driving for the elderly, where Peter explains that he thinks it important to stop and think about your driving ability as you get older, and asking people to renew licenses at seventy is a great way to get people to do this. ‘When I reached seventy, I decided to take an advanced driving test to confirm that my reactions were as good as I thought, and that I wouldn’t be endangering anyone on the roads’ he continues. While he believes most, like him, know their limitations and will set their own restrictions (such as not driving in the dark or the fog), there will be some who aren’t competent – and ‘if you’re not willing to put yourself to the test, perhaps someone else should be appointed to test you’.

Interestingly, Peter also contrasted the inability of the old with the inexperience of the young: ‘shouldn’t something also be being done about the much more dangerous 17-20 age group? In biking,’ (another of Peter’s passions) ‘size restrictions are placed on motorbikes for younger drivers – perhaps something like this should be introduced for driving’? In fact, the Institute of Advanced Motorists say that the 8% of UK drivers over 70 were involved in just 4% of all injury accidents, while the 15% of drivers in their teens and twenties accounted for 34%.

Peter is glad that the DVLA is giving people an opportunity to renew their driving license at 70, because he believes that driving is, for the elderly, an almost essential tool. He says, ‘many older people live in villages where there is poor public transport and aren’t lucky enough to have family members or friends on hand to take them around. Thousands of people’s lives would be made very much poorer if they were not able to drive’.

Lunch with a YouTube Legend: Geriatric1927

Early this week, I was very excited to have the opportunity to meet up with 82 year old YouTuber Peter Oakley, aka Geriatric1927. I left London early on Monday, travelling north into the heart of Middle England to hear Peter’s pearls of wisdom on the internet, online video and senior surfers.

As many will know, Peter is a true online video celebrity: creating his first YouTube video on 5^th August 2006, he shot to the #1 spot on YouTube within the week, receiving international media coverage not only in the early view-booming days, but also when his microwave meal ‘cookalong’ hit proved more popular than Gordon Ramsay’s. Geriatric1927 currently has over eight million upload views, and I was delighted to speak to the person behind the channel on Monday about his life, his motivations, his passions, his fame and of course, his videos. Here are some of the highlights.

Why YouTube?

Of course the first thing I asked Peter about was how he got in to YouTube in the first place. He explained that after becoming a widower, he wanted to access the world, meet new people and find penfriends – but without disrupting his ‘reclusive life’ behind the screen. The internet was a natural choice, and he started off in chatrooms – but soon realised they were almost exclusively full of teenagers and not quite the right environments for him.

Peter has always been an adventurous person, keen to tackle new and unusual challenges. When he was in his 60s, he took an Art GCSE course at the local secondary school in a class of 15 and 16 year olds, and went on to complete his A Level and Art Foundation courses in similar youth environments: communication with young people has been something he’s enjoyed for years. His interest in art and photography soon led him to research video and see what he could do with that. He sat down at his computer in August 2006 to Google ‘video’, and suddenly found himself in the middle of the world of YouTube. The first thing he did, once he realised his computer already had the software he needed to create video, was upload one of his own to test the waters. Of course, that’s when the media picked it up, and the rest is history!

Who is Geriatric1987?

While the sudden influx of media attention was worrying for Peter from a privacy perspective, he explained, ‘The Daily Mail used the headline ‘The Internet Grandad’, and I have adopted that character as my own ... many young people speak to me in the way they would to their own grandad if they were able to, telling me their worries’. He maintains a dialogue with many of his virtual ‘grandchildren’ and values their friendship – the headline attached to his first ever upload really has shaped his online persona.

Geriatric1927 has a wide audience spectrum: youngsters watch, middle aged people watch, and of course ‘us old YouTubers all watch each other’. Peter is a great advocate of intergenerational communication, and sees the internet as a way to bridge the gap between generations, allowing sharing, collaboration and communication between young and old.  As well as maintaining a dialogue with young people in a grandad-style capacity, he has also encouraged older people to tackle the medium and the space, collaborating with Bruce of the You Are Never Too Old Technology Company in the US,  and with the UK government’s Digital Inclusion project, whose aims include increasing the number of older people using broadband.

Silver Surfers

Increasing the number of older people online is one of Peter’s greatest challenges, and he believes the solution will often require the one-to-one efforts of family members, appealing to his YouTube audience to help their parents and grandparents to feel comfortable online. His view is that the greatest challenge for the elderly online is the Fear Factor: ‘they are afraid of the internet ... it all seems too complicated; like there is so much to learn’. He often uses a car analogy when introducing people to computers – ‘you don’t have to know the mechanics of how a car works to drive one. Computers are similar’.

Peter spoke of the great importance communication has for older people, and the ways that the internet can facilitate this conversation, ‘the internet is great for communication. For example, Skype, YouTube – these things are wonderful’. He is a huge advocate of giving older people the opportunity to discover the opportunities that exist online, and he believes the steps brands are currently taking to open up services for the elderly online can’t be anything but positive. You can read more about this in the next post, Geriatric1927 on Silver Surfers.

Thank you, Peter, it was a pleasure to chat with you!