Final Report Summary - EUROTRANSMEDIA (Gathering media clusters to bridge digital content with emerging technologies)
Executive Summary:
Ten years ago, the media industry was a conglomerate of isolated areas: cinema, TV, games, advertising, music, and web. Three phenomena have deeply shaken the media and the cultural industries: the dematerialization of contents, the durable transformation of consuming habits and the advent of the digital convergence.
Nowadays, there is a trend of telling stories using a wide range of new media technologies at the same time. This is the so-called “Transmedia revolution”, a convergence between TV, cinema, broadcast, web, mobile, advertising, social networks and games. This revolution is reshuffling the cards and globalizing the media market that involves a broader range of players.
Transmedia is an extremely fast and promising growing sector. This sector’s growth is backed by the explosive success of connected mobile devices and social networks and impacts new technological developments, job offers and spinoffs creation. Also, Consuming contents differently, the consumer has become from passive to (inter)active, and in many cases a producer, more and more using multi-platforms technologies, getting mobile, ubiquitous within his virtual community (social networks, blogs, forums).
We came from a traditional system to a new way model of circulation of contents in which the audience has a direct impact on the reception and the spreading of the content. It is maybe the largest driving force behind the emergence of transmedia. At the same time, the expansion of the Internet and the liberalization of the telecom networks have contributed to the proliferation of distribution and broadcasting channels and of content access.
The consortium of Eurotransmedia saw at that time the opportunity to boost the media industry in Europe for the better with one assumption: mastering transmedia contents is the key to the future of creative industries. In that respect, our consortium has posed the basic building blocks of this upcoming industry:
First of all, in terms of technology, the way must be paved to address a demand increasingly high for immersive and interactive content. Also, the success of technology development will depend more and more on either its acceptance by the users / citizens or its ‘transparency’ (users want a service that works and do not care about its embedded technologies).
In terms of business, Transmedia content is a chance for the European Union to get rid of its old way of thinking. Protection of its local and cultural content is over, as transmedia means creation of worldwide communities which consumption doesn’t depend on cultural barriers but is based on artistic universes.
Finally, and to adequately address this previous issue, the creation of a homogeneous artistic universe, that will compose as a whole a bankable content on several devices, is a key element. The revolution led by the transmedia creation on content will have an even bigger impact on the creative human resources as they will have to reinvent the way they are working. From a lonely creation, which is usually the rule in Europe, they will likely have to turn towards a team creation in order to face all the characteristics of the transmedia creation.
As a conclusion, Transmedia content is a real opportunity for Europe to create and valorize its creative IP, at a European scale and beyond, to push forward its model of public financing and to generate new digital technologies, in the field of image, sound and text.
Project Context and Objectives:
The Eurotransmedia main objectives were to:
• Integrate key problem areas in the EU by uniting research efforts to get rid of the remaining technological barriers that still hamper user creativity, user content editing, interoperability, portability and new editorial strategies (which can be seen as the future of the media industry). It will tackle technological, scientific, organisational, and economic challenges for research and innovation for the European media industry ;
• Adapt a new value chain to the new economy, in which the user is both a consumer and a producer and practices are nomadic and ubiquitous ;
• Defragment research through the development of a common trans-regional research agenda and of the associated Joint Action Plan integrating regional specifics based on the common knowledge acquired by six key European research-driven clusters.
To reach those goals, the consortium followed a precise and planned programme all written in the Description of Work. Here is a summary of the actions taken by Eurotransmedia during the three years of the project.
Beginning with the WP1, the consortium started its activities with the mapping of stakeholders, facilities, existing funding opportunities, research priorities as well as infrastructures in the media sector at regional level. This mapping activities led the partners to perform a SWOT analysis at both regional and European level. In parallel, a state-of-the-art analysis of transmedia at international level was performed which contributed to ensure the right positioning of Eurotransmedia project in global trends. This global analysis contributed to build a scenario analysis for joint actions in the field of transmedia. The partners were able to identify many similarities in the strengths and opportunities, a positive view of the opportunities and signs of willingness among industry stakeholders and public funding moving towards the digital and transmedia way. The report also showed some weaknesses and threats as for example the fact that stakeholders tends to choose “proven formats” and to show dependency on public funding.
Then Eurotransmedia entered the WP2. Based on the results of the SWOT analysis, the consortium developed regional research agendas in close collaboration with each regional authority to define strategies at regional level to strengthen leading areas and overcome bottlenecks. At the same time, a Vision document was drafted by project partners thanks to the results of the European SWOT analysis and the priorities highlighted by the international study.
The Vision Document describes the expected future of the transmedia industry for 2030 - where Europe wants to go and why. It identifies the main challenges and gives indications to help positioning the European industry on the transmedia globalised market. The vision of this document shows that the success of transmedia content will be based on the ability of its creators to manage different skills, starting with technological ones (although in an environment in perpetual flux), but also and especially economic and artistic skills. On the other hand, the success of transmedia content will also be based on the talent of its creators to meet the expectations of consumers, who increasingly want ATAWAD (Any Time, AnyWhere, Any Device) content. Through different tools, theses consumers will have more and more influence on the creation of contents in the future. The consumer is no longer a spectator but a participant. In this new framework, how the European transmedia talents will be able to contribute to the expansion of the European culture as a whole and to the building of a new industry is a crucial question.
The Vision Document is intended to become a reference document:
• For public policies on the national, regional, and European levels: list of potential research topics and regulations to be addressed by public policies.
• For the media market: overall overview of the field, identification of emerging markets and opportunities.
Mixing these two approaches (bottom-up and top-down), a Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) and a Joint Action Plan (JAP) was drafted in order to define a regional European priorities and boost competitiveness.
The Strategic Research Agenda identifies areas that need more research and innovation investment in order to reach the objectives described in the Vision Document. The key players of the transmedia industry have to face three main challenges to adapt to the evolution of media in terms of financing and production, consumption habits, and audience expectations. The consortium therefore proposed to structure the potential of research in the field of transmedia in three sections: artistic, technological, and business challenges.
Technological Challenges
● T1; Improve Interoperability of Formats
● T2: Improve Distribution Channels’ Infrastructure
● T3: Adapting Data Storage and Security to Transmedia
● T4: Measurement of User Attention and Engagement
● T5: Developing a Transmedia Feedback Platform
● T6: Integrate Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality in Transmedia Storytelling and Tools
● T7: Integrate New Interaction Paradigms in Transmedia Storytelling and Tools
● T8: Exit the Ghetto of Proprietary Technologies in Distribution Channels
● T9: Appropriation of Digital Technologies by Content Creators
Business Challenges
● B1: Business Models
● B2: Local Innovation Support in Creative Industries
● B3: Better User Generated Content Management
● B4: Content IP Ownership
● B5: Transmedia Financial Support
● B6: Impact Study
● B7: Cultural Transmedia
● B8: International Cooperation
Artistic Challenges
● A1: Discovering and Improving Transmedia Talents
● A2: Co-creation and Synergies
● A3: Improve Storytelling Methods to Follow the Technical Evolution
● A4: Discover New Storytelling Methods for Public Venues
● A5: Design and Test Storytelling Methods Enabled by Internet of Things
● A6: Improve User-Generated Content Integration in Production Workflows
● A7: Digital Literacy
The Eurotransmedia consortium has built on this analysis and has launched a series of actions - coordinated between regions- to help the transmedia sector overcome the challenges and benefit from the opportunities. This list of actions is included the Joint Action Plan. The JAP identified common activities to be launched among project partners in the project area starting M18 until the end of the project (and beyond if necessary). This included activities between members (meetings, lectures, publications...) activities toward the local regions and their industrial, political, and educational actors involved in the project (learning sessions, meet&match events, workshops), as well as disseminations activities toward other European regions.
Here are the 11 SMART objectives listed in the JAP:
● Provide online access to tools facilitating the creation, production, and distribution/broadcasting of new media formats
● Engaging digital transformation via transmedia solution
● Gather key actors in the European transmedia sector, propose a measuring audience methodology, and reach an agreement on a common set of audience measurement requirements
● Allow crowdfunding platforms to seamlessly invest cross-border in companies in exchange for shares, help bring the private sector funding into transmedia field
● Support innovation in the creative industries
● Promotion of transmedia awareness of the transmedia key factors (as new business models) toward non-media industry
● Facilitate the emergence and appropriation of cutting-edge knowledge on transmedia
● Identification of innovative business models
● Raise European awareness about relationship between transmedia and culture
● Implementation of a transmedia master at European level
● Maintaining the cooperation between the project partners to foster transmedia
The WP3 aimed at implementing the first measures proposed in the JAP and therefore to foster collaboration among consortium members and towards international partners. The consortium identified new funding resources and opportunities at regional, national, European and international level in order to ensure the sustainability of the project after its duration.
The consortium also produced a Transmedia White Paper in order to actively contribute to the policy setting at European and International levels. The White Paper highlights actions to take advantage of the opportunities and overcome the current challenges towards the implementations of the transmedia approach and help to the development of the European creative industries. The main conclusion of the White Paper was: “The transmedia approach must be embraced by European creative institutions and industries to maintain themselves competitive in the content creations and publishing global industry.”
Internationalisation activities was taken into account in all WPs as well, due to the strong globalisation of the media market. Eurotransmedia project paid a particular attention to trends at international level in order to optimise its positioning and developed international collaborations with non EU clusters in order to benefit from their experience and reinforce European position and attractiveness on foreign markets. A clear list of actions suitable to be co-developed among European parties and international ones is included in the White Paper.
The WP4 was dedicated to communication, dissemination, and international prospection activities and continuously interacted with all other WPs to ensure the project visibility and promoted collaboration with other actors, including international partners.
A smooth management was ensured by WP5, which contributed to strong communication among the partners in order to meet all project deadlines and proper implement legal, financial and administrative EC rules.
Project Results:
The main outcome of the Eurotransmedia project is the Joint Action Plan and its 11 JAP actions:
- JAP1 - Create an API intermediation platform for the audiovisual industry
- JAP2 - Transmedia Challenge Competitions
- JAP3 - Transmedia in European Culture
- JAP4 - Observatory of transmedia best practices
- JAP5 - Audience measurement methodologies
- JAP6 - European Master in Transmedia
- JAP7 - A convergent fund to support transmedia creation
- JAP8 - Research about innovative business models
- JAP9 - Crowd financing regulations for transmedia business
- JAP10 - Facilitation of Transmedia experiments and their dissemination in other sectors than the media industry
- JAP11 - Maintaining and enlarging the Eurotransmedia network beyond the end of the project
Following the General Assembly in April 2016, the EUROTRANSMEDIA consortium decided to merge some of these actions together. JAP11 and JAP7 are merging as well as JAP10 with JAP2. It became evident that those actions were working towards the same ends and the consortium thought that it would be wiser to pool forces in merged actions.
Below are the main results for each action:
JAP1 - CREATE AN API INTERMEDIATION PLATFORM FOR THE AUDIOVISUAL INDUSTRY
The objectives of this action were to:
• Provide online access to web-services facilitating the creation, production, and distribution/broadcasting of new media formats.
• Help producers, creators and developers to adopt collaborative tools
• Facilitate the adoption of internet business model
In order to validate the platform concept with various stakeholders, a proof of concept application has been developed. This application demonstrates that it is possible to build an on-line tool with original and innovative features based only on preexisting remote services.
At this stage, the API screen platform is currently online and working as a prototype (TRL 6-7) but with only a few API available on the platform. The dedicated website to request a test is https://www.apiscreen.fr/
As a result, several lessons were learned from this proof of concept:
• Integrate external api through Faascape is really easy. Api are consistent and simple.
• Unit testing api independently of user interface allow rapid iteration for server side development.
• All efforts can be focused on the client part which is the more difficult to get right. It is really critical to be able to automatize integration tests. This is not always possible to do across all the panel of target devices.
• Deployment is greatly simplified by not having to manage server side implementation and storage.
• Third parties api platforms are robust and have not generated any trouble.
• Using sets of HTML5 based modules and components on the client side and web api on the server side, building original applications are more an aggregation work than pure hard core development and is clearly the way to go.
The positive feedback from the community confirms us to pivot on the business model by proposing an Open Source version of the platform.
This move will have an impact on the adoption rate and will also ease the integration of more and more APIs directly added by the community.
JAP2 - TRANSMEDIA CHALLENGE COMPETITIONS + JAP10 - FACILITATION OF TRANSMEDIA EXPERIMENTS AND THEIR DISSEMINATION IN OTHER SECTORS THAN THE MEDIA INDUSTRY
Given the complementary goals of the two following actions: Transmedia experiments led by Media Evolution and Transmedia Challenges led by Cap Digital, the two consortium partners decided to join their forces to reach a wider audience and get a bigger impact. The objective here is to disseminate and create transmedia opportunities across sectors to raise awareness and wider the market size.
The objectives of the transmedia challenges are to better map and connect innovative ecosystems and transpose transmedia best practices to sectors as diverse as tourism or smart city.
New sectors such as healthcare, lifestyle, consumption of non-media goods and services getting more and more digitized every day. This marriage between digital sectors and other social, industrial or economic sectors should be the best new business opportunity for transmedia content and storytelling by far.
Media Evolution conducted around 125 different events during 2015 and 75 in the first half year of 2016 where the digital media industries was invited to meet non-media branches, or where transmedia related companies deepened their knowledge to be able to produce better content to new and other branches. The converges between when digital and media companies meet tourism, health, education, construction firms, banks, unions, culture sector or the regions officials is what Media Evolution is all about.
When conducting these types of events new ways of problems solving have to be considered and collaborating over branches and personal knowledge to gain the most out of the people involved is needed. Get new and innovative ideas and products by combining the different ways of looking at things. Starting to look at what is it we like to solve, and then work on the way to get there.
In a series of events Media Evolution has conducted a Digital Culture Lab, in collaboration with the Region of Skånes Cultural department, towards cross cultural organisations with digital & media producers. The objective was to give them the tools to create new ways of communicating or reach out their audience, or to include digital enhancement in their storytelling, both outside their venues as well as within.
Media Evolution have also held a series with building construction firm Skanska, to cross their building plans with digital enhancement, storytelling from the beginning of a construction of a house and to plan for transmedia products inside the building from the start, such as how to use screens and communication within the building itself.
Media Evolution has also helped several traditional companies to look over their digital strategies and how they can use transmedia storytelling in their daily business and work.
The experiences of new working processes was then taken to Paris France in collaboration with Pole Media Grad Paris at the occasion of a B2B day in the spring of 2016. Media Evolution held a workshop of rapid prototyping, where the members of the consortium, participants as well as invited transmedia companies from France and Belgium looked at how we will found our jobs in the future with digital tools and came to some great ideas by combining each other’s ideas.
At the occasion of Cap Digital’s Future En Seine Festival in Paris in June 2016, transmedia companies from the partner regions presented examples of innovative transmedia products and shared their experiences and vision of the transmedia market.
The different experiences held through the years of the convergence of transmedia to more non-digital branches has also been shared in the Eurotransmedia whitepaper.
As for challenges operated by Cap Digital, the idea is to undergo smart sourcing to inspire a public institution or a private corporation and engage them to work with innovative and agile structures. Objectives of this meetup would be to work on engaging and immersive experiences.
By gathering these different structures, we aimed at showing that transmedia can be an enabler of interaction, immersion, engagement, customer loyalty, personalised user experience, community management ...
JAP3 - TRANSMEDIA IN EUROPEAN CULTURE
The proposed action is based on the need to focus the interest and support the increase of knowledge and deployment of transmedia as a strategy to develop new forms of creative expression and communication that will allow a positive impact on the European museums and cultural heritage in the future, facilitating the cooperation between institutions, companies, experts and users.
Currently, many museums and cultural heritage management companies in Europe are in their way of defining their digital strategy in order to connect the contents with the public and improve visitor’s engagement.
In every region around Europe but at different rates, museums are trying to promote new projects to enrich the user experience, beyond the physical experience. This comprehends the phase before the visit (preliminary or preparatory visit), the visit phase (physical or virtual experience) and the phase after the visit (connection with the user experience).
In this context, technologies are confronted to specific challenges that we should consider such as:
• The possibility to personalize or individualize services, products and the provision of resources (content, type of visit, languages, reading level, etc.) in order to answer to the diversity and heterogeneity of the public.
• The engagement of the visitors and the museums through the multiplications of stories and interactive propositions, or through the changes of the concepts of time and space which favour the appeal of the virtual experience before and after the visit.
• The creation of new publics and the construction of loyalty of the existing users thanks to the tools of surveillance and analysis. Those allow to collect essential information which aim is to improve the range of services and products in order to meet the company’s needs and expectations.
• The improvement and the reinforcement of the relationship Museum-User, as well as the relationship between users (communities, groups of interest, etc.), in particular through the social networks, which at the same time could become an important source of knowledge in regards of the preferences and expectations of the public.
In order to continue with the definition and specification of the action, we have made a thorough analysis of the conferences, congresses, meetings and events open to the public that have been held in recent years and also the one planned for this year in Europe suitable for scheduling a seminar or workshop on transmedia in museums and heritage sites. To complete this annotated compilation diverse sources, including the ones mentioned at the beginning of the document, have been contacted, but also companies working in the field and researchers, curators, etc. In fact those tables are in some extend a first result of the action by themselves, since are a good starting point for the next activities.
We compiled a list of contacts made of organisations, committees, working groups, with interest in transmedia in culture. This compilation of practitioners, event organizers, etc. is being used to send the results of the project, as documentation, whitepapers, etc. to all interested parties. We received some feedback from some events in form of invitations to get to the next edition to share the findings of the project.
JAP4 - OBSERVATORY OF TRANSMEDIA BEST PRACTICES
This action consisted in the creation of an intelligence letter focused on transmedia, from a technological, economic, consumer behaviour point of views, covering projects all over Europe and at the international level as well. Published at a monthly pace since December 2015, we aim at being a reliable and inspirational source of information at the European level.
The main objective of the letter was to provide a comprehensive information source to share among consortium members and their ecosystems. Other objectives of the observatory was to highlight interesting projects undergoing within the consortium members countries, to draw attention to innovation and R&D supported or valorize the knowledge of our pools of experts.
The observatory also helped us to communicate about project results and to capitalize on our dissemination activities, helping interested stakeholders to take note of latest innovations presented at events they could not attend or had not heard of. As such, it enabled us to better map transmedia related events all over Europe.
Although there are only few issues available for now (we published 6 transmedia observatory letters since we started the action), its smooth publication process was ensured by a combination of competences and resources put in the project. For watch purposes, we monitored social networks, specialised monitoring tools and intelligence platforms and selected, for each letter, about 10 to 15 news to share. We aimed at putting together issues with 5 pages or less to make the reading process fluid and quick to our readers.
Our readers’ base is mainly composed of ecosystem members of the partnering clusters, meaning broadcasters, telecom operators, production companies, technology providers and independent transmedia professionals.
JAP5 - AUDIENCE MEASUREMENT METHODOLOGIES
The objective of this JAP is to gather key actors in the European transmedia sector, to propose a measuring audience methodology and to help them reach an agreement on a common set of audience measurement requirements.
The main goal of this action is to deploy a new transmedia audience measurement tool to enhance an innovative business model shift in creative SMEs & associated partners.
The first step of implementation was to gather key actors in the transmedia sector. TWIST, being the leader of this action, instigated first meetings with interested parties in Wallonia.
Two work groups soon formed themselves. The job of the first group is to propose a credible data collecting framework and to develop a proof of concept. The second group will validate the technological part of the methodology and set up R & D activities necessary for the successful completion of the project or identified during the project as relevant.
The European market is probably too large to consider a single methodology and the importance of comparing the best of them and making some choices is very central in this matter. After careful consideration, it was decided to use the impact measurement methodology used by the advertising sector. This methodology is based on the trilogy: paid/bought media, owned media and earned media.
Using this model, Dentsu Aegis Network set up a list of relevant KPIs.
The next step was to find a proof of concept. Wallimage Creative brought to our attention the project “Urbance”. This true transmedia experience produced by Wallimage Creative and the Canadian Media Fund consists of four main axis: an animated web series, a computer game, a mobile app and the usual social networks (Facebook, Twitter...). More axis will be added later such as comics, action figures and so on. “Urbance” meets perfectly the ambitions of the work groups and the fact that it is a Belgian Canadian product gives even more credibility to the establishment of our methodology.
The business model of the proof of concept is a freemium type. There are three levels of users and thus engagement: the first level of users playing for free, the second level of users who spent money to progress in the game, the third level of users who build a community.
Having decided of using “Urbance” as our proof of concept allowed us to raise awareness around the issue of audience measurement for transmedia products in a more both entertaining and effective way. For instance we took advantage of the fact that “Urbance” was presented at the festival Le Forum Blanc to talk about this action.
Now that we have developed a matrix integrating transmedia related KPI (methodology). The next step is the development of a software (technology) to measure those KPI.
JAP6 - EUROPEAN MASTER IN TRANSMEDIA
The worldwide media landscape is becoming definitively transmedia. The lack of preparedness of creative workforce within European companies is one of the top reason why Europe is still behind. Successful transmedia content creators proficiently juggle technological, economic and artistic expertise in a dynamic ATAWAD (Any Time Any Where Any Device) environment. They offer a rare combination of talent, creativity and technical skills. Three European hubs, including education centres, companies and industrial clusters, already locally active in the promotion of the transmedia, have joined forces to outpace the current situation. The proposed alliance aims at creating a favourable ecosystem for exchanging knowledge, sharing creative initiatives, and boosting professional opportunities in transmedia. The project’s name is European Transmedia Institute Initiative (ETMI).
To fulfill this goals the project will embrace this tasks:
• Design and creation of an open organization that imagine and coordinate solutions at EU level, the envisioned European Transmedia Institute (ETMI). As an effective link between academic institutions and companies it will foster a rich, dynamic and productive transmedia ecosystem in Europe.
• Design and development of the ETMI European wide curricula and supporting tools, including the European Transmedia Skills Certification programme. ECTS teaching units will foster European mobility for future transmedia professionals and linking their training with current and future needs of media and related industries.
• Design an ETMI open platform for fostering the knowledge exchange and matchmaking between all European transmedia students, practitioners and companies in the transmedia value chain.
• Carry out a vigorous communication and dissemination plan to ensure the impact of the institute and the platform.
To prove the validity of the described initiatives, the outcomes of the project will be settled well before the end of the project and submitted to European stakeholders for validation. ETMI project, fostered by a relevant and complementary consortium, is a very appropriate initiative since it tackles specifically already identified challenges that hampers European creative industries development that right now aren’t addressed by any other measure public nor private.
One of the results of the project Eurotransmedia is the Eurotransmedia Strategic Research Agenda (SRA). Extensive SWOT analysis and the feedback from their stakeholders and the Advisory Board members was carried out in order to identify the challenges and bottlenecks that hamper the development of the Transmedia approach in the European creative industries. The bottlenecks were organised around three axes: the artistic (A), the technological (T) and the business (B). The most relevant for the ETMI proposal are:
• Discovering and improving transmedia talents (A1)
European content creators are generally not tech-savvy enough to translate their ideas into real world productions and their creativity is thwarted by the fast pace of change in digital devices and their use by the general public.
“Pure” transmedia profiles are extremely hard to find. Not all productions require highly skilled transmedia architects, but, in the near future, transmedia skills should become part of all profiles along the media production pipeline.
The SRA identified the following three as the main issues behind this challenge:
- College curricula are targeting overly narrow niches instead of crossing and merging traditionally established topics (drawing, broadcast video, movie making, web development, etc.). As groups of transmedia creators are heterogeneous, there is a need for a new position, to ensure consistency and cohesiveness among the various skills and profiles of a team.
- The current educational curricula are not open to technical innovations and to the simultaneous use of multiple channels.
- A lack of coordination between the education curricula hobbles Media workers’ international mobility: The similarities between same level courses in the various European countries are not strong enough to guarantee the equivalence of their graduates’ degrees.
- Co-creation and Synergies (A2)
The study found the lack of creative and technological skills and expertise in multi-format production teams. Consequently, transmedia currently requires the collaboration of multiple actors, interests, and skills within the creative teams. Co-creation and synergies are mandatory to improve mutual understanding of the different jobs and competences in the sector
Furthermore, the Eurotransmedia SRA identifies also this other challenges that are also addressed by the ETMI proposal:
- Improve storytelling methods to follow the technical evolution (A3)
- Discover new storytelling methods for public venues (A4)
- Integrate VR and AR in Transmedia Storytelling and Tools (T6)
- Integrate new interaction paradigms(T7)
- Appropriation of digital technologies by content creators (T9)
- Content IP Ownership (B4)
- International Cooperation (B8)
ETMI’s proposition builds upon the Eurotransmedia SRA findings to overcome these challenges.
According to the European Digital Agenda, “Europe is slow in the uptake of ICT based innovations, notably in areas of public interest“. On top of that, the preamble of the Creative Europe Programme (Regulation EU No 1295/2013) acknowledges that the European cultural and creative sectors, although a culturally rich, is significantly diversified along national and linguistic lines. Hence, are not prone to transnational cooperation and mobility, and may lead to geographical imbalances that hamper the European creative sector as a whole.
The ETMI participant organisations agree and have been working under the Eurotransmedia umbrella on a development agenda supporting the actual Commission policy in the field of media, addressing both future European competitiveness as well as media industry stakeholders’ needs.
Individually and collectively, they are launching -or have already launched- several projects to address the bottlenecks faced by the media transition to digital, and especially to the emergence of transmedia as a new industrial branch. It is in the interest of all participating organisation to implement a fast and pragmatic way to accelerate methods to put skilled Transmedia workers on the market. Every region provide to the whole framework specific strengths that would be available by this pan European initiative to the other regions becoming a good example of smart specialisation wide area collaboration.
European creative industries are in need of skilled transmedia professionals for boosting their competitiveness in the European and global scene. Participating companies and clusters in ETMI understand that in a receptive industrial and market ecosystem, these talents are the ones meant to drive the European transmedia sector to a productive and innovative path. Hence, participating in an initiative in which industry and academia join forces to educate and train their future workforce is a safe and rentable investment.
Participant research organisations and universities need, on one hand, healthy, dynamic and ambitious creative industries that are able to envision, co-create and adopt new technologies and innovative processes and services. Tech-savvy transmedia professionals are prone to experimenting with new creative tools and engaging in the development process of new solutions. On the other, these talents would be able to create innovative ways of narrating and creating contents. This would open up fields of research typically siloed to specific disciplines (e.g. discourse analysis, semiotics, audiovisual language, etc.). Research in these areas would advance the state-of-the-art, of knowledge and technology, and set up the base for further advancements.
The ETMI project results are expected to increase the visibility and strengthen the position of the European media industry on the European and worldwide markets while preserving the regional specificities.
Thanks to the previous studies carried out by the Eurotransmedia project, the solutions envisioned in this proposal are specifically targeted to address the challenges of the creative industries by coordinating cross country initiatives like helping to align efforts among academic institutions:
• The design of an open organization like the ETMI Institute which will imagine and coordinate solutions at EU level in the field of transmedia, will address the challenges related to the lack of cross-country creative talent discovery and development, and the co-creation and production strategies for innovative content creation that would become competitive in a globalised audience.
• Design of the European Transmedia curricula will help in the coordination among different academic institutions even in different countries to offer similar level courses strong enough to guarantee the equivalence of their graduates’ degrees and help new talent’s mobility. The new curricula won’t only take into account traditional topics: broadcast, film, book publishing, etc. It will cover also transversal skills needed by this new breed of creators, like business, usability, communication technologies. etc.
• The European Transmedia Skills Certification programme will foster European student’s mobility helping them to get access to regional knowledge specialities not available in all countries.
• Design an open platform for fostering the knowledge exchange and professional matchmaking to provide technological and creative skills and the best workforce to the European companies.
• Wide dissemination to ensure this approach would be embraced by as much academic institutions and companies as possible to convert Europe in a creative global powerhouse
Some of the ETMI partners are working together since September 2013 on a vision document about the European transmedia industry and its real world implementation. The resulting Eurotransmedia Vision Document (VD) is available online at: http://www.eurotransmedia.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/eurotransmedia-visiondocument-web.pdf
This vision includes a synthesis of European needs in the MEDIA field for the ten years to come. The document has been elaborated with a strong predefined methodology that included a SWOT analysis of the MEDIA industry at the regional, national, European and worldwide levels. This SWOT analysis was done with help from external consultants (Aegis -www.aegisworld.com) and implied interviews and discussions with over 400 professionals in the transmedia field.
The analysis focused on Western Europe but identified also the most prominent extra-European transmedia markets (China, USA, Japan, and South Korea). One of the key findings is that in Europe the economic model is not yet sufficiently developed by sources other than public funding.
As a conclusion of this SWOT analysis, the mains identified challenges to address are education oriented and not technology or business oriented. In that regards, ETMI is one of the most important action envisioned by the Eurotransmedia consortium to tackle the problems related to education and this is why ETMI is addressing the problem at the educational level with a strong participation of the private sector.
Indeed convergence of medias means that the whole value chain of content creation and content valorization is being modified. In that respect, innovation has to be applied in the education of our tomorrow’s new talents, at once.
Hence, new ways of writing or storytelling have to be implemented in educational systems in Europe as they are still aiming at teaching in silos: animation, theatre, graphic design, comics creation, gaming, architecture, cinema, etc. A transverse vision is needed as medias need to speak to each other. In parallel, private companies need to valorize contents not only in their field of competencies but at a broader level.
From the SWOT analysis we know how difficult it is to break with the conventional logic of audio-visual production and valorization designed for the linear environment and change in favour of the transmedia concept. ETMI has the ambition to support both the academic institutions and private companies in order to gather the needed competencies to train properly our tomorrow’s new talents, and this why the most advanced company in the field in Europe is in our consortium (Dupuis with its Belgian heroes initiative).
As a conclusion we can say that there are still two converging constants: the public wants content in order to be entertained or informed, and the authors have stories to tell, ideas to share, and the desire to achieve such content. Between these two points, the whole value chain is affected by the digital revolution. This why the strengths and specificities of local talents need to be reoriented to fulfill transmedia requests. Creative people ability to “think transmedia” will be key in order to keep their audiences instead of losing them to the global media leaders from US or Japan.
The European Transmedia Institute Initiative aims to:
• Objective 1: Design and creation an open organization that imagine and coordinate solutions at EU level, the envisioned European Transmedia Institute (ETMI). As an effective link between academic institutions and companies it will foster a rich, dynamic and productive transmedia ecosystem in Europe.
• Objective 2: Design and development of the ETMI European wide curricula and supporting tools, including the European Transmedia Skills Certification programme. ECTS teaching units will foster European mobility for future transmedia professionals and linking their training with current and future needs of media and related industries.
• Objective 3: Design an ETMI open platform for fostering the interaction and matchmaking between all European transmedia students, practitioners and companies in the transmedia value chain.
• Objective 4: Carry out a vigorous communication and dissemination plan to ensure the impact of the institute and the platform.
ETMI’s work plan provides sufficient elements in order to monitor progress towards objectives. Timely compliance of contractual deliverables and reports is indeed a key indicator of project progress at task level. When accompanied with quality assurance procedures such as the ones described and implemented by WP5, the ETMI consortium will be able to ensure this progress is attained in the highest quality standards.
ETMI, as a consequence of the Eurotransmedia project, supported by the European Union’s 7th programme (Region of Knowledge) is obviously composed of some European digital media clusters and private entities involved in the Eurotransmedia project. These members of the Eurotransmedia consortium, based in Barcelona (Eurecat), Paris Region (Pôle Media Grand Paris) and Wallonia (TWIST) will be the hyphen between the two projects and will guarantee the consistency of ETMI regarding the results of Eurotransmedia. Also, some complementary partners have been invited to join the “core group” in order to bring a missing knowledge such as the academic partners and a private partner covering a relevant sector of the media industry.
As mentioned, ETMI gathers European actors from three key regions (Belgium, Spain and France). In each region, a high education partner is involved along with a private entity directly involved in the transmedia industry and a cluster organization representing key industrial partners in the field of transmedia. A fourth region, Bavaria in Germany, will be associated to the project with the Macromedia University of Applied Sciences in Munich.
The consortium also includes three private companies among the most advanced in the transmedia revolution: Dupuis (Belgium) with its “Belgian R/O” initiative, INA (France) and Fluor (Spain). Two of them, Dupuis and Fluor, were already involved in the Eurotransmedia project as members of its Advisory Board. INA will have a clear added value as a major European player of the valorisation of radio and TV archives, another specific sector of the media industry. FLUOR works as a branding agency exposing the need to find new formulas to their clients in order to reach a society that is increasingly hyper-connected, fragmented and mobile.
The ETMI consortium is inherently linked to two other Transmedia initiatives by two of its partners:
• TWIST is coordinator of the Eurotrasnmedia project (FP7), which will run until ends of 2016.
• UPF is coordinator of the Transmedia literacy project (H2020), which will run until 2018.
ETMI will liaise with these two projects in order to mutually improve and multiply the impact.
Moreover, ETMI will strive to liaise with major vocational training international events in order to co-locate future ETMI workshops and seminars. In the long term, ETMI’s ambition is to organize a yearly European Transmedia event to compete with the existing ones in North America and Asia (e.g. SXSW)
JAP7 - A CONVERGENT FUND TO SUPPORT TRANSMEDIA CREATION + JAP11 - MAINTAINING AND ENLARGING THE EUROTRANSMEDIA NETWORK BEYOND THE END OF THE PROJECT
The initial objective of JAP7 is to support innovation in the creative industries to produce innovative content taking advantage from the transmedia approach. The initial objective of JAP11 is maintaining the cooperation between the project to foster transmedia.
Following the General Assembly in April 2016, the consortium decided to merge some of the JAP actions together. JAP7 and JAP11 started as separate actions but then it became evident that those actions were working towards the same ends and the consortium thought that it would be wiser to pool forces in merged actions.
The transmedia sector faces a clear lack of financial support for the creation of innovative screenwriting and narrative design. There is a fundamental need for reinvention of the funding mechanisms. Transmedia is on the hunt for reliable investors and private funding seems to be the way to go for most transmedia production with clear business models. Innovative transmedia storytelling could be turned into real business by investment from various sources, but the three most realistic are private investment, public funding and crowdfunding.
Whereas the digital content media sector is evolving from a mono-media environment to a multi-platform environment, it is still considered as an in-silo sector at the SME level and even at public funds level.
This Eurotransmedia action aims at helping SMEs to step outside their sector silos by encouraging, with horizontal incentives, a collaboration between sectors and by designing monetized bridges between them in order to multiply the access doors to a globalized digital audience and create a scalable media content industry at the European level.
In that context, "the overarching objective is to support creative industry stakeholders assembling, benchmarking, and fine-tuning their custom business model in order to grow a scalable and sustainable digital media content industry in Europe.”
The result of those two merged JAP actions has spawned the writing of a project named MediaBoost, based on a 2 million euros budget, and the commitment of the creation of a European meta-cluster (http://www.eurodigitalcluster.eu).
MediaBoost: The main objective is implemented through two technical objectives:
• Launching of 2 calls to help ensuring transmedia projects structure, by enabling and enhancing the business links
Success criteria:
- 60 new projects financially supported (at least 30 multi-partners projects);
- 90 SMEs financially supported;
- 30 SMEs amongst the 90 reusing validated business model for transmedia content production before the end of the 24 months project.
• Matching cross-border and cross-sector transmedia partners
Success criteria:
- 20 successful cross-sector SMEs matches (Video game, TV/Radio, Internet, social media, cinema, publishing, design, music, advertising);
- 20 financially supported projects are intra-European cross-border; (at least 8 countries covered by participants; 4 workshops to be organized in 4 different countries.)
MediaBoost: Three secondary objectives of MediaBoost are:
• Creation of a European network of experts in valorisation of creative content intellectual property. This open group will disseminate the new business tools and good practices learned from MediaBoost. The existence of this network will be a plus for the European media industry even after the end of the project.
Success criteria:
- At least 10 specialised experts from the following sectors: Video game, TV/Radio, Internet, Social media, Cinema, Publishing, Design, Music, and Advertising;
- At least 2 experts in immersive-interactive technologies (AR/VR, 360°, etc.);
- At least 2 experts in transmedia storytelling.
• Increasing creative SMEs awareness about the transmedia value chain and its strategic importance.
Success criteria:
- Making 200 creative SMEs aware through dissemination, training and mentoring activities;
- 4 workshops to be organized in 4 different European countries;
• Training media investors to evaluate successful transmedia projects
Success criteria:
- 40 public funds managers to be trained;
- 40 private investors to be trained;
- 4 workshops to be organized;
MediaBoost: Concept
MediaBoost offers the possibility to strengthen business aspects of a project architecture that are usually overlooked during a release date driven digital production such as:
● Prototype a fine tuned business model by assembling multi-streams revenues into a unique monetization ecosystem that organically fits the singularity of the project;
● Apply out-of-the-box business approaches to disrupt the competition and access new markets demands (i.e. Uber, Tinder, Twitch, Clash of Clans, Duolingo, Slack...);
● Anticipate technical or structural major updates to seize a strategic market opportunity window;
● Implement economical, behavioural, sociological or other type of relevant benchmarking process to stress the project during its early development and production stages;
● Monitor and fine-tune a project after its release by collecting, analyzing and converting market relevant data to elaborate refreshed marketing strategies.
In the digital media sphere, our experience proves that European projects (and especially SME-driven projects) tend to follow an accelerated track to a release date once financing is wrapped up. The budget often suffers cuts down the line that might not affect the artistic or practical quality of the work but still represents a threat to its sustainability over time. Elaboration and proper evaluation of an appropriated business model is among the first victims of budget cuts because content production seems always to be priority #1.
As an example, audience data collection has to be implemented during the early days of conception but its technical realization is often set aside as soon as the production fast tracks to its release for two identified main reasons:
● A lack of dedicated finance to afford steps that are not visible and therefore do not seem to contribute to the artistic or the technical value of the end project.
● The absence of in-house resources to provide the most relevant cross-sectors expertise.
On a larger scale, those two reasons can be found behind the lack of any new business model optimization in the majority of European digital projects. Those are nevertheless financed and they access the digital market, somewhat unprepared. MediaBoost offers them a chance to gear up.
MediaBoost calls can play a crucial part at different stages of a digital content project depending on the project and the identified needs as long as the project is still being conceived and the application is occurring at a time/efficiency relevant stage before reaching TRL 6.
MediaBoost: Ambition
By setting up creative business architecture and by creating new streams of revenues, SMEs will generate more profit that will necessitate a new form of stimulated engagement. This dynamic disrupts the European public funding model and tends to generate market leaders that are constantly seeking new opportunities and a way to seize them.
All those activities will help the creative industry SMEs to go several steps further to cross the valley of death that many projects find in their path to the valorisation, sustainability and final profitability, mainly strengthening the business aspects of a project.
European meta-cluster
At the same time, the consortium is currently working on the creation of a European Meta-cluster. The people involved in this proposal are representing a group of European Clusters with a common intent to form a European Strategic Cluster Partnership (ESCP) with smart specialisation in Digital Transformation/Industry 4.0 and Creative Industries.
Our new partnership will be named Euro Digital Cluster and will be accessible at http://www.eurodigitalcluster.eu.
We intend to regroup excellent clusters with complementary expertise in creative industries digital transition and “web 4.0” industries to promote the European position in all sectors affected by the transition to digital (including new media and internet of things).
We are looking to find a perfect balance between clusters and organisations from smart specialisation areas involved in “Digital Transformation/Industry 4.0” and industries actually living the digital revolution such as Communication/ICT, Health, Mobility, and Education.
The Clusters already associated to the partnering are:
• TWIST: Pierre Collin
• Cap Digital: Joséphine Rohner
• Pôle Média Grand Paris: Lydie Fenech
• Media Evolution : Sara Ponnert
• Eurecat : Santi Fort
• Transmedia Bavaria: Egbert van Wijngaarden and Silke Schmitt
JAP8 - RESEARCH ABOUT INNOVATIVE BUSINESS MODELS
Digital business models are getting inherently complex. Adding the component of transmedia content is adding to the complexity: to figure out which standards agreements that are put in use, to look and licensing agreements and to investigate opportunities for expansion of concurrent business models.
The business models are also tied to developments of publishing platforms, technological development, social networks terms of services so those areas will also be put into consideration with bearing towards the business model investigation.
We wanted to have a deeper loon in to the standards and innovation in business models used on the Anglo-Saxon markets, since that market (US, Canada, UK) are in the driving seat for media development.
The research was presented to stakeholders foremost SMEs and public sector as White Paper and as popularised Web content.
This work was also included in the Report on future transmedia business models opportunities . The report presents general considerations about transmedia value chain and current business models, focusing on the value creation in digital markets and the value creation and the social contagion effects to achieve critical mass and audience.
It includes a regional level study (Estonia, Sweden, France, Spain and Belgium) of existing and possible business models and how those regional business models could be enriched through inter-regional cooperation.
The report also compiles success business cases for the different regions and the opportunities and challenges for inter-regional adaptation to these success cases and business models. These opportunities can be summarized into:
• Encourage interregional participation among all the value chain; in the production and marketing of transmedia works between companies and especially between final users participation through the network services available on the Internet.
• Define and establish adequate transmedia innovative strategies designed to capture the available attention of public/audiences, and take advantage of network economies.
• Public procurement, promoting research, development and innovation of new products, technologies and value creation models for transmedia activities.
The research of business models have also played an important role in the writing of the transmedia Whitepaper by Eurecat. Here you can read about the actions related to audiences and empowerments of the users, actions related to technologies and to economy, and also the role of international cooperation. And what are the opportunities within the transmedia scope. In the whitepaper research for business models we found that two economy models for transmedia seem to emerge. They will definitely inspire those of tomorrow, productions centered on content and IP rights monetization. This is the model of traditional media looking to evolve and to adapt to the highly competitive international environment. – and promotion, marketing and other awareness-raising campaigns for brads or events. This more flexible model is specific to new entrants.
JAP9 - CROWD FINANCING REGULATIONS FOR TRANSMEDIA BUSINESS
The objective of the action was to scan the current crowdfunding landscape globally, identify recent trends and problems, try and fit the transmedia SME issues into crowdfunding context, and test the resulting findings in real life. Ultimately, this would have provided transmedia SMEs with a better conceptual toolkit to navigate the difficulties of finding investment for growth.
Main findings were:
• Cross-border investment for start-ups is extremely complicated across the multitude of national legislations inside the European Union
• EU legislations are not harmonized when it comes to regulating crowdfunding, leading to a fragmented market that hinders the growth of the field in general
• Capital inflows from outside the EU into SMEs, including in transmedia field, are severely restricted because of legal complications. Hence, European Union is lagging behind the two growth areas of the world in crowdfunding: the USA and Asia
• Crowdfunding may become a lost opportunity for European transmedia SMEs if barriers to cross-border investment remain, much of it due to differences in national legislations
• Government support, progressive regulation and tax reliefs strongly correlate with turnover volumes in equity crowdfunding investments in different countries
• Equity crowdfunding volumes continue to grow at high rates globally, offering a sizable opportunity to transmedia SMEs that struggle to raise funding from more traditional sources like banks, VC funds, etc.
Our partners participated in the pan-European study Current State of Crowdfunding in Europe, published in Spring 2016, that outlines EU crowdfunding industry.
Important approaches were made between the crowdfunding platforms and transmedia SMEs to facilitate launching crowdfunding investment campaigns for the latter. At least two campaigns for funding by transmedia SMEs are being launched in 2016 as a direct result of these contacts.
New networks were established between the crowdfunding platforms and transmedia SMEs for further information flows regarding changes in EU countries’ legislations, and emerging new technologies (blockchain).
Potential Impact:
The potential impacts generated by the Eurotransmedia project, including socio-economic and wider societal implications, are many. Eurotransmedia included at its core many objectives and a lot of them has been reached and the consortium is expecting long term impacts thereafter.
Eurotransmedia basically aimed at reshaping the value chain and gathering the stakeholders at European level. Transmedia is by definition the convergence of different medias, devices and services and highly contribute to the defragmentation of the multimedia market.
The first step of the project consisted of an analysis of the R&D forces. Eurotransmedia helped to fine tune the R&D efforts in the most pertinent directions at European and interregional level in order to optimize existing efforts and to increase the efficiency of future ones. The research agenda contributed then to merge them in a coherent way.
Eurotransmedia helped strengthen European knowledge skills, infrastructures and research driven clusters by sharing tools, knowledge exchange, mentoring among key European regions in the media area.
In the long run, the consortium will have contributed to the investments in transmedia products and to a better access to funding for European clusters. By initiating a collaboration between industry and research community, the project has also enabled a long term public-private partnership and has boosted the European media cluster.
The consortium raised the global impact of the project by a broad dissemination strategy among stakeholders, SMEs, industrials, policy makers and general public across Europe.
The partners of the Eurotransmedia project will continue working together and they will keep on bringing to light the assets of the European transmedia industry and its professionals. For example, an event of international calibre as the B2B Matchmaking at the KIKK festival is one of the direct outcome of the project.
More importantly, the biggest initiative taken by Eurotransmedia is the creation of a European Meta-cluster. Indeed, Eurotransmedia succeeded in building sustainable partnerships between academia and business within clusters as well as transnationally across clusters and regions. The consortium intends to regroup excellent clusters with complementary expertise in creative industries digital transition and “web 4.0” industries to promote the European position in all sectors affected by the transition to digital (including new media and internet of things). This new European meta-cluster will try to find the perfect balance between clusters and organisations from smart specialisation areas involved in “Digital Transformation/Industry 4.0” and industries actually living the digital revolutions such as Communication/ICT, Health, Mobility and Education.
The Strategic Research Agenda was built around three big challenges (artistic, business and technological) in which the Eurotransmedia project impacted a least a little if not a lot.
These actual and potential impacts are the most obvious when analysing each JAP actions undertaken by the consortium.
Below are the potential impact for each JAP actions:
JAP1 - CREATE AN API INTERMEDIATION PLATFORM FOR THE AUDIOVISUAL INDUSTRY
API Screen will support companies in the challenges related to the creation of new formats, and the digital convergence, such as:
• Lower the cost: Using the platform, producers are able to create their customized application without starting from scratch anymore. They directly benefit from the work already done by previous users. Moreover, it gives them the possibility to switch from one API provider to another without extra development. Indeed, the abstraction layer of the platform offers the possibility to switch directly on the back-office side, thanks to previous contributors.
• Optimize process speed: Providing ready to use modules eases the process to build customized applications. These applications will be project-specific because every project will be different in terms of target format and metadata collected. It will also foster the fluidity and homogenization of the media workflows (with an emphasis on new formats).
• Ease web services interoperability: In addition to the modules ready to use it is also crucial to guarantee that these modules are able to work perfectly and efficiently. The platform was designed to propose a seamless process. This is another key point because users will not have to address this point which will be different without the platform.
• Increase adoption of collaborative processes by proposing Open Source tools.
JAP2 - TRANSMEDIA CHALLENGE COMPETITIONS + JAP10 - FACILITATION OF TRANSMEDIA EXPERIMENTS AND THEIR DISSEMINATION IN OTHER SECTORS THAN THE MEDIA INDUSTRY
One of the biggest effect of this action is the number of people reached out. Indeed, by sharing the different results and findings of the experiments through social media, newsletters and via the participants of our events and experiments themselves, this action has reached out over 40 000 people.
This action has also impacted and ushered the creation of new collaboration with the non-digital branches by creating events where the knowledge of how you can you see digital and media tools for better transmedia products. The experiments and challenges have also been completed by the Transmedia Observatory and the White Paper which acted as great tool of inspiration for SMEs for the creation of new business models..
New projects have started to emerge, where transmedia companies get the focus and efforts they deserve, being the new economies front runners as they are, the officials needs to put in more attention to the future export companies as digital strategies and tools will be the way to survives in business in the future.
JAP3 - TRANSMEDIA IN EUROPEAN CULTURE
The tasks carried out by the JAP action resulted in different kinds of effects which all contributed to the impacts. First one was the initial awareness process about the transmedia opportunities for cultural actors in terms of improving the relationship with their audiences and the related general business opportunities derived just by the interview process in the development of the JAP action and the production of the related documents. The second effect was the immediate request about sharing the findings of the project as a whole and from the JAP action in particular by the invited participants in the tasks and further contacted parties.
First one of these presentations or activities in specialized events was the participation in a symposium titled « new scenographies for museums ». This event took place in Liège (Belgium) on the 26th and 27th of May 2016 and involved professionals from France and Belgium. As recognized player of the new forms of storytelling, Eurotransmedia consortium (represented by Eurecat and TWIST) has been invited to moderate a round table titled « Transmedia ».
After the completion of the annotated and rated tables of events, associations and interest groups, we contacted some of them to know their plans about including the transmedia topics in their agenda and foster related activities in relationship with their associates, their audiences or their specialist depending the type of institution of business contacted. It is fair to mention that most of them know about the transmedia approach. At the same time the related activities are very few at this time, mainly due to the uncertainties of the return of the investment needed. We have to take into account that cultural institutions are in general not particularly well funded, and only few ones in the form of cultural foundations backed by big firms like insurance and telecom companies or banks have enough resources to accomplish big projects in terms of content development. At least all of them get the interest of undertaking transmedia relationships with their audiences and promised to study the way to proceed from this point of view.
As direct impacts, at least partly motivated by the tasks performed by the JAP Action, all events related to cultural and heritage dissemination and museums will include in their programmes, as far as we know, sessions devoted to transmedia in this field, as the aforementioned one in Liège.
JAP4 - OBSERVATORY OF TRANSMEDIA BEST PRACTICES
The Transmedia Observatory Letters have had a great impact on Eurotransmedia target audiences. It has animated the project website and social medias with recurring content which increased significantly the number of visitors and followers. The impacts were many and varied. It has increased the shared knowledge among consortium members and clusters’ members, highlighted local innovative ecosystems at European level, better mapped recent projects and technologies at the European level and raised awareness on transmedia opportunities across the community. In addition, it has positioned Consortium members as reference and reliable source of transmedia information.
JAP5 - AUDIENCE MEASUREMENT METHODOLOGIES
First, Eurotransmedia has successfully raised awareness about audience measurement issues and has gathered the key players who are now working together. We are currently working on the proposition of a measuring audience methodology which will be shortly followed by the adequate technology.
A R&D proposal is being written right now in order to build an integrated tool which will enable broadcasters, advertisers and producers of content to better understand the public and the way they consume the transmedia universe that they have created. The specific indicators will ameliorate the quality of content in a global way or in a targeted way, that means in accordance with the specific preferences of one user in particular or with the generic behaviour on a specific media. Beyond this “integration” aspect of data sources, new extraction algorithms of knowledges should be implemented. There is no existing audience measurement tool consolidating the diverse communication channels used by the producer yet. To create such a tool and to enhance the European market, and then global, is the goals of this R&D proposal.
The expected impact which will follow this action is first the reinforcement of the credibility of transmedia contents. Indeed when the audience measurement tools will be ready, it will help companies to understand the audience dynamics and thus to invest in transmedia content.
A high scale consequence of this action will be the creation of new business models and the advancement of the legal framework of the transmedia products.
JAP6 - EUROPEAN MASTER IN TRANSMEDIA
The ambition of this project is that the European Transmedia Institute (ETMI) becomes a powerful strategic open partnership carrying out promotion and exchange activities in the field of education, industry and socio-economic development.
At the moment of its launch, ETMI will count with core assets around which all its activities will be articulated: the Transmedia Curriculum, the international training scheme and the baselines for developing the industry-academia exchange platform.
Hence, this project is an enabling first step towards tackling the challenges described in previous sections. Indeed, the European Transmedia Institute will make it possible surface the true potential of the creative (and transmedia) Europe to:
• Up bring new transmedia professionals for enriching the European creative industries and related sectors.
• Provide mobility opportunities for students to accede to international training programs dealing with transmedia content creation and distribution.
• Foster communication, networking and incubation activities both locally and in the European wide context, for developing entrepreneurship mind-set and skills among new talents and experienced professionals.
• Facilitate, through the Transmedia exchange platform, the link between education institutions, students, professionals and companies. Keeping the platform open will allow the mix and mingle of talents and transmedia agents across Europe.
In this project the Higher Education Institutions will help to:
• Design the ETMI in order to make it as useful as possible.
• HEIs will bring their knowledge and know-how about transmedia towards the design of the ETMI open platform
• Higher education institutions will contribute also by designing project management based courses, using flipped and blended learning, taking advantage of new tools like the ETMI platform where students and professors will be developing and acquiring learning outcomes together.
• Developing a legitimate authority in terms of transmedia competencies and unified certification.
• Providing their legal aspects knowledge towards ECTS mobility initiative.
At short term:
• The ETMI project will contribute to support the continuous improvement of academic excellence, allowing, i.e. to adapt quickly from professional innovations that they could integrate in the curricula
• Increased job opportunities for future graduates who will be at the forefront of transmedia development
• Thanks to the exchange platform, the knowledge will go also in the professional to training direction providing complementary sources of valuable information.
• HEI institution, both in the consortium and the new ones that will join afterwards, by joining the
ETMI will be connected with the real transmedia needs
At mid-term:
• The exchange possibilities offered by the shared Platform will boost the whole dynamic of having a largely European transmedia initiative.
• As the platform is open for pedagogical content and it is not evaluated only by teachers, but also by users, this will show in real time market innovation
• Project partner countries will gain recognition for the training of transmedia specialists
• The academia will be closer to the industry to maintain themselves up to date and relevant
The companies in the consortium are not only prominent in their own markets thanks to their experience and production capabilities but also for their innovative strategies and long term vision. They will contribute together to the development of the project by indicating clearly what the business’ needs are and to give inputs to the academic institutions and creative markets. Their guidance is key to establish successful Transmedia master studies across Europe.
As an example, specifically for Dupuis, they’ve recently launched a project called R/O, It was born from the industry observations on the technological and behavioral rupture they are in and with their consumers: if industries want to stay competitive, they have to meet the new challenges of skills, alignment to technologies, and new business models. This Belgian experience, as a pilot, would be expanded to other countries orchestrated by ETMI allowing greater levels of European and global influence in this field. The project’s three dimensions: skills development, R&D and IP management, and industry exploitation, realign creative production and creative markets.
As a short-term benefit, associated companies will have access to better-prepared professionals, multi-skilled and specifically targeted to their needs, and more important, with a mind-set adapted to this always-evolving industry and used to deal inside international cooperation structures.
In the long term, ETMI will offer a rare opportunity to students and professionals to be part of a unique creative process and own a share of the production via the IP rights exploitation by the associated companies.
The European Union has defined in its Digital Agenda a policy over a ten years horizon, confirming its Commitment to build a society based on knowledge, sustainability and inclusion. The content industry is here included in a broader industrial ecosystem, the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI), which are identified in the context of Information society as "a catalyst for innovation and structural change.”
As we can read in the abstract from the Eurotransmedia Vision document: “We believe that transmedia isn’t about jobs but about skill”. By 2030, a complete transmedia curriculum will have to involve courses in storytelling, data and interoperability, technology, user experience, marketing, and project management to enable professionals to adapt to a fast-changing industry.”
But in the 2016 context, there is not a single high education institution in the world teaching all those skills in a single location. Most of them are known for their strength in one or two of the required domains. Therefore, intra-European cooperation and student’s mobility are required in order to provide a full transmedia curriculum in the short term.
Beyond cultural specificities, each of the consortium regions (and future participating regions) has their own specific strengths, stemming from some strong industrial stakeholder(s). For example, Belgium, through their R/O project, is focusing on fictional content (cartoons, video games, animation, VR, etc.), the Paris region is strong in movies, TV programs (News, magazine, entertainment), web, and postproduction, Catalonia is a sports, exhibitions and video game savvy region, etc. Complementarities are thus rather natural as soon as a SWOT analysis is done (partners did it in Q4 2014). The idea, following the smart specialization approach, is to take advantage of the regional strengths in the curriculum design. This would facilitate also that strongest industrial partners in every region would be able to provide support, business or technological, to the Higher Education Institutions (HEI) and their students.
The same Vision document says also: “What will happen are specific variations per market due to local mentalities, giving ad-hoc colors to developments, such as what is observed in Japan or South Korea.” Media, and more specifically mobile-aware transmedia businesses are developing in different directions in each region. Trans-border collaboration can only benefit to the sector from the unique multicultural diversity offered by Europe, especially when compared with its biggest rival: USA, where a single common language and nation-wide media networks are erasing local specificities.
Dupuis -for the past 3 years-did a very mature analysis of the business and consumer’s needs, and along with other industrial partners, like the national TV channel RTBF, they built up a solution that will reflect on an international level. Gathering skills -project development, R&D -and new markets & business models has never been seen in Europe before. To allow this global impact for the projects developed within R/O, the industries agreed to collaborate and create global opportunities. In the same way, to allow international impact, regions must collaborate.
Finally, in order to facilitate the creation of content adapted to the digital single market designed by the EC, the academic and private partners of this consortium have the ambition to train the future leaders of the European media industry on the creation of media content at a European level and beyond.
Co-creation and synergies are mandatory to improve mutual understanding of the different jobs and competences in the sector. The ETMI project will allow the creation of a favorable ecosystem for exchanging knowledge, sharing creative initiatives and boosting professional opportunities in transmedia.
The main effect of this action will be the discovering and improving of transmedia talents. We also expect that the ETMI project will be able to increase the visibility and strengthen the position of the European media industry on the European and worldwide markets while preserving the regional specificities.
The ETMI project intends to pave the way for innovative education in a cutting edge sector. As such, several target groups will directly benefit from the results of this project, and first the consortium members:
One of the main missions of a cluster is to facilitate the mix between the industrial and the research worlds. The program will enable them to do so with ease, by positioning them between the companies and the university/research labs in the European Transmedia Institute. This and their involvement in the curricula design will help them mentor the youth into an entrepreneurship spirit. Moreover, the clusters will be able to leverage their presence in the Institute to promote training in the still growing field that is transmedia. Clusters will empower their industrial partners with their strategic market monitoring, available in the long-term on the educative platform. Clusters will benefit from the program, enhancing the service offer to their members, their « brand awareness », and their international influence and recognition.
Companies’ development, SMEs particularly, can be hindered by a lack of access to new competences and cutting edge technologies. Companies involved in the project will thus help design the platform so as it enables them to accompany the professional development of their employees and the mutation of competences and jobs. Moreover, by being direct partners in the curriculum, companies will have a direct access to innovative projects and employees’ profiles, facilitating the development of new IPs designed from the start for a European market. The expected outcomes for companies will be better international competitiveness and the development of partnerships supporting innovation and the exchange of good practices.
Higher Education Institutions and research labs are always eager to experiment with innovative training. Creating a curriculum of this kind will enable them to validate these new training methods. Moreover it will enhance the HEIs training expertise on new skills based on real market needs, and with direct return from the companies. The development of this multidisciplinary approach to teaching and learning will improve the quality and the relevance of the curriculum. HEI will then spread their knowledge on the education platform, building a knowledge database around transmedia.
Students, even if not directly involved in the first two years of the program, will benefit greatly from the program. Transversal (“trans-sectorial”) education & training is still uncommon, and the long-term goal of the project will be to create professional better suited to the digital markets and their new business models. They will have a wider range of competences and increased opportunities of professional development. Moreover, with the project European scope (student mobility and regional specialization), students will learn to develop from the start their ideas for an international market.
Finally, the general public, media/transmedia stakeholders & interest groups and non-participating HEI will be kept up to date with the project outcomes through direct communication channels and the participation in exhibitions, fairs ... This will improve the project radiance and help integrate new regional hubs (company + HEI + cluster) into the consortium.
HEIs, clusters and companies will be involved from the start of the project, with regional representatives of each being full partners in the consortium, participating in the design of the institute, curriculum and platform.
The two years of the program will be dedicated to the construction of the curriculum and the platform, through true cooperation and emulation between the four stakeholders community: students, HEI, clusters and companies. The role of the communication WP will be to enable this emulation, this iterative approach that is necessary to ensure that the curriculum content stay up to date in an ever-changing industry landscape. Potential future students will be polled early in the project to have their opinion on existing formations, so as to improve what already exists without being redundant. Clusters will have a crucial role in the early phase of the dissemination. They will act as regional ambassadors of the project in their region, with the objectives of sensitizing companies and HEI to the needs of a transversal, collaborative education, and spreading the vision of the project.
Companies will be involved during the whole project too, providing their expertise on market applications and skills needs. HEI will act as link between the research labs (and the emerging technologies) and the companies, and of course help design the courses content.
Dissemination will take place during all the project lifetime, starting at the very start of the program. We will have a global, general, communication supported by the use of different communication channels depending on the specific groups targeted.
Our main communication channels will be: a web page dedicated to the project, mailing lists, meetings and direct channels (calls, emails, booths on education/training fairs...). Consortium members will meet in person 2 times a year for general assemblies, and have monthly technical calls to monitor the project progress.
At a local and regional level, the project will enable better cooperation between the different transmedia stakeholders: companies will be able exchange good practices between them, and stay aware of the latest technological developments of the research labs. Likewise, research labs will have the opportunity to focus their research on real market needs and challenges. This will better the competitiveness of the region in a global, digital market, and help train tomorrow’s professionals.
At a European level, the project will create regional specialized hubs consisting of clusters, HEI and companies, that will be dedicated to the research, training, production and promotion of transmedia. This network of start-ups support structures will be a key factor in the creation of the next European media IPs and formats, keeping the EU at the forefront of innovation. This will be reinforced by strategic partnerships with start-ups incubators in the project regions.
After the end of the project will come the actual implementation of the curriculum, and the start of the training. The exact way we will reach students is yet to be defined and will depend on the actual recruiting process. At that moment, we should be able to leverage the existing higher education institutions communication networks to promote the curriculum towards European students.
The main goal after the end of the project will be to ensure that the various stakeholders keep working together, sharing knowledge and developing and enhancing the platform. All partners will have their part to play in this:
Clusters, who are experienced in this kind of “go-between” and multi partners emulation, will keep communicating about the project and its results towards their industrial members, keeping their interest active about the program and recruiting new companies into it.
HEIs will be responsible of the platform management, and of maintaining the proximity between the curriculum and the research labs. Companies will be in charge of organizing experimentation related tasks (hackathons for example), will of course be involved in the course content (through case studies or call for projects for example), and will provide technologies for the students to use, be it in their office or by lending it to the HEIs. The goal is still the same: innovation, creation, and collaboration. The collaborative aspect will be key in ensuring that the content of the curriculum keeps fitting with all the stakeholders needs.
After the first 2 years of dissemination, the program should have by its end notoriety sufficient enough to encourage other participants to join in. The project will progressively integrate new regional hubs, consisting of a cluster, one/some HEI and a/some companies. The new regional hubs will be chosen with logic of smart specialization, every one of them enlarging the program to further related sectors.
In the long term, the goal is the creation of an European transmedia institute, the creation of a joint diploma, the progressive integration of new territories through regional hubs and the roll out of the pedagogic platform.
We intend for the main parts of the project to stay active even after the EU funding ends. HEI will be responsible of ensuring the platform sustainability, both financially and « qualitatively ». This will require the allocation of some human resources to guarantee the proper functioning of the platform.
Clusters already have some resources in their action plans devoted to emulating the activity between the industrial and academic worlds. They will be used to secure a continuous involvement of companies in the program. Clusters will help create a public/private partnership between HEIs and companies around the program. This will enable the companies to finance a part of the program in exchange from their participation in it: they will devote some time to the program (participation in the courses, assessment of student’s projects...) and sponsor events (hackathons, workshops). These events will finance the program, and enrich the platform with rounds of contributions. We could even envision some kind of crowdfunding for the platform, enabling both companies and ex-students who want to contribute to new projects to participate in its funding.
The goal is to create a virtuous circle around the pedagogic platform to ensure a sustainable improvement of the knowledge base, both in terms of quantity and quality. Former students who used the platform during their studies will keep an access to it, and be able to enrich the platform during their professional life. From a student database, the platform will in the long run become a professional resource centre. The continuous development of the platform will be ensured through a collaborative and iterative process between the companies, the start-ups support structures and the platform.
We intend for the curriculum to start after EU funding, the project will only participate in designing it. The costs related to running the curriculum in the long run should not be prohibitive to HEIs given the fact that it is building on existing transmedia courses in the different regions.
Some leads to monetize the program in the long term could be considered, such as integrating very large companies (and thus having them pay some kind of subscription for being part of the project), or have companies sponsor a project nursery. As for measuring the impact, several indicators will be put in place, both quantitative and qualitative: Number of students enrolled, number of projects finished, number of students projects broadcasted, capacity of the students projects to secure financing, number of companies interest in the different projects, number of stakeholders on the platform, number of contributions on the platform...
As an example of the impacts on markets and audiences, Dupuis (as a creative enterprise) is counting on this European master to create a pool of new transmedia talents that could become the potential new authors of fictions and heroes of tomorrow. These multi-skilled master students will develop Transmedia projects, in several industries, and will need a framework for this development. Dupuis, with R/O, will bring this: a place to develop, nurtures, test, and interact with audiences. For ETMI, it is important that the industries are equipped with these talents, to grow the capacities and accelerate the lifecycle. For all partners involved this will create various opportunities for production and therefore employment development. Just for the entertainment industry and games and animation for example, one successful transmedia content can impact dozens of developers, and animators, several drawers, script writers, storytellers, producers, various broadcasters, infinite merchandising production, the numbers can be very large.
The impact will then be largely international, as if one project is successful, this will lead to several types of rights for broadcasting on multiple channels and countries.
The R/O example is a good observation in terms of desired impacts:
• A 5-year running of R/O could potentially train and form around 125 Transmedia authors, sought for by the entertainment industry. This could lead to their projects production but also to their direct employment into partners ’structures.
• 5 to 8 projects are targeted to become international hits that would lead to the production of video games, comic strips, movies, cartoons, merchandising objects, etc. The Smurfs example talks by itself: the global revenues are 1.4 Billion $ in 2011, thanks to the derivate products.
• Depending on the source and broadcasting country, this would replace the country on the international markets, in our case specifically Belgium. But if the model is reproduced, local productions could generate international impacts for various countries.
In the USA, they created these new models for authoring: Pixar, show runners for TV series, co-authoring on video gaming. They’ve skilled their talents to target the right audiences, the right supports. The ambition is to reproduce this successful concept in Belgium. But to make it efficient, talents need to become Swiss-knives. And preparing them for that during a European master would multiply the international impact, collaborations, and country integration.
JAP7 - A CONVERGENT FUND TO SUPPORT TRANSMEDIA CREATION + JAP11 - MAINTAINING AND ENLARGING THE EUROTRANSMEDIA NETWORK BEYOND THE END OF THE PROJECT
A- Context
● In the context of the Eurotransmedia Vision Document, a study market conducted by Dentsu Aegis Network and financed by the European Commission showed that the transmedia market weights already several billion euros in Asia and in North America. Revenues of a transmedia franchise mostly come from Comics, Animated Series, Feature film, Casual Game, Multiplayer Online Games (MMO-RPG) and Merchandising (in average).
● Belgian Heroes (and the R/O institute), a Belgian-based company developing and exploiting transmedia franchises, evaluates a business model based on the Eurotransmedia conclusions.
B- Direct impact
● Based on the previous context, and without considering any blockbusters, we have evaluated that the exploitation of 60 projects, launched on a 5-year period, will generate a revenue around €20 million;
● The first subsequent five-year periods will generate 60 new projects and will lead to a revenue of €125 million more, with expected revenues of €305 million after 15 years,
● These revenues represent an average growth of 300% due to the implementation of an innovative valorization architecture of the created IP;
● The short terms period revenues generated will allow to double the number of convergence of media-related projects created on a short term period by facilitating the reinvestment in creation and development; This growth of revenues will modify the proportion of public investment in the value chain. The public funding will be used as a leverage tool and will represent a maximum of 30% (75% today) of the total funding of the creation of the IP.
● On a short-term period, creation of jobs should grow of 50% in the related supported sector.
● In general, in this field, the concept of "Research and development" is limited to develop new creative IPs. However, it is also the development of new process or tools such as the related-immersive and interactive technologies (performance capture for instance). Only 1% of the creative and content companies have held or used a patent which is less than the average of the industry (5,3%). MediaBoost, thanks to its cross-sectorial activities, forecast to increase the creation or use of patents by 30%, in the sector.
• Expected impact from the work programme: Strengthen industrial leadership in the EU Member States and Associated Countries.
• Impact of the project: By reinforcing value chains we strengthen the European creative industries and make them more competitive in the global market thanks to optimized monetization strategies.
- Revenues growth of 300%
- Job growth of 50%
- Creation or use of patents growth of 30%
• Expected impact from the work programme: Stimulate the creation of new globally competitive industrial value chains across the EU Member States and Associated Countries to accelerate the development of emerging industries.
• Impact of the project: Public funding agencies, private investors, content distributors will participate in the training and networking activities with the goal of developing a scalable creative and digital industry at a European level and beyond.
- Sustainable increase of the private investments which will represent on a short-term period 70% of the funding of an IP. Private investment represents only 30% today.
• Expected impact from the work programme: Further leverage and complement support for innovation in SMEs and other funding, which may be provided by national or regional authorities (including under the European Structural and Investment Funds) and/or by private investors (upfront or as follow-up investments), including in relation to the European Fund for Strategic Investments, Knowledge and Innovation Communities, European Technology Platforms, European Innovation Partnerships etc.
• Impact of the project: Creative content companies have a difficult dialogue with banking and capital investors. These actors realize that there is a lack of knowledge about the less tangible markets where content companies position themselves and a lack of support for these businesses. Based on successful and repeatable business models, such companies will be able to attract business angels, venture capitalists or banks.
- 5 private investors will take shares in creative and digital content SMEs
• Expected impact from the work programme: Contribute to regional smart specialization strategies by capitalizing upon concentrated and complementary competences for the development of new industrial value chains and emerging industries with a clear EU added value.
• Impact of the project: Every consortium partner has a different smart specialisation in terms of content monetization: Belgium in comics, Sweden in video games, France in TV, etc. Linking together all this knowledge bring the opportunity to develop sustainable and transnational smart value chains.
• Expected impact from the work programme: Provide a clear and measurable contribution to the innovation performance of the supported SMEs in the short-term – as revealed by indicators such as numbers of new or significantly improved goods and/or services, processes, or new organizational methods –, and to its impact on resource efficiency and/or turnover. A wider impact is also expected in the medium-term.
• Impact of the project: Bringing to SMEs a better knowledge in IP valorisation will allow them to generate:
- On a short-term period, 60 projects for revenues of €20 million
- On a medium-term period, 60 projects for cumulating revenues of €105 million
• Expected impact from the work programme: Improve the business environment of the supported SMEs.
• Impact of the project: By generating growth and by establishing open collaboration spaces, our SMEs will be better armed to fight/collaborate with their rivals on the global scene.
- 180 projects will be generated within the next 15 years for revenues around €180 million.
JAP8 - RESEARCH ABOUT INNOVATIVE BUSINESS MODELS
New collaborations with the non-digital branches will form due to the creation of events where the knowledge and the vision of digital and media tools for transmedia products are showcased.
By spreading the different results in the transmedia observatories by Cap Digital and the White paper, we have been able to show SME’s in the transmedia segment inspiration on how they can innovate further to create new business models.
And by working closely with the officials in the Regions of the partners, we have been able to start new projects where transmedia companies get the focus and efforts they deserve, being the new economies front runners as they are, the officials needs to put in more attention to the future export companies as digital strategies and tools will be the way to survives in business in the future.
JAP9 - CROWD FINANCING REGULATIONS FOR TRANSMEDIA BUSINESS
All project partners were alerted to the growing opportunities of crowdfunding with regard to transmedia field and SMEs during the general assemblies and through these, to respective partner cluster companies.
The rapidly emerging global playing field of equity crowdfunding is likely to be an important building block in the future transmedia economy, and it is vital that it be included in any discussions on EU-, as well as member states’, national legislations in order to effectively tap into this growth area.
Transmedia SMEs would be some of the first start-ups to capitalise from a strong EU-level regulatory boost to equity crowdfunding, given the relative immaturity of business models in the field, as well as the current global statistics according to which the most money raised on crowdfunding platforms fall at least partially in the fields feeding into transmedia.
The most important impact is that the partner clusters are alerted to this opportunity, and will do the utmost to facilitate the changes in their respective countries’ regulations that would allow their member companies to benefit from this emerging growth area.
List of Websites:
http://eurotransmedia.eu/
Ten years ago, the media industry was a conglomerate of isolated areas: cinema, TV, games, advertising, music, and web. Three phenomena have deeply shaken the media and the cultural industries: the dematerialization of contents, the durable transformation of consuming habits and the advent of the digital convergence.
Nowadays, there is a trend of telling stories using a wide range of new media technologies at the same time. This is the so-called “Transmedia revolution”, a convergence between TV, cinema, broadcast, web, mobile, advertising, social networks and games. This revolution is reshuffling the cards and globalizing the media market that involves a broader range of players.
Transmedia is an extremely fast and promising growing sector. This sector’s growth is backed by the explosive success of connected mobile devices and social networks and impacts new technological developments, job offers and spinoffs creation. Also, Consuming contents differently, the consumer has become from passive to (inter)active, and in many cases a producer, more and more using multi-platforms technologies, getting mobile, ubiquitous within his virtual community (social networks, blogs, forums).
We came from a traditional system to a new way model of circulation of contents in which the audience has a direct impact on the reception and the spreading of the content. It is maybe the largest driving force behind the emergence of transmedia. At the same time, the expansion of the Internet and the liberalization of the telecom networks have contributed to the proliferation of distribution and broadcasting channels and of content access.
The consortium of Eurotransmedia saw at that time the opportunity to boost the media industry in Europe for the better with one assumption: mastering transmedia contents is the key to the future of creative industries. In that respect, our consortium has posed the basic building blocks of this upcoming industry:
First of all, in terms of technology, the way must be paved to address a demand increasingly high for immersive and interactive content. Also, the success of technology development will depend more and more on either its acceptance by the users / citizens or its ‘transparency’ (users want a service that works and do not care about its embedded technologies).
In terms of business, Transmedia content is a chance for the European Union to get rid of its old way of thinking. Protection of its local and cultural content is over, as transmedia means creation of worldwide communities which consumption doesn’t depend on cultural barriers but is based on artistic universes.
Finally, and to adequately address this previous issue, the creation of a homogeneous artistic universe, that will compose as a whole a bankable content on several devices, is a key element. The revolution led by the transmedia creation on content will have an even bigger impact on the creative human resources as they will have to reinvent the way they are working. From a lonely creation, which is usually the rule in Europe, they will likely have to turn towards a team creation in order to face all the characteristics of the transmedia creation.
As a conclusion, Transmedia content is a real opportunity for Europe to create and valorize its creative IP, at a European scale and beyond, to push forward its model of public financing and to generate new digital technologies, in the field of image, sound and text.
Project Context and Objectives:
The Eurotransmedia main objectives were to:
• Integrate key problem areas in the EU by uniting research efforts to get rid of the remaining technological barriers that still hamper user creativity, user content editing, interoperability, portability and new editorial strategies (which can be seen as the future of the media industry). It will tackle technological, scientific, organisational, and economic challenges for research and innovation for the European media industry ;
• Adapt a new value chain to the new economy, in which the user is both a consumer and a producer and practices are nomadic and ubiquitous ;
• Defragment research through the development of a common trans-regional research agenda and of the associated Joint Action Plan integrating regional specifics based on the common knowledge acquired by six key European research-driven clusters.
To reach those goals, the consortium followed a precise and planned programme all written in the Description of Work. Here is a summary of the actions taken by Eurotransmedia during the three years of the project.
Beginning with the WP1, the consortium started its activities with the mapping of stakeholders, facilities, existing funding opportunities, research priorities as well as infrastructures in the media sector at regional level. This mapping activities led the partners to perform a SWOT analysis at both regional and European level. In parallel, a state-of-the-art analysis of transmedia at international level was performed which contributed to ensure the right positioning of Eurotransmedia project in global trends. This global analysis contributed to build a scenario analysis for joint actions in the field of transmedia. The partners were able to identify many similarities in the strengths and opportunities, a positive view of the opportunities and signs of willingness among industry stakeholders and public funding moving towards the digital and transmedia way. The report also showed some weaknesses and threats as for example the fact that stakeholders tends to choose “proven formats” and to show dependency on public funding.
Then Eurotransmedia entered the WP2. Based on the results of the SWOT analysis, the consortium developed regional research agendas in close collaboration with each regional authority to define strategies at regional level to strengthen leading areas and overcome bottlenecks. At the same time, a Vision document was drafted by project partners thanks to the results of the European SWOT analysis and the priorities highlighted by the international study.
The Vision Document describes the expected future of the transmedia industry for 2030 - where Europe wants to go and why. It identifies the main challenges and gives indications to help positioning the European industry on the transmedia globalised market. The vision of this document shows that the success of transmedia content will be based on the ability of its creators to manage different skills, starting with technological ones (although in an environment in perpetual flux), but also and especially economic and artistic skills. On the other hand, the success of transmedia content will also be based on the talent of its creators to meet the expectations of consumers, who increasingly want ATAWAD (Any Time, AnyWhere, Any Device) content. Through different tools, theses consumers will have more and more influence on the creation of contents in the future. The consumer is no longer a spectator but a participant. In this new framework, how the European transmedia talents will be able to contribute to the expansion of the European culture as a whole and to the building of a new industry is a crucial question.
The Vision Document is intended to become a reference document:
• For public policies on the national, regional, and European levels: list of potential research topics and regulations to be addressed by public policies.
• For the media market: overall overview of the field, identification of emerging markets and opportunities.
Mixing these two approaches (bottom-up and top-down), a Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) and a Joint Action Plan (JAP) was drafted in order to define a regional European priorities and boost competitiveness.
The Strategic Research Agenda identifies areas that need more research and innovation investment in order to reach the objectives described in the Vision Document. The key players of the transmedia industry have to face three main challenges to adapt to the evolution of media in terms of financing and production, consumption habits, and audience expectations. The consortium therefore proposed to structure the potential of research in the field of transmedia in three sections: artistic, technological, and business challenges.
Technological Challenges
● T1; Improve Interoperability of Formats
● T2: Improve Distribution Channels’ Infrastructure
● T3: Adapting Data Storage and Security to Transmedia
● T4: Measurement of User Attention and Engagement
● T5: Developing a Transmedia Feedback Platform
● T6: Integrate Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality in Transmedia Storytelling and Tools
● T7: Integrate New Interaction Paradigms in Transmedia Storytelling and Tools
● T8: Exit the Ghetto of Proprietary Technologies in Distribution Channels
● T9: Appropriation of Digital Technologies by Content Creators
Business Challenges
● B1: Business Models
● B2: Local Innovation Support in Creative Industries
● B3: Better User Generated Content Management
● B4: Content IP Ownership
● B5: Transmedia Financial Support
● B6: Impact Study
● B7: Cultural Transmedia
● B8: International Cooperation
Artistic Challenges
● A1: Discovering and Improving Transmedia Talents
● A2: Co-creation and Synergies
● A3: Improve Storytelling Methods to Follow the Technical Evolution
● A4: Discover New Storytelling Methods for Public Venues
● A5: Design and Test Storytelling Methods Enabled by Internet of Things
● A6: Improve User-Generated Content Integration in Production Workflows
● A7: Digital Literacy
The Eurotransmedia consortium has built on this analysis and has launched a series of actions - coordinated between regions- to help the transmedia sector overcome the challenges and benefit from the opportunities. This list of actions is included the Joint Action Plan. The JAP identified common activities to be launched among project partners in the project area starting M18 until the end of the project (and beyond if necessary). This included activities between members (meetings, lectures, publications...) activities toward the local regions and their industrial, political, and educational actors involved in the project (learning sessions, meet&match events, workshops), as well as disseminations activities toward other European regions.
Here are the 11 SMART objectives listed in the JAP:
● Provide online access to tools facilitating the creation, production, and distribution/broadcasting of new media formats
● Engaging digital transformation via transmedia solution
● Gather key actors in the European transmedia sector, propose a measuring audience methodology, and reach an agreement on a common set of audience measurement requirements
● Allow crowdfunding platforms to seamlessly invest cross-border in companies in exchange for shares, help bring the private sector funding into transmedia field
● Support innovation in the creative industries
● Promotion of transmedia awareness of the transmedia key factors (as new business models) toward non-media industry
● Facilitate the emergence and appropriation of cutting-edge knowledge on transmedia
● Identification of innovative business models
● Raise European awareness about relationship between transmedia and culture
● Implementation of a transmedia master at European level
● Maintaining the cooperation between the project partners to foster transmedia
The WP3 aimed at implementing the first measures proposed in the JAP and therefore to foster collaboration among consortium members and towards international partners. The consortium identified new funding resources and opportunities at regional, national, European and international level in order to ensure the sustainability of the project after its duration.
The consortium also produced a Transmedia White Paper in order to actively contribute to the policy setting at European and International levels. The White Paper highlights actions to take advantage of the opportunities and overcome the current challenges towards the implementations of the transmedia approach and help to the development of the European creative industries. The main conclusion of the White Paper was: “The transmedia approach must be embraced by European creative institutions and industries to maintain themselves competitive in the content creations and publishing global industry.”
Internationalisation activities was taken into account in all WPs as well, due to the strong globalisation of the media market. Eurotransmedia project paid a particular attention to trends at international level in order to optimise its positioning and developed international collaborations with non EU clusters in order to benefit from their experience and reinforce European position and attractiveness on foreign markets. A clear list of actions suitable to be co-developed among European parties and international ones is included in the White Paper.
The WP4 was dedicated to communication, dissemination, and international prospection activities and continuously interacted with all other WPs to ensure the project visibility and promoted collaboration with other actors, including international partners.
A smooth management was ensured by WP5, which contributed to strong communication among the partners in order to meet all project deadlines and proper implement legal, financial and administrative EC rules.
Project Results:
The main outcome of the Eurotransmedia project is the Joint Action Plan and its 11 JAP actions:
- JAP1 - Create an API intermediation platform for the audiovisual industry
- JAP2 - Transmedia Challenge Competitions
- JAP3 - Transmedia in European Culture
- JAP4 - Observatory of transmedia best practices
- JAP5 - Audience measurement methodologies
- JAP6 - European Master in Transmedia
- JAP7 - A convergent fund to support transmedia creation
- JAP8 - Research about innovative business models
- JAP9 - Crowd financing regulations for transmedia business
- JAP10 - Facilitation of Transmedia experiments and their dissemination in other sectors than the media industry
- JAP11 - Maintaining and enlarging the Eurotransmedia network beyond the end of the project
Following the General Assembly in April 2016, the EUROTRANSMEDIA consortium decided to merge some of these actions together. JAP11 and JAP7 are merging as well as JAP10 with JAP2. It became evident that those actions were working towards the same ends and the consortium thought that it would be wiser to pool forces in merged actions.
Below are the main results for each action:
JAP1 - CREATE AN API INTERMEDIATION PLATFORM FOR THE AUDIOVISUAL INDUSTRY
The objectives of this action were to:
• Provide online access to web-services facilitating the creation, production, and distribution/broadcasting of new media formats.
• Help producers, creators and developers to adopt collaborative tools
• Facilitate the adoption of internet business model
In order to validate the platform concept with various stakeholders, a proof of concept application has been developed. This application demonstrates that it is possible to build an on-line tool with original and innovative features based only on preexisting remote services.
At this stage, the API screen platform is currently online and working as a prototype (TRL 6-7) but with only a few API available on the platform. The dedicated website to request a test is https://www.apiscreen.fr/
As a result, several lessons were learned from this proof of concept:
• Integrate external api through Faascape is really easy. Api are consistent and simple.
• Unit testing api independently of user interface allow rapid iteration for server side development.
• All efforts can be focused on the client part which is the more difficult to get right. It is really critical to be able to automatize integration tests. This is not always possible to do across all the panel of target devices.
• Deployment is greatly simplified by not having to manage server side implementation and storage.
• Third parties api platforms are robust and have not generated any trouble.
• Using sets of HTML5 based modules and components on the client side and web api on the server side, building original applications are more an aggregation work than pure hard core development and is clearly the way to go.
The positive feedback from the community confirms us to pivot on the business model by proposing an Open Source version of the platform.
This move will have an impact on the adoption rate and will also ease the integration of more and more APIs directly added by the community.
JAP2 - TRANSMEDIA CHALLENGE COMPETITIONS + JAP10 - FACILITATION OF TRANSMEDIA EXPERIMENTS AND THEIR DISSEMINATION IN OTHER SECTORS THAN THE MEDIA INDUSTRY
Given the complementary goals of the two following actions: Transmedia experiments led by Media Evolution and Transmedia Challenges led by Cap Digital, the two consortium partners decided to join their forces to reach a wider audience and get a bigger impact. The objective here is to disseminate and create transmedia opportunities across sectors to raise awareness and wider the market size.
The objectives of the transmedia challenges are to better map and connect innovative ecosystems and transpose transmedia best practices to sectors as diverse as tourism or smart city.
New sectors such as healthcare, lifestyle, consumption of non-media goods and services getting more and more digitized every day. This marriage between digital sectors and other social, industrial or economic sectors should be the best new business opportunity for transmedia content and storytelling by far.
Media Evolution conducted around 125 different events during 2015 and 75 in the first half year of 2016 where the digital media industries was invited to meet non-media branches, or where transmedia related companies deepened their knowledge to be able to produce better content to new and other branches. The converges between when digital and media companies meet tourism, health, education, construction firms, banks, unions, culture sector or the regions officials is what Media Evolution is all about.
When conducting these types of events new ways of problems solving have to be considered and collaborating over branches and personal knowledge to gain the most out of the people involved is needed. Get new and innovative ideas and products by combining the different ways of looking at things. Starting to look at what is it we like to solve, and then work on the way to get there.
In a series of events Media Evolution has conducted a Digital Culture Lab, in collaboration with the Region of Skånes Cultural department, towards cross cultural organisations with digital & media producers. The objective was to give them the tools to create new ways of communicating or reach out their audience, or to include digital enhancement in their storytelling, both outside their venues as well as within.
Media Evolution have also held a series with building construction firm Skanska, to cross their building plans with digital enhancement, storytelling from the beginning of a construction of a house and to plan for transmedia products inside the building from the start, such as how to use screens and communication within the building itself.
Media Evolution has also helped several traditional companies to look over their digital strategies and how they can use transmedia storytelling in their daily business and work.
The experiences of new working processes was then taken to Paris France in collaboration with Pole Media Grad Paris at the occasion of a B2B day in the spring of 2016. Media Evolution held a workshop of rapid prototyping, where the members of the consortium, participants as well as invited transmedia companies from France and Belgium looked at how we will found our jobs in the future with digital tools and came to some great ideas by combining each other’s ideas.
At the occasion of Cap Digital’s Future En Seine Festival in Paris in June 2016, transmedia companies from the partner regions presented examples of innovative transmedia products and shared their experiences and vision of the transmedia market.
The different experiences held through the years of the convergence of transmedia to more non-digital branches has also been shared in the Eurotransmedia whitepaper.
As for challenges operated by Cap Digital, the idea is to undergo smart sourcing to inspire a public institution or a private corporation and engage them to work with innovative and agile structures. Objectives of this meetup would be to work on engaging and immersive experiences.
By gathering these different structures, we aimed at showing that transmedia can be an enabler of interaction, immersion, engagement, customer loyalty, personalised user experience, community management ...
JAP3 - TRANSMEDIA IN EUROPEAN CULTURE
The proposed action is based on the need to focus the interest and support the increase of knowledge and deployment of transmedia as a strategy to develop new forms of creative expression and communication that will allow a positive impact on the European museums and cultural heritage in the future, facilitating the cooperation between institutions, companies, experts and users.
Currently, many museums and cultural heritage management companies in Europe are in their way of defining their digital strategy in order to connect the contents with the public and improve visitor’s engagement.
In every region around Europe but at different rates, museums are trying to promote new projects to enrich the user experience, beyond the physical experience. This comprehends the phase before the visit (preliminary or preparatory visit), the visit phase (physical or virtual experience) and the phase after the visit (connection with the user experience).
In this context, technologies are confronted to specific challenges that we should consider such as:
• The possibility to personalize or individualize services, products and the provision of resources (content, type of visit, languages, reading level, etc.) in order to answer to the diversity and heterogeneity of the public.
• The engagement of the visitors and the museums through the multiplications of stories and interactive propositions, or through the changes of the concepts of time and space which favour the appeal of the virtual experience before and after the visit.
• The creation of new publics and the construction of loyalty of the existing users thanks to the tools of surveillance and analysis. Those allow to collect essential information which aim is to improve the range of services and products in order to meet the company’s needs and expectations.
• The improvement and the reinforcement of the relationship Museum-User, as well as the relationship between users (communities, groups of interest, etc.), in particular through the social networks, which at the same time could become an important source of knowledge in regards of the preferences and expectations of the public.
In order to continue with the definition and specification of the action, we have made a thorough analysis of the conferences, congresses, meetings and events open to the public that have been held in recent years and also the one planned for this year in Europe suitable for scheduling a seminar or workshop on transmedia in museums and heritage sites. To complete this annotated compilation diverse sources, including the ones mentioned at the beginning of the document, have been contacted, but also companies working in the field and researchers, curators, etc. In fact those tables are in some extend a first result of the action by themselves, since are a good starting point for the next activities.
We compiled a list of contacts made of organisations, committees, working groups, with interest in transmedia in culture. This compilation of practitioners, event organizers, etc. is being used to send the results of the project, as documentation, whitepapers, etc. to all interested parties. We received some feedback from some events in form of invitations to get to the next edition to share the findings of the project.
JAP4 - OBSERVATORY OF TRANSMEDIA BEST PRACTICES
This action consisted in the creation of an intelligence letter focused on transmedia, from a technological, economic, consumer behaviour point of views, covering projects all over Europe and at the international level as well. Published at a monthly pace since December 2015, we aim at being a reliable and inspirational source of information at the European level.
The main objective of the letter was to provide a comprehensive information source to share among consortium members and their ecosystems. Other objectives of the observatory was to highlight interesting projects undergoing within the consortium members countries, to draw attention to innovation and R&D supported or valorize the knowledge of our pools of experts.
The observatory also helped us to communicate about project results and to capitalize on our dissemination activities, helping interested stakeholders to take note of latest innovations presented at events they could not attend or had not heard of. As such, it enabled us to better map transmedia related events all over Europe.
Although there are only few issues available for now (we published 6 transmedia observatory letters since we started the action), its smooth publication process was ensured by a combination of competences and resources put in the project. For watch purposes, we monitored social networks, specialised monitoring tools and intelligence platforms and selected, for each letter, about 10 to 15 news to share. We aimed at putting together issues with 5 pages or less to make the reading process fluid and quick to our readers.
Our readers’ base is mainly composed of ecosystem members of the partnering clusters, meaning broadcasters, telecom operators, production companies, technology providers and independent transmedia professionals.
JAP5 - AUDIENCE MEASUREMENT METHODOLOGIES
The objective of this JAP is to gather key actors in the European transmedia sector, to propose a measuring audience methodology and to help them reach an agreement on a common set of audience measurement requirements.
The main goal of this action is to deploy a new transmedia audience measurement tool to enhance an innovative business model shift in creative SMEs & associated partners.
The first step of implementation was to gather key actors in the transmedia sector. TWIST, being the leader of this action, instigated first meetings with interested parties in Wallonia.
Two work groups soon formed themselves. The job of the first group is to propose a credible data collecting framework and to develop a proof of concept. The second group will validate the technological part of the methodology and set up R & D activities necessary for the successful completion of the project or identified during the project as relevant.
The European market is probably too large to consider a single methodology and the importance of comparing the best of them and making some choices is very central in this matter. After careful consideration, it was decided to use the impact measurement methodology used by the advertising sector. This methodology is based on the trilogy: paid/bought media, owned media and earned media.
Using this model, Dentsu Aegis Network set up a list of relevant KPIs.
The next step was to find a proof of concept. Wallimage Creative brought to our attention the project “Urbance”. This true transmedia experience produced by Wallimage Creative and the Canadian Media Fund consists of four main axis: an animated web series, a computer game, a mobile app and the usual social networks (Facebook, Twitter...). More axis will be added later such as comics, action figures and so on. “Urbance” meets perfectly the ambitions of the work groups and the fact that it is a Belgian Canadian product gives even more credibility to the establishment of our methodology.
The business model of the proof of concept is a freemium type. There are three levels of users and thus engagement: the first level of users playing for free, the second level of users who spent money to progress in the game, the third level of users who build a community.
Having decided of using “Urbance” as our proof of concept allowed us to raise awareness around the issue of audience measurement for transmedia products in a more both entertaining and effective way. For instance we took advantage of the fact that “Urbance” was presented at the festival Le Forum Blanc to talk about this action.
Now that we have developed a matrix integrating transmedia related KPI (methodology). The next step is the development of a software (technology) to measure those KPI.
JAP6 - EUROPEAN MASTER IN TRANSMEDIA
The worldwide media landscape is becoming definitively transmedia. The lack of preparedness of creative workforce within European companies is one of the top reason why Europe is still behind. Successful transmedia content creators proficiently juggle technological, economic and artistic expertise in a dynamic ATAWAD (Any Time Any Where Any Device) environment. They offer a rare combination of talent, creativity and technical skills. Three European hubs, including education centres, companies and industrial clusters, already locally active in the promotion of the transmedia, have joined forces to outpace the current situation. The proposed alliance aims at creating a favourable ecosystem for exchanging knowledge, sharing creative initiatives, and boosting professional opportunities in transmedia. The project’s name is European Transmedia Institute Initiative (ETMI).
To fulfill this goals the project will embrace this tasks:
• Design and creation of an open organization that imagine and coordinate solutions at EU level, the envisioned European Transmedia Institute (ETMI). As an effective link between academic institutions and companies it will foster a rich, dynamic and productive transmedia ecosystem in Europe.
• Design and development of the ETMI European wide curricula and supporting tools, including the European Transmedia Skills Certification programme. ECTS teaching units will foster European mobility for future transmedia professionals and linking their training with current and future needs of media and related industries.
• Design an ETMI open platform for fostering the knowledge exchange and matchmaking between all European transmedia students, practitioners and companies in the transmedia value chain.
• Carry out a vigorous communication and dissemination plan to ensure the impact of the institute and the platform.
To prove the validity of the described initiatives, the outcomes of the project will be settled well before the end of the project and submitted to European stakeholders for validation. ETMI project, fostered by a relevant and complementary consortium, is a very appropriate initiative since it tackles specifically already identified challenges that hampers European creative industries development that right now aren’t addressed by any other measure public nor private.
One of the results of the project Eurotransmedia is the Eurotransmedia Strategic Research Agenda (SRA). Extensive SWOT analysis and the feedback from their stakeholders and the Advisory Board members was carried out in order to identify the challenges and bottlenecks that hamper the development of the Transmedia approach in the European creative industries. The bottlenecks were organised around three axes: the artistic (A), the technological (T) and the business (B). The most relevant for the ETMI proposal are:
• Discovering and improving transmedia talents (A1)
European content creators are generally not tech-savvy enough to translate their ideas into real world productions and their creativity is thwarted by the fast pace of change in digital devices and their use by the general public.
“Pure” transmedia profiles are extremely hard to find. Not all productions require highly skilled transmedia architects, but, in the near future, transmedia skills should become part of all profiles along the media production pipeline.
The SRA identified the following three as the main issues behind this challenge:
- College curricula are targeting overly narrow niches instead of crossing and merging traditionally established topics (drawing, broadcast video, movie making, web development, etc.). As groups of transmedia creators are heterogeneous, there is a need for a new position, to ensure consistency and cohesiveness among the various skills and profiles of a team.
- The current educational curricula are not open to technical innovations and to the simultaneous use of multiple channels.
- A lack of coordination between the education curricula hobbles Media workers’ international mobility: The similarities between same level courses in the various European countries are not strong enough to guarantee the equivalence of their graduates’ degrees.
- Co-creation and Synergies (A2)
The study found the lack of creative and technological skills and expertise in multi-format production teams. Consequently, transmedia currently requires the collaboration of multiple actors, interests, and skills within the creative teams. Co-creation and synergies are mandatory to improve mutual understanding of the different jobs and competences in the sector
Furthermore, the Eurotransmedia SRA identifies also this other challenges that are also addressed by the ETMI proposal:
- Improve storytelling methods to follow the technical evolution (A3)
- Discover new storytelling methods for public venues (A4)
- Integrate VR and AR in Transmedia Storytelling and Tools (T6)
- Integrate new interaction paradigms(T7)
- Appropriation of digital technologies by content creators (T9)
- Content IP Ownership (B4)
- International Cooperation (B8)
ETMI’s proposition builds upon the Eurotransmedia SRA findings to overcome these challenges.
According to the European Digital Agenda, “Europe is slow in the uptake of ICT based innovations, notably in areas of public interest“. On top of that, the preamble of the Creative Europe Programme (Regulation EU No 1295/2013) acknowledges that the European cultural and creative sectors, although a culturally rich, is significantly diversified along national and linguistic lines. Hence, are not prone to transnational cooperation and mobility, and may lead to geographical imbalances that hamper the European creative sector as a whole.
The ETMI participant organisations agree and have been working under the Eurotransmedia umbrella on a development agenda supporting the actual Commission policy in the field of media, addressing both future European competitiveness as well as media industry stakeholders’ needs.
Individually and collectively, they are launching -or have already launched- several projects to address the bottlenecks faced by the media transition to digital, and especially to the emergence of transmedia as a new industrial branch. It is in the interest of all participating organisation to implement a fast and pragmatic way to accelerate methods to put skilled Transmedia workers on the market. Every region provide to the whole framework specific strengths that would be available by this pan European initiative to the other regions becoming a good example of smart specialisation wide area collaboration.
European creative industries are in need of skilled transmedia professionals for boosting their competitiveness in the European and global scene. Participating companies and clusters in ETMI understand that in a receptive industrial and market ecosystem, these talents are the ones meant to drive the European transmedia sector to a productive and innovative path. Hence, participating in an initiative in which industry and academia join forces to educate and train their future workforce is a safe and rentable investment.
Participant research organisations and universities need, on one hand, healthy, dynamic and ambitious creative industries that are able to envision, co-create and adopt new technologies and innovative processes and services. Tech-savvy transmedia professionals are prone to experimenting with new creative tools and engaging in the development process of new solutions. On the other, these talents would be able to create innovative ways of narrating and creating contents. This would open up fields of research typically siloed to specific disciplines (e.g. discourse analysis, semiotics, audiovisual language, etc.). Research in these areas would advance the state-of-the-art, of knowledge and technology, and set up the base for further advancements.
The ETMI project results are expected to increase the visibility and strengthen the position of the European media industry on the European and worldwide markets while preserving the regional specificities.
Thanks to the previous studies carried out by the Eurotransmedia project, the solutions envisioned in this proposal are specifically targeted to address the challenges of the creative industries by coordinating cross country initiatives like helping to align efforts among academic institutions:
• The design of an open organization like the ETMI Institute which will imagine and coordinate solutions at EU level in the field of transmedia, will address the challenges related to the lack of cross-country creative talent discovery and development, and the co-creation and production strategies for innovative content creation that would become competitive in a globalised audience.
• Design of the European Transmedia curricula will help in the coordination among different academic institutions even in different countries to offer similar level courses strong enough to guarantee the equivalence of their graduates’ degrees and help new talent’s mobility. The new curricula won’t only take into account traditional topics: broadcast, film, book publishing, etc. It will cover also transversal skills needed by this new breed of creators, like business, usability, communication technologies. etc.
• The European Transmedia Skills Certification programme will foster European student’s mobility helping them to get access to regional knowledge specialities not available in all countries.
• Design an open platform for fostering the knowledge exchange and professional matchmaking to provide technological and creative skills and the best workforce to the European companies.
• Wide dissemination to ensure this approach would be embraced by as much academic institutions and companies as possible to convert Europe in a creative global powerhouse
Some of the ETMI partners are working together since September 2013 on a vision document about the European transmedia industry and its real world implementation. The resulting Eurotransmedia Vision Document (VD) is available online at: http://www.eurotransmedia.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/eurotransmedia-visiondocument-web.pdf
This vision includes a synthesis of European needs in the MEDIA field for the ten years to come. The document has been elaborated with a strong predefined methodology that included a SWOT analysis of the MEDIA industry at the regional, national, European and worldwide levels. This SWOT analysis was done with help from external consultants (Aegis -www.aegisworld.com) and implied interviews and discussions with over 400 professionals in the transmedia field.
The analysis focused on Western Europe but identified also the most prominent extra-European transmedia markets (China, USA, Japan, and South Korea). One of the key findings is that in Europe the economic model is not yet sufficiently developed by sources other than public funding.
As a conclusion of this SWOT analysis, the mains identified challenges to address are education oriented and not technology or business oriented. In that regards, ETMI is one of the most important action envisioned by the Eurotransmedia consortium to tackle the problems related to education and this is why ETMI is addressing the problem at the educational level with a strong participation of the private sector.
Indeed convergence of medias means that the whole value chain of content creation and content valorization is being modified. In that respect, innovation has to be applied in the education of our tomorrow’s new talents, at once.
Hence, new ways of writing or storytelling have to be implemented in educational systems in Europe as they are still aiming at teaching in silos: animation, theatre, graphic design, comics creation, gaming, architecture, cinema, etc. A transverse vision is needed as medias need to speak to each other. In parallel, private companies need to valorize contents not only in their field of competencies but at a broader level.
From the SWOT analysis we know how difficult it is to break with the conventional logic of audio-visual production and valorization designed for the linear environment and change in favour of the transmedia concept. ETMI has the ambition to support both the academic institutions and private companies in order to gather the needed competencies to train properly our tomorrow’s new talents, and this why the most advanced company in the field in Europe is in our consortium (Dupuis with its Belgian heroes initiative).
As a conclusion we can say that there are still two converging constants: the public wants content in order to be entertained or informed, and the authors have stories to tell, ideas to share, and the desire to achieve such content. Between these two points, the whole value chain is affected by the digital revolution. This why the strengths and specificities of local talents need to be reoriented to fulfill transmedia requests. Creative people ability to “think transmedia” will be key in order to keep their audiences instead of losing them to the global media leaders from US or Japan.
The European Transmedia Institute Initiative aims to:
• Objective 1: Design and creation an open organization that imagine and coordinate solutions at EU level, the envisioned European Transmedia Institute (ETMI). As an effective link between academic institutions and companies it will foster a rich, dynamic and productive transmedia ecosystem in Europe.
• Objective 2: Design and development of the ETMI European wide curricula and supporting tools, including the European Transmedia Skills Certification programme. ECTS teaching units will foster European mobility for future transmedia professionals and linking their training with current and future needs of media and related industries.
• Objective 3: Design an ETMI open platform for fostering the interaction and matchmaking between all European transmedia students, practitioners and companies in the transmedia value chain.
• Objective 4: Carry out a vigorous communication and dissemination plan to ensure the impact of the institute and the platform.
ETMI’s work plan provides sufficient elements in order to monitor progress towards objectives. Timely compliance of contractual deliverables and reports is indeed a key indicator of project progress at task level. When accompanied with quality assurance procedures such as the ones described and implemented by WP5, the ETMI consortium will be able to ensure this progress is attained in the highest quality standards.
ETMI, as a consequence of the Eurotransmedia project, supported by the European Union’s 7th programme (Region of Knowledge) is obviously composed of some European digital media clusters and private entities involved in the Eurotransmedia project. These members of the Eurotransmedia consortium, based in Barcelona (Eurecat), Paris Region (Pôle Media Grand Paris) and Wallonia (TWIST) will be the hyphen between the two projects and will guarantee the consistency of ETMI regarding the results of Eurotransmedia. Also, some complementary partners have been invited to join the “core group” in order to bring a missing knowledge such as the academic partners and a private partner covering a relevant sector of the media industry.
As mentioned, ETMI gathers European actors from three key regions (Belgium, Spain and France). In each region, a high education partner is involved along with a private entity directly involved in the transmedia industry and a cluster organization representing key industrial partners in the field of transmedia. A fourth region, Bavaria in Germany, will be associated to the project with the Macromedia University of Applied Sciences in Munich.
The consortium also includes three private companies among the most advanced in the transmedia revolution: Dupuis (Belgium) with its “Belgian R/O” initiative, INA (France) and Fluor (Spain). Two of them, Dupuis and Fluor, were already involved in the Eurotransmedia project as members of its Advisory Board. INA will have a clear added value as a major European player of the valorisation of radio and TV archives, another specific sector of the media industry. FLUOR works as a branding agency exposing the need to find new formulas to their clients in order to reach a society that is increasingly hyper-connected, fragmented and mobile.
The ETMI consortium is inherently linked to two other Transmedia initiatives by two of its partners:
• TWIST is coordinator of the Eurotrasnmedia project (FP7), which will run until ends of 2016.
• UPF is coordinator of the Transmedia literacy project (H2020), which will run until 2018.
ETMI will liaise with these two projects in order to mutually improve and multiply the impact.
Moreover, ETMI will strive to liaise with major vocational training international events in order to co-locate future ETMI workshops and seminars. In the long term, ETMI’s ambition is to organize a yearly European Transmedia event to compete with the existing ones in North America and Asia (e.g. SXSW)
JAP7 - A CONVERGENT FUND TO SUPPORT TRANSMEDIA CREATION + JAP11 - MAINTAINING AND ENLARGING THE EUROTRANSMEDIA NETWORK BEYOND THE END OF THE PROJECT
The initial objective of JAP7 is to support innovation in the creative industries to produce innovative content taking advantage from the transmedia approach. The initial objective of JAP11 is maintaining the cooperation between the project to foster transmedia.
Following the General Assembly in April 2016, the consortium decided to merge some of the JAP actions together. JAP7 and JAP11 started as separate actions but then it became evident that those actions were working towards the same ends and the consortium thought that it would be wiser to pool forces in merged actions.
The transmedia sector faces a clear lack of financial support for the creation of innovative screenwriting and narrative design. There is a fundamental need for reinvention of the funding mechanisms. Transmedia is on the hunt for reliable investors and private funding seems to be the way to go for most transmedia production with clear business models. Innovative transmedia storytelling could be turned into real business by investment from various sources, but the three most realistic are private investment, public funding and crowdfunding.
Whereas the digital content media sector is evolving from a mono-media environment to a multi-platform environment, it is still considered as an in-silo sector at the SME level and even at public funds level.
This Eurotransmedia action aims at helping SMEs to step outside their sector silos by encouraging, with horizontal incentives, a collaboration between sectors and by designing monetized bridges between them in order to multiply the access doors to a globalized digital audience and create a scalable media content industry at the European level.
In that context, "the overarching objective is to support creative industry stakeholders assembling, benchmarking, and fine-tuning their custom business model in order to grow a scalable and sustainable digital media content industry in Europe.”
The result of those two merged JAP actions has spawned the writing of a project named MediaBoost, based on a 2 million euros budget, and the commitment of the creation of a European meta-cluster (http://www.eurodigitalcluster.eu).
MediaBoost: The main objective is implemented through two technical objectives:
• Launching of 2 calls to help ensuring transmedia projects structure, by enabling and enhancing the business links
Success criteria:
- 60 new projects financially supported (at least 30 multi-partners projects);
- 90 SMEs financially supported;
- 30 SMEs amongst the 90 reusing validated business model for transmedia content production before the end of the 24 months project.
• Matching cross-border and cross-sector transmedia partners
Success criteria:
- 20 successful cross-sector SMEs matches (Video game, TV/Radio, Internet, social media, cinema, publishing, design, music, advertising);
- 20 financially supported projects are intra-European cross-border; (at least 8 countries covered by participants; 4 workshops to be organized in 4 different countries.)
MediaBoost: Three secondary objectives of MediaBoost are:
• Creation of a European network of experts in valorisation of creative content intellectual property. This open group will disseminate the new business tools and good practices learned from MediaBoost. The existence of this network will be a plus for the European media industry even after the end of the project.
Success criteria:
- At least 10 specialised experts from the following sectors: Video game, TV/Radio, Internet, Social media, Cinema, Publishing, Design, Music, and Advertising;
- At least 2 experts in immersive-interactive technologies (AR/VR, 360°, etc.);
- At least 2 experts in transmedia storytelling.
• Increasing creative SMEs awareness about the transmedia value chain and its strategic importance.
Success criteria:
- Making 200 creative SMEs aware through dissemination, training and mentoring activities;
- 4 workshops to be organized in 4 different European countries;
• Training media investors to evaluate successful transmedia projects
Success criteria:
- 40 public funds managers to be trained;
- 40 private investors to be trained;
- 4 workshops to be organized;
MediaBoost: Concept
MediaBoost offers the possibility to strengthen business aspects of a project architecture that are usually overlooked during a release date driven digital production such as:
● Prototype a fine tuned business model by assembling multi-streams revenues into a unique monetization ecosystem that organically fits the singularity of the project;
● Apply out-of-the-box business approaches to disrupt the competition and access new markets demands (i.e. Uber, Tinder, Twitch, Clash of Clans, Duolingo, Slack...);
● Anticipate technical or structural major updates to seize a strategic market opportunity window;
● Implement economical, behavioural, sociological or other type of relevant benchmarking process to stress the project during its early development and production stages;
● Monitor and fine-tune a project after its release by collecting, analyzing and converting market relevant data to elaborate refreshed marketing strategies.
In the digital media sphere, our experience proves that European projects (and especially SME-driven projects) tend to follow an accelerated track to a release date once financing is wrapped up. The budget often suffers cuts down the line that might not affect the artistic or practical quality of the work but still represents a threat to its sustainability over time. Elaboration and proper evaluation of an appropriated business model is among the first victims of budget cuts because content production seems always to be priority #1.
As an example, audience data collection has to be implemented during the early days of conception but its technical realization is often set aside as soon as the production fast tracks to its release for two identified main reasons:
● A lack of dedicated finance to afford steps that are not visible and therefore do not seem to contribute to the artistic or the technical value of the end project.
● The absence of in-house resources to provide the most relevant cross-sectors expertise.
On a larger scale, those two reasons can be found behind the lack of any new business model optimization in the majority of European digital projects. Those are nevertheless financed and they access the digital market, somewhat unprepared. MediaBoost offers them a chance to gear up.
MediaBoost calls can play a crucial part at different stages of a digital content project depending on the project and the identified needs as long as the project is still being conceived and the application is occurring at a time/efficiency relevant stage before reaching TRL 6.
MediaBoost: Ambition
By setting up creative business architecture and by creating new streams of revenues, SMEs will generate more profit that will necessitate a new form of stimulated engagement. This dynamic disrupts the European public funding model and tends to generate market leaders that are constantly seeking new opportunities and a way to seize them.
All those activities will help the creative industry SMEs to go several steps further to cross the valley of death that many projects find in their path to the valorisation, sustainability and final profitability, mainly strengthening the business aspects of a project.
European meta-cluster
At the same time, the consortium is currently working on the creation of a European Meta-cluster. The people involved in this proposal are representing a group of European Clusters with a common intent to form a European Strategic Cluster Partnership (ESCP) with smart specialisation in Digital Transformation/Industry 4.0 and Creative Industries.
Our new partnership will be named Euro Digital Cluster and will be accessible at http://www.eurodigitalcluster.eu.
We intend to regroup excellent clusters with complementary expertise in creative industries digital transition and “web 4.0” industries to promote the European position in all sectors affected by the transition to digital (including new media and internet of things).
We are looking to find a perfect balance between clusters and organisations from smart specialisation areas involved in “Digital Transformation/Industry 4.0” and industries actually living the digital revolution such as Communication/ICT, Health, Mobility, and Education.
The Clusters already associated to the partnering are:
• TWIST: Pierre Collin
• Cap Digital: Joséphine Rohner
• Pôle Média Grand Paris: Lydie Fenech
• Media Evolution : Sara Ponnert
• Eurecat : Santi Fort
• Transmedia Bavaria: Egbert van Wijngaarden and Silke Schmitt
JAP8 - RESEARCH ABOUT INNOVATIVE BUSINESS MODELS
Digital business models are getting inherently complex. Adding the component of transmedia content is adding to the complexity: to figure out which standards agreements that are put in use, to look and licensing agreements and to investigate opportunities for expansion of concurrent business models.
The business models are also tied to developments of publishing platforms, technological development, social networks terms of services so those areas will also be put into consideration with bearing towards the business model investigation.
We wanted to have a deeper loon in to the standards and innovation in business models used on the Anglo-Saxon markets, since that market (US, Canada, UK) are in the driving seat for media development.
The research was presented to stakeholders foremost SMEs and public sector as White Paper and as popularised Web content.
This work was also included in the Report on future transmedia business models opportunities . The report presents general considerations about transmedia value chain and current business models, focusing on the value creation in digital markets and the value creation and the social contagion effects to achieve critical mass and audience.
It includes a regional level study (Estonia, Sweden, France, Spain and Belgium) of existing and possible business models and how those regional business models could be enriched through inter-regional cooperation.
The report also compiles success business cases for the different regions and the opportunities and challenges for inter-regional adaptation to these success cases and business models. These opportunities can be summarized into:
• Encourage interregional participation among all the value chain; in the production and marketing of transmedia works between companies and especially between final users participation through the network services available on the Internet.
• Define and establish adequate transmedia innovative strategies designed to capture the available attention of public/audiences, and take advantage of network economies.
• Public procurement, promoting research, development and innovation of new products, technologies and value creation models for transmedia activities.
The research of business models have also played an important role in the writing of the transmedia Whitepaper by Eurecat. Here you can read about the actions related to audiences and empowerments of the users, actions related to technologies and to economy, and also the role of international cooperation. And what are the opportunities within the transmedia scope. In the whitepaper research for business models we found that two economy models for transmedia seem to emerge. They will definitely inspire those of tomorrow, productions centered on content and IP rights monetization. This is the model of traditional media looking to evolve and to adapt to the highly competitive international environment. – and promotion, marketing and other awareness-raising campaigns for brads or events. This more flexible model is specific to new entrants.
JAP9 - CROWD FINANCING REGULATIONS FOR TRANSMEDIA BUSINESS
The objective of the action was to scan the current crowdfunding landscape globally, identify recent trends and problems, try and fit the transmedia SME issues into crowdfunding context, and test the resulting findings in real life. Ultimately, this would have provided transmedia SMEs with a better conceptual toolkit to navigate the difficulties of finding investment for growth.
Main findings were:
• Cross-border investment for start-ups is extremely complicated across the multitude of national legislations inside the European Union
• EU legislations are not harmonized when it comes to regulating crowdfunding, leading to a fragmented market that hinders the growth of the field in general
• Capital inflows from outside the EU into SMEs, including in transmedia field, are severely restricted because of legal complications. Hence, European Union is lagging behind the two growth areas of the world in crowdfunding: the USA and Asia
• Crowdfunding may become a lost opportunity for European transmedia SMEs if barriers to cross-border investment remain, much of it due to differences in national legislations
• Government support, progressive regulation and tax reliefs strongly correlate with turnover volumes in equity crowdfunding investments in different countries
• Equity crowdfunding volumes continue to grow at high rates globally, offering a sizable opportunity to transmedia SMEs that struggle to raise funding from more traditional sources like banks, VC funds, etc.
Our partners participated in the pan-European study Current State of Crowdfunding in Europe, published in Spring 2016, that outlines EU crowdfunding industry.
Important approaches were made between the crowdfunding platforms and transmedia SMEs to facilitate launching crowdfunding investment campaigns for the latter. At least two campaigns for funding by transmedia SMEs are being launched in 2016 as a direct result of these contacts.
New networks were established between the crowdfunding platforms and transmedia SMEs for further information flows regarding changes in EU countries’ legislations, and emerging new technologies (blockchain).
Potential Impact:
The potential impacts generated by the Eurotransmedia project, including socio-economic and wider societal implications, are many. Eurotransmedia included at its core many objectives and a lot of them has been reached and the consortium is expecting long term impacts thereafter.
Eurotransmedia basically aimed at reshaping the value chain and gathering the stakeholders at European level. Transmedia is by definition the convergence of different medias, devices and services and highly contribute to the defragmentation of the multimedia market.
The first step of the project consisted of an analysis of the R&D forces. Eurotransmedia helped to fine tune the R&D efforts in the most pertinent directions at European and interregional level in order to optimize existing efforts and to increase the efficiency of future ones. The research agenda contributed then to merge them in a coherent way.
Eurotransmedia helped strengthen European knowledge skills, infrastructures and research driven clusters by sharing tools, knowledge exchange, mentoring among key European regions in the media area.
In the long run, the consortium will have contributed to the investments in transmedia products and to a better access to funding for European clusters. By initiating a collaboration between industry and research community, the project has also enabled a long term public-private partnership and has boosted the European media cluster.
The consortium raised the global impact of the project by a broad dissemination strategy among stakeholders, SMEs, industrials, policy makers and general public across Europe.
The partners of the Eurotransmedia project will continue working together and they will keep on bringing to light the assets of the European transmedia industry and its professionals. For example, an event of international calibre as the B2B Matchmaking at the KIKK festival is one of the direct outcome of the project.
More importantly, the biggest initiative taken by Eurotransmedia is the creation of a European Meta-cluster. Indeed, Eurotransmedia succeeded in building sustainable partnerships between academia and business within clusters as well as transnationally across clusters and regions. The consortium intends to regroup excellent clusters with complementary expertise in creative industries digital transition and “web 4.0” industries to promote the European position in all sectors affected by the transition to digital (including new media and internet of things). This new European meta-cluster will try to find the perfect balance between clusters and organisations from smart specialisation areas involved in “Digital Transformation/Industry 4.0” and industries actually living the digital revolutions such as Communication/ICT, Health, Mobility and Education.
The Strategic Research Agenda was built around three big challenges (artistic, business and technological) in which the Eurotransmedia project impacted a least a little if not a lot.
These actual and potential impacts are the most obvious when analysing each JAP actions undertaken by the consortium.
Below are the potential impact for each JAP actions:
JAP1 - CREATE AN API INTERMEDIATION PLATFORM FOR THE AUDIOVISUAL INDUSTRY
API Screen will support companies in the challenges related to the creation of new formats, and the digital convergence, such as:
• Lower the cost: Using the platform, producers are able to create their customized application without starting from scratch anymore. They directly benefit from the work already done by previous users. Moreover, it gives them the possibility to switch from one API provider to another without extra development. Indeed, the abstraction layer of the platform offers the possibility to switch directly on the back-office side, thanks to previous contributors.
• Optimize process speed: Providing ready to use modules eases the process to build customized applications. These applications will be project-specific because every project will be different in terms of target format and metadata collected. It will also foster the fluidity and homogenization of the media workflows (with an emphasis on new formats).
• Ease web services interoperability: In addition to the modules ready to use it is also crucial to guarantee that these modules are able to work perfectly and efficiently. The platform was designed to propose a seamless process. This is another key point because users will not have to address this point which will be different without the platform.
• Increase adoption of collaborative processes by proposing Open Source tools.
JAP2 - TRANSMEDIA CHALLENGE COMPETITIONS + JAP10 - FACILITATION OF TRANSMEDIA EXPERIMENTS AND THEIR DISSEMINATION IN OTHER SECTORS THAN THE MEDIA INDUSTRY
One of the biggest effect of this action is the number of people reached out. Indeed, by sharing the different results and findings of the experiments through social media, newsletters and via the participants of our events and experiments themselves, this action has reached out over 40 000 people.
This action has also impacted and ushered the creation of new collaboration with the non-digital branches by creating events where the knowledge of how you can you see digital and media tools for better transmedia products. The experiments and challenges have also been completed by the Transmedia Observatory and the White Paper which acted as great tool of inspiration for SMEs for the creation of new business models..
New projects have started to emerge, where transmedia companies get the focus and efforts they deserve, being the new economies front runners as they are, the officials needs to put in more attention to the future export companies as digital strategies and tools will be the way to survives in business in the future.
JAP3 - TRANSMEDIA IN EUROPEAN CULTURE
The tasks carried out by the JAP action resulted in different kinds of effects which all contributed to the impacts. First one was the initial awareness process about the transmedia opportunities for cultural actors in terms of improving the relationship with their audiences and the related general business opportunities derived just by the interview process in the development of the JAP action and the production of the related documents. The second effect was the immediate request about sharing the findings of the project as a whole and from the JAP action in particular by the invited participants in the tasks and further contacted parties.
First one of these presentations or activities in specialized events was the participation in a symposium titled « new scenographies for museums ». This event took place in Liège (Belgium) on the 26th and 27th of May 2016 and involved professionals from France and Belgium. As recognized player of the new forms of storytelling, Eurotransmedia consortium (represented by Eurecat and TWIST) has been invited to moderate a round table titled « Transmedia ».
After the completion of the annotated and rated tables of events, associations and interest groups, we contacted some of them to know their plans about including the transmedia topics in their agenda and foster related activities in relationship with their associates, their audiences or their specialist depending the type of institution of business contacted. It is fair to mention that most of them know about the transmedia approach. At the same time the related activities are very few at this time, mainly due to the uncertainties of the return of the investment needed. We have to take into account that cultural institutions are in general not particularly well funded, and only few ones in the form of cultural foundations backed by big firms like insurance and telecom companies or banks have enough resources to accomplish big projects in terms of content development. At least all of them get the interest of undertaking transmedia relationships with their audiences and promised to study the way to proceed from this point of view.
As direct impacts, at least partly motivated by the tasks performed by the JAP Action, all events related to cultural and heritage dissemination and museums will include in their programmes, as far as we know, sessions devoted to transmedia in this field, as the aforementioned one in Liège.
JAP4 - OBSERVATORY OF TRANSMEDIA BEST PRACTICES
The Transmedia Observatory Letters have had a great impact on Eurotransmedia target audiences. It has animated the project website and social medias with recurring content which increased significantly the number of visitors and followers. The impacts were many and varied. It has increased the shared knowledge among consortium members and clusters’ members, highlighted local innovative ecosystems at European level, better mapped recent projects and technologies at the European level and raised awareness on transmedia opportunities across the community. In addition, it has positioned Consortium members as reference and reliable source of transmedia information.
JAP5 - AUDIENCE MEASUREMENT METHODOLOGIES
First, Eurotransmedia has successfully raised awareness about audience measurement issues and has gathered the key players who are now working together. We are currently working on the proposition of a measuring audience methodology which will be shortly followed by the adequate technology.
A R&D proposal is being written right now in order to build an integrated tool which will enable broadcasters, advertisers and producers of content to better understand the public and the way they consume the transmedia universe that they have created. The specific indicators will ameliorate the quality of content in a global way or in a targeted way, that means in accordance with the specific preferences of one user in particular or with the generic behaviour on a specific media. Beyond this “integration” aspect of data sources, new extraction algorithms of knowledges should be implemented. There is no existing audience measurement tool consolidating the diverse communication channels used by the producer yet. To create such a tool and to enhance the European market, and then global, is the goals of this R&D proposal.
The expected impact which will follow this action is first the reinforcement of the credibility of transmedia contents. Indeed when the audience measurement tools will be ready, it will help companies to understand the audience dynamics and thus to invest in transmedia content.
A high scale consequence of this action will be the creation of new business models and the advancement of the legal framework of the transmedia products.
JAP6 - EUROPEAN MASTER IN TRANSMEDIA
The ambition of this project is that the European Transmedia Institute (ETMI) becomes a powerful strategic open partnership carrying out promotion and exchange activities in the field of education, industry and socio-economic development.
At the moment of its launch, ETMI will count with core assets around which all its activities will be articulated: the Transmedia Curriculum, the international training scheme and the baselines for developing the industry-academia exchange platform.
Hence, this project is an enabling first step towards tackling the challenges described in previous sections. Indeed, the European Transmedia Institute will make it possible surface the true potential of the creative (and transmedia) Europe to:
• Up bring new transmedia professionals for enriching the European creative industries and related sectors.
• Provide mobility opportunities for students to accede to international training programs dealing with transmedia content creation and distribution.
• Foster communication, networking and incubation activities both locally and in the European wide context, for developing entrepreneurship mind-set and skills among new talents and experienced professionals.
• Facilitate, through the Transmedia exchange platform, the link between education institutions, students, professionals and companies. Keeping the platform open will allow the mix and mingle of talents and transmedia agents across Europe.
In this project the Higher Education Institutions will help to:
• Design the ETMI in order to make it as useful as possible.
• HEIs will bring their knowledge and know-how about transmedia towards the design of the ETMI open platform
• Higher education institutions will contribute also by designing project management based courses, using flipped and blended learning, taking advantage of new tools like the ETMI platform where students and professors will be developing and acquiring learning outcomes together.
• Developing a legitimate authority in terms of transmedia competencies and unified certification.
• Providing their legal aspects knowledge towards ECTS mobility initiative.
At short term:
• The ETMI project will contribute to support the continuous improvement of academic excellence, allowing, i.e. to adapt quickly from professional innovations that they could integrate in the curricula
• Increased job opportunities for future graduates who will be at the forefront of transmedia development
• Thanks to the exchange platform, the knowledge will go also in the professional to training direction providing complementary sources of valuable information.
• HEI institution, both in the consortium and the new ones that will join afterwards, by joining the
ETMI will be connected with the real transmedia needs
At mid-term:
• The exchange possibilities offered by the shared Platform will boost the whole dynamic of having a largely European transmedia initiative.
• As the platform is open for pedagogical content and it is not evaluated only by teachers, but also by users, this will show in real time market innovation
• Project partner countries will gain recognition for the training of transmedia specialists
• The academia will be closer to the industry to maintain themselves up to date and relevant
The companies in the consortium are not only prominent in their own markets thanks to their experience and production capabilities but also for their innovative strategies and long term vision. They will contribute together to the development of the project by indicating clearly what the business’ needs are and to give inputs to the academic institutions and creative markets. Their guidance is key to establish successful Transmedia master studies across Europe.
As an example, specifically for Dupuis, they’ve recently launched a project called R/O, It was born from the industry observations on the technological and behavioral rupture they are in and with their consumers: if industries want to stay competitive, they have to meet the new challenges of skills, alignment to technologies, and new business models. This Belgian experience, as a pilot, would be expanded to other countries orchestrated by ETMI allowing greater levels of European and global influence in this field. The project’s three dimensions: skills development, R&D and IP management, and industry exploitation, realign creative production and creative markets.
As a short-term benefit, associated companies will have access to better-prepared professionals, multi-skilled and specifically targeted to their needs, and more important, with a mind-set adapted to this always-evolving industry and used to deal inside international cooperation structures.
In the long term, ETMI will offer a rare opportunity to students and professionals to be part of a unique creative process and own a share of the production via the IP rights exploitation by the associated companies.
The European Union has defined in its Digital Agenda a policy over a ten years horizon, confirming its Commitment to build a society based on knowledge, sustainability and inclusion. The content industry is here included in a broader industrial ecosystem, the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI), which are identified in the context of Information society as "a catalyst for innovation and structural change.”
As we can read in the abstract from the Eurotransmedia Vision document: “We believe that transmedia isn’t about jobs but about skill”. By 2030, a complete transmedia curriculum will have to involve courses in storytelling, data and interoperability, technology, user experience, marketing, and project management to enable professionals to adapt to a fast-changing industry.”
But in the 2016 context, there is not a single high education institution in the world teaching all those skills in a single location. Most of them are known for their strength in one or two of the required domains. Therefore, intra-European cooperation and student’s mobility are required in order to provide a full transmedia curriculum in the short term.
Beyond cultural specificities, each of the consortium regions (and future participating regions) has their own specific strengths, stemming from some strong industrial stakeholder(s). For example, Belgium, through their R/O project, is focusing on fictional content (cartoons, video games, animation, VR, etc.), the Paris region is strong in movies, TV programs (News, magazine, entertainment), web, and postproduction, Catalonia is a sports, exhibitions and video game savvy region, etc. Complementarities are thus rather natural as soon as a SWOT analysis is done (partners did it in Q4 2014). The idea, following the smart specialization approach, is to take advantage of the regional strengths in the curriculum design. This would facilitate also that strongest industrial partners in every region would be able to provide support, business or technological, to the Higher Education Institutions (HEI) and their students.
The same Vision document says also: “What will happen are specific variations per market due to local mentalities, giving ad-hoc colors to developments, such as what is observed in Japan or South Korea.” Media, and more specifically mobile-aware transmedia businesses are developing in different directions in each region. Trans-border collaboration can only benefit to the sector from the unique multicultural diversity offered by Europe, especially when compared with its biggest rival: USA, where a single common language and nation-wide media networks are erasing local specificities.
Dupuis -for the past 3 years-did a very mature analysis of the business and consumer’s needs, and along with other industrial partners, like the national TV channel RTBF, they built up a solution that will reflect on an international level. Gathering skills -project development, R&D -and new markets & business models has never been seen in Europe before. To allow this global impact for the projects developed within R/O, the industries agreed to collaborate and create global opportunities. In the same way, to allow international impact, regions must collaborate.
Finally, in order to facilitate the creation of content adapted to the digital single market designed by the EC, the academic and private partners of this consortium have the ambition to train the future leaders of the European media industry on the creation of media content at a European level and beyond.
Co-creation and synergies are mandatory to improve mutual understanding of the different jobs and competences in the sector. The ETMI project will allow the creation of a favorable ecosystem for exchanging knowledge, sharing creative initiatives and boosting professional opportunities in transmedia.
The main effect of this action will be the discovering and improving of transmedia talents. We also expect that the ETMI project will be able to increase the visibility and strengthen the position of the European media industry on the European and worldwide markets while preserving the regional specificities.
The ETMI project intends to pave the way for innovative education in a cutting edge sector. As such, several target groups will directly benefit from the results of this project, and first the consortium members:
One of the main missions of a cluster is to facilitate the mix between the industrial and the research worlds. The program will enable them to do so with ease, by positioning them between the companies and the university/research labs in the European Transmedia Institute. This and their involvement in the curricula design will help them mentor the youth into an entrepreneurship spirit. Moreover, the clusters will be able to leverage their presence in the Institute to promote training in the still growing field that is transmedia. Clusters will empower their industrial partners with their strategic market monitoring, available in the long-term on the educative platform. Clusters will benefit from the program, enhancing the service offer to their members, their « brand awareness », and their international influence and recognition.
Companies’ development, SMEs particularly, can be hindered by a lack of access to new competences and cutting edge technologies. Companies involved in the project will thus help design the platform so as it enables them to accompany the professional development of their employees and the mutation of competences and jobs. Moreover, by being direct partners in the curriculum, companies will have a direct access to innovative projects and employees’ profiles, facilitating the development of new IPs designed from the start for a European market. The expected outcomes for companies will be better international competitiveness and the development of partnerships supporting innovation and the exchange of good practices.
Higher Education Institutions and research labs are always eager to experiment with innovative training. Creating a curriculum of this kind will enable them to validate these new training methods. Moreover it will enhance the HEIs training expertise on new skills based on real market needs, and with direct return from the companies. The development of this multidisciplinary approach to teaching and learning will improve the quality and the relevance of the curriculum. HEI will then spread their knowledge on the education platform, building a knowledge database around transmedia.
Students, even if not directly involved in the first two years of the program, will benefit greatly from the program. Transversal (“trans-sectorial”) education & training is still uncommon, and the long-term goal of the project will be to create professional better suited to the digital markets and their new business models. They will have a wider range of competences and increased opportunities of professional development. Moreover, with the project European scope (student mobility and regional specialization), students will learn to develop from the start their ideas for an international market.
Finally, the general public, media/transmedia stakeholders & interest groups and non-participating HEI will be kept up to date with the project outcomes through direct communication channels and the participation in exhibitions, fairs ... This will improve the project radiance and help integrate new regional hubs (company + HEI + cluster) into the consortium.
HEIs, clusters and companies will be involved from the start of the project, with regional representatives of each being full partners in the consortium, participating in the design of the institute, curriculum and platform.
The two years of the program will be dedicated to the construction of the curriculum and the platform, through true cooperation and emulation between the four stakeholders community: students, HEI, clusters and companies. The role of the communication WP will be to enable this emulation, this iterative approach that is necessary to ensure that the curriculum content stay up to date in an ever-changing industry landscape. Potential future students will be polled early in the project to have their opinion on existing formations, so as to improve what already exists without being redundant. Clusters will have a crucial role in the early phase of the dissemination. They will act as regional ambassadors of the project in their region, with the objectives of sensitizing companies and HEI to the needs of a transversal, collaborative education, and spreading the vision of the project.
Companies will be involved during the whole project too, providing their expertise on market applications and skills needs. HEI will act as link between the research labs (and the emerging technologies) and the companies, and of course help design the courses content.
Dissemination will take place during all the project lifetime, starting at the very start of the program. We will have a global, general, communication supported by the use of different communication channels depending on the specific groups targeted.
Our main communication channels will be: a web page dedicated to the project, mailing lists, meetings and direct channels (calls, emails, booths on education/training fairs...). Consortium members will meet in person 2 times a year for general assemblies, and have monthly technical calls to monitor the project progress.
At a local and regional level, the project will enable better cooperation between the different transmedia stakeholders: companies will be able exchange good practices between them, and stay aware of the latest technological developments of the research labs. Likewise, research labs will have the opportunity to focus their research on real market needs and challenges. This will better the competitiveness of the region in a global, digital market, and help train tomorrow’s professionals.
At a European level, the project will create regional specialized hubs consisting of clusters, HEI and companies, that will be dedicated to the research, training, production and promotion of transmedia. This network of start-ups support structures will be a key factor in the creation of the next European media IPs and formats, keeping the EU at the forefront of innovation. This will be reinforced by strategic partnerships with start-ups incubators in the project regions.
After the end of the project will come the actual implementation of the curriculum, and the start of the training. The exact way we will reach students is yet to be defined and will depend on the actual recruiting process. At that moment, we should be able to leverage the existing higher education institutions communication networks to promote the curriculum towards European students.
The main goal after the end of the project will be to ensure that the various stakeholders keep working together, sharing knowledge and developing and enhancing the platform. All partners will have their part to play in this:
Clusters, who are experienced in this kind of “go-between” and multi partners emulation, will keep communicating about the project and its results towards their industrial members, keeping their interest active about the program and recruiting new companies into it.
HEIs will be responsible of the platform management, and of maintaining the proximity between the curriculum and the research labs. Companies will be in charge of organizing experimentation related tasks (hackathons for example), will of course be involved in the course content (through case studies or call for projects for example), and will provide technologies for the students to use, be it in their office or by lending it to the HEIs. The goal is still the same: innovation, creation, and collaboration. The collaborative aspect will be key in ensuring that the content of the curriculum keeps fitting with all the stakeholders needs.
After the first 2 years of dissemination, the program should have by its end notoriety sufficient enough to encourage other participants to join in. The project will progressively integrate new regional hubs, consisting of a cluster, one/some HEI and a/some companies. The new regional hubs will be chosen with logic of smart specialization, every one of them enlarging the program to further related sectors.
In the long term, the goal is the creation of an European transmedia institute, the creation of a joint diploma, the progressive integration of new territories through regional hubs and the roll out of the pedagogic platform.
We intend for the main parts of the project to stay active even after the EU funding ends. HEI will be responsible of ensuring the platform sustainability, both financially and « qualitatively ». This will require the allocation of some human resources to guarantee the proper functioning of the platform.
Clusters already have some resources in their action plans devoted to emulating the activity between the industrial and academic worlds. They will be used to secure a continuous involvement of companies in the program. Clusters will help create a public/private partnership between HEIs and companies around the program. This will enable the companies to finance a part of the program in exchange from their participation in it: they will devote some time to the program (participation in the courses, assessment of student’s projects...) and sponsor events (hackathons, workshops). These events will finance the program, and enrich the platform with rounds of contributions. We could even envision some kind of crowdfunding for the platform, enabling both companies and ex-students who want to contribute to new projects to participate in its funding.
The goal is to create a virtuous circle around the pedagogic platform to ensure a sustainable improvement of the knowledge base, both in terms of quantity and quality. Former students who used the platform during their studies will keep an access to it, and be able to enrich the platform during their professional life. From a student database, the platform will in the long run become a professional resource centre. The continuous development of the platform will be ensured through a collaborative and iterative process between the companies, the start-ups support structures and the platform.
We intend for the curriculum to start after EU funding, the project will only participate in designing it. The costs related to running the curriculum in the long run should not be prohibitive to HEIs given the fact that it is building on existing transmedia courses in the different regions.
Some leads to monetize the program in the long term could be considered, such as integrating very large companies (and thus having them pay some kind of subscription for being part of the project), or have companies sponsor a project nursery. As for measuring the impact, several indicators will be put in place, both quantitative and qualitative: Number of students enrolled, number of projects finished, number of students projects broadcasted, capacity of the students projects to secure financing, number of companies interest in the different projects, number of stakeholders on the platform, number of contributions on the platform...
As an example of the impacts on markets and audiences, Dupuis (as a creative enterprise) is counting on this European master to create a pool of new transmedia talents that could become the potential new authors of fictions and heroes of tomorrow. These multi-skilled master students will develop Transmedia projects, in several industries, and will need a framework for this development. Dupuis, with R/O, will bring this: a place to develop, nurtures, test, and interact with audiences. For ETMI, it is important that the industries are equipped with these talents, to grow the capacities and accelerate the lifecycle. For all partners involved this will create various opportunities for production and therefore employment development. Just for the entertainment industry and games and animation for example, one successful transmedia content can impact dozens of developers, and animators, several drawers, script writers, storytellers, producers, various broadcasters, infinite merchandising production, the numbers can be very large.
The impact will then be largely international, as if one project is successful, this will lead to several types of rights for broadcasting on multiple channels and countries.
The R/O example is a good observation in terms of desired impacts:
• A 5-year running of R/O could potentially train and form around 125 Transmedia authors, sought for by the entertainment industry. This could lead to their projects production but also to their direct employment into partners ’structures.
• 5 to 8 projects are targeted to become international hits that would lead to the production of video games, comic strips, movies, cartoons, merchandising objects, etc. The Smurfs example talks by itself: the global revenues are 1.4 Billion $ in 2011, thanks to the derivate products.
• Depending on the source and broadcasting country, this would replace the country on the international markets, in our case specifically Belgium. But if the model is reproduced, local productions could generate international impacts for various countries.
In the USA, they created these new models for authoring: Pixar, show runners for TV series, co-authoring on video gaming. They’ve skilled their talents to target the right audiences, the right supports. The ambition is to reproduce this successful concept in Belgium. But to make it efficient, talents need to become Swiss-knives. And preparing them for that during a European master would multiply the international impact, collaborations, and country integration.
JAP7 - A CONVERGENT FUND TO SUPPORT TRANSMEDIA CREATION + JAP11 - MAINTAINING AND ENLARGING THE EUROTRANSMEDIA NETWORK BEYOND THE END OF THE PROJECT
A- Context
● In the context of the Eurotransmedia Vision Document, a study market conducted by Dentsu Aegis Network and financed by the European Commission showed that the transmedia market weights already several billion euros in Asia and in North America. Revenues of a transmedia franchise mostly come from Comics, Animated Series, Feature film, Casual Game, Multiplayer Online Games (MMO-RPG) and Merchandising (in average).
● Belgian Heroes (and the R/O institute), a Belgian-based company developing and exploiting transmedia franchises, evaluates a business model based on the Eurotransmedia conclusions.
B- Direct impact
● Based on the previous context, and without considering any blockbusters, we have evaluated that the exploitation of 60 projects, launched on a 5-year period, will generate a revenue around €20 million;
● The first subsequent five-year periods will generate 60 new projects and will lead to a revenue of €125 million more, with expected revenues of €305 million after 15 years,
● These revenues represent an average growth of 300% due to the implementation of an innovative valorization architecture of the created IP;
● The short terms period revenues generated will allow to double the number of convergence of media-related projects created on a short term period by facilitating the reinvestment in creation and development; This growth of revenues will modify the proportion of public investment in the value chain. The public funding will be used as a leverage tool and will represent a maximum of 30% (75% today) of the total funding of the creation of the IP.
● On a short-term period, creation of jobs should grow of 50% in the related supported sector.
● In general, in this field, the concept of "Research and development" is limited to develop new creative IPs. However, it is also the development of new process or tools such as the related-immersive and interactive technologies (performance capture for instance). Only 1% of the creative and content companies have held or used a patent which is less than the average of the industry (5,3%). MediaBoost, thanks to its cross-sectorial activities, forecast to increase the creation or use of patents by 30%, in the sector.
• Expected impact from the work programme: Strengthen industrial leadership in the EU Member States and Associated Countries.
• Impact of the project: By reinforcing value chains we strengthen the European creative industries and make them more competitive in the global market thanks to optimized monetization strategies.
- Revenues growth of 300%
- Job growth of 50%
- Creation or use of patents growth of 30%
• Expected impact from the work programme: Stimulate the creation of new globally competitive industrial value chains across the EU Member States and Associated Countries to accelerate the development of emerging industries.
• Impact of the project: Public funding agencies, private investors, content distributors will participate in the training and networking activities with the goal of developing a scalable creative and digital industry at a European level and beyond.
- Sustainable increase of the private investments which will represent on a short-term period 70% of the funding of an IP. Private investment represents only 30% today.
• Expected impact from the work programme: Further leverage and complement support for innovation in SMEs and other funding, which may be provided by national or regional authorities (including under the European Structural and Investment Funds) and/or by private investors (upfront or as follow-up investments), including in relation to the European Fund for Strategic Investments, Knowledge and Innovation Communities, European Technology Platforms, European Innovation Partnerships etc.
• Impact of the project: Creative content companies have a difficult dialogue with banking and capital investors. These actors realize that there is a lack of knowledge about the less tangible markets where content companies position themselves and a lack of support for these businesses. Based on successful and repeatable business models, such companies will be able to attract business angels, venture capitalists or banks.
- 5 private investors will take shares in creative and digital content SMEs
• Expected impact from the work programme: Contribute to regional smart specialization strategies by capitalizing upon concentrated and complementary competences for the development of new industrial value chains and emerging industries with a clear EU added value.
• Impact of the project: Every consortium partner has a different smart specialisation in terms of content monetization: Belgium in comics, Sweden in video games, France in TV, etc. Linking together all this knowledge bring the opportunity to develop sustainable and transnational smart value chains.
• Expected impact from the work programme: Provide a clear and measurable contribution to the innovation performance of the supported SMEs in the short-term – as revealed by indicators such as numbers of new or significantly improved goods and/or services, processes, or new organizational methods –, and to its impact on resource efficiency and/or turnover. A wider impact is also expected in the medium-term.
• Impact of the project: Bringing to SMEs a better knowledge in IP valorisation will allow them to generate:
- On a short-term period, 60 projects for revenues of €20 million
- On a medium-term period, 60 projects for cumulating revenues of €105 million
• Expected impact from the work programme: Improve the business environment of the supported SMEs.
• Impact of the project: By generating growth and by establishing open collaboration spaces, our SMEs will be better armed to fight/collaborate with their rivals on the global scene.
- 180 projects will be generated within the next 15 years for revenues around €180 million.
JAP8 - RESEARCH ABOUT INNOVATIVE BUSINESS MODELS
New collaborations with the non-digital branches will form due to the creation of events where the knowledge and the vision of digital and media tools for transmedia products are showcased.
By spreading the different results in the transmedia observatories by Cap Digital and the White paper, we have been able to show SME’s in the transmedia segment inspiration on how they can innovate further to create new business models.
And by working closely with the officials in the Regions of the partners, we have been able to start new projects where transmedia companies get the focus and efforts they deserve, being the new economies front runners as they are, the officials needs to put in more attention to the future export companies as digital strategies and tools will be the way to survives in business in the future.
JAP9 - CROWD FINANCING REGULATIONS FOR TRANSMEDIA BUSINESS
All project partners were alerted to the growing opportunities of crowdfunding with regard to transmedia field and SMEs during the general assemblies and through these, to respective partner cluster companies.
The rapidly emerging global playing field of equity crowdfunding is likely to be an important building block in the future transmedia economy, and it is vital that it be included in any discussions on EU-, as well as member states’, national legislations in order to effectively tap into this growth area.
Transmedia SMEs would be some of the first start-ups to capitalise from a strong EU-level regulatory boost to equity crowdfunding, given the relative immaturity of business models in the field, as well as the current global statistics according to which the most money raised on crowdfunding platforms fall at least partially in the fields feeding into transmedia.
The most important impact is that the partner clusters are alerted to this opportunity, and will do the utmost to facilitate the changes in their respective countries’ regulations that would allow their member companies to benefit from this emerging growth area.
List of Websites:
http://eurotransmedia.eu/