Comments on: Liveblogging: Lord Carter’s Digital Britain keynote at NESTA

By: Lindawool

Lindawool — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:46:24 +0000

I would just like to say “hello”.

By: Tony Hirst

Tony Hirst — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 17:04:19 +0000

A lot of people claim not to have been very impressed by the Digital Britain report, so how about we write our own version of it?

Digital Britain, in our own words: http://wiki.writetoreply.org/wiki/The_Fake_Digital_Britain_Report

By: mtemple

mtemple — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 08:18:48 +0000

coverage of nesta news

By: alan p

alan p — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 08:41:45 +0000

Forgot to add – we are writing a considered response, would be happy to collaborate with others doing the same.

By: alan p

alan p — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 08:19:32 +0000

I felt a bit sorry for Lord Carter – vested interests (no doubt with armies of lawyers & lobbyists) breathing down his neck and many noisy muppets in his face.

I’m afraid if We The People want to have a voice the response will need to be achievable, reasoned and well argued (Sorry, but access to “The Twitter” does not make one a digital media policy expert)

Biggest issue though is that the overall UK TMT industry is the size of the UK Fin Serv industry so is clearly been designated as one of the champions to lead us out of recession.

But if all the money (£1.3 trillion and counting) has been given over to prop up the guys who f*cked the country over (in my day, when you took over an underperforming company you fired the management – plus ca change) where is the investment to really do this well going to come from?

Also, if its going to champion the way out it can’t then have its revenues destroyed by piracy (sorry, open rights of access to information).

And to make it more “interesting”, the industry will need to have tax breaks to compete with all the other countries trying to get into the space via incentive packages.

By: Mike Butcher

Mike Butcher — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:54:31 +0000

Most of the analysts say the Media Industry will HALVE in size in the next 10 years. Growth industry!

By: Basheera Khan

Basheera Khan — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:07:13 +0000

@Tristam The email address is where you would send notification to Digital Britain that you want to formally respond to the report. You can also comment on specific sections of the report via Write To Reply – http://writetoreply.org/digitalbritain/

I also just noticed that Digital Britain has since this morning added a link to their newly launched discussion forum – http://www.digitalbritainforum.org.uk/.

By: tristam sparks

tristam sparks — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 13:44:52 +0000

ps. can the author clarify this?

“If you’re interested in joining the debate, register your interest at digitalbritain@berr.gsi.gov.uk.”

is this an email list? what?

By: tristam sparks

tristam sparks — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 13:36:50 +0000

whenever a centralised organisation, such as a government, tries to control decentralised organisation, you’re bound to run into conflict.

government wants to increase the economy’s capacity. information has to be free. so you end up with government siding with 100 year old attitudes towards copyright and publishing, to protect it’s corporate “partners.”

@Ricky knowing about twitter is not necessarily a qualifier in these discussions, but the way their service, which includes a low barrier to entry and an open api that allows potential businesses to grow out of its own creation, is an useful analogy of how the internet itself has influenced the economy and society. innovation flounders as soon as it’s regulated or barriers to communication are erected.

By: Michael Kowalski

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 12:08:31 +0000

Britain is “naturally good at media stuff”, yes. And with the fall from grace of financial services, media people are thrilled at that prospect that their industry could be the single basket where we put all our eggs. What makes this odd is that, as Kestenbaum put it, none of them know what their model will be in 10 years’ time—or whether they will even have one.

By: Participation Marketing

Participation Marketing — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:59:59 +0000

Digital Britain debate on TechCrunch UK…

Join in the #carter fun here.

……

By: AlastairDuncan

AlastairDuncan — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:44:06 +0000

In a world where the government is buying back Royal Bank of Scotland and selling off Royal Mail, I can see the Royle family on the panel about Digital Britain policy and putting up a few sensible insights. Setting aside opinions of NESTA though, what do we want for public policy on digital britain?

By: AlastairDuncan

AlastairDuncan — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:38:41 +0000

There’s a real feeling of ‘old media’ about this whole debate, particularly when it comes to definitions around content. Let’s not forget that Lord Carter grew up at JWT before hopping to NTL. Peter Bazalgette’s point about generally unsuccessful attempts by old media to build new media properties does strike a chord too.

By: Roger

Roger — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:36:09 +0000

NESTA no doubt is full of good people with good intentions but it is very difficult to take them seriously. Reading the list of finalists for their £1 million give away the Big Green Challenge is like reading through a Bird and Fortune script. The UK Innovation Index Project is about as surreal as you can get, even on public money.

By: Mike Butcher

Mike Butcher — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:24:06 +0000

I’m very disappointed that there was no-one on the panel who could give a ‘tech company’ perspective (I’m talking web startup, games developer, mobile company etc). Instead they were all people largely from the media side of “digital”. Yes, I know this debate is about policy, but if you don’t understand the ‘digital platform’ how can you frame the policy?

By: AlastairDuncan

AlastairDuncan — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:14:06 +0000

poinabout content being morethan tv shows and music clips. Why is there nobody on the db advisory panel from web content creation land?

By: Loula

Loula — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:01:07 +0000

actually Ricky you are wrong.

By: RickWaghorn

RickWaghorn — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 09:58:28 +0000

Charles Leadbeater asking about service delivery, creative use of new business models and the dividend around entrepreneurial activity. Bazalgette says: it’s already there…

Oh, yeh. Where?

By: Ricky

Ricky — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 09:27:24 +0000

Getting quite bored of Twitter being some kind of verifier as to whether anyone knows anything about digital technology or not. The notion that if you’re not on Twitter then you can’t possibly be interested or insightful about the digital market is a little dubious.

By: RickWaghorn

RickWaghorn — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 09:24:33 +0000

Ever since I got waved away from NESTA’s door with our proposition for http://www.mylocalwriter.com supported by a self-service advertising system aka Addiply for being, quote, ‘beyond their area of expertise and experience…’ can’t take them too seriously.

NESTA. ‘Making innovation flourish…’

Mmm.