This week, we talk with Esther Bailey.

Esther Bailey has been working in new media for about 8 years now and has been specialising in mobile for the past 3. She has always loved the thrill of the new. She is NSW President and also sits on the Mobile Content Industry Development Group, the National Executive and more sub-committees than she care to mention…

mo:life
Can you give us a brief rundown of AIMIA and its interest in mobile media?

Esther
AIMIA (the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association) is a member based organisation that exists to further the development of digital content and interactive media. We provide export assistance, support and training; celebrate creativity through our annual awards; lobby government at every level to ensure that the digital sector receives the positive recognition that it deserves; and provide opportunities for members to come together, share ideas, find partners and to do better business.

Many of our members are working in the mobile media sector so as a result of the groundswell of interest we formed an Industry Development Group last year. I think just about every significant mobile player in Australia is represented now, handset manufacturers, telcos, aggregators, creative agencies, content creators. The group has just completed a much-needed comprehensive independent survey of mobile phone usage in Australia (report out at the end of July) and is creating developer resources and toolsets to assist content developers in managing the technical complexities of creating for this platform, which are available through our website www.aimia.com.au . We are also looking at incubator services, work placement schemes and have been engaging with the arts sector through projects like Mobile Journeys, which we created to foster commercial market engagement and to stimulate critical and creative debate about the sector and where it could go.

mo:life
Art practitioners use the net heavily. Are there signs of Australian artists
experimenting with the mobile medium? Can you point to any?

Esther
There are some fantastic projects coming through from the arts right now. Through Mobile Journeys we had the opportunity to work with about 20 established and emerging artists and the diversity of their work is fantastic. Through the first round of Mobile Journeys we got some great works out of Mark Titmarsh, Ian Haig, Melinda Rackham and Tanja Visosevic – all completely different in style; Mark’s was visually rich and textural, Melinda’s was a witty little narrative piece, Tanja’s are stylish and intriguing and Ian’s, well Ian’s were just a bit crazy psychotic! In this next round we’ve just closed our call for submissions for Mobile Journeys exhibition at the Sydney Opera House Studio, which is part of the dLux d>art exhibition commencing on August 9th. The diversity of submissions was quite fantastic, lots of interest in locative in various forms and mixed reality games, multiplayer and other games and then lots more video content. We haven’t announced final selections yet, but there are some well known local names in there and some really excellent proposals. I’m excited that we’ll be able to showcase a really diverse set of works that really get into the cultural, political social and artistic dimensions of mobile media. Should be a great show!

mo:life
If an artist or creative collective wants to get involved in, or initiate
their own mobile media projects, what would you suggest? Where do they begin?
What types of funding bodies or media organizations are there to offer sup port?

Esther
It seems like the funding bodies are finally awakening to the relevance of mobile in contemporary culture and there are a number of projects around that have had arts funding; Mobile Journeys for one. We were so pleased that the Australia Council came back us gave us second round funding for this project, and I think that it will really bear fruit in demonstrating the adaptability of Australian new media practitioners.

There are instances of a number of other people as well getting good projects through the funding bodies; Sophia Zachariou and the PFTC last year; The SAFC, ABC, and ANAT have got their miniSeries project coming out soon which should be great. I know that the FTO are interested in this area because they’ve been very supportive to MJ and have just funded the MetroMobility training program through Metroscreen in Sydney. The film bodies are kind of interested and it’s definitely hit radar, but they remain a little sceptical. There are some great projects coming through that might help to change that. One of our Mobile Journeys masterclass participants Natasha Dwyer has been working on a doco with Big hART and SBS called KNOT@ HOME. They intend to use the AWARE platform (http://aware.uiah.fi/), which is essentially a moblogging tool, to extend the dialogue with the characters from the doco. The idea is that after the screening some the aboriginal kids who participate will be given a phone to use as a recording and transmission device. People can send them questions about their life or surroundings, and the participants will send them back images, or films or text in response. This material will also be published on the web. I think that this kind of extension of narrative could start to engage the more traditional TV and film people and show that there are new approaches which could add value to their work in a more ‘lean forward’ world.

So in short, it’s definitely a good time to be putting your ideas out there . I think the number one point is, as with so many things in life, to keep it simple and make it compelling. It can’t be mobile for the sake of it or you just create a huge so-what factor. Artists should be thinking about what is unique or compelling about the platform and explore that to create their work. The second point is that it’s all in the craft. A good idea is just 5%, the hard yards are in the detail and delivery. And its only through excellent delivery that new funding models will open up for us.

mo:life
In a commercial sense, it seems everyone is being encouraged to get in to
mobile content development, but is it really that easy? What are the barriers
to entry? Like television, there seem to be only a few big fish in a small
pond. Would you encourage others to jump in?

Esther
I think the main message is don’t give up your day job! There are people making money in mobile, but like you say, it ain’t that many and getting a good idea up isn’t that easy. In-house development teams and agencies are always going to have better access to commissioning dollars than independent producers. Iconmobile’s Random Place that launched recently is a good example of how to do a thing right. They used professional development teams - photographers, script editors, actors, TV crews (even though the core product is stills based). They secured sponsorship and media partners, carry advertising and bought media placements - and you need all of those things to make a really successful project. But, on the other hand, publishers are hungry for content and as the market matures the diversity of content that they are seeking will increase. There’s also an incredible skills shortage out there right now, so people who are developing their own pet projects for fun and for learnings will undoubtedly be better placed to get a job in-house with one of these companies. Plus I do believe that extraordinary ideas get up regardless of the odds. Now is definitely the time to be experimenting and pushing some boundaries.

mo:life
Crystal-ball time from your vantage point, can you signpost the next fiive
years in the mobile media sector?

Esther
First of all, SMS will be dead. We’ll all just be using instant messenger products and chat that enable us to keep an open dialogue with a number of friends all day for just the cost of some short text data. Once you’re on 3G it’s a much more economical way to go. Economics drove the take up of SMS and economics will kill it.

Apart from that its all a bit ordinary evolution; less about mobile, more about media on the move. There is already video, TV and radio to mobile devices; it will just take a while for the devices to filter through the system and prices to come down enough to make it attractive to the end user. If we look at broadband take up as a model we could expect another 5 years or so before we have serious penetration and widespread mobile content usage. Telstra said at Mobile Content World last month that it thought only 6-7% of their customers understood content. Initial findings from the AIMIA survey puts awareness in the general population nearer to a 25%, but content consumption type is still fairly limited to info services, ringtones and logos and music, but as the phone evolves into a media device people’s usage of it will diversify accordingly.

Also, everyone in industry has been talking about this user pays model and isn’t that great for business because it’s not the internet where everyone thinks it is free. But, when it basically is the internet, I’ll start wanting it to be free! There’ll be aggressive data cost bundling as all the services launch their 3G networks and fight for customers. In parallel to that we’ll see the emergence of the classic advertising models from TV, radio and online on your mobile; so you’ll have video topped and tailed by ads; programming brought to you by x; comprehensive merchandising by publishers through wallpapers, games, “clubs” designed to extend your interaction with a given brand; and of course brand owners making content plays (think BMW short films, Baz Luhrman and Chanel) which could really upset the value chain! Mobile could finally be the perfect customer insight tool for marketers, but I suspect that consumers will reject that kind of interaction and we’ll definitely see the emergence of new social networks. I really hope that combining mobile, and blogging and social networks creates a new revitalised independent media landscape and communication paradigm.. but we’ll have to see whether Santa brings me one of them!

mo:life
Ok, consider this a diamond-ball question: if you were to invest in tech
stocks limited to mobilecompanies/products, where would you put your money? Any
particular handset makers? Content providers? Service providers? Infrastructure
companies? And if any, why?

Esther
Nokia still has 50% of handsets in this country and I don’t think that’ll change much. Handset refresh rates might be picking up, but I’m pretty sure that brand loyalty remains; I’ve strayed from the path into other user interfaces and always come scurrying back in a hurry! Although, the fusion of consumer electronics products means hat is no longer a given I guess. Apple’s definitely going to be in it. Microsoft has had a slow start, but for business phones that interface well with your desktop offices tools, a Windows operating system is probably going to gather in appeal.

Southern Star has still got the most consistent interest in innovation and experimentation with new forms and they are bolting on mobile-money-makers like its going out of style over at Big Brother right now. We’ll see more of those kind of ‘franchises’ where multiple mobile products hang loosely from one successful format. HWW are on fire at the applications end just for great usability and design of useful tools and great content management.

There’ll undoubtedly be a shakedown in the service provider sector in the next 12 months, or at the least a higher degree of specialism; once everyone finished their creative experiments and starts looking hard at the bottom line again and those with an international footprint are going to be much safer when that time comes. But there is still a lot of players who’ll come in with cool new ideas that we haven’t seen yet. I’m working on a project with some friends that is playing with the idea of a phone as a social device (crazily obvious I know, but a notion that can get lost in conversations about ‘content’!) Hoodlum Productions who did Fat Cow are working on some new narrative forms for TV and mobile interaction and I predict a Napster style P2P based service for phones that’ll come from left field and spin everyone’s head. Fun times, that’s for sure.