When Sony turns to content

The key message in Sony's decision to appoint Sir Howard Stringer, the British chairman of the company's U.S. operations—specifically the movie studios and recording labels—as the first non-Japanese to run the company is that the future lies in content, not electronics.

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After the consumer electronics division at Sony said it will miss its revenue goals for the second year in the face of rising competition from Korean and Chinese manufacturers, CEO Nobuyuki Idei, the legendary inventor of the Walkman portable audio player, and his right-hand, Kunitake Ando, president of Sony, were shown the door by the board Sunday. Ken Kutaragi, the leader of Sony's Playstation business, will give up his board seat to focus on the gaming division and former Executive Deputy President Ryoji Chubachi will take over the consumer electronics division, attempting to revive the television and audio manufacturing business.

Stringer, a former CBS executive who also led a short-lived Bell operating company interactive television venture, led Sony's $4.8 billion acquisition of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in September 2004. The deal, which added MGM's huge library of classic films to Sony Pictures' burgeoning movie and television production business, positioned Sony to capitalize on one of the only growing part of its business. Except for the gaming division, Sony's production company was the fastest-growing part of the company and delivered the largest share of operating revenue.

In short, the Sony that rose to global prominence has placed its bet on content and after cutting costs within its electronics division will leave much of the market to low-cost competitors. Sony's electronics will likely be concentrated on the higher-end, cutting-edge technologies it can invent and exploit until manufacturers in the rest of Asia drive prices down.

This places content at the very forefront of Sony's efforts. But here's what we know about content today: The most compelling new programming and music is coming from the edge of the network. While Stringer's movie deals are creating gains for Sony, the music business actually fell more than 60 percent—the independent labels and garage bands distributing music through sharing systems, like Weed  are taking listeners to new places. Sony's Idei is famous for passing on a deal to join Apple Computer's wildly successful iTunes online music business, because it would have cannibalized the Walkman business.

Why are we thinking about this at Outhink? Simply this: Producers with the ability to tap talent anywhere on the globe are the answer Sony needs, and a tool like SpinXpress, which allows people to work privately and quickly, is the foundation for the virtual creative network that will produce the films, television programs and music that can be assembled at garage costs (with studio flourish applied judiciously and easily, because the producer or director has access to those resources through the network).

Here, though, is the rub, and also why we think we're on the right track with SpinXpress. Great works of art are not the result of committee work, they are guided and shaped in private—even when that "private" workspace includes hundreds of people—as far from the incessant attention paid to celebrities as these people can get. SpinXpress creates those private spaces where risks can be taken, mistakes made and lessons learned before the final production is shown to the world. We're working on an array of features and functionality that make the expensive resources of the studio system available on the fly, with accountability and processes that make the people providing the money for creative work comfortable, too.

Free minds need supple tools

We're happy to see this kind of sharing of content by established performers....

Scott G, otherwise known as “The G-Man,” has implemented a collaboration between recording artists and audio students, named The Mix Fix Project. The first song on his latest release, Sonic Tonic, will be available for students at the Audio Recording Institute (A.R.T.I).

Creativity expands to fill minds like computer code expands to fill available memory and processor cycles, the trick is moving it quickly and conveniently so that the creative flow isn't hindered. The Tapegerm Collective is facilitating free exchanges of mixes, making loops available through simple search interfaces. Additional background on the 30-person group is available here.

What we hope to achieve with SpinXpress is a easily accessible workspace that can be organized by the participants to direct the flow of files purposefully. Think global conductor, a Bernstein or Jam Master Jay directing the flow, adding a bit of strings or a scratch where it was needed but the need hadn't been heard yet. The first step is giving those maestros the global studio, providing the links between minds.

Intel's On-the-Go Vision

Intel today took attendees at its Developer Forum in San Francisco on a tour of a future in which computing is ubiquitous and connected, even in the dashboard of a Range Rover.

Showing a dual-core concept system that simultaneously played an MP3 audio file while rendering video in real-time and a video of a live videoconference with a wireless user on an airliner in flight, Sean Maloney, vice president and general manager of Intel's Mobile Platforms Group explained a world where collaboration is possible virtually all the time.

"Moore's Law has been called on more and more to address mobility rather than just requirements for performance," Maloney said. This is an important admission from the chip maker, because it indicates that distributing work is becoming more important than building greater stand-alone processing capability into PCs. As the dual-core systems Intel has been racing to bring to market in the wake of numerous announcements appear in PCs, tablets and automobiles, more cycles will be dedicated to communication capacity.

With a secure ad-hoc network, like the infrastructure for collaboration we're working on at Outhink, PCs will connect on-the-go to allow artists and teams to work together by passing files—and parts of files that can be worked on separately and reassembled with different versions embedded for review and selection by producers—between PCs that feature real-time graphics, audio and video rendering capabilities.

Check out the video of Outhink's appearance during an earlier Intel presentation at OracleWorld, when Intel CEO invited us on stage to explain how teams made up of partners in several cities can work together. With enhanced networking and SpinXpress installed, the video would download more quickly because SpinXpress uses secure P2P technology to move files.

Does this mean we'll be working all the time or that, as creative professionals, we'll be able to work more quickly to make more time for the lives we lead? We're betting on the latter.

What we know so far

SpinFlow is workflow enabled by ad hoc secure file transfers, time-stamped and registered documents that ensure trusted access, as well as many new features that will be invented on the SpinXpress platform. SpinFlow will change the way established and newly organized teams collaborate. The ability of producers and managers of creative teams to tap talent in real-time, allowing more dynamic combinations of new and existing ideas, challenges the status quo and opens the path to creative explosions that test the limits of traditional organizations. SpinFlow is work-plus-freedom, something evolving that must be documented as it grows into a well understood way of getting creative projects from inception to completion.

New forms of collaboration are producing incredible new creative content. No longer are teams limited to the narrow confines of geography. Whether producing music, making movies or television programs or just working together on rich media files within the enterprise, creative professionals have never had so many opportunities to connect.

Dave and his team at Outhink have built a powerful and secure peered filesharing system for professional collaboration, a virtual private network technology I think provides the foundation for improving the way people work together. Dave, as he mentioned below, has asked me to help document that new way of working, the opportunities and challenges it presents to creative teams and their managers. He calls me "executive editor," but I would prefer consulting blogger or, better, an eclectician who finds and illustrates the new connections that are changing work. In ancient Greece, a philosopher was "eclectic" if they were not aligned with any particular school of thought—in the new world of work there are already a lot of philosophies and I borrow freely and critically to make clear how and why things are changing.

The whole point of SpinXpress and the notion of Spinflow processes is to put you in charge of your destiny, to bring the organization to the edges and open a new range of collaborative resources to the artists, organizations and managers who must come together to make big things happen.

My background? I've been an writer about and entrepreneur in the field of media for almost 20 years, though much of the first 10 years my work was focused primarily on computing. Then, computing morphed into every cranny of media. As editor and publisher of Digital Media: A Seybold Report and co-host of the Digital World Conference, I was very fortunate to meet, interview, write about and even introduce many of the people who have reshaped media since the appearance of the Web. As chief content officer at ON24, I built the first 24/6.5 (we took part of Sunday off) webcast financial news networks, a completely personalized audio and video feed of news and analysis for investors. I published one of the first electronic books in Voyager format in 1991. My involvement with Audible Inc., which I continue, has put me behind the microphone and in the trenches of time-shifted audio production and distribution since the very beginning. I've designed user interfaces for community sites and have built software and services in a variety of markets.

So, my background is eclectic and that's why Dave asked me to do a little piloting here.

There is also a financial relationship, folks, so I am writing here as a commentator with an agenda: To illuminate where and how Outhink's technology fits and can be customized to serve creative professionals. I'll be critical and your coconspirator in making Outhink products better, not a spokesman for the company. But, I am paid to do this, so always feel free to question the ideas and links made here if you think they are self-serving. I welcome the opportunity to discuss why I made certain decisions. Moreover, if you want to participate in discussions at any point, jump in. This is a research process in the making, which will help Outhink make a better product and help developers integrate its capabilities into a wide range of tools that enhance the creative process.

We're going to be launching this site with regular postings from around the Web and a series of interviews with audio and video producers. Stop by each day to see what's new or add us to your RSS subscriptions. I promise it will always be interesting and worthwhile.