Angela Natividad's Live & Uncensored!

20 April 2012

Meet Disruptomatic.


One of my favourite things to do in the year is attend MIPTV and MIPCOM as an official liveblogger. Both conferences serve as real-time deal-making spaces for TV networks and production firms, and the biggest thing this industry's been wrestling with is how their business models are changing as a response to online services and shifting user behaviours. The heads of networks fall at different extremes: open and experimental, or shut-off and defensive.

With that said, it's with happy surprise that I found Reed MIDEM (which runs MIPTV and MIPCOM) has been open to our experiments and discoveries in making the conferences themselves more social. In addition to liveblogging, we tweet, track progress and play around with new tech, like Soundcloud bytes and video posts. It hasn't just helped to make the conference seem more relevant to young producers and developers; it's also warmed me to an industry facing torrents of scary change.

On the train ride home this year, my fellow liveblogger Stuart Dredge and I were texting gossip and jokes back and forth. Between laughs about how often we heard the word "disruption" that week, Stuart -- half in jest -- suggested we start a disruption blog. I made up the name, he bought the URL and we quickly told MIPBlog community manager James Martin, who immediately joined us.

That's how Disruptomatic was born. It's the fruit of our tongue-in-cheek (but generally optimistic) wombs -- mine, James' and Stuart's. Our axe is "technology disrupting media" -- it covers significant changes in TV, gaming, publishing and mobile. (Probably more, once we think of them.)

It sounds general but I do think this picks at a scab nobody's fully ripped off: real lay coverage of how seemingly fixed industries are mutating, forging digital roots and mutating again. And most of these industries were lucky: they had years to cash in on a business model that hasn't changed much in over two generations.

As technology advances with increasing speed, so does disruption: some people are already demanding disruption in SoLoMo, which hasn't had time to sort out business models that are nearly as fixed.

I also think we are well-positioned to give these topics the balance and multiple perspectives they deserve: Stuart regularly writes about music and apps, James is deep in the trenches of music and TV, and I regularly cover ads, technology and user behaviour.

Note that this version of the site is basically our "beta". We'll be launching a new design in the month to come, as well as an official logo.

For now, read along for the fun of it and follow us on Twitter: @Disruptomatic.

No comments: