What is Transmedia and how can we tell interesting, interactive and engaging stories? The first TransmediaZH meetup focused on Transmedia basics, and sharing some learnings from Los Angeles and the Transmedia Startup Weekend in San Francisco.
*Transmedia SF & startup weekend in San Fran
*Story hack Zurich
*Transmedia LA meetup group
*Story2023 (http://www.story2023.com/)
2. TransmediaZH
• Who is organizing this, and why?
• What’s the goal of the TransmediaZH
TransmediaZH is all about developing a community of people
in Zurch/Switzerland based around storytelling in our
increasingly fragmented media age.
It’s organized by Mark Melnykowycz (idezo.ch/
lostinreality.net) and Elizabeth Henry (henrygeneral.com/)
6. • Monthly meetups
• Town Hall style meetups
• Hollywood 2.0 podcase
• Regular workshops and
meeups on transmedia,
story, technologies, etc.
7. WorkingIdea Pitch Final Pitch
• Minimum 3 platforms
• Use partner technologies
• Centered on the city theme
54 hours
MentorsMentors SponsorsSponsors
10. City X on Mars
BlogBlog
Learn Solution Idea Making
11. Interesting Projects
The cupcake craze has taken
over, we need to rally and
bring back the donut!
Don’t let the Cupcakes Win!
Using a mobile location
app, residents of Los
Angeles can record and
geotag things they would
like to change in the city.
http://www.la2050.org/
12. The Signpost project is about revolutionizing the printed
press by combining publications with augmented reality
technology. The purpose is to no focus on the technology,
but to create a new way of storytelling that is engaging,
intuitive and natural.
A printed paper is paired with a mobile app, and using AR
image recognition a person can browse through the
electronic content using the physical printed paper.
There are some AR enabled magazines, but I loved seeing
the technology be integrated into a local newspaper,
although here the paper is really more of a user interface...
http://signpo.st/http://ismashsf.com/
I SMASH SF is a 3-6 player board game where
you battle other inhuman demolishers and
carve a path of devastation through our beloved
city.
A lot of people liked the I SMASH SF game,
they used the weekend to develop some
monsters for the game. It’s an interesting mix of
a board game with a real location (San
Francisco).
13. Thoughts on TransmediaSF SW
Experience
• Totally worth the flight from
Zurich to West Coast
• 54 hrs. too little time to
develop a story universe from
zero
• Greater focus on story
creation tools/methodology
would have been huge benefit
• How can we develop a
StoryHack planform in
Zurich?
• How can we focus on
story-technology
integration?
• What
methodologies/tools
should be used in rapid
story creation process?
15. StoryHack ZH
Writers/Authors UX/UI Design Developers
• As a writer/artist who have gotten into user experience and startup weekends,
a story hackathon is the next logical step
• The purpose will be to see how established stories can be transformed through
design and integration with new technologies
• We’re planning to hold the first StoryHack Zurich in the Fall of 2013
• Leading up to the StoryHack we’ll hold workshops on story, narrative, and
technology to make the weekend significant, good stories takes time. 54 hours
is too short to develop great story material...but it’s plenty of time to hack.
http://www.storyhack.ch/
16. Open to Swiss university students
Text/audio in the story must be in English
Show a unique vision of the future with the year 2023
Story must use a minimum of three platforms
Text, comics, graphic stories, motion comics, images, mobile apps,
games, audio, video, ARG (Augmented Reality Game), posters,
flyers, social media, and email
Encourage transmedia storytelling
among the future generations in
Switzerland
Create a Swiss-American
transmedia community
Enhance visibility as pioneers in this
field for all the initiative’s
stakeholders.
www.Story2023.com
17. Links and Info
US Organizations
TransmediaLA Meetup
TransmediaLA.org
TransmediaSF Meetup
TransmediaSF.org
Story Hackathon/Challenges
Los Angeles Story Hackathon
Story2023
StoryHack Zurich
Transmedia Articles
Labour of love: Explaining the transmedia sprawl
Select and arrange: Why transmedia for fiction might be a mess
Books on Story
On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction
The Storytelling Animal
Donut Dazzler: Donut let the
Cupcakes Win
As an artist-engineer I’m always jumping between the two different worlds. Looking at storytelling from a transformative perspective, I’m drawn to how design, story, and coding can be combined to create new storylines.
In Fed. 2012 I started the Lost In Reality project at Startup Pirates Lisboa, working with co-founders we’re developing a location-based storytelling mobile app. After speaking with Christopher Sandberg at X Media Lab Basel, I got interested in transmedia and flew down to the TransmediaSF startup weekend and visited the TransmediaLA meetup group and the Funny or Die offices to see how stories are told in California.
Both TransmediaLA and TransmediaSF are strong communities with regular meetups for continuous learning with great content on their webpages.
The TransmedaiSF Startup Weekend followed the traditional format of 54 hours from start to end. The transmedia part meant we needed to include 3 platforms in the final product, ideally using the partner technologies, and centered on “the City” as a central theme.
I decided to join the Marshmallow Project team. The overall goal is to hold workshops with young students, where the Stanford d.school design thinking process is used as a way for students to solve problems. 3D modeling and printing is integrated into the process as added tool in the problem solving process. The main idea of the weekend was to work on a story for the project, which was centered on Mars.
Our story centered on a city on Mars, while an astronaut is flying to the city he has a problem on his space ship. He writes about his life on a blog, which students can read to understand that his oxygen system was having problems. Then, after getting immersed in the story line and empathizing (key point of design thinking process) with the main character, they can design a solution for the failing system.
In many ways Donut Dazzler was the best project from the weekend. Their team developed an easy to access but very compelling call to action, a resistance war to bring back the donut as a favored sweet treat and over-throw the prestigious cupcake overlords (my impression). A mobile app showing resistance areas and integration with social media channels would allow great interaction with users. The project was pitched and developed all during the weekend, while many other projects came as developed ideas, so in the spirit of the event, I think they were awesome.