I know you are familiar with this motto. The first person who told me that sentence was my Dad when I was in a competition of my university to win a one year scholarship to Japan. It was with me in almost things I have done so far. However, I should admit that Justice Williams (Tru Life Magazine – BCU Guest Speakers) was far more energy and desirous then I was in taking this motto. I can see from her all characters that an entrepreneur needs: Creative, Entrepreneurship and Innovative and not least a strong desire to do things she wants to do. Read more »
It was meant to be two hours allotment for our lecture, but its impact was as though one was in a highly charged room full of action and the whole world was watching from a glass. We had a visit from Justice Williams, Ruth Ward and Dan Bowers who were walking the talk and coming down to our level and explaining what their experiences and their passions were. I did not have the pleasure of being there physically however twitter made it possible for me to enjoy some important words of advice. For a little over two hours, essential nuggets of wisdom and advice in the industry that we were seeking to begin movers and shakers in the future were all being brought to us. Without missing a heartbeat, it felt like paying for a consultancy session from professionals. I could barely walk away from the computer, and when my laptop battery started beeping I searched impatiently for my charger not wanting to miss any part of this interesting event. Even though I use to think of myself as one abreast with changes, the experience of seeing the developments on twitter was both exciting and very much informative. What was interesting from my perspective was that there were student colleagues as well as lecturers in the room that were all interested in making sure that the outside world that was watching were not missing out on all the brilliant lines that stroke a chord with them. Those who had access to twitter in the session were doing their best to keep the rest of the world knowing.
WHAT THEY SAID MATTERS.
In many years that I worked as a journalist, the tradition has always been to go the event, record all that was going on, make some notes, come back, go through everything and write your piece and then the audience can read it in the newspaper. It is true that the world has changed and moved on and speed was extremely essential in parading information. A few years ago, one will only imagine major corporation with the financial backing to be able to do this however it was not so with my fellow students. They understood that part of our training was for making quick judgments and walk the walk of technology by being active agents who provide real-time information without being paid any money because it was all possible from one lecture hall at Birmingham City University. From important messages like “your network is your net worth” to “web is fantastically transparent” to a key message to using the city that you are in to your advantage. It was certainly a very useful experience and what’s more it cut to the chase.
THE TIGER, THE BEAR AND THE LION
Some of the time when one ever considers what his reaction will be in the face of some of the heavyweights of the jungle ready to pounce, it is easy to consider flight as the first option. However I believe if these three offered to take you on a tour of the jungle, to a degree of certainty, one will feel safe. For the students on the MA Enterprise, this was the case when we had Justice Williams, Ruth Ward and Dan Bowers come in to spend some time with us and offering to help us make sense of the big business jungle that awaits us in our process of becoming entrepreneurs. Of course they came as friends even though they all had portfolios of conquest that identify them as successful in their own right at what they do. They were there to give us the guided tour of how they made it, what they learn and what we should always remember.
They did not disappoint at all, I daresay and even I was over 90 miles physically away from them. These three had all come in with a great deal of experience that was behind them and the fact that they were ready to open us their tool box and explain to us what aided them in their journey of becoming we found many more things to hold unto which will allow us to impact the our generation and perhaps in some years to come, repeat these whole episode however this time it is us who will be opening our tool boxes.
In conclusion I certainly believe that an experience like that coming to us students at this crucial time is extremely useful. It gives us a sense of assurance that if we go out there and do our best, the sky indeed is the limit. As much as I enjoyed the action from afar through tweeter and live blogs, I kind of believe that in the future, I would love the opportunity to be there and rather be tweeting to the outside world.
Today, during our MA Media Enterprise lecture, we had talks from Justice Williams MBE (founder of TruLifeMagazine and Birmingham Media Group, amongst other things), Daniel Bower of econversions and VoucherCodes.co.uk, and Ruth Ward of Rewired PR. Al of them had interesting and inspirational stories to tell about their businesses, and I picked up a lot of useful tips. I recorded the talk by Justice and it’s embedded below (apologies for the poor quality, TV and camera work was never my forte!).
This is my first blog post for mediaenterprise.co.uk and I thought I would start with my recollections from the MA Media and Creative Enterprise so far.
At the beginning of the course I was also taking part in Insight Out: Managing a Portfolio Career, which was fantastic and I feel it has prepared me well for the rest of the MA.
I found a lot of crossover between the Enterprise module and Insight Out, which was helpful because it enabled me to really take in what I have learnt. However, the module I have found most intriguing (and most perplexing at times!) has been Creative Industries and Cultural Policy.
The ‘hot topic’ at the moment seems to be the role of the creative industries in the UK’s economy, and whether the sector can pull us out of recession (and for some people the creative industries also encompasses digital and IT). Several events have taken place during my short time on the MA including Digital District, Hello Digital, the Big Debate and the national Cabinet Forum.
All of them were concerned with the future; how improving Birmingham’s broadband infrastructure could have long-term benefits for SMEs and the economy (Digital District), how the digital industries can pull the UK out of recession (Hello Digital), how Birmingham’s creative industries should band together to try and achieve the same (Big Debate) and so on.
Has there been enough discussion?
Despite those three events dealing with slightly different themes, all pointed towards the creative industries and how they can move forward in Birmingham. Though I found them all interesting and relevant, maybe now it is time for the discussions to stop and action to begin, especially from policy makers.
The biggest event of them all was the Cabinet Forum, simply due to the amount of hugely influential creative workers and policy makers in attendance. One major subject of debate was copyright, which is of particular interest to me due to my involvement in magazine publishing and I will be studying it for my first assignment. Some delegates felt that the copyright debate is getting ‘old’ and the debate needs to move on, others felt that it was a hugely important part of the creative economy and problems with copyright protection in the digital age (such as illegal file sharing) need to be addressed.
As entrepreneurs, there is no doubt that copyright (and intellectual property in general) plays a big part in what we do. If our intellectual property is not protected, our product won’t be unique; it will be exploited and our ideas will not be our own. One such incident happened to me recently when an article I used for my final year degree project was re-used several times by the FA and other companies without my permission (it was a digital magazine and my contact details were clearly visible on the website). I wouldn’t have minded but I wasn’t acknowledged for it. The (c) symbol doesn’t matter to people in the digital age.
On the other hand, people (creatives and consumers) are unwilling to pay for photographs and articles, but there is the compromise of Creative Commons, where authors can make their work available for free as long as they are acknowledged.
On that note, I am going to leave you with a very good talk by Dr Lawrence Lessig (who came up with the idea of Creative Commons) about copyright and current policy.
Enterprise | Hai Nguyen | Monday, November 30, 2009 | 
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