And so begins our Digital Pioneers programme in Hong Kong. It was a whirlwind day today, and the following few days look set to be just as busy.
We started with a visit to Menfond electronic art who have done post-production for films like Hero and Ultra Violet. We had a very interesting talk by Victor Wong, director of the company. He sees Hong Kong as being a gateway between East and West for the film sector. Their 300-strong company has just set up offices on mainland China and are providing post-production and 3d animation to USA and Europe. I asked him what he saw happening over the next five years and he said that now that Hong Kong firms like his have major projects under their belts that more post-production will be outsourced via Hong Kong.
We also met up with a delegation of film/digital people from Canada, and I got to chat to Ken Bautista of Hotrocket - he seems to be doing some very similar stuff to the projects I’m involved in in the UK. They have successfully set up a digital media industry group, of which he’s the head. I’ll be talking to him in more detail aobut this later.
Then it was off to the Hong Kong Design Centre which was very interesting. The current issue seems to be the HK and Chinese companies lack an understanding of the value of design, so they are running a number of support schemes, campaigns and awards ceremonies to change this.
A flying visit to VisualGram, who manufacture a range of very non-recyclable plastic products, then on to a seat-of-the-pants TV channel called The Interactive Channel. This is a live pilot for a channel which allows people to partipate live with the broadcast through text, online chat, and to have 3g video and webcams with audio included live within a broadcast.
Bizarrely, the subject of debate was “Do you believe that AMULETS and other paraphernalia can be used to ward off evil?”, to which the reaction was apparently 58% YES in their live poll.
Although the channel was very tackily designed and quite ugly to look at, the ideas they were playing with were very interesting. I can see more of this happening in the UK soon.
Then it was off to Cyberport (pictured above), which is a goverment-funded development aimed at building a Silicon Valley for Hong Kong. There are opportunities for start-ups to get space in the Innocentre (an incubation project) as well as more established companies to rent much larger spaces.
We had a presentation from Yat Siu of Outblaze who are responsible for running the Sanriotown Hello Kitty online community. Their model was very interesting. Rather than acting as an agency for clients they set up a separate company as a joint venture, with Sanrio and Outblaze having equity stakes. They then share revenue from payments and subscriptions. I’ve pitched this concept to many clients over the years as a way of building a successful site and not once has a client had the foresight to go for something like this.
They attribute this model as the main factor in the success they’ve had in building a successful online community. Food for thought.
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