Like many of the partners and colleagues we have worked with over the years, we were shocked and saddened to learn last week that the Global Health Council is closing operations after forty years of service to the field of global health.  As a forum for advocacy, shared learning, networking and mutual support, the Council’s contributions have been both broad and deep, and it is difficult to imagine the global health community without this tenacious champion for the health needs of the world’s poorest people.

WebsEdge/Health is particularly grateful to the Council for its active engagement and support for Global Health TV.  It was our shared vision and partnership that helped create a widely available broadcast program highlighting the work and results of global health organizations and individuals, illustrating that progress is possible, even on some of the most intractable issues.

From its modest beginnings at the Council’s 2005 annual conference, Global Health TV has grown to become an established year-round channel for capturing, disseminating and celebrating key events and developments in the global health field. It is now featured on www.thelancet.com as well as on its stand-alone site at www.globalhealthtv.com, and it broadcasts regularly from important global health conferences taking place around the world. Our in-depth reports cover a range of topics from AIDS and Malaria to the often-neglected Global Mental Health issues.

It is a privilege for us to be involved with the many organizations, such as Medecins Sans Frontieres, Jhpiego, Sightsavers, Children without Worms and many universities that first began working with us in the context of our work with the Global Health Council.  We have filmed in over 50 countries, and the dedication and passion we have encountered with each project both humbles us and gives us hope for what we can all achieve together.  The films we create for this community continue to be the work that inspires us most, and with gratitude and fondness for the organization that first helped make it possible, we look forward to continuing that work for many years to come.

WebsEdge/Health - Global Health TV team
Follow us on Twitter:
@GlobalHealth_TV and @WebsEdge_Health

So the 2012 Ageing in America Conference has come to a close. The five days of engagement and debate have finished, the stands have been taken down and the 3, 000 or so delegates have made their way home.  Though you can of course continue to watch coverage of the event on ASA TV on both YouTube and the ASA website.

The conference program covered an enormous number of issues – both practical and political. So this is perhaps a good opportunity to consider what’s been achieved last week in Washington.

I’ve covered hundreds of conferences over the past few years in many countries. And delegates always value the opportunity to network with their peers. But despite this I was particularly struck this week by the almost unique opportunity the Ageing in America Conference gave caregivers to swap stories and simply lean on each other for support.

The other big success was the opportunity to have a really well informed discussion on the issues facing the elderly in modern America. These issues are always more important during an election year. But this is no ordinary election. And one gets the feeling this is a pivotal moment in America for older adults.

But successful as the conference has been it can’t stop here. The ASA is standing up for older Americans in the firestorm that represents current political debate. And it’s also great to see them using all the modern communication tools at their disposal – including ASA TV – to do just that.

Stephen Horn, CEO

WebsEdge

Follow: @stephenjhorn

Stuck at Heathrow waiting for my flight to Vancouver. This week WebsEdge/Health is covering the 101st Annual Meeting of the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology. We take great pride in understanding subjects that are outside our knowledge zone and the past few weeks have been fascinating and stretching.

I’ve left the team pulling together the remaining films and doing whizzy things with digital formatting to make sure everything will play on the various distribution channels.

The theme running through the programs is the fundamental contribution that technological developments play in pathology.  That’s true of our business too. Technology creates new opportunities for communicating messages on a daily basis. Understanding who the audience is and where they are is still key to getting your message out there.

By all accounts, Vancouver deserves the accolade of being one of the best places in the world to live. For three years it held the top spot, being knocked off by Melbourne and Vienna at the end of 2011. Apparently congestion was what did for it – all those people who visited for a conference, fell in love with the place and moved there permanently, maybe.  It’s my first visit so I’ll report back with my first impressions. Although it might be clouded by the fact that when I get there, my body will feel like it’s tomorrow morning.

Liz Horn
Director, WebsEdge
@LizHorn

So the year is really off and running. It’s only mid January but the WebsEdge team has already been on the ground in Boston and Chicago producing Historians TV as well as covering the Joint Mathematics Meeting – the world’s largest gathering of mathematicians. And next week we have a team in Washington DC for the National Council on Science and the Environment.

This is our first year producing JMM TV but our fourth with Historians TV. And as always there was a really interesting mix of pre-made films and coverage of the event itself. All put together into a television programme shown at the conference venue and in the delegate hotel rooms. And as always a lot of positive feedback – which is always good. Just don’t test me on my algebra!

Whilst we’re always tuning the model the basics of that programme formation and distribution haven’t really changed over the last few years. But this year there was one major difference – the use of video via social media. B2B media – be it video, magazines or even events – isn’t always the first place you find innovation in social media. And whilst Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have been ever present among consumers for quite a while now they have been slower to take hold with events.

But all that is beginning to change. We saw two trends emerging last week.  First, more and more people are joining in the twitter conversation using the conference hashtag. But what’s interesting is that whilst many of these are at the conference a sizeable proportion isn’t. Enabling folks not at the event to actually take part in the conversation.

Second, people are embedding the videos we made at the conference into tweets using YouTube. I think that’s a really interesting development for two reasons.  It allows people to have a conversation around the videos rather than just watching them. But even more interesting is the effect this has on mobile media. Because YouTube videos can play on most devices the video clips of that days conference can now be carried around with you in a form anyone can access on any device. And for business to business media that’s really a first.

2012 is shaping up to be a big year. With both the London Olympics and US Presidential elections on the agenda there’s plenty to look forward to for television folks everywhere.

And here at WebsEdge we’re no exception. We’ve three major events in January alone with two inside the first week. We’re off to Chicago to produce Historians TV for the AHA’s 126th Annual meeting and to Boston for the Joint Mathematics Meeting – the world’s largest mathematics meeting.

And these are interesting times for both groups. The venues will be bursting at the seams with a combined audience of around 15, 000 professors, graduate students and undergraduates. And as we go around conducting interviews and putting together television programmes we’ll be struck by the depth, the diversity and the sheer sense of optimism that abounds in both these meetings.

But there’s no doubt that both of these meetings also take place against a very challenging budget cycle. As politicians look to make federal spending cuts there is less money to fund many important programs. Take the ‘Teaching American History’ grants for example which have just been eliminated from the 2012 Federal Budget.

But what also strikes me is the new wave of innovation that is tackling both the need to compete on a global scale and ever declining budgets. This may be the 126th annual meeting of the American Historical Association but one of the main themes for discussion is the use of digital technology in all it’s forms. And I think that’s what drives these organisations and their members forward. Of course the challenges are great. But we’ve been here before. And the only way through is by constantly challenging ourselves to be more relevant in the future than we’ve been in the past.

Stephen Horn, CEO

WebsEdge

So it’s the first full week of December. It’s getting colder, some snow is falling and everyone’s thoughts are turning to Christmas. And, or course, Christmas shopping! One of the biggest sellers this year is Internet Connected – or Smart Televisions. They enable you to sit in your living room and watch web based video directly on your tv. The war of convergence is over and the television is the victor!

And a whole host of new services are launching to take advantage of this change. Tesco and HMV have both recently launched Video on Demand services and Netflix is leading the charge from the United States. All the content you ever dreamed of, right into your living room.

According to a study just out from Bain and Co over 60% of households will have one of these connected televisions by 2014. One of the report’s most interesting findings is that 50% of people surveyed expected they would access this content in different ways. Instead of simply watching a channel they would use search engines and social networks to hunt down specific content they were interested in fueling discussion of a major transformation in viewing habits.

But despite this flood of content most people surveyed didn’t think they would watch more television. And they certainly didn’t think they would pay more for it. When it came to new forms of content – such as ‘webisodes’ – few respondents said they would be prepared to pay anything at all.

So where does this leave us? With the rapid expansion of connected devices – not just televisions but phones and tablets as well – there are more ways than ever to watch video. With this rapid expansion has come an explosion in available content it is safe to say there are more and more ways to watch more and more content. But here lies the paradox. With the same amount of money funding rapidly increasing content the amount spent creating each piece is going to fall. And yet given all this ‘noise’ the only way to reach consumers is through what the report calls an ‘improved content experience’.

So it’s all about sending the right piece of great content to the right person. And I guess that hasn’t changed – whatever device you choose to watch it on.

So it was a busy October for the WebsEdge team.  After producing SOLACE TV in Edinburgh for local authority chief executives we were off to Washington DC to produce AMIA TV in healthcare informatics and then to Chicago for IACP TV – the International Association of Police Chiefs.

Each of these organisations is facing radical change. In the UK local authorities have borne the brunt of government spending cuts. More for less has become a popular mantra. 2011 is the pivotal year for health informatics in the US as the Obama health care reforms take centre stage. For the International Association of Police Chiefs the ever evolving threats to national security are the order of the day in law enforcement.

And there lies an interesting paradox. These are complex issues and are becoming ever more so. Lets look at law enforcement for example. Local policemen all round the world are no longer just fighting local crime. The bobby on the beat may be central to community policing but just as important they’re also seen as the front line of attack combating international terrorism.

But these complex issues need broad communications. All the organisations involved not only need to reach large numbers of people – they also need to break these issues down so we can all understand and act on them. We might not be able to untangle the federal budget but we’re all going to need to know what electronic payment records mean to us.

So our job in October has been working with a number of different stakeholders – local authorities, charities, hospitals, police forces etc – to help them use video and specialised video channels to reach their audiences. For example, how can people help transport police in the US stop home grown terrorism in its tracks?

By definition this isn’t easy. But I think we’ve seen real progress. A growing realisation that content needs to be accessible and audiences need to be reached – even if both of those things can be a messy process.

WebsEdge/Government is in Edinburgh this week for the newly revamped SOLACE Summit 2011. SOLACE has decided to do things differently this year and are holding what some have coined an ‘un-conference’. They are hosting five work-streams which are running in parallel and will address some of the key issues facing local government today. Each work-stream is designed to encourage debate and generate ideas and suggestions for the future of local government in the UK.

As always, WebsEdge/Government is at the heart of the action and will be producing SOLACE TV at the event. SOLACE TV will be a mix of interviews and coverage of the Summit keeping participants (the new term for delegates) informed about how each workstream is developing.

We’ve worked with WRVS and Bracknell Forest Council this year to produce two excellent films related to two of the propositions. Read about the propositions here.



You can watch the films, and all of our content on the Local Government Channel, on the SOLACE website, or on the new SOLACE TV YouTube channel. Enjoy!

You can follow the action, too. Just follow @websedge_gov on Twitter and we’ll keep you up-to-date with developments as they happen. 

Stay tuned, and as always, let us know what you think.

The WebsEdge Team

So as you know we’re in Milwaukee this week for the ICMA’s  97th Annual Conference. I’ve never been to the city before so thought I’d do my homework. I knew it was the home to Harley Davidson and some great breweries but that was about it. Turns out it’s the US’s 28th largest city by population and has one of the highest per capita student populations in the country.

Now clearly Milwaukee has a proud industrial heritage. And walking through the city a lot of its history is very much in tact. But as with any industrial city it’s had its challenges as manufacturing takes up a smaller proportion of our GDP. But Milwaukee has also seen a cultural renaissance with the building of the new conference centre and the Riverwalk.

So what better place then to hold the conference?  All of the city managers gathering here this week have faced challenges over the past few years. And let’s be honest – continue to face them. Every community is focused on jobs and providing better services to its citizens against a backdrop of continuing economic uncertainty.

But don’t mistake that for doom and gloom. If you look around you’ll find a lot of innovative approaches to these issues that people in central government right around the world would do well to take notice of. So I’m really looking forward to the week. Time to interview lots of really interesting people, talk to old friends and meet some new ones. Not to mention the trip to the brewery! But what I’m looking forward to the most is the opportunity to witness this pioneering approach first hand.

Watch all our conference interviews and reports on www.icmatv.com.

Follow us on twitter @ICMATV and the conference using #icma11

I’ve been in Mumbai for three days now and it hasn’t stopped raining! Well what do you expect – it is the Monsoon season.

But what an interesting week it’s been. I started in New Delhi and made my way via Kochi to Mumbai. I’ve met so many great people to talk about introducing conference tv and on-line television channels to core clients in India.

Not that there’s a shortage of television in India of course. Sitting here in the heart of Bollywood that’s all too obvious! And whilst I write this the whole of India, or so it seems, is watching the 2nd cricket test match against England.

But there are also a plethora of news and business channels here that give you a window on the world. It’s been particularly fascinating for me to watch reporting on the Indian economy. Company after company has been reporting it’s figures which, by and large, show significant increases in sales and profits. And whilst a lot of the names are similar – I’ve been watching coverage on both local CNBC and CNN – the coverage isn’t . It’s less critical and of course the numbers are radically different.

It’s also been fascinating to watch the US debt crisis evolve here and to see how that’s been reported. It’s clear to people here – and throughout Asia – that the US economy and it’s problems are of vital importance to everyone. And of course they’re hoping for – and expecting – a sensible outcome. Though you do get the feeling that many here wonder how it got to this in the first place.

Stephen Horn

CEO, WebsEdge

Follow me on Twitter: @stephenjhorn