The Hebe Week In Pics

We headed over to Manchester for the Hyper Island launch partyThe Hebe Team taking a stroll around the Northern QuarterShang Ting and Stacey the tourists!In Hyper Island, Can you guess who's shoes they are?Inside Printworks, ManchesterShang Ting goofing around in Papa G's, ManchesterShang Ting is snap happy in the train station; no more trains for us, train drivers suck!Shang Ting and one of our old friend's art in Manchester Papping the Papper!Back in Leeds, yesterday it was Mentos central! This was a Mentos train dancing in the street!And the streets were filled with musicians!Spotted: New Pizza Express on Albion Street, what do we think? A nice view of Round Foundry and Temple Works

Hyper Island Manchester Launch

Last Friday we attended the first official event at Hyper Island Manchester. As regular readers of our site will already know, we have been heavily involved with the project and Hyper Island globally, so we were excited to check in and meet some of the students from the first-ever class and catch up with some of our other Manchester friends.

Arriving at the Watts Brothers building on Lever Street we, along with the Hyper Island UK team, felt a bit like proud parents watching something that we have all worked so hard on, come to fruition. The first Hyper Island facility outside of Stockholm is a massive step for the brand, but one that we all believed would be a great success. The industry obviously agreed with the likes of Google, MTV, Channel 4, Wieden + Kennedy, Saatchi & Saatchi and loads more getting involved with the project.

It was really nice to spend a bit of time with the new students. They are a real interesting bunch! In just a couple of hours we had been involved in conversations about the city of Manchester, the fashion industry, the use of the word 'viral', the re-birth of speed garage, problems with restrictions when working in government and loads more random yet facinating subject! We are sure that some amazing people and projects will come out of Hyper Island Manchester in the coming months. You can see from their video above, they are already getting in the zone!

Check a couple of our previous posts related to Hyper Island here:

Hyper Island Arrives In Manchester

Creative Spaces Are Key To Creative Culture

We will keep you posted on progress of this first class on here over the summer months. In the meantime check out some of the pictures from Friday's event below:

The first class along with Hyper Island UK Director David McCall and Programme Assistant Amir LodgeShang Ting hanging with some of the studentsLee getting excited about something geeky no doubt!David McCall and some of the students along with representatives from Google, NESTA and Code Computerlove welcome everyone to the eventThe Hyper Island way already kicking inCollecting souvenir stickers of all the students :)

Hyper Island Arrives In Manchester

We have been working with Hyper Island for more than a year now. One project we have had to keep under wraps is their launch of a new facility in the UK... in Manchester to be exact. We think the project is awesome (we would of course!) Here are some of the highlights of the press release issued today:

A golden ticket for young creative talent as Sweden’s “Digital Harvard” launches industry-led learning in UK 

Budding digital media students are today being offered the chance to take part in a cutting-edge new educational programme in the UK, backed by businesses such as Channel 4, Saatchi & Saatchi and Sony Games.

Applications open today for a British version of a tried and tested Swedish training model for people in the interactive media, communications and advertising industries. The ‘Interactive Media Design and Management’ programme, which will be run in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, is the first of its kind to be introduced by Hyper Island outside of Sweden and has already received the backing of leading brands such as MTV, McCann, Channel 4, Saatchi & Saatchi, Sony Games, Code Computerlove and Wieden + Kennedy. 

Hyper Island’s model offers a distinctive action-learning approach, with participants delivering solutions to real problems brought to them by businesses. This new programme has been designed in collaboration with leaders in the media and advertising industry from around the world, many of whom will help deliver it...

“It’s all about industry-ready people”, says Hyper Island’s David McCall, Director of the new programme, which opened for applications today. “Media and communication technologies have converged, and the industry needs talent that is unbound by disciplines, instinctively collaborative and able to thrive in a rapidly changing environment. Our first UK programme has been designed with industry, with exactly this kind of talent in mind.

Jon Kingsbury of NESTA says: “The digital media sector offers exciting growth potential for the UK if we can develop people with the right skills. NESTA is excited to be partnering with Hyper Island to understand how an industry-led approach to education might be a more effective way of giving talented young people a pathway into the digital media sector.”

There are 25 places available on the pilot for exceptionally talented young people, aged between 18 and 25 years old, who want an alternative start to their career in interactive media, communications and advertising.

Our View

We think the project has the potential to be a huge success. The students that leave Hyper Island are generally of a different mind-set and level when compared to their counter-parts from other backgrounds. Manchster and the UK in general will have some brilliant talent walking out of the northern quarter and into industry here which can only be a good thing.

There are some amazing brands involved including Amaze, BBC, Channel 4, Code Computerlove, Dare, Glue Isobar, Love, McCann Eriksson, MTV, Poke, Profero, Saatchi & Saatchi, Sony Games, Stardotstar, The Neighborhood, TBWA and Wieden + Kennedy. The project has all the right backing and input to do something special.

We will try to keep you up to date on the progress of the project in the coming months. If you want any more information about Hyper Island in Manchester click here or follow on Twitter here.

Creative spaces are key to creative culture...

The view from the reception at Amaze. The first stop on our tour of creative offices in Manchester and London.

Lee and I hit the road last week, visiting Manchester and London to interview some of the folk involved in a new project with Hyper Island (more on this soon). In the course of three days we visited the offices of Amaze, Channel 4, Code Computerlove, Dare, McCann-Erickson, MTV and Wieden + Kennedy. For us it was an opportunity to have loads of fascinating conversations, some fun with our new video camera (again, more on this soon), and time to reflect on why offices in the world of digital are so very cool.

In the final days of 2010 (it seems a million years away to us now) the team here at Hebe Media spent a few hours dreaming about the kind of 'work space' we want be in. Don't get us wrong, it's not that we don't like our existing office (it's been a good friend since we opened for business last year), but the fact that it is "an office" is precisely the challenge we need to overcome.

The view as you leave the lift in the DARE officesWalking into somewhere like Dare, with all its unfinished ply and exposed concrete, and employees sharing lunch over a ping pong tournament; or the Eastend offices of Wieden + Kennedy, with their cycle filled reception and air of independence; or Code's canal side dwelling that hosts a sizzling BBQ whenever the Manchester weather allows, you definitely don't get the sense that this is just another office. Furthermore, you get a distinct impression that the space isn't just a part of a clever branding exercise: these spaces seem to embody, and simultaneously make possible, the particular culture of each organisation.

A little out of focus, sorry, but this image gives you a view on the entrance to Wieden + Kennedy's office.Lee has written about our work with Hyper Island on a number of occasions. One of the many reasons we enjoy our work with the Swedish-born school of all things digital is that we 'get' their methods. Post-it packed walls, working through 1,000's of ideas (even when they are terrible... mostly mine, I think) to find the few that fit, and using noise and energy as a lubricant for getting to great solutions. Adopting these methods requires a culture of openness, where mess and discontinuity are a part of the furniture. In turn we need a space that matches up to that culture. A space that is a fundamental part of our culture.

Hebe team member, Shang Ting showing putting some thoughts about our office down on paper before XmasWe think the Hebe office needs to be bigger and brighter, one space that is made of many kinds of different spaces. Make it happen space, relax space, reflect space, test space, mess space, retail space, gallery space, meeting space, drinking coffee space, play space, social space, party space, and so on. We also think that this is a space that we would want to share with others, so that our culture can cross fertilise. We want to start when we start, finish when we finish, and hang out when our brains can't take any more. In short, we want a creative space.

This is our dream. We hope to realise it in 2011, and we want anyone who shares this dream to join us. You know where to find us!

"All technology is neutral", a reflection on Sir Ken Robinson's speech for #shifthappens 2010

“All technology is neutral”. This was the essence of a keynote speech given by Sir Ken Robinson (@SirKenRobinson), via Skype from his home in California, to a packed out auditorium at York Theatre Royal.

Sir Ken Robinson addresses the audience at Shift Happens 2010

The speech came at the end of the opening day of the third annual Shift_Happens event, the brainchild of Pilot Theatre’s Artistic Director, Marcus Romer (@MarcusRomer). Inspired by Romer’s experiences at TED, Shift_Happens draws people together from across the cultural and creative industries (the arts, media and film, museums and libraries, and so on) to talk about how they can take part in, and drive the digital landscape. The event includes a series of speeches, covering areas of both digital practice and policy, as well as performances, user testing of new digital and interactive media works, and surgeries giving new arrivals to the conversation insight into the digital landscape.

We were very pleased to attend Shift_Happens on behalf of Hyper Island, who we work with lots, and who are working with Skillset and Screen Yorkshire on a new leadership programme for Yorkshire’s digital and creative workforce. Our mission was to find out what is making people in the arts tick when it comes to digital.

The keynote will be available to view online in the coming weeks, so I won’t summarise here (we will provide a link once available). To be honest, I’m not sure where I’d begin anyway: it moved back and forth between the earliest developments of technology, and predictions about where we might be heading. What I can summarise, though, is the thesis: that technology, historically, has shaped the condition of society and its cultures. In that process, technology has promoted ways of living (urbanisation, for example) that push us away from nature, and each other. However, the truth of the matter is that technology is not actively working towards these ends: it is not looking to drive the wedge. Indeed, technology is only ever passive – “all technology is neutral”. What matters, then, is how we use technology. If we use it responsibly then it will promote creativity and spiritual wellbeing. If we don’t then we could be in trouble.

Sir Ken’s keynote followed another presentation (part speech, part crowd-souring performance lecture) by Andy Field, Artistic Director of Forrest Fringe Festival (a free festival phenomenon that landed at the Edinburgh Fringe a few years ago).

Andy Field, of Forrest Fringe Festival, talks to Director of National Theatre Wales, John E McGrath

By accident or design, Field’s speech set a clear context for Ken Robinson’s keynote, and made it’s own call for a reconsideration of how technology is used by artists, to affect change: paraphrasing… “digital is a field that we are all, as artists and creative people, right at the forefront of: even if we were, in many ways, the last to arrive at the party. Rather than using technology to re-use existing ideas and content, we should be using our art to rip the heart from technology. We should bring art and technology together to dream stupid, impossibly grand visions of what the future might look like… It is true that no one can break the Internet, but we should all be trying.

So, to end where I began (or, rather, where Sir Ken began), all technology is neutral. It is passive, non-political, non-destructive. What activates technology is us, and it is up to us to determine its uses and by extension the shape of tomorrow’s society. That all seems simple, doesn’t it? Well, not if you skip back to the middle of Sir Robinson’s presentation when he shared a prediction: that by 2050 the average personal computer will have the same processing power as all of human consciousness. Machines that think, and learn, and re-write their operating systems based on their experiences. Will technology still be neutral then?

While you ponder that one the team at Hyper Island are heading off to buy copies of the Sarah Connor Chronicles, and here at Hebe we're getting started on the bunker.