My rough rough notes from Henry Jenkins http://henryjenkins.org/

opening statement at Future of Entertainment 3

“Amazed I was, it made such sense, and it was at so little expense!

no press release no ad campaign, those days are gone, the rules have changed.”

-first slide.

speaking to viral culture and the nature of marketing and advertising.

A quilt is the first thing you will find if you Google for “Convergence.”

We are chasing after a cultural understanding of what Convergence means. It is not a magical set of links between technologies. Instead, convergence is a cultural process. Ideas about brands will play themselves out across all possible media platforms. The convergence is in our heads and in our social interactions together. In a networked society, people are increasing forming knowledge communities to pool information and work together to solve problems they could not confront individually.

We call that collective intelligence.

We are seeing an emergence of a new form of participatory culture. (a contemporary version of folk cutlure!!!) as consumers take media in their own hands reworking its content to serve their personal and collective interests.

what is the difference between mass media and participatory culture? Where are the gates between them and why are they there? Participatory culture has been largely embraced by most of the creative industries.

What is the next step past this? We are going into a space that we don’t yet understand. We are speaking about these issues in relationship to web 2.0.  Web 2.0 was the beginning of participation and convergence culture.

The debate is beginning. There is a cultural shift in the way that companies relate to consumers.

In addition there is an increasingly aware consumer base, they know they are contributing content. They are savvy consumers. But the consumer operates under a different logic with different motives. The consumer wants to bargain for identity and rights.

“I am not your user generated content.”

The myth of ‘viral media’ begins to emerge. There is a promise of viral media cash.. magic for corporations… But what is it? How to do it? How do we control the flow of revenue and brands?

We need to shatter the myth of viral media. Additionally the consumer has the myth of ‘memes’. Both of these draw on biology. Why is this? Memes and viral both relate to infection.