Great Mind 2009

Sometimes, you are surprised by recognition from an unexpected source. It provides a very warm and welcome feeling when your efforts are rewarded, and I was recently the recipient of just such an acknowledgement.

It was from the Advertising Research Foundation, and I was given a certificate of distinction as part of their 'Great Mind 2009' award for my work on advertising technology at Real Time Content (my day job). You can read more about it on the Real Time Content blog.

What is interesting about the award is that my work is all about disruptive change. I work with a highly skilled and hugely knowledgeable team of colleagues (who should really all be mentioned on the 'Great Mind' award) on changing the way that media is created and delivered. We are making media that is flexible and malleable, rather than a fixed 'recording' that can only be played back. Instead, we want to make the media of the future something which can change in length, rating, presentation, style, and more.

Turning media into something that is not constrained to a single 'instance' turns it into a form that is more like a live performance, where what happens next is not pre-determined, but is controlled by the reaction of the audience. Adaptive media might be one way of describing it, and the word 'adaptive' is very significant...

The great advances in technology are often based on a generic version of more specific solutions. The wheel turns a lever, from a one-shot method of moving a heavy load forwards, into a continuous form. The computer is a general purpose information processing device that can be used whenever you want to manipulate data. Perhaps making media adaptive is another of these fundamental changes...