The first session after lunch focused on digital media and entertainment, with the first presentation given by David Gurney, co-founder of Blue Rocket Productions. David talked about the company’s history developing multimedia entertainment, and how the economics of production have become harder as the media has become more advanced.

He also talked about the difficulty inherent in looking into the digital entertainment industry’s future.

“We are in a market where it is getting harder to tell the true innovators from the people who are just good marketers, and audiences are moving away from channel loyalty to brand loyalty,” Gurney said. “Audiences are slipping away from television into Facebook, or into World of Warcraft. So the advertisers know this and are pulling their money and putting it into online where they can quantify their results through use of metadata. So that leaves the broadcasters with less money for commissioning, which means the audiences are offered less and are moving even more online. As content producers we are constantly wondering how we can monetise a space that is becoming more and more fragmented.”

Furthermore, the new gatekeepers have not come from a traditional TV background- they are telecommunications companies and device makers.

There are upsides however.

“The future, particularly with faster broadband, will enable us to exchange ideas very quickly with international partners,” Gurney said.

The second presentation was given by Evan Manolis, group senior product manager for AV at Samsung Electronics Australia. He discussed the company’s three year process to bring convergence technologies and content to televisions. He said the television is now very much an entertainment hub, and his company has partnered with some of the biggest content partners in Australia. Moving forward about a third of Samsung’s televisions will be Internet-connected smart TVs.

He also talked about the Your Video function that is now embedded into TVs.  The service has access to tens of thousands of videos that can be bought as you please on a pay-per-view basis. In  Australia however there is a lack of content providers, can tie into freinds’ recommendations through Facebook, and also integrate your own video content.

He also described Samsung as one of the new gatekeepers described by Gurney. The company has brought sport to its TVs through its tie-up with Telstra Bigpond, and is signing up other content details across Australia. Eventually Samsung will enable Australians to watch foreign television stations live on its television over the Internet.

I’m currently attending the annual Korea-Australia-New Zealand (KANZ) Broadband Summit in Hobart, and tomorrow morning will be giving the breakfast address.I’ll be blogging selectively throughout the day, and it is also being streamed live.

After a brief welcoming address from Professor Mike Miller, emeritus professor at the University of South Australia, the opening speech was given by Australia’s Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy. The Senator talked about the long history of friendship between Australia, New Zealand and Korea, and the partnerships that have been formed, including one between Korea and CSIRO. The Australian animation company Crewjo also got a mention for its alliance with a Korean company for the production of educational content. He also talked about the partnership between Australia and New Zealand to reduce trans-Tasman mobile roaming charges.

He also talked about the start differences in the deployment of broadband between the three counties – Australia and New Zealand being in the middle of their next-generation broadband deployments, while Korea is recognised as a world leader in broadband. He said it was fitting that the conference be held in Tasmania, where the National Broadband Network first went live.

he also talked about how Australia’s productivity performance has slowed to 1.4 percent, from almost double that in the previous decade.

“Ubiquitous high speed broadband is the key to the nation’s economic and social future, and the key to participating in the digital economy,” he said. “(High-speed broadband) drives productivity. It will connect Australians to each other, and the world.”

His address was followed by one from Mr See Joong Choi, the chairman, Korean Communications Commission, who talked about the changes the have occurred in Korea as a result of the introduction of broadband technology into Korea.

“Our three nations have a common goal of pursuing economic development and the advance of digital culture with high-speed broadband infrastructure,” he said. “The Korean government has established three mid to long term development projects since 1995 to roll out an ultra-fast broadband network.  These network upgrading projects will not only support the expansion of a smart society, but lay the foundation for the development of a digital economy.”

He also discussed the idea that unless Korea develops a culture of being able to capture the benefits of these network developments – it is the applications and services that are vital, and they must be the focus of ongoing development. Society must als be educated as to the issues of cyber-safety as more and more of its actions move online. Finally, he talked about the role that broadband can play in reducing greenhouse emissions through the use of ICT for energy saving activities, particularly the use of cloud computing.

The final opening address was given by Hon. Steven Joyce, the New Zealand Minister for Communications and Information Technology. Mr Joyce talked about New Zealand’s Ultra-Fast Broadband network deployment, which is occurring in partnership with the private sector and aims to deliver high speed broadband to 75 percent of the population by 2019.  The country is also deploying a rural network, the Rural Broadband Initiative, for high-speed access in regional areas, which aims to give at least 5 Mbps to more than 80 percent of regional areas. Altogether the two networks will give high speed broadband to more than 90 percent of the nation’s population.

The opening address of the second session for the day was given by Peter Harris, secretary for the Department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy, who discussed the new Convergence Review. He talked about how the NBN will change the paradigm of media delivery in Australia.

“The time has come to examine the regulartory structures that underpin the businesses that deliver services over these networks,” Mr Harris said.

To paraphrase, the impact of technology on the media sector has been stark. We are moving away from the age of the television and towards the  age of the intelligent screen. About 20 percent of TVs sold in the US last year were Internet-connected, and a third of US households will have Internet-connected televisions by 2015.

He also talked about the changes in content, and the desire of Telstra and others to get more access to live sports and other big-audience events. Netflix is taking on original content, telstra wants Internet AFL rights, and Hulu is looking at coming into Australia. There are now over 45 million IPTV subscribers in the world, and growth rates of more than 60 percent are being reported in some parts of Asia. He showed Nielsen figures that showed that Internet-connected Australians are watching 1.5 hours of video on mobiles, 2.7 hours of IPTV and 4.2 hours of ‘catch-up’ TV, and 5.5 hours of downloads.

The second presentation was given by Andrew Wilshire, the managing director of consulting company Tomorrow, who talked about convergence as being like a Swiss Army knife that is changing the way that businesses are operating adn allowing the reinvention of business.

He also talked about how the world is being indexed, with the data used to sell value-added services, such as by the website Foodspotting. Abstract business models are emerging that are creating new forms of monetising services. The changes are widespread – price comparison applications and bar-code readers make it easy for consumers to compare retail prices, classified advertising in print has been almost wiped out, and dozens of other industries face similar issues. Other trends include the better use of customer data and the need to stop thinking about owning the supply chain from end to end. Often it is the largest companies that have the greatest resources but have the most trouble with changing – all of this means looking outside for expertise.