Excerpt from Culture Shift blog by Tim Kindberg:

Culture Shift Nairobi (as we called it), took place at Pawa 254 on the 15th and 18-20th February. Our theme was the digital moving image, including film, video, TV, animation. And it was the digital culture of this sector (practices, aesthetics, collaborations) that we sought to ‘shift’ in locally relevant ways. Our goal was a more productive digital media ecosystem. Our question: why isn’t Africa’s digital media as vibrantly present within the continent, and outside it, as its music is? We believe that a greater emphasis on digital media creativity and on content and experiences — as opposed to digital technology in the form of apps and what-not — will help bring that about. Plus we think that more collaborative ways of working are possible in the Kenyan context, in which creatives and technologists work together to achieve what they could not do by themselves.

So, there we were: facilitators plus 22 participants: dreamers, realists, spoilers. Creatives in the moving image ecosystem (film makers, animators, distributors, …). And techies (programmers, FabLabbers). Plus a pinch of social media types and games designers.

After introductions, presentations, discussions and creative limbering-up exercises on day 1, our five teams were ready to get their teeth into their projects. I call our approach, that of the Pervasive Media Studio where I come from, a sprint, not a hack. The design of new types of experience doesn’t involve code or hardware necessarily. Neither was this an exercise in business development. If we’re to be disruptive, first the creative faculties must be given free rein, unencumbered by thoughts of business plans. That can come later.

Read the full article here