Europrix Top Talent Award Jury 2007 (2)

The trip to Salzburg yesterday was awful. I had a transfer in Frankfurt. But the plane for Frankfurt arrived late due to the bad weather. Of course I missed the connecting flight from Frankfurt o Salzburg and had to spend the afternoon in the airport; part of it attempting to get through a security check of more than twenty minutes (and they never caught a terrorist despite all those measures; this while you are not checked on liquids and gel in Croatia, Bahrain and Dubai). It gives people a secure feeling and politicians an idea that they are doing something for a secure society.

But arriving in Salzburg was like being greeted in a in a big sauna. There was a group of Europrix veterans (first five years) and veterans of the Europrix Top Talent Award (of the last five years). I had met my friend Cai and Martin Casey of Arekibo in Ireland, the winner of the first students’ award at Frankfurt airport. In the same plane was in fact the first spokesperson for the Europrix jury, Peter Kabel, who is these days a venture capitalist. But at the restaurant more young veterans were waiting: Irena from Slovenia, Jozef from Hungary, Karin from Salzburg, Frank from Graz and Ted from Paris. And there were some new faces. And this morning there was another surprise with the overnight arrival of Silvia –Adriana Ticau, a former Romanian state secretary, minister as well as senator and these days Member of the European parliament; in politics time flies (see photograph). Silvia was part of the Wold Summit Grand Jury team in Dubai in 2003.

This morning the work started in earnest. Happily enough the entries for the Europrix Top Talent Award had been previewed, so that the workload had been reduced to 125 entries for some 13 jurors. Of those 125 entries there were nine Dutch entries, which is not bad; the record still stands at 23. Today all the jurors had at least seen four out of the eight categories with roughly 30 entries each. And I enjoyed the old jury labour of viewing, thinking and evaluating; either grading them high or low. By the end of the day the shortlist was put together, which usually leads to some heavy discussions, in which jurors attempt to convince their fellow jurors of their views. Tomorrow it is decision time for the 24 award nominees, the eight category winners and the one overall winner. At the end of the day the jurors soaked up some sunrays, after two days of bad weather (see photograph).

The day was ended with a dinner under the castle, not in the centre of Salzburg. It was an enjoyable meal with an exchange about the policy on the creative industries in the respective countries and about the role of the public broadcast companies in digital media. So far governments in the UK and the Netherlands have sponsored the public broadcast companies heavily in creating portals, theme portals and international radio stations all over internet. They are quite a force in the national arena of internet, but they hardly play at an equal level with commercial companies like commercial broadcast stations like RTL and SBS or commercial internet companies. And they are not really innovative; as I have said before: they are riding the waves trying to keep up with every upcoming fad and are repressively tolerant towards user generated content, as long as their name remains immaculate.

Blog Posting Number 879

Tags: digital media competition, broadcast, creative industry