Wham BAM multimedia

FOR a long time they kept hitting the "snooze" button, but Irish businesses the are finally waking up to possibilities of using multimedia, the dancing chorus line technology of the computer world.

At least, that's the consensus of Irish multimedia developers who filled the back end of the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham in Dublin last week to woo interested companies at the second annual Business and Multimedia (BAM) conference.

Sponsored by Limerick's Business & Technical information Service (BTiS) and Multimedia Technologies Ireland (MTi), BAM itself is a measure of how yesterday's buzzwords have become today's must have technologies. A year ago, business familiarity with multimedia generally meant some manager had children who played with Myst or Millie's Math House. And the first BAM, held in October 1995, drew a curious but non committal business crowd who definitely flashed more curiosity than cash.

"It was really more a case of educating people about what multimedia was," explained one exhibitor, who had nonetheless come back for BAM 96. He said delegates, who ranged from corporate executives to college administrators interested in using multimedia for training, were again basically "just looking". However, exhibitors could discuss ways to use the technology rather than the technology itself, and most hope for future contracts from the day's networking.

The tentative interest the Government has begun to show in the fledgling new media field was backed up by Richard Bruton, officially Minister for Enterprise and Employment and unofficially the Tech Minister, who opened the conference with a promise to kick start his new steering committee developing a "National Information Society Strategy and Action Plan".

While scoring points for effort and enthusiasm, Bruton still somewhat stiffly uses the terminologies of new media, email and the Internet as if learning a new and somewhat confusing foreign language.

A more fluent speaker was Frans de Bruine, Director of the European Commission's DG XIII/E, whose conference address pressed for greater "content" development and less fuss over the technologies themselves.

Discussing Europe's competitive position in contrast to North America, he pointed out a number of strengths such as a long publishing tradition, a rich content base and diversity of cultures.

A recent EU study on electronic publishing (see Computimes, October 7th), which he launched in CD Rom form, predicts that multimedia - whether through CD-Roms or online delivery - will create one million new European jobs within 10 years.

Keynote speaker Kevin O'Brien of the Department of international Marketing Management at Bournemouth University argued that multimedia required a "paradigm shift" in marketing concepts because it allowed its audience to interact with the message, rather than passively receive it in a linear "narrative" form. Multimedia's strength and challenge is that it engages with its audience rather than just "telling".

Proof that multimedia is a strong growth area in Ireland was furnished by a company called Resolution in the exhibitors section. The London based recruitment firm specialises in sourcing employees for "the interactive computer industry". Consultant James Osborne said that such was the shortage of and demand for experienced people in the area in Ireland that they were kept busy supplying candidates from Britain.

The London multimedia scene is dominated by larger companies of 70 or so employees, he says, and has recently been downsizing. Smaller companies in Ireland or elsewhere in Britain, such as those in Scotland, the Midlands and Yorkshire, have proven more resilient than the London ones, he said.

Most of the energy of the conference was generated in the buzz of the exhibition area, where exhibitors vied to show off their latest corporate CD Roms. And not just to the possible clients: as several exhibitors admitted, BAM serves as a preening ground where developers can flash their digital plum age for each other and calculate where they currently fit in the competitive pecking order.