A seminar will be held in Virginia late June this year on ‘Cross-Media Teams: Strategic Thinking for a Multi-Platform World’.

This seminar brings together senior executives from both Web and traditional operations to tackle the challenges and rewards of multi-platform media and interdepartmental cooperation. Participants boost teamwork while getting the core knowledge and strategies required to build lasting multi-platform news operations.

Of the intended results listed the following are of interest to me:

* Alignment of online and offline strategies and workflows to maximize the impact and reach of news and information initiatives on all platforms
* Creation of a cohesive, multimedia vision to integrate strategies and workflow of all available delivery channels

It seems that the areas of advertising and journalism are the earliest to jump into understanding cross-media. This is due to both being highly reliant on market force. Franchise creators are also keen to understand the area, as well as iTV developers. I just wonder why there isn’t more interest in the creative and academic realms? Perhaps because the use of cross-media implies lots of $$ and corporate backing and so is considered either out-of-reach or not Art. If anything, the lack of consideration of the area is an indication of a lack of understanding of how audiences are experiencing works. Obviously not many creators and Narratologists have their ear to the ground.