Mediasmiths are sponsoring The Media Festival in Manchester this week.  The Media Festival is new, this is only its second year, and that freshness is one of the key reasons why we have chosen to support it.  The Media Festival captures two trends that we see emerging in media: the first is the greater emphasis on creative communities working outside of London, and the second is the need for a better understanding of creative production and changing technology.

There has always been a vibrant media scene outside of London, but too often it has been seen as secondary to London or acting as  feeder channel to London based media organisations.  Despite the BBC's past efforts, and maybe because of ITV's, there remains a concentration of money, talent and decision making in London.  It is questionable whether this is a good thing . Some economists may argue that such a concentration of people produces a strong "network" effect , where the proximity encourages more collaboration and the generation of better ideas.  Given the isolation in which many media professionals exist, and social networking technology enabling more virtual communication, this does not sound compelling. More likely is that the people who hold the purse strings like their flats in London, and homes in Oxford a bit too much.

The emergence of MediaCity UK in Salford is likely to change this, primarily because it is of such a scale that it has the potential for the first time to provide a fully functioning home for a large collective of media organisations outside of London. As the BBC move to Salford becomes a reality, we will see the creation of a new strong regional hub underpinned by the BBC but made successful by the other media organisations who will follow in their footsteps.  For someone who grew up in Dublin in the 80s, who looked  to Manchester as the heart of a dynamic and fresh media culture, it is heartening to see the potential for MediaCity UK to not only recreate that vibrancy but probably exceed it.  Its effect will ripple beyond Salford, and we hope that MediaCity UK will galvanise other media centres in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland as well as the rest of England, where strong regional and inter-regional networks could help rebalance a London bias.

And technology will be a critical element in that success.  One of the great attractions of The Media Festival is that it draws a diverse group of media professionals.  This is unlike other media events, notably IBC, NAB and MIPCOM that tend to focus on specific areas of the business.  The limitations of this niche approach in a market where technology is removing traditional barriers and enabling much greater sharing of content and blurring of traditional working roles is really beginning to show - events such as IBC are beginning to look archaic as it becomes apparent that the traditional broadcast video engineering world is beginning to shrink, and that many organisations in that market have failed to grasp how newer IT based media technologies can transform the way that they work and interact with their customers.

MediaCity UK presents a fantastic opportunity to build a media infrastructure that incorporates in its foundations the core of this new technology, namely the networking, storing and exchange of file based content rather than video tapes.  A flexible IT-based infrastructure where media organisations can access services rather than have to build their own technology, collaborate and share online, rather than travel to windowless meeting rooms, will liberate media professionals from some of the inherent constraints of traditional media technology.  This is the vision offered by MediaCity UK, and it is fitting that The Media Festival, which draws people with a similar vision, should be strongly linked to it.