Cross-media # 1. From Star Wars through Big Brother  has been the first italian event on cross-media communication, organized by the network Cross-media.it, directed by prof.Max Giovagnoli with the collaboration of Link Campus University of Malta in Rome.
A full day of training experience on the application of cross-media for entertainment, journalism and institutional communication, dedicated to professionals, young writers and authors and broadcast employees. Cinema, tv, internet, mobile and advertising with videogames, Iptv and format-tv have been the different areas for case studies, panels and performance in the wonderful auditorium S. Leone Magno of the faculty of Link Campus in Rome. See the streaming on the website: www-linktv.it and, to know more about the program, visit www.cross-media.it.  And may the force be with you.

Max Giovagnoli, Fare cross.media. Fron Big brother to Star Wars. Theory and techniques of the integrated and distribuited use of simultaneous media, Dino Audino Editore, pp.160 Euro 18,00

Performing cross-media entails carrying out information, entertainment and communication campaigns in an ‘integrated’ manner, thereby simultaneously utilising a range of media forms within large editorial projects. From reality show (Big Brother, Operation Triunfo, Talpa) to film promotion (Star Wars, Harry Potter, The Ring 2). From multi-medial journalism (BBC news, SKY TV 24, RAI news 24) to video mobile telephone use and internet serials. From inter-business, institutional and political communication, to the creation of emotional marketing campaigns and new formats for cable links. The book describes, through examples, simulations, and contributions by leading international scholars, the techniques, the scenarios and the fundamental rules necessary in order to carry out communication project distributed across various media forms. Among the first publications in Europe on the subject, the work uses the research on collective imagination, emotional competence, project management and alternative dramaturgies to give order to a discipline where, to this day, too much scope is given to the talent of the individual and to an improvisation that generates mysterious successes or unexpected flops in the sectors: information, entertainment and communication.

Max Giovagnoli teaches at the Link-Campus – University of Malta in Rome He is director of the cross-medial workshop proiettiliperscrittori. He has served as chief of the editorial staff for the italian Big Brother. His previous books include Scrivere il Web, 2002; Web writing, 2003; Come si fa una tesi di Laurea con Internet, 2004, and Fuoco ci vuole, 2005.

From my recent interview with Salvatore Cotogno, Interact Department / Endemol Italy, the definitive confirmation of the presence of two different cross media models in TV Entertainment: a supportive/proactive, and a competitive/defense one. The difference is in the use of the same contents, you see, but also in the dialogue with the audience, in the use of dramatic structures of the narration, in the emotional skills and, of course, in the contract formula with the broadcaster and the mobile/web partner of the project. But we ought to use more, and better, the competitive/defense model, to enpower the interactive dimension of the cross media storytelling, I believe.

One of my last attempt is to create a cross media model using some recent theories built up for the shape of the universe. There's a strong connection between shape, movement and result in the curving of the universe and the same concepts in the crossmedia project's structure and living. Here in the images three 3d models for the universe. Try to connect'em with three different cross media habitat you lived, expecially with narration and techniques. Personally, it really seems positively working in one of the first chapters of my next book (Image, from left to right: neuter curving, positive curving and negative curving model).

Let's take a look to the remarkable cross media report written by Mr. Jack Bouman for the Acten group some months ago (www.acten.org). After 10 years of cross media activities is truth, for many of us it isn't still a question of terms the need of distinguishing between interactive media, multi-platform media, Integrated media, converge media and hybrid media. But, is it really a matter of remediation?

Tonight at 21 pm the public reading of my last novel, Fuoco ci vuole, at the University "La Sapienza" of Rome. The reading will be held for the celebration of the 700 anniversary of the foundation of the atheneum. After radio (as a format on storytelling), cinema (it was a screenplay, before achieving the literary asset) and web (I published it as a web fiction in 26 epishodes, in my blog,  last summer), Fuoco ci vuole will encounter the press and the event's formula al last. It's time to start thinking to a resolution of the project? I wouldn't. Crossing media with a story is a way to learn a way to re-desing future, as I read a pair of years ago.

Let's say a word about the studies lead in Australia by Christy Dena, one of the most referred cross media researcher in these last days. Here two rows imported from her amazing blog, www.crossmediastorytelling.com:  "The notion of cross-media storytelling is creeping into academic and art. A sibling concept, 'distributed aesthetics', is being bandied about at a few 'spaces'. " I can say that Italy is a strange field of studies, in this sense. Academy anc university are not so positive with cross media discipline, in fact, either in their teaching activities that in their authoring labs. I'm trying to modify - considering my little role - this sense of march, but it's not so easy, believe me.