From today’s keynote on “Looking for Ideas: a Media+Entertainment Perspective” at X|Media|Lab - good turn-out in Auckland, with start-up interest in content and social media.

My keynote was preceded by 42 Entertainment CEO Susan Bonds with her imaginative distribution narrative-styled ARGs (alternate reality games for The Dark Knight’s “Why So Serious” and Halo 2’s “I Love Bees”), followed by a cross-platform magazine company HB Media Ltd director Vincent Heeringa, who reminded me of a Kiwi equivalent of early Richard Branson and Felix Dennis.

The ARGs were very convincing, and talking to Susan afterwards, there’s more intellectual property here than the studios take advantage of, in terms of content communities created and unique registrants. Early beginnings of a new production model for marketing (and monetizing that marketing).

On the HB Media front, leading with a well designed mag called “Idealog” - very tough model in print media; everyone wants to read magazines and newsprint - especially in bathrooms - but the model needs to be social news crowdsourced…to survive. More updates to follow…

# Apologies on Slideshare crunching the text.

For those innovative startups feeling the credit crunch - and which of the few/many aren’t(?) - an intriguing 33-slide read from North Venture partners, aka former Virgin Interactive team members. Given the lack of investor appetite these days, many newco’s are going the bootstrappy, ‘develop revenues first’ route. This “Breaking” deck talks about getting past the filters and gatekeepers of capital. And speaking of Virgins, Sir Richard Branson is running an interesting PitchTV or pitchfest online, via his Business Stripped Bare blog, and airing on Virgin Atlantic planes. The 33-page deck after the jump…