5 Things We Learned From The Roshan Abbas Keynote Speech On The Future Of Content

At the recently concluded Tech And Innovation Summit 2023 organised by Entrepreneur India in Bangalore, Founder of Kommune India, Roshan Abbas, gave an intriguing key note address on ‘With the rise of on demand content, how will it change the way content is created?’

Abbas spoke about how we’ve gone from a generation that didn’t have a TV in every house to the current stage where we are spoilt for choice between various modes of media. How do we decide which movie to go for? What sets certain top content creators apart from the rest? Which way are we headed in? Talking about the creation, distribution and consumption of entertainment, Abbas gets his points across with relatable examples.

1. Living in the era of choice: When Roshan Abbas was a kid, every Sunday around 40 of his neighbours would gather at his place with the permission of his mother to watch Chitrahar, a Bollywood song show on DD National. That was a time when not everyone had a TV. Four decades later, we live in a different era where we are all spoilt for choice. Some of us had seen the Oscars live at 6 am but for the ones who didn’t we had the choice on catching it the recorded version later. For the ones who had a paid subscription, they were not disturbed by irritating ads, but the rest had to bear with them, as not paying was a choice they had made.

Pathaan created a record with a box office collection of 1,000 crores. During the screening of Pathaan, the trailers of two other films were shown- Shehzada and Selfie, neither were able to do even 1/100^th of the collection that Pathaan did, much lesser actually. There are two screens in the current scenario, the screen of spectacle (the movie screen) and the screen of intimacy (mobile phone). The first one involves a lot of friction- coordinating with different people who you want to go with, getting parking space, reaching there on time and spending a huge amount on overpriced popcorn.

The other option is available to you where you want, how you want and when you want it. And when you make the choice of spectacle, you ask yourself is it worth spending so much money on to go to the movie hall? It is like the circus or where the gladiators would fight, and only if that movie is big enough in spectacle will you decide to go for it. So while choice is why you choose things it is also why you reject things.

SEE VIDEO: Keynote speech by Roshan Abbas: Tech & Innovation Summit 2023

2. A Forgiving Generation: Which brought Abbas to his next point- about how his generation was a much more forgiving one. They would sit through three hours of a bad film, while the current gen can’t sit through 30 seconds of bad content and this is what choice has done to us.

3. Entertain or Empower or Visibility: Online short form content has taken various forms- there is the viral dress up challenge- the ‘entertain me’ economy. Then there is the ’empower you’ economy, one part of which are the finfluencers of today who show and tell us what decisions we should be taking in certain areas of our lives. Lastly, there is the make me visible economy, which says, ‘Can I be a hero?’ This is where we make content thinking if we could be the next top creator out there.

4. Intimacy and Personal Brands: When you are reading an article, there are several interruptions in the form of ads or suggestions which keep popping up on our screen. The creators who rose during the pandemic and after were those who created an intimacy between themselves and the audience through their videos. There doesn’t need to be great lighting or high production value, but more of a conversational style, something which Abbas advices people at his spoken word community.

Through their content, content creators have become brands by themselves. Influencer and actor Prajakta Koli was invited to the United Nations and at Davos. The reason a young creator was invited there was because these elite groups which have their walled gardens also want people to see what is happening within their walls- and hence the need for a Prajakta to showcase it to the world through her followers.

5. Technology: With the advances in technology, our phone has become enabled with tools that can help us shoot, edit and upload videos. Gone are the days when we needed an edit machine, graphics and other devices to be able to produce video content. Hence, with the click of a button, it has become much easier to create content on our own.

The author can be reached at [email protected] and Instagram.com/kabirsinghbhandari