The Scottish Digital Media Industry Advisory Group has produced 'Digital Inspiration' believed to be the first strategy document for Scotland's digital media sector, understood to comprise some 500 companies with a further 800 companies in Scotland involved in the information and communication technologies (ICT) sector.

Group chairman, (right) Stuart Cosgrove (Channel 4 director of nations and regions) said: “Many of the simple things we do every day are being transformed by digital technologies - from online news and digital photography, to music downloads, multiplatform television and social networking.

“These markets offer huge potential for Scotland and we want to ensure that our companies are able to act on these opportunities. To achieve a step-change in Scotland’s global reputation in digital media, we need to increase the number of companies, encourage them to leverage, own and exploit the platforms on which they operate, and extract more value from intellectual property rights.”

Strategy key recommendations:
* Increase both the number and scale of digital media companies
* Increase the volume and value of innovative digital media platforms owned or managed from Scotland
* Greater and more profitable role for Scottish companies in the distribution and interactivity chain
* More sophisticated understanding of the value to be derived from digital media in a growing and evolving business sector
* Greater commitment to improving performance of companies in the creative ‘value-chain’
* More profitable leverage of Intellectual Property rights
* Launch a pilot programme of tax and fiscal benefits to support the Scottish games sector in 2010 to increase its global competitiveness
* Generate greater investor awareness of digital media as a growth sector and greater investor readiness on the part of emergent companies
* Cultivate a more ambitious national culture of growth, so Scottish companies can buy and not always be bought.

"[Our vision] is to create a high growth, world class cluster of content, platform and technology providers, developing and distributing innovative digital content and technologies to global markets.

"Achieving this vision will require commitment and investment from businesses, academia, government and the public sector in five critical areas for development: innovation, interactive distribution platforms, internationalisation, investment and infrastructure."

Scotland is home to games companies which have made a significant global impact such as Realtime Worlds (securing $81m of venture capital since 2006) and Rockstar North (developers of the fastest-selling global entertainment product of all time, the video game: Grand Theft Auto IV).
In on-line marketing, BigMouth Media is a leading international digital marketing company based in Edinburgh.

The Scottish ICT sector features many companies which compete with great success internationally, including Craneware, Axios Systems and Memex.

In Glasgow, the Digital Media Quarter at Pacific Quay is being developed to house digital media enterprises.

The University of Abertay, in Dundee, recently launched the world’s first degree in Computer Games Design, and the Dare to be Digital competition.

Subsequently it has been followed by Edinburgh's first dedicated video games lab at Edinburgh Napier backed by Brian Baglow and Kenny Mitchell. The games lab was designed primarily as a resource for students on the University’s new BSc in Interactive Entertainment, aimed at creating a next generation of games programmers working with 24 networked Xbox 360s and PCs, a 50-inch plasma screen and large projected screen, as well as robotics development capabilities.

Adds Terry Hurley, senior director of Digital Media and Enabling Technologies at Scottish Enterprise: “I would like to thank the Digital Media Industry Advisory Group  for their tremendous work in producing this strategy, that sets out both the opportunities in this exciting sector and the priority areas for action."


The link website on the press release got its link late in the day, for those early birds who struggled with the block/parking domain and publicity service site of Demys Internet Intellectual Property Managment run by Penny Hearn and Andrew Lothianan web.

Now the full 36page pdf can be brooded on. Great graphics, but not quite interactive yet! It should make a good update companion to that authorative reports on the games development industry impact published in October 2008 by Oxford  Economics.