The Fat Guy

By Harry van Vliet on 7 October 2009

No I am not talking about a new cartoon series or a new Flickr community but about something I picked up today at the conference ‘Business Model Innovation Cultural Heritage’ at the Hermitage in Amsterdam (not a terrible bad place to spend a afternoon by the way). The term ‘de dikke man’ refers to the added value one must seek in developing new innovative services. Eppo van Nispen of DOK, keynote speaker at the conference, used it. He demonstrated what he meant by this by showing a video clip of an audition of a Michael Jackson imitator on one of the many ‘nobody’s got talent’ shows aired nowadays. Nothing special so far, but halfway through the act a ‘fat guy’ joins him and they start dancing together. The crowd goes wild.

The ‘fat guy’ became something of a leitmotiv for me during the afternoon. Scanning the program in preparation of the conference (yes I do that sometimes…), I was surprised that on the issues being discussed (organisation, ICT-infrastructure, copyright, and earnings logics), there seemed to be no place for the value proposition. Not diminishing the importance of the other issues, but for me the value proposition is a key component in business modelling. And although Eppo introduced it strongly in his opening speech it somehow got lost during the afternoon. That is not to say the discussions weren’t interesting, but if you say nothing substantial about the value proposition during an afternoon discussion on business modelling you somehow missed the point…

For me one such value proposition in the context of culture heritage is regarding your digital assets not as part of a finalised professional story, but as a semi finished product that others, that is us!, can pick up, manipulate, transform, fuck up and make it into their own story. Talking about commitment! If you take this as a starting point it trickles down to all kinds of decisions regarding organizational issues and ICT. You can read more about this in ‘De Digitale Kunstkammer’ (DDK).

Another thing that struck me was the overemphasis on the value of the digital artefacts. What about the authentic object, why do we line-up to see a ‘real’ Rembrandt if we can look at it anytime, anywhere via the Rijksmuseum widget and their iPhone app? Sure you can discuss how the digital gives a new dimension to what regard authentic (please do, and think about for instance Walter Benjamin in the process). But there is a value in seeing for instance that certain ‘real’ handwritten letter, even if it is behind glass.

The presentations and discussion also made me realise how many issues DDK doesn’t address. Oh well, it was never intended to be the final answer to the meaning of it all, and getting some compliments on the book during the afternoon made me head home in good spirit.

tagged with: business models, cultural heritage

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