Innovative Individuals

Innovative Individuals: Bjarke Myrthu

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“I started my career [at] a newspaper but realized that there was a media revolution taking place elsewhere. I wanted to be part of it, and set out on a mission to define the Internet as a new medium for storytelling.” This short bio statement sums up the reason why we are featuring Bjarke Myrthu, co-founder of Magnum in Motion and Founder and CEO of Story Planet, as this week’s “Innovative Individual.” If anybody out there is truly shaking things up in the industry and carving a new path for multimedia storytelling, Bjarke is the man to watch.

Q) How do you drive innovation in your work?

A) It usually starts when I discover a project that I really like. It can be online, in a Magazine, at an exhibition or maybe just something someone says at a presentation.

Then I start thinking about what I would do if I had to solve the same task, or how this idea would look if it was implemented in one of my own projects. It usually simmers in the back of my mind, and then if it is the right thought it emerges later as part of a new idea.

I usually get really good ideas when I am at boring meetings, where I scribble in my notebook. Or when I go running and let my mind wander off. But like I said it usually starts with an existing idea.

I like mashing up ideas and thoughts that others have had and turning them into something new – and at some point I feel they are so new and so much me that I can call it a new idea that I have created. I guess you can call me kind of a remixer.

I think the real geniuses are the ones who can come up with a totally new and unique invention. I am not a genius, far from, I am just really passionate about what I do, and quite hard working. And good at finding inspiration.

Q) What piece in your portfolio are you most proud of and why?

A) I think that would be Magnum In Motion. It was an idea I had been musing about for a while, and it turned out Mark Lubell (Magnum Director) and Claudine Boeglin (my co-founder) were sitting in different parts of the world with similar thoughts. We came together, and by chance we came together and created something much bigger than ourselves. This is exactly why I am proud of MIM – because it has grown above and beyond me. I employed interns that are now running the show, or have moved on to really great jobs elsewhere. It makes me really humble and proud to see people grow like that.

If I should point out one project it must be The Enemy Within which was the second interactive documentary I produced. I think back when we did it in 2001 (I collaborated with a photographer and a journalist), we were really pushing the possibilities of the medium and inventing new things. And we had almost no restraints or boundaries – if we could think something up we tried it out in this project. It took us three intense months to produce – and about three months to recover afterwards.

Q) Please provide a brief educational and professional history.

A) My big issue is to use the properties of online media to create new forms of storytelling, not just distribute old media. I quit my job as a newspaper reporter to produce interactive documentaries in 2001, and my projects quickly became very photo-based as I found audio and visuals better suited for the screen than long texts. So I started working tightly together with photographers.

In 2002 I won the American Online News Awards for a story I did about Russian Soldiers Returning from Chechnya (The Enemy Within). I got a bit of attention for this as it was one of the first real full-blown online documentaries, and one of the things that happened was that Magnum asked if I could help them figure out what to do online. So I hooked up with Mark Lubell and Claudine Boegline and made up a concept called Magnum In Motion that became the production studio / online publication of Magnum.

However, I found that there were too much technical work with Flash, HTML, FinalCut etc, and it was really hard to collaborate effectively between journalists, photographers, designers and others involved in online documentaries. So this slowly emerged into the idea of Storyplanet, which I am working on now together with Pete Barr-Watson, Joichi Ito and Mohamed Nanabhey. We are getting pretty close to shipping our V2 which will be our first real working product. Basically Storyplanet aims to create a network of storytellers that can collaborate and edit interactive stories with out the need for technical knowledge.

Q) Where do you believe multimedia fits into today’s society and how will that role change over time?

A) The term multimedia is very broad, and I am actually not too crazy about this label. I would rather talk about news journalism, investigative journalism, documentaries etc. What I am really concerning myself with is the in-depth documentary. I think this format is extremely important. It might not be the kind of stories that a lot of people see and talk about, but people who see a great documentary will remember it, and it will transform the way they think about a specific issue. News is just this big carpet of white noise that nobody can remember the next day.

The documentary has had a hard time in recent years in traditional media, but I think the Internet and digital media are really changing this, and providing a lot of new opportunities for these formats. New players like NGO’s, foundations and networks of individuals can create their own media outlets and fund them in new innovative ways.

I think we will see a lot of MediaStorm‘s and Bombay Flying Club‘s in the future – small agile entities that are really innovative – that are loosely joined, but have the ability to make a change in the world when all their stories are combined.

Q) What is one thing on your “To-Do” list?

A) We really need to ship V2 of Storyplanet. This takes up the first five to ten spots on my to-do. The next few spots are reserved for research. There are a bunch of projects, books and reports I would like to check out. Finally I would like to have more time to meet with interesting storytellers and people from the media industry. I always leave with new inspiration when I hang out with interesting people.

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Want to nominate a deserving colleague, friend or inspirational figure to be highlighted in this series? Confidential nominations can be emailed to innovativeinteractivity@gmail.com on an ongoing basis. Self nominations are also welcome. A person will be featured every Friday, so look for the next “innovative individual” Friday, April 9th!

Other posts that might interest you:

• Innovative Individuals: Evelio Contreras
• Innovative Individuals: Lauren Clifford-Holmes
• Innovative Individuals: Poul Madsen

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