Night Zookeeper at the CMC
Night Zookeeper roared into life as an idea for a story set in a world of Time Travelling Elephants and Old Sea Lion Generals. This story runs through all of our games and educational resources and is at the emotional core of what we do and believe in. The story is a metaphor for creative self-expression and childhood bravery and we use it to stimulate imaginations and inspire people.
We are proud of the job we have already done in bringing the importance of kids’ digital creativity to the fore, but we want to do more and believe that sharing our story across different media will be an exciting and compelling way to do this.
It was with this mindset that I travelled to Sheffield last week to attend the Children’s Media Conference. I wanted to find partners to bring Night Zookeeper to life beyond our classroom apps and website. Specifically, I was looking for: animators, book publishers, broadcasters and technology partners for our brand.
I was very fortunate to have been asked to appear on a couple of panel sessions to help raise Night Zookeeper’s profile. The theme of the conference was Child@Heart and an important strand of this was learning and education. Night Zookeeper has grown in schools across the UK, so it turns out this was the perfect conference for us to attend.
On day one, I was delighted to participate in a workshop on educational games run by Kirsten and Martha from @edugameshub. They challenged attendees to create an educational game idea for a piece of existing intellectual property. It was a great session, with lots of ideas flowing from the creative minds of organisations like Aardman, TinyPop and playcollective. I also loved my chance to be a judge and discuss the ideas they presented with my fellow panellists @cowlyowl, @preloaded and @ramathing.
Afterwards, we made our way across the Crucible for @MrDylanCollins keynote address. I had met with Dylan a few weeks before and had a suspicion that he wouldn’t shy away from controversy. He didn’t disappoint, and caused quite a stir with assertions that we were at an inflection point where small, niche children’s media companies and global mega corps would be all that could survive in the digital age. I loved his examples of children creators, however, which is something we see and celebrate all the time at Night Zookeeper.
Then came evening drinks and by then, I was starting to think I actually knew a fair few people at the conference. It was great to catch up with friends who have really taken us under their wing and helped us from day one: @sharnajackson, @dinoboy89, @nickbrw, @stuartdredge, @PeterRobinson81, @jensbachem, @AscensionGrp and many more.
Everyone I met at the CMC was quite simply lovely. I have attended a lot of conferences, across a variety of industries and this one was genuinely the most open, caring and welcoming conferences I have ever been to.
I had far too many amazing conversations over the three days to list them. The kind words about Night Zookepeer, the encouragement and congratulations for our efforts to-date and the business meetings that have come about as a results of the conference is staggering. I will be busy for weeks with follow up.
On Friday, I participated in the @BBC sponsored Innovation Forum alongside Mario Dubois @Mar10_D, Ylva Hallen @ylvahallen and many others. It was a great session chaired by Julier Tzabar @PluginMedia. Night Zookeeper seemed to go down well, with people really understanding our desire to encourage children’s creativity.
Once again, I want to sincerely thank everyone that I met and spoke with at the CMC. See you all next year!
Night Zookeeper Josh.