To my delight I’ve seen a lot of great transmedia-related projects turning up left and right in the TV business over the past months. One of the most obvious is of course ”Defiance”, which for the first time tries to blend an MMO 3rd person shooter with a scifi TV series and let the two influence each other. A highly anticipated venture, the game has opened to generally favoralbe reviews, while the TV series debutes right now. There are of course others, some of which will be presented these coming days.

I’ll be spending the next few days in Cannes at the MIPFormats, MIPTV and MIPCube conferences. A central hub for the TV industry, this is where a lot of new trends are revealed (and a lot of semi-old ones re-hashed). Looking at the programme for the days ahead, there are some things to be glad for. For the first time there is a session called ”How to make your format transmedia?”, a challenge I’ve written about several times on this blog.

There is a lot of talk about branded content, about social media formats, how to negotiate the difficult waters of multiplatform formats and so on. My hope is that I will see a clear shift forward, towards a world where ”transmedia” is no longer needed as a term, since every project is inherently as ”transmedia” as it has to be to achieve its maximum level and no one thinks twice about it.

Another interesting aspect at MIPFormats will be to observe what kind of value the market puts on social interaction, social media, social engagement. Will formats that are building on these variables be more or less successful on the marketplace?

During MIPTV and MIPCube, Monday to Thursday (although I’m leaving Wednesday late in the afternoon) there is even more to look forward to. Alongside stalwarts of the conference such as ”Fresh TV Around The World” are new and interesting sessions; ”Create killer social experiences”, the Content 360 pitches, a TV Hack Fest, a MIPCube start-up competition, how to create user interface etc and so on.

In between meetings I’ll be tweeting, and to what extent I have the time, blogging from the events. I’m also moderating a couple of sessions on Wednesday – ”Meet The Digital Producers” at 9.45am in the Producer’s Hub and ”Producers: Take Back Your Monetisaion Power” at 14.15 in Esterel. If you’re there, come say hi!