A guest blog by screen and digital specialist Gina Fegan
What are the three most useful aspects of Open to Export?
- Tips, advice and pointers to further information
- Contacts - both in territory and here in the UK
- Being able to access people who have problems, concerns or issues
Okay, so this is how it really works for me.
As the Screen and Digital Media specialist at UKTI, my time is spent linking companies and UKTI, working to make sure that UKTI’s support is as effective and as relevant as possible. At the moment I am doing some research on the opportunities in India. I happen to be focused on screen and digital media businesses, but I’m guessing it works the same way for every other company. After going through all the old files and reports on my desktop – which only confirmed things I already knew, I went on to OpentoExport.com and under ‘countries’ checked out ‘India’, not really knowing what I’d find.
I was struck by three things:
1) Under the ‘featured’ heading there was lots of information about setting up a business or generically doing business in India, really useful information but I didn’t need right away so I mentally bookmarked it for future reading.
2) Going through the ‘articles’ I found just what I was looking for in an article "Opportunities for UK businesses in India: Digital innovation" posted by Priya Kurien, for UK India Business Council. Although focused more on ITC, there was some really useful data on screen and digital media plus it was posted in May 2012 so current.
3) Then, as the added bonus, while I was reading my article something caught my eye, and I clicked through to ‘related articles’ on India - Opportunities In E-Healthcare. I had just had a conversation about this and was able to email the link to my contacts about an upcoming event in time for them to join in.
This way of using the site had already worked for me when I was doing similar research on Brazil - I found the articles by my colleague Nitan, they were just want I needed, I was able to contact him directly for the extra details - it meant that I didn’t waste his or my time - I knew exactly what I needed to ask.
Another way that I use the site is the reverse. What I mean is that rather than looking for answers to my questions I look at the questions to see if we are developing the right kind of information for companies exploring new market opportunities. Perhaps that’s another reason for companies to post the questions that are burning issues because then within UKTI we can see how best to help, in both the particular case, but also, as questions begin to repeat or as articles become more popular we can see where there is a real demand. For me, I have already been able to make sure that when preparing a pre-trade mission briefing I know the areas that really have to be covered.
It’s still early days for the Open to Export site but already I find that when I start looking for information, or for people who are well informed, in one area I will happily spent an hour reading other really interesting articles - often making me think about issues that I hadn’t even considered before. No matter where I start I find connections, links and comments that flow in naturally useful way and I guess that as more people add information it will only get better - I’ll have to be careful to allow enough time to take advantage of wealth of related material!
Gina Fegan is a Screen & Digital Media Specialist at UK Trade & Investment and is an international specialist on the emerging relationships between traditional media, new technologies and telecommunications. She advises global media companies, financing organisations, creative content producers and public sector agencies. She is also an active film producer (‘The Tournament’, ‘Devil’s Playground’). Gina is on the Arts and Humanities Research Council advisory board, BBC online advisory board, the advisory committee for Digital Hollywood and is a member of BAFTA. Gina founded the D-Media Network, which has 4,000 followers from across the creative industries