Q&A

Companies and individuals can participate in this project as interviewees or as supporters of several short thematic documentary films. Please have a look here for more details.

The main tone of this project is positive with the purpose to inspire people to think about the digital future. Technology with the potential to rapidly transform existing structures in business, government, and society is just emerging. This needs an open mind toward its future development, and critical thinking about the future we actually want to live in. This project paints a positive picture of digital technologies and its protagonists, and it shall inspire viewers with technical and non-technical backgrounds to discuss the challenges and opportunities that will shape the future in decades to come.

The primary audience includes informed readers of the business and technology section of leading news media including NZZ, New York Times, Financial Times, the Economist, BBC, Wired, etc.

The secondary audience is much wider. With my previous film about the blockchain (www.blockchain-documentary.com) I assumed the audience would be relatively narrow, but it actually reached into schools, governments, multinationals in the whole world. I hope the same happens with this film.

Producing a film of this scale costs money, and we are in discussions with partners from consulting firms, media, financial institutions, and tech industry who might be a fit as sponsors. Sponsors have the opportunity to participate in the conversation about the digital future. At the same time, this is a documentary and not an image film or pay to play project. If you would like to support and participate this project, please contact us.

Digital Transformation: Visions of Nations, Companies, and People is the continuation of my trilogy on digital technology. The first part was FinTech Made in Switzerland (2016), and the second part The Blockchain and Us (2017). All films follow a similar pattern with interviews and a narrative.

The interview format is relatively free, touching on topics such as experiences and expectations of (digital) technologies in the future, entrepreneurship, trends in adoption, disruptive potential in industry, impacts on economies of nations, societies, people, etc. After the interview, interviewees have the opportunity to check it again and make edits until they are happy with the content of their interview. The interviews are informal personal conversations in English or the mother tongue of interviewees.

Interviewees should reserve about 20-30 minutes for an interview. The best location is an office/home office or conference room at the interviewees location, but we can make anything work that is convenient. The location should be relatively quiet and have electrical outlets.

The process is more or less the following:

1. Short discussion of questions and direction of the conversation
2. Recording of the conversation (30 minutes)
3. Editing a rough cut of the interview (usually within 1-2 weeks)
4. Review of the rough cut by the interviewee and further edit until you give the OK
5. Finalizing the edit, segmenting the interview in chapters, publishing on YouTube, social media, project website
6. After the interview phase of the project concludes: Creating the documentary film from segments of a selection of interviews while preserving the point of view of interviewees

Yes, of course. As soon as interviews are public on YouTube, interviewees are free to embed them on their own websites (YouTube offers handy embed codes for this) and share the links in their social media campaigns if they like. Supporters of this project also receive the original recording files of their interviews and personalized versions of the short films they fund.

Stand-alone versions of individual interviews and short versions will be available freely on YouTube, the website of the project, and on social media shortly after recording. The full versions of the short documentary films will be available online and on social media, and we are also pitching it to traditional, distribution channels including festivals, conferences, and television.

The digital transformation of industry and society is a process that is ongoing. This project started in May 2017 and remains open for new interviews and short documentary continually without an end date.