If nothing else, last week's Story World Conference in San Francisco affirmed the reality of a new creative movement devoted to transmedia storytelling.

After years of building connections via online sharing and various ad-hoc collaborations, this gathering of the tribes of transmedia will certainly accelerate the movement, invigorate a cadre of practitioners and theorists, and generate buzz among many content creators. 

It's a big tent that has been pitched, sheltering artists, theorists, academics, vendors, allies -- with conflicting values and beliefs. (Don't expect a manifesto any time soon.) 

And yet, after listening to three days worth of panels, speeches, workshops,  (with 2,000-plus tweets) it's possible to extract some...

Marshall McLuhan's pronouncement that "the medium is the message" was revolutionary back in its day. 

Nearly 50 years later, McLuhan's influence survives, with many of his ideas serving as memes for wave upon wave of new media. Not for nothing did Wired Magazine anoint McLuhan as patron saint at the dawn of the Internet! 

Digital hipster Doug Coupland even published a McLuhan book subtitled” You Know Nothing of My Work” that riffed on the old gent’s ironic appearance in that Woody Allen flick.

McLuhan asserted that the container (the medium itself) mattered more than its actual content. Or something like that. Pissed a LOT of people off back then, especially people making the actual content. 

...

With television moving onto different platforms, it seems like nowadays we can watch TV everywhere. What is the ultimate future for television in a world that expects more from their screens?

The tech world is rife with trend-mongering, much of which winds up as wishful thinking or downright wrong. The future of television technology is no exception. (Remember Web TV, Intercast and interactive set-top boxes?) Prognostication is a mug's game.

And, so it is with great caution that I approach the latest trio of trends -- Connected TV, Social TV and Expanded TV. Whether these jargony trends hurl us into the future, they reflect the challenge that every content creator (and distributor) faces today:

Consumers expect more from all of their screens. 

Herein I break down these three big trends, along with their odds for future...

Second of three parts.

Leading transmedia talent has emerged from a wide array of disciplines, including technology, indie film, fantasy games, marketing, comic books, videogames, advertising, brand advertising, television production, theme parks, academia, and, of course, the Internet.

What sets each apart is a willingness to embrace meaningful audience participation in the transmedia projects that capture their passion.

“I think that the idea of participation is one of the key things we are all wrestling with, both fans and authors, movie directors or whatever kind of creative person we’re talking about, says author Frank Rose.

Also read: Transmedia: Why It's Catching On...