As a result of these recommendations Glenn’s company was subsequently contracted to manage their technology platform and various public screens with a view to implementing strategies and developing relationships to facilitate building audience and public engagement and raising awareness of Federation Square Internationally. At the time Federation Square was one of the first non-commercial public screens of it’s kind in the world and there were no road maps on how to effectively program an urban screen to achieve these objectives.
Glenn was invited to speak at the 2nd International Urban Screens conference in Manchester in 2006 where he proposed the establishment of a cooperative network for content exchange. He then negotiated with the event organisers and key members of the urban screens community to host the 3rd International Urban Screens Conference at Federation Square in 2008. This event was developed in conjunction with Melbourne University and Federation Square.
Since the launch of Federation Square Glenn has been responsible for consulting on and managing the installation of non-commercial cultural screens for city and state governments and cultural institutions across Australia. He has advised local and State Government on the implementation of similar screen installations, to facilitate the installation of new screens (where appropriate), to help manage and support new screen installations and to produce creative projects and programs for screen partners in the network. He has written numerous feasibility studies, operational recommendations, technical documentation and digital placemaking strategies for governmental agencies and councils around Australia and overseas.
Glenn is currently working with several universities on a variety of collaborative research projects around Urban Screens and Digital Placemaking. In conjunction with our partners and the support of the Digital Placemaking Institute Glenn is currently driving the development of an interactive platform for use throughout the network, this is an exciting next step in the development of this International network.
Glenn Harding has been running his own companies in the marketing and media space for over 30 years. Glenn has always been at the forefront of technological convergence and new marketing methodologies moving from desktop publishing, telemarketing and database marketing in the early eighties through to Interactive design and Internet marketing in the nineties.
His previous company, Webmedia, was a hugely successful creative interactive design company that grew rapidly to open offices in Melbourne, Auckland, Hong Kong and San Francisco. Webmedia won creative design awards around the world for a diverse portfolio of projects and multinational clients. At it’s peak the company was valued at NZ$40m. During this time Glenn consulted to the boards of both the NZ Department of Trade and the Department of Industry and participated in numerous business round tables on initiatives to help foster a knowledge economy in NZ.
Glenn has consulted to many multinational companies as well as government and cultural agencies throughout Australasia and internationally.
Glenn’s interest in public screens and Digital Placemaking began in the early 2000’s when he drafted the multimedia strategy for Federation Square, Melbourne.