Dr Richard Barbrook began the evening by lamenting the fact that the lecture had been given the old Imperial title, Kosovo, rather than Kosova, but that he was very happy to introduce Professor Jonathan Briggs to give this year�s Christmas lecture. In a year dominated by international disharmony and war in the Middle East, Jonathan�s work in Kosovo was a timely reminder of recent conflicts on our own continent, and how digital media and technology can be used to re-build war-torn economies.

Jonathan, Professor of new media design at Kingston University, described how he had spent much of the year working to develop a new media management programme at IPKO, an educational institute in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. This work followed directly from his experiences over the last seven years in co-founding and running Hyper Island in Sweden. Based on a former naval prison on an island in Karlskroner, Hyper Island is a educational centre for the study and practice of interactive media, bringing together cross-discipliniary teams of design, technology and business students to learn and work on practical projects. Hyper Island now enjoys an international reputation, with its graduates working in business and media around the world.

The idea of establishing a Hyper Island in the Balkans was a daunting challenge that Jonathan could not resist, although it soon became apparent that the Hyper Island model could not be easily replicated. As Jonathan said, Kosovo is �not a simple place� and many of the elements necessary for success at Kingston or Hyper Island are absent. Kosovo is still recovering from war and the subsequent driving out of the Serbian population, and there are 40,000 UN and NGO personnel stationed there, attempting to keep the peace and build the economy. The technological infrastructure is weak and unstable. It is a young country, with 50% of the population under 30, but it suffers from a lack of trust, confidence or entrepreneurship. Among his students, there was a culture of disaffection and suspicion that needed to be overcome, and which he had not encountered when teaching elsewhere.

Some of the difficulties in developing a digital economy in such an environment are highlighted by an e-commerce project that Jonathan and the students worked on. The project was to design and set-up a greeting cards business, in which individuals and businesses could, via email, order and personalise cards that would then be posted. Before the war, there was a culture of sending cards in Kosovo, and the students were initially excited about its prospects. However, they gradually lost their confidence and enthusiasm in the face of considerable problems � there are no credit cards in Kosovo, patchy internet access, little in the way of a fulfilment infrastructure or even a reliable system of postal addresses.

Nevertheless, he is optimistic about Kosovo�s future. Recent years have seen the beginnings of a distinct design aesthetic, with a new emphasis and excitement around design, creativity and communications. It is a very westward-looking part of Europe, there is considerable investment from the USA and many Kosovars are now based in London and New York. All this has meant that young people are becoming more interested in the kinds of cultural activities, education and business practices that are common in more developed economies.

There were many questions from the audience, both about the IPKO project and living in Kosovo itself, and Jonathan encouraged everyone present to find out more for themselves. There are a number of excellent bloggers in Kosovo, and many of his students are keen to work with and learn from new media businesses in London. Jonathan was realistic about his work in Pristina � describing it as a small fire that has been started, rather than any kind of model, and he urged people to go out and start their own.

You can find out more about Jonathan�s work in Kosovo and elsewhere at his blog, www.reengage.org .