The spread of digital technology has exploded the number of video moviemakiers, bloggers and bedroom musicians. Suddenly we're all poets and publishers. Are we witnessing a creative renaissance? Or drowning under a wave of wannabees? Enter Gen C – the generation of digital creatives remaking the way we buy, sell and communicate. 
Ant Timpson is a film buff from way back. This self-confessed movie nerd knows more about the big screen than most die-hard rugby fans know about the injuries of Buck Shelford – and there have been a few.
But ask Timpson if he knew how happily his own film career would progress and he shakes his head. "I've been stunned at the volume," he says.
Not volume as in sound, but volume in entries. Timpson is founder of the 48Hour film festival, a competition to find the best short film made within a precisely-timed 48-hour period. The wacky, stress-filled, movie smackdown has become a cause célèbre, not just in the rarefied airs of Grey Lynn movie circles, but for anyone half-competent with a digital camera and a sister with acting skills. In its first year the competition attracted 88 entries in Wellington and Auckland. By year three it almost tripled to 234 entries and expanded to Christchurch and Dunedin. This year the competition is being run nationwide and Timpson expects entries to pass 450.
"It might plateau at year five, I guess", he says. We doubt it.
Suddenly it feels like we're all filmmakers. In fact we are. The world's most popular camera brand is not one the professionals would necessarily pick. It's Nokia. There are already 350 million camera phones out there, meaning we've all become snap-happy movie makers and photographers. Flickr, a picture-sharing website, boasts over 100 million photographs on its servers, up from 15 million just a year ago.
Suddenly we're all publishers too: research firm Pew, claims 44 percent of American adults have created some kind of Internet content. We're now all historians (Wikipedia), columnists (blogs), book reviewers (Amazon), movie critics (everyonesacritic.net), advertising creatives (Trade Me) or global authorities on matters obscure (visit any specialty site).
Thanks to technology you can be a singer (Songstar), a musician (GarageBand), a disc jockey (MP3 players), TV programmer (MySky), model (MySpace) and designer (go to Nike.com and design your next shoe).
You might have a Ulysses in your bottom drawer but printing and distributing it was always beyond the ability of most ordinary folk. Now you can it take to Blurb.com, where wannabe authors can have their masterpiece published for as little as $50.
Digital technology has lowered the barriers that once stood between Joe Public and his artistic cousins. It's a massive change. Marketers have even coined a snazzy new name for this onslaught of digital artists: Generation C. "Generation C is probably today's fastest-rising niche", declares Trendwatching.com, publisher of a popular marketing e-newsletter.
"Are you creative, opinionated and technofluent? Do you have access to professional equipment and online distribution? You may be part of Generation C", writes Digital Hive, a weblog for direct marketers.
The way these trendspotters see it, Gen C is a mega-shift in the way we operate, not just as consumers but as a society. It's leading, say some, to a global renaissance in creative endeavour.
If it all sounds a bit like, well, marketing speak, you could be right. No one yet agrees on what the C stands for. Trendwatching.com says it's C for 'content', meaning Gen C are defined by their production of original material. The bloggers at Digital Hive say it's all about 'creativity' – that Gen C want to become co-creators of their world ("Don't just sell me a car – involve me in designing it"). Tomi Ahonen, a Swedish telco consultant and author, has another definition: C is for 'community'. He says young consumers walk around with "a gang in their pocket", continually txting, phoning and pxting their friends and families. "No decision is now made as individual, everything is done in community".
Tom Eslinger, Saatchi & Saatchi's worldwide interactive creative director, says it's all the above but is also C for 'channel'. "You can have all the digital devices and creative skills you like, but opening a channel to reach millions of customers and fans marks out Generation C". Whatever. You would miss the point if you got hung up on the semantics of Gen C. What can't be ignored is the explosion in creative endeavour – in the arts, in commerce and in government, where policy on culture and creativity is being rewritten around the world as a cornerstone contributor to economic growth. Are we witnessing a creative rebirth – another Renaissance, even? Generation C may be ill-defined and misunderstood but the combination of technology, prosperity, peaceful times and youth is shaping a mega-trend in the way the economy works. Better listen up.
(To be continued in our next BRRandNew newsletter)
BRR's thanks to Jake Pearce, Simon Young and Idealog magazine for kind permission to reprint this article.
For more information on Gen C visit http://jakepearce.com
