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The precinct of South Melbourne/Port Melbourne is internationally renowned as a Centre for the Arts and Creative production in Melbourne; A community of kindred creative spirits and commercial media production enterprises which has evolved over a period of 40 years (theatre, advertising, radio, music, print, film, television and more recently computer software and interactive multimedia.)

It is estimated that there are over five hundred separate production enterprises and studios within this compact geographic area. Most are using some form of digital media applications for production. Many are internationally renowned studios and production houses.

The nature of their projects involves the use of time-based media (Radio, Music, Film, Television, Interactive Multimedia) in time-critical multi-disciplinary production environments. Production scenarios which commonly require the use of regional, national and international hookups e.g. news, current affairs, commercial production.

The media content creation community is a leading-edge user and exponent of communications technologies. Connectivity with colleagues, collaborators and consumers is the foundation stone of these information content industries. Their use of electronic networks and binary code for creation, production and delivery is as old as morse code and teletype.

These multi-media content production industries have been using digital technologies as a common mode of creation and production for a decade or more before the term multimedia entered the popular vernacular.

The need to build upon and foster these human capital assets of creative talent and the infrastructure of a community of resources and expertise which had been built up over decades would seem to be an obvious objective of a Government who aspired to make Melbourne an international force in multimedia content creation.

Convergence and interactivity is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the multimedia era. Digital Docklands is a concept for facilitating this community to become a more effective "cable enabled" production environment to build upon and strengthen the existing social and creative network of community life which has drawn talent to congregate in this geographic area for decades.

Digital Docklands builds upon the culture of a network-aware production community in which exploration and adoption of the use of LAN cable networks for production has been going on since the mid 60's. Within the precinct are pioneering examples of leading edge innovations in the use of data networks as an integral part of their normal production activities for intra-state, interstate and world-wide services eg AAV, Soundfirm, Digiline, Beam.

Digital Docklands is a metaphor for the communication systems which fashioned the City of Melbourne - access to the seaways, bay, waterways and river. The establishment of ports and harbours, the docklands and warehouses, the embarkation and disembarkation points for trade and commerce, for news and information with the rest of the world.

Digital Docklands is a vision for a new form of creative production community built around access to data networks rather than waterways. The reason for focusing upon the existing geographic precinct is to capitalise and build upon the assets of an established production community network. To provide this community with the infrastructure of distributed data networks and allow it to explore and evolve new modes of working in a global production environment.