Yesterday evening, just after 7 o'clock, I and three colleagues asked a panel of 'dragons' for a quarter of a million pounds. I'd not met my companions before that morning but we were confident about our strategic vision and the investment opportunity that we were offering. Three of the potential investors turned us down, although two asked us to come back if we secured, as we believed we would, a big public sector contract. But after rigorous questioning one wise man stepped up to the plate and put his money down. At this point it seemed rather a shame that it was all only a game.

The occasion was the culmination of a day-long pilot event that aimed to explore what it takes to build a successful cross-platform media company. In the convergent world where the goal is to create media across a combination of broadcasting, games, social media and the rest, what are the skills and capabilities that a company needs to succeed?

One of the organisers, Frank Boyd, oversees the Crossover labs. These week-long events assemble producers and executives from different media (TV, web, games) to work together developing cross-platform projects. But the labs are very focussed on individual productions and there's also a need to think about how companies -- whether they're  established broadcast producers or games-focussed start-ups -- can prepare themselves for developing effective cross-platform projects. Hence yesterday's 'Playing the Game' workshop.

As Frank said yesterday, 'we're all in the foothills of this stuff' and it can be hard to get a proper picture of the landscape. But the 25 of us in the Soho basement of the 01zero-one media centre were handed a pretty good top-level map, especially from an initial presentation by consultant Jon Watts from MTM London.

Broadcasters are starting to commission 360-degree projects to work across television, the web and elsewhere. Media owners and marketers are increasingly looking to cross-platform content solutions to engage hard-to-reach demographics. And many of the barriers have fallen that previously stopped creative companies exploring direct-to-consumer markets. So how best to work in this perplexing environment and -- most important of all -- where's the money?

Wherever the money is, it's not easy to find, and one of our conclusions from the discussion was that many projects will require partnerships between a range of partial funding sources. Yes, the BBC or the big ad agencies may splash the cash on a few prime projects but for much of the time a producer is going to have to be as creative with her deals as she is with her media. Same as it ever was.

Professionally, we were a mixed bunch of people: a games designer, a documentary director, a former funder from the Europeaqn Commission and even a media producer turned stand-up comic. To get us all to think through the opportunities and challenges for cross-platform producers, we moved into a role-playing game. First, we collectively explored the problems facing three fictional companies: established Cardiff-based documentary producers TV Co; dynamic digital agency London Boys; and small games designer Fun and Games. Split into small teams, we were then assigned one of these companies, told to develop a pitch for one of five fictional projects, and given around two hours to put together our Dragon's Den-style pitch.

I can be a bit of a cynic about exercises like this. In fact it turned out to be a strikingly successful way for my three colleagues and I to consider the challenges facing TV Co. We put together a plan for hiring technical and business development staff, nurturing new capabilities in-house, and endeavouring to effect a cultural change across 'our' company. Within our quartet, we chose an effective MD, benefitted hugely from the real-world experience of someone with bucketloads of public sector new media experience, and lifted a key idea from a Swedish producer who had done a great-sounding international project for IKEA.

The distinguished dragons were creative director at Eidos Ian Livingstone (invariably known as 'the godfather of Lara Croft'); author and consultant Peter Grimsdale; Jon Kingsbury, who runs the Creative Economy Innovation Programme at NESTA; and (just out of the picture) the immensely experienced new media producer Fred Hasson, who now runs the virtual world company RedBedlam. They were chaired by Channel 4's Commissioning Editor for Education Matt Locke. By the time we got to enter the den, we were brimming with confidence.

Even in a situation like this where you have nothing to lose but a shred or two of reputation it's surprising how much you can still want to 'win'. So our team was a touch aggrieved when one of our three competitors stated that they had a major contract signed and sealed -- we'd been told we could only be developing a pitch for its equivalent. Still, we won over Jon Kingsbury, even if two of the other teams each brought in two investors.

Did I have a good time? Yes. Did I learn stuff? Yes, too. So I'll be really interested to see how this pilot day develops into a fuller series of events, the next of which is at the Sheffield Documentary Festival. The Doc/Fest from next Wednesday is also running a series of panels called DigiDocs360, and I'll report more on this at the end of next week. I'm also taking part in a panel at Sheffield called Here Come the Philistines about the now and future state of arts programming; inevitably, I'll blog about this too.