A recap of this event, with photos and the presentations (where possible).
Intro
“Your Honour, being conscious that it’s a while since the ‘Social media: beyond the hype’ event at the end of October, I’d like to plead in mitigation that I’ve had a couple of bouts of ‘flu since then, and a broadband cut-off [although that’s another *very* long story :-s].” [Enough excuses – Ed.]
Event details
As per my original post, the event was held at the Great North Museum Hancock, and really ran very well, courtesy of fantastic organisation from Ellie Silson and Julie Moore (and others) from Codeworks.
We discovered during the evening that the reason the room was so cold was because of a dead body at the back of the room (until 27th Nov 09), more often known as Lindow Man.
I’m told that the business networking facilitated by the Dollywagon technology was a success, although perhaps the format should have included a bit longer for folks to make each other’s acquaintance.
Presos from Jason Brownlee (Professor Young was also struck down by ‘flu) and Armin Talic to come hopefully. I’ve checked with Paul Smith, who feels his presentation loses rather too much in translation, but essentially tells the story of Twitchhiker.
Feedback
Ellie tells me that the speakers all got excellent marks, and also that the feedback was very favourable. Well done everybody!
I used to work at a systems integrator, as part of their Knowledge Management practice, and then latterly as a business consultant in their Information Management practice.
Vignette was a name that always came up in discussions about web content management, and so it’s interesting to see that it was bought by OpenText this summer.
I happened to be browsing through Slideshare, and found these presentations by Gerardo Dada, who is Senior Director, Product Marketing at Vignette.
With Sapient
This first presentation is useful in terms of Social Media ‘strategising’:
Quick plug for this event by organised by Codeworks Connect this coming Thursday.
As credited by Herb Kim at the recent TEDxNewcastle, I am helping to ‘produce’ the evening – i.e. Herb and the team were kind enough to adopt my rough concept for the evening – and organise it! :-D
Aims (from my perspective):
Bring Social Media to a wider audience and into the mainstream of the North East
Grow the pie for various players in this space – yes, we’re in competition, but that doesn’t mean it’s a zero-sum game out there
By using these tools, Regional players can help increase turnover and reduce costs.
The following is a cut-and-paste from the Think and a Drink website [n.b. link is probably time-limited].
Date: Thursday 29th October 2009
Time: 17.30 until 22.30
But what’s the truth about social media? Can they really help your business? And how, exactly?
Everyone and anyone is talking up social media right now. Asking you to "join the conversation", "engage" with your customers rather than shouting at them. And telling you that if you don’t use these tools you’re at a major disadvantage.
At October’s Think and a Drink event, you’ll get to see social networking in action and learn about the science behind it. A selection of social media experts – including ‘Twitchhiker’ Paul Smith and Stephen Davies, one of the UK’s most popular PR bloggers – will give you an insight into how social media can be used, based on their knowledge and experiences.
Who’s speaking?
• Professor Malcolm Young. A professor at Newcastle University, Malcolm’s research expertise lies in complex systems analysis and informatics. He was one of 18 scientists worldwide nominated by The Sunday Times as the "Brains behind the 21st Century".
• Paul Smith. A freelance journalist, copywriter and new media "ideas man", Paul is perhaps best known in social media circles as ‘The Twitchhiker’. Together with Newcastle-based developer Jon Nairn, Paul recently launched Never Odd Or Even LLP, specialising in mobile application development.
• Stephen Davies. An online public relations specialist and managing director of 3W PR, an online PR and social media agency based in Sunderland. He also writes PRblogger.com, one of the UK’s leading PR blogs.
• Jason Brownlee. Prior to launching Dollywagon Media Sciences, Jason was the founder and research director of Other Lines of Enquiry, a successful media research consultancy. He has developed several new media research technologies, including eye-tracking, SMS surveys and online media engagement testing.
• Justin Souter. An experienced, customer-facing consultant who recognises the wider context for IT solutions. Justin recently started his own business, Souter Consulting, which offers advisory and consultancy services to customers who want to maximise the return on their technology investments.
• Armin Tali?. Armin has spent the last seven years as a designer, project manager and new media practitioner, most recently putting his experience to use as the community manager for revolutionary web video specialists Quick.tv.
Want to be a guinea pig?
Good. Because if you come to October’s Think and a Drink, you won’t really have a choice. During the event we’ll be running an exclusive networking experiment run by Jason Brownlee of Dollywagon Media Sciences.
Armed with a Think and a Drink delegate badge, some business cards and your sparkling personality, you’ll be ready to experience 3 genuinely useful 60 second business meetings.
The Think and a Drink delegate badges will have 3 names on the back with 3 highly relevant people you are due to meet (and in what order). It will also tell you what you are meeting to discuss and where you will meet – the venue will be split into ‘zones’.
Each meeting will last for 60 seconds. That’s long enough to put a face to a name, break the ice and identify your common interests. You can then arrange to meet later in the evening, perhaps with a relaxing drink in your hand.
After 60 seconds a bell will ring and you’ll dash off to your next meeting. At the end of the speed networking session you will have made 3 new contacts with experience of a specific issue or challenge that you stand to learn from.
We will learn all the information we need to from your registration form.
Register today
Places for Think and a Drink events usually run out quickly. So book yours today at www.thinkandadrink.com
If you have any questions please call Ellie Silson on 0191 556 1127 or email ellie.silson@codeworks.net.
P.S. If you’re coming from Middlesbrough you can hop on a free bus we’re running to and from the event. Please indicate so when booking.
So, hope to see you there and good luck with the networking!
(By Richard Holway Saturday 17th Oct 09) Back in 2003, I introduced my ‘Martini Moment’ theme – basically the ultimate aim was to be able to access the internet ‘anyplace, anytime and from any device’. Since then I have excitedly reported achieving this on land, at sea and in the air. I guess listening to the Archers on my laptop in a junk in the Mekong Delta/Vietnam three years ago was the point where I realised my Martini Moment had arrived. Since then I have reported on ever more remote locations where I have been able to gain internet access. Indeed, in all my travels since, to India, China, Korea etc, I have rarely been out of mobile internet range for more than a hour or two.
This week we have been visiting Egypt and Jordan . Here I expected good internet access in the main cities. But on one trip we travelled by truck for 4 hours into the Jordanian desert. We ate dinner in a Bedouin camp. Only candles lit the campsite so we could experience the blackest of skies twinkling with a million stars. But wait…what is that other glow I see? All around me the Bedouins were on their mobile phones! It was only later that I spotted the tallest mobile mast I have ever seen right in the middle of the desert – indeed the only man made structure I could see!
Cairo has some pretty awful slums. Many of the 18m inhabitants live in squalid conditions without water or sewage. But, yet again, everyone seems to have a mobile phone. The shanty towns may not have had flush toilets but they all seemed to have a satellite dish!
At the moment, most of these very poor people use basic mobile phones but I’m certain that in a few years smartphones will be the norm here too. That provides a powerful computing device in the hands of the poorest in the land. I know how access to the internet has revolutionised my own life and that of my kids and grandchildren. But they are the ‘haves’ of this world. Wouldn’t it be great to think that those advantages, that information revolution, might at last come to the ‘have nots’ too?
“Battle of the clouds […] The fight to dominate cloud computing will increase competition and innovation”
This comment (I’m assuming it’s genuine points towards a similar scenario to that of mobile phones – i.e. developing countries don’t need a landline infrastructure, they can use mobiles instead…:
I recently completed a course on IT project management and I could say that I got more out of this course than what I signed up for.
Reason: I am Ethiopian… and I know the hassles that one has to endure to setup the necessary hardware just to be "connected" both internally and to the world.
I see cloud computing as the wave of the future, especially for Africa where the Mobile technology has already helped us leapfrog and reach higher levels of efficiency and productivity without the pain of investing heavily on IT infrastructure.
Hope more African and other developing nations get this message and jump on the band wagon, cause viola’ there is no need for heavy lifting anymore … you can get it out there!
a major international association of independent accounting firms and business advisers that has been meeting the needs of clients with interests in more than one country for 45 years. The association now has over 300 offices across the world.
DFK International creates special value for clients with cross-border interests. DFK member firms enjoy effective cooperation throughout the world resulting in the ability to deliver international services on time and at a competitive cost.
Fascinating to find out that I should be speaking at an event for a far-flung business networking organisation!
The Burns Supper
I thought it might be a good idea to go up the night before – there was a set-piece Burns Supper with haggis. Our table had a great vibe, but not enough grub: maybe we were just being greedy [shurely not! – Ed.]
I made a recording of my presentation, which is of better quality than the screenshot below. You can be your own judge of how informative it was… n.b. it’s probably 55 minutes, so if you’ve watched it all the way through – I’d love your feedback. Thanks!
Once piece of constructive feedback is that there was probably too much content on the slides. Unfortunately I haven’t reached heights of greatness akin to Tara Hunt or Stowe Boyd. :-(
Anyway, feel free to whack whatever comments you might have below.
Mega quick post (that I may well update) to capture any comments you goodly people might have about this preso.
The story is that I have been invited to speak at the DFK UK & Ireland Annual Conference on the 2 October at the Marine Hotel in Troon (www.barcelo-hotels.co.uk/marine-hotel/)
This is my draft presentation to 50 Accountants to give them an intro to the Why’s and Wherefore’s of Social Media.
UPDATE: The presentation is up to slide 44, and the rest are stats or ‘off-cuts’. Many props to Emily Coltman for input re Acountants who ‘do’ social media.
I’ve no idea who sent me this link, probably some well meaning soul on Twitter but the embedded Slideshare presentation is worrying. Stuffed with out of date ’stuff’ like on overfull suitcase, it takes the wrong angle on so-called social media, a term I detest, for accountants. It demonstrates a lack of understanding about what makes this style of audience tick. It’s hard enough to get professional accountants to understand the world of marketing, social media as presented here will blow their heads off.
Instead, can I suggest that those who are curious steer away from the consumer facing spiel and think more about communications, internally at first and how sharing information might better serve the practice. Professionals should be looking for ways to better collaborate both internally and among their communities.We’re starting to see that at ion. And it’s not about using these tools as direct marketing tools or gimmicks but about the indirect effects that arise out of your efforts at supporting those around you through the stories you tell.
But above everything, please don’t see this as any quick fix. Making these things work takes time.
Interesting points & I need to update the deck asap with the gist of this, and also from Phil Richards (see comments).
I’ve been invited to take part in a roundtable event by RMT – my accountants.
This is an excerpt from the invite:
Getting the north east trading online @ RMT Gosforth on the 24th Sept 09
The aim of the day is to discuss how we can help get more north east based business trading online.
Cut through the mystery of trading online and dispel some of the myths, many of us take our knowledge for granted!
I will need to have a think about this and collect my thoughts – but please suggest anything you want me to raise on the day.
‘Trading online’ – to my mind – is about using the Web to market, sell, and serve customers. I suspect the ‘answer’ will be quite complicated and ‘multivariate’!
I believe there is a local newspaper involved, and also some people from various ‘grown-up’ industry bodies – so please chip in!
Agenda
There are two sessions, either side of lunch:
Session one – online business issues
Session two – develop a strategy to get the north east online
Further background:
If you could all think about your experiences of businesses that you have dealt with, which trade online and those that don’t, and try to identify any key issues.
Please bring to the table anything you think might be hampering online trade in the region, and things that might help improve it.
If you raise it, I’ll do my best to mention it – and then blog the upshot.
UPDATE 21/9/09: I thought I’d dig out the PDF that Peter Moran mentions and publish it through Scribd.com and hence make it more accessible…
This post describes the work around the new SCL identify, and how you can get involved.
Introduction
I’ve asked Steve and the Gang at Fat Frog to draw up the identity for Souter Consulting. I had thought of putting the work out to Crowdspring, but that could have been a bit too hard and difficult right now. That said, I’m keen to explore the crowdsourcing approach. Alex Bogusky has posted about this recently.
So, I’ve gone for a different approach. Steve has nominated Gino for this, and I met with him last week to talk through his initial thoughts.
By way of explanation, Gino normally works with customers in a slightly different way. They will give FF the brief, and then Gino will present a design which is pretty close to complete [er, I think that’s it :-s].
Steve and Gino were happily willing to go along with my suggestion that I be involved in the design process.
What I’ve done here is to take Gino’s creative ideas, and post the PDFs so we can see where he’s going with it all.
I mentioned to Gino that I spent some time hanging out at the St Bride Library, in my early twenties. Styled as “the world’s foremost printing and graphics arts library”, it’s a haven for typeface nuts – of which I count myself one. :-D
So, I was proper thrilled when Gino unveiled the following design. Key ideas behind this face are a mixture of tech & readability – probably to be used for headings. What do *you* think?:
This section contains Gino’s ideas for the visual identity for SCL. Please comment at the bottom to let us (Gino and I) know what you think.
Round 1
I like the idea of these primary colours being blended together to make black in the middle. Also, they struck me as being “accessible” – hopefully easy to ‘take in’ when they first see them.
I realise it’s a bit cheeky to criticise, but the thought crossed my mind at the time that perhaps they look a bit like Housing Association re-branding exercise maybe?! [Did I get away with that? ;-)]
So, this time a similar approach in terms of colours, but more of a sense of motion, change, etc. The middle roundel / start at the bottom is great because the colours are built in layers.
They remind me of a corporate logo of yesteryear, but something here definitely to work on.
This cube / hexagon is fascinating. Cleverly, the design means that it can be both.It reminds me a bit of the old skool Mystify screen-saver effect.
I like the thought that it represents some sort of continuum, with ideas flowing around the cube in some way. To me, the concept of a ‘digital nervous system’ covers
Document and records management
Knowledge management
Process
Lightweight application integration
Social Media & collaboration tools
And various other things I can’t think of right now
