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’:
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.
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
Last week I made a business development call on a local company, who were looking to find out more about Social Media–and what it could do for them.
They are a business-to-business organisation, and I was slightly stumped when asked about B2B case studies in Social Media, so I decided to have a bit Google and find out more.
Summary Presentation
The following is a really rather good presentation, which I have embedded from Slideshare.
According to Dan Sears, you might consider the following:
Listen and monitor the online conversation
Gather product requirements and feedback
Alert customers of new product features, upcoming events
Introduce products to prospects
Develop advocates and Industry influencers
Reposition products and brands
Share information during tradeshows and events
Align and connect communities of interest and practice
Generate awareness and exposure (press release)
Which of these might be useful for you?
Link Love
There are also a number of good links below to get you started. The Marketing Profs article “latching” (although 3rd hand) has a useful swathe of numbers which might whet your marketing appetite.
I’ve also included an article I’ve found which sets out the Devil’s Advocate position, i.e. that it’s a waste of time [but it’s from 2007 ;-)].
I put this document together recently when I was involved with a bid recently.
These incredibly useful numbers / quotes etc. were culled from the Marketing Charts website – brilliant site, although I do wonder if the companies involved ‘place’ the reports on it to further their own agenda. That said, the stats are great – in this case, about Social Media.
If you’re interested in which report I got the data from – go to the Marketing Charts website, and search using the exact words from the titles of a particular section: it should bring up the original report. As they say, Enjoy!
* Peter Whybrow – UCLA Semel Institute
* Robert Fabricant – Frog Design Inc
* Jeffrey Bardzell – Indiana University
* Jen van der Meer – Drillteam
DESCRIPTION
The core of sustainability efforts is behavior change, understanding patterns of behavior and developing models for motivating sustainable behavior change. This approach assumes a rational response from the consumer. However, most decisions are irrational. This panel will examine how to motivate people to make sustainable changes by appealing to their emotions instead. This panel is sponsored by frog design.
Live blogging session, flying the flag for the Brits (any other European peeps on the panel?)
PRESENTERS
Mike Butcher – TechCrunch
Mike Teasdale – Chinwag/Harvest Digital
Stewart Townsend – Sun Microsystems
Aleks Krotoski – Chinwag/UKTI
Nigel Eccles – Hubdub.com
DESCRIPTION
The European market with over 500 million citizens is an enormous single market, with the UK providing a natural first-step for US companies looking to expand East-wards. After all, we share (pretty much) the same language. Challenging economic times mean the search for lucrative new markets is more important than ever. Quiz the panel and discover what it’s like to do business in the UK and Europe, how to find partners, and stay gaffe-free. Get the skinny on the fast-moving tech, mobile and games scene. This panel is sponsored by Chinwag.
And so much more [sounds like a 1980’s advert – Ed.]
I’ve also been investigating some pro bono work to assist some non-profit organisations and generate some happy customers — and thereby reference material!
STOP PRESS: Over the weekend I have contributed to a bid — my part being how the solution might involve online collaboration. The wheels begin to turn! :-)
