Category: Events

Why @OneQuestionConf was the best event I went to in 2016

tl;dr – One Question Conference is fantastic and you should really try and get to the second event this coming May

tl;dr – One Question Conference is fantastic and you should really try and get to the second event this coming May (tickets are on sale here). Newsletter subscribers can get a 15 discount of the stated ticket price in the next edition (#218).

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In November last year, I tweeted this:

It’s been a good three-nearly-four months so I figured now is a good a time as any to finally write up my notes from the inaugural One Question conference.

One Question, if you’re unfamiliar with the concept, it is, to use its own words:

‘…an event like no other; a focused agenda based on a single topic, with speakers from vastly different backgrounds providing their unique perspectives. There are no slides, no sales pitches; just inspirational stories designed to educate and excite. Designed to challenge the way we think, as people and professionals.’

The ‘one question’ in this first instance was thus:

‘How do we successfully marry technology and humanity?’

The speakers lined up to address this question came from industries such as advertising, music, technology, media, finance, and more.

And everything about it was excellent.

The venue – stunning. The speakers – well curated. The Wi-Fi was reliable (shocking, I know) and it was clear a lot of care and attention had gone into making the event enjoyable, insightful, and, ultimately, successful.

In short: if you missed it, you missed out.

What follows is a rough, three-month-percolated (yet unfiltered) download of the thoughts, quotes, and notes from the day (with occasional additional commentary). On reflection, there aren’t loads of notes and, tbh, that speaks a lot to the quality of lecture from each presenter.

But still. Here are said notes from One Question 2016.

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Session One: The Human Perspective

Rory Sutherland on ‘Benign Bullshit’
– aka ‘things that are meaningless’.

‘Economics is psychology dressed up as maths’.

‘Why doesn’t Google Maps show you a journey by scene vs speed?’

This reminded me of being in Exeter a short while before. I can’t remember why. I think a trip somewhere? Maybe a wedding? I can’t recall. Wait, yes, it was a wedding. Anyway, the day after I met my good friend Scott Gould for a coffee and he said, amongst other things, to take a different route home afterwards. ‘Yes it’s 30mins longer but the scenery is beautiful – and you’ll pass Stone Henge!’ – sold.

Session Two: The Future Perspective
Trevor Hardy on ‘The Long View’.

Delayed gratification. Long news. Slow news. Speed is not always good, says Trevor. I tend to agree.

Session Three: The Creative Perspective
Vikki Chowney speaking to tech is nothing without human influence/narrative. Story-telling. Empathy. Land Rover doing a thing on Instagram (I disagree). Cadbury and QR codes. Have you all seen the QR code on the back of a bar of Cadbury chocolate? You definitely have. Scan it next time. See what happens.

Sidenote: some friends and I used to plant easter eggs behind QR codes (silly photos, comments etc) and stick them around London. I might start that again. Ha.

Session Four: The Start Up Perspective
‘You can’t talk to any start-up for more than 30 seconds without them spasmodically yelling ‘DISRUPTION!” – Richard Newton (brilliant). Also, go look up Nancy Tilbury of XO, super interesting.

Session Five: The Editorial Perspective
‘Reclaiming what we’ve lost in a world of constant connection’ – Michael Harris, The End of Absence

‘The lamp of human attention can only shine on one thing at a time’ – I like this.

‘We’re not multi-tasking, we’re lame spasm attention shifters’

‘Checking your Twitter is like picking nits out of your hair’

Session Six: The Media Perspective

Gut instinct or data insight?

Bias in algorithm. You know algorithms have bias, right?

Not many notes on this one. Not sure why.

(oh, I think I had a work call – bugger)

Session Seven: The VR Perspective

Sol Rogers is ace. Go look up VRTogether.org/Rewind (RWD). Retirement VR is being used to help people save more. Google ‘Clouds over Sidra’ – also, VR as medical treatment. And ‘Bravemind: PTSD’ – or VR snowball fights for burn victims.

This sessions is probably the best answer to the question so far.

Questions from the audience:

  • Will technology like this create a bigger societal divide? Maybe. But democratize it and make it as accessible as possible.
  • What about the dangers of dopamine? Will there be VR addiction centres? ‘Yes, probably. But that’s because dopamine is addictive’

Session Eight: The Music Perspective

This session was amazing. Freda Bolza (there’s a Spotify link you need to get, James) took us on a journey of technology + humanity from starting with Bach, then to the invention of the vocoder, then Moroder (legend), and then to T-PAIN. What an AMAZING session!!!

Got a link to that talk/playlist right here.

General Notes:

  • Great Venue
  • Well Cast – good speakers / mix of people
  • Good length of sessions
  • Water, food, and wi-fi – all reliable.
  • Damn this event is fantastic.

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So yeah. One Question. It’s pretty damn good.

You should go.

You should come to #NotatSXSWLDN

Let me tell you why…

#NotatSXSWLDN

Set to be the best ‘Not at’ event EVER, #NotatSXSWLDN is to be held Friday March 15th and you are invited.

  • Not making out to Austin this year?
  • Finding the whole thing just too darn over-hyped and over-priced?
  • Looking for some FREE inspiration on a Friday night?

Then JOIN US for NOT AT SXSW – LONDON EDITION where we can get together, drink, and generally have an awesome time.

On top of that we’re bringing you an awesome venue (I’m not kidding), an amazing set of speakers (who are bringing along their very own ‘shot of south by’) and of course, a stunningly beautiful group of attendees (that’s YOU).

So please, come hang out at the coolest new members club in town and enjoy a night of brilliance created especially for you.

You’re coming, right? Good.

Because tickets are available now.

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We’re also currently taking sponsorship so, if you’d like to know more, please take a look at our background documentation and get in touch ASAP.

 

#NotatMWC 2013

We’re baaaaack!

This coming February sees the cream of the world’s mobile industry all descend on Barcelona’s (thing?) for Mobile World Congress. But the thing is, attending the world’s biggest mobile conference is not cheap so many mobile geeks don’t get the chance to go.NotatMWC

But don’t panic, we’ve got you covered –

The original #NotatMWC event is BACK!

  • Are you having trouble making it to MWC?
  • Have you decided to say ‘BALLS!’ to Barcelona?
  • Do you have a slight obsession with all things cellular?

THEN JOIN US FOR BEERS AND GENERAL MOBILE MERRIMENT AT #NOTATMWC!

February 28th is the date you need to book in your diary and we’ve booked the upstairs at All Bar One on New Oxford Street for just over 70-odd people. If we over do it and loads of you turn up, no matter! We can just flood the ENTIRE PUB with mobile folk and have a jolly good time.

See you there?

 

PS. Tell your friends —-> “Feb 28th. NotatMWC. Be there”

PPS. Sponsorship options are also available.

In The Theme Park

The pitch?

“One evening five dramatically different and challenging speakers, together with their equally unruly audience, go to work on the soft edges of a common theme.”

Each of the five speakers were given the same brief of which one part was this –

This, was their theme, if you will. Using that, in part at least, as an inspiration point – each speaker had to give a ten minute talk about how said theme had inspired them.

Discussions from all sorts of weird and wonderful minds filled the air, from Captain Scroggs‘ tales of flipping the music industry on its head through the fetishisation of product in the digital age (see real world example, Tom the Lion); to Jeremy Hutchison’s dissection of the centimetre-thick glass that stands between us and the goods we so desperately want… His description of last year’s London looters as ‘the over-performing consumer’ was a definite highlight.

My section, at the mid-way point, took a more futurology-based approach. With homemade slides to boot (thank you, Paper). They’re embedded below, however I would recommend that you click through to the slideshare page where the accompanying slide notes are also available.

In The Theme Park: The High Street

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Overall, In The Theme Park was a wonderful evening. Good food, both for the brain and for the stomach, good company and a thoroughly entertaining way to spend an Wednesday evening in London town.

FreeState, the agency behind it, did a superb job in speaker selection (if I do say so myself) as well as audience curation. Which, funnily enough, is probably the one thing that most event organisers overlook.

Follow @InTheThemePark on Twitter to find out when the next event is on.

No doubt I’ll see you there.

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UPDATE: In The Theme Park have published their own blog post documenting the evening and, to be perfectly honest, having my talk referred to as ‘a digitalised version of Edward de Bono’s thinking hats‘, is quite possibly one of the best compliments I’ve ever received. 

 

 

1000heads: The Nokia Gift Machine

It’s Social Media Week this week and all across the globe, a multitude of key cities are gathering together to learn and discuss about the impact of social media on modern society today.

As part of our work with Nokia, global partner for Social Media Week, we’ve got teams all over the world helping with all kinds of different activations, similar to the work that we accomplished back in February.

At Social Media Week Glasgow however, we’re doing things a little differently.

Introducing The Nokia Gift Machine

Collection time!

Our brief was simple: how do you make the simple things you see around you, just that little bit more special?
Our response? We decided to create one of the world’s first Foursquare-enabled vending machines.

Unlike most machinery, the instruction manual is quite simple:

  1. Open Foursquare on your phone
  2. Find the Nokia Gift Machine @ SMW
  3. Check-in using the #NokiaConnects hashtag
  4. Share to Twitter
  5. Collect your prize

As demo’d below  –

Anyone following on Twitter last week would’ve spotted this teaser we put out when we first went to test the machine above, I’m fairly sure no one managed to guess what the image was going to be!

If you’re at Social Media Week Glasgow this week, make sure you get yourself along to the Sky Park on Elliot Place and give it a go!

PS. It doesn’t just hold candy y’know…

 

Full press release

Other Vending Machine images

 

 

1000heads: Ticketmaster: Social Ticketing

This morning, Mashable is reporting the launch of Ticketmaster‘s latest layer of Facebook integration, a move that allows users to see exactly where their Facebook friends will be sitting at various different events and gigs across the globe.

Live on over 9000 events across the Ticketmaster website, the new interactive map enables seat tagging, which will post to your Facebook wall requesting (or nudging) your friends to do the same.

Got that? No? Try watching this 80 second explanation –

Social ticketing is something we’ve talked about before here at the ‘heads, but that was more around using social media to reward regular attendees with loyalty points and bonuses. What Ticketmaster have done here – really quite well – is taken the Facebook social graph API and applied it to their own site.

In a similar way that Trip Advisor change the structure of what you’re looking at depending on your friends’ purchasing decisions after their experiences, Ticketmaster has taken a step forward by showing the purchasing decision before the experience. Enabling friends to buy tickets whenever they want instead of waiting and waiting until they’re able to get their tickets at the same time.

I’m reminded of something that o2’s Head of Social Media, Alex Pearmain, said at the Social Media Influence conference back in June –

“How much are we seeing of social brought into commerce rather commerce being brought into social?”

Setting up shop in a Facebook tab is [relatively] easy by comparison, so why not consider changing your customers’ web experience based upon their Facebook preferences as they travel around your website? 

To top it off, Ticketmaster’s research suggests that every time a ticket purchase is shared through social, that converts to an extra five dollars in additional ticket sales. Social media integration moving the sales needle? Perfection. Definitely something to keep an eye on in the future.

Irrespective of your feelings around the Ticketmaster brand, this new feature is smart, useful and ultimately beneficial to the end customer. Well done.

1000heads: Postcard from Cannes (Part 2)

Cannes Lions is well and truly over and, with the Young Lions celebrating their latest win (along with many, many others), it’s time to look back over some of the more leading and creative thoughts that fell out of such an important conference.

Back in part one I promised some thoughts on the Diageo session I attended as well as some overall thoughts and links post-event.

First, Andy Fennell, CMO, Diageo –

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Key points and quotes –

  • Andy talks about his ‘FACE’ values. They are; Flair, Agility, Consumer insight and Execution
  • When discussing new creative, ask ‘What is ‘the centre of gravity’ of an idea?’
  • “We need to change our ideas inherently to build participation from the start” – a thought 1000heads has advocated for years
  • “For rich content to arrive in Africa, phones need to get cheaper or Silicon Valley needs to work out where Africa is on a map.” – contentious!

Speaking of Africa, Andy gave an example of how Guinness arrived in the football-loving continent with their very own football-themed quiz show –

The whole idea, initiated by Guinness (one of Diageo’s sub-brands), started and ended with the drink in question and resulted in a significant jump in sales.

I personally hadn’t seen a brand invent its own TV show before, not least of all one that actually delivered on both an entertainment value (average episode views are upwards of 4m) as well as on a brand awareness and sales front too. Very impressive.

Overall, the Diageo session was interesting as it was a brand talking about their creative as opposed to an agency. Hearing the insights and ways of working behind such a huge, worldwide company inspired plenty of food for thought and served as a reminder at just how impactful television can be when harnessed correctly.

Thanks for reading.

 

Additional links of interest:

My unofficial Cannes recap – via The Brand Builder
Nokia @ Cannes – via Nseries