this is my happy place
Well, I say ‘we’. What I mean is, Dan and I certainly aren’t. Ben is.
But we’re not talking to Ben right now.
If you’re in London town on the evening February 17th then come and join one half of the Really Mobile team for much merriment and mobile-shaped beers at All Bar One, New Oxford Street from about 7pm onwards…
This past week saw the Exeter-based gathering that is known as the LikeMinds 2010 Autumn Conference.
Photo via the lovely Benjamin Ellis
If you’re a regular reader here at 1000heads you’ll know that LikeMinds has become one of our favourite things ever since our first attendance back in February of this year. I’m pleased to say that last week’s event – based around the themes of ‘Creativity + Curation’ – was no disappointment.
Unlike February’s event, where the one key takeaway (for me at least) was the audience-wide understanding of the importance of listening, this time around the lessons were much more broad; touching upon various different subjects, specialisms and industries including; Music, Film, Publishing (traditional and new) as well as other, more thought-provoking pieces along the lines of the impact of social technologies and the much-discussed ‘Big Society‘.
For me personally, the highlights came in varying forms. First, the opening Publishing ‘immersive’ session hosted by Andrew Davies of Idio was rammed to the rafters as everyone came together to discuss the impact of the social web upon the traditional publishing industry. For such a packed event, Andrew facilitated well as the rest of the group swiftly leapt from one area to another covering off not only the real value of brand/consumer relationships (throwing in some real world examples to boot) but also whether or not true curation is just filtering other people’s content.
LikeMinds resident live-blogger, Adam Tinworth, happened to be in the room also and his blow-by-blow recap is definitely worth a look.
Second, Chris Carey from the PRS, yes really – the PRS. Chris is an in-house economist for the music industry and he used the patterns that he is paid to spot day-in and day-out, to illustrate the pitfalls in any market of relying on what you think you know. His example of NBC’s mistake of turning off the Gossip Girl stream on their website was a lesson to us all.
And the third and final one (again, that spoke to me personally) was that of Benjamin Ellis. Who, with one phrase, captured the whole audience:
“A fish would be last to discover water”
— and to give that context, I’d spend some time looking over his rather awesome presentation –
According to the website –
We are watching more TV than at any time in the last five years.
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That statistic is usually followed by ‘despite the rise of the Internet’. We’re in the opposite camp. We believe TV viewing is increasing because of the Internet. The social web turns TV into an event, a shared experience.
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And as the social web becomes increasingly central to our lives, these events become more and more important. It becomes the nationwide, and sometimes worldwide water-cooler.
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Where’s it all going? And what’s the next cool thing going to be?
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Join us 14 October 2010 evening at Conway Hall.
So I did.
Before we start, this post might look quite long but it’s not. Not really anyway, there’s just a lot of pictures…
Let’s crack on.
Up first, Matt Locke, Head of Cross Platform for Channel 4. For this session I thought I’d crack open my Moleskine and give ‘mind-mapping’ a go. Something I’d seen Charlie Osmond do at SXSWi earlier this year, I’d been meaning to try it out for a while, so…
Start at ‘Television: Traditional’ in the middle of the left page and follow the arrows from there (click the image for larger size):
As per the right hand page, at 19:35 and 19:40 there were two slides which I loved (and subsequently uploaded). First, the web hits received by Channel 4 when their 2screen show ‘Seven Days‘ went live –
Err… WOW. No wonder the site went down on day one.
Second, the Google searches for ‘1066 Channel 4’ which was an online game that Ch4 ran during the showing of their 1066 drama broadcast in the summer earlier this year.
The TX date is the peak at the top. The slide that I didn’t manage to grab was the one after, which showed how their online game carried on this peak long after the TX date. A great learning.
Matt spoke of attention shapes coming in different forms. Priyanka has a great write-up of these and I’d recommend taking a look at her words. The key takeaway for me was that, back in the day, our attention (as consumers) was organised by content creators –
‘It’s our TV show, we’ll broadcast it 7am. You need to be there to see it.’
Today, that is no longer the case and broadcasters are not only having to adjust their models accordingly, but also get over their fear of this changing consumption model.
Presentation two was from Margaret Roberstson, Director of Development at Hide & Seek. Just a couple of quotes from this one (which hopefully speak for themselves);
The irony of ‘focus’ resulting in two choice tweets is not lost on me.
Next up, my good friend Utku Can and his mate Tim Morgan. The former representing LivePitch, one of my favourite iPad apps to date and the latter, talking about Picklive; a way to bet on short amounts of football.
The mindmap for that session is below, start on the bottom page in the middle just above ‘RTRTG’ where it says ‘Picklive + LivePitch’ –
This one was a touch more difficult as there were two speakers, taking it turns to talk about two different products but around one theme (which changed every few minutes). Like before, at 20:15, there was a slide that I really liked and, as such, subsequently uploaded. Take a look –
I love this slide.
As mentioned, Utku is a friend of mine and often we talk about distraction vs attention and when he pulled up this slide, suddenly it all clicked.
The point of this slide is demonstrate that television is constantly demanding attention – whether you’re looking at it or not, the iPad on the other hand (with its built-in accelerometer) knows when it’s not being looked at so shouldn’t shout at you when it’s flat down and not moving for example. However when it is picked up or being moved/looked at, it should know that too and then start responding accordingly.
Utku later commented –
One other thing I had mentioned was we don’t necessarily need the devices to have accelerometers. A cruder way of achieving this would be ‘time since last interaction’: if you haven’t tapped or clicked anything in a while, we can scale back how much attention the second screen is demanding.
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For the lack of a better phrase, I’m calling it ‘reactive interfaces’.
Nice.
Finally, Kevin Slavin spoke at length, about crowds creating magic and how that drives us online ‘to 2screen’ with the larger community. Cinema viewings vs TV viewings, concerts vs radio… it adds up.
It’s an odd sense of wonder, being aware that there are thousands, nay millions, of others sharing your experiences.
Limbic resonance, who knew?
At the end of it all, 2screen turned out to be one of my favourite events of recent years and – if you’re interested in the future of television, broadcast or consumer entertainment behaviour then I would definitely suggest reading up on 2screening right now; it’s already happening.
Be a part of it.
I was invited to attend today’s M-Publishing event (thank you CamerJam) but alas work commitments have kept me in the office. However, that didn’t stop me throwing together a few thoughts this morning on my way into work… For me, the key question you need to answer is ‘why’?
Forgive me if this seems a bit scatty, it was an early morning brain-dump somewhere under London.
Last weekend 1000heads despatched a number of its team out to a certain convention in the good ol’ US of A.
Admittedly, while we were there supporting a particular client, I also made sure we had time to get into the Austin Convention Center itself and take in some of the more interesting panels and talks that SXSW has to offer.
First and foremost, while a fair chunk of the predicted chatter was indeed about location-based services such as Gowalla and Foursquare, what we found was a very low rumbling about 2010 being the year when companies and brands alike truly harness the power of crowd-sourcing. This piece from Fjord about the iPad cements some of the feelings I already have about it, but also talks about content curation and the knowledge of where as opposed to what.
Hat tip to the guys over at Genius Rocket by the way, good to hear some sense throughout all the noise…
We also learned that SXSW really isn’t as bad as some people say it is. Similarly to other conferences we’ve been to before, the real value lies within the many different opportunities to connect, learn and share… and, with a smattering of smarts, maybe do a small amount of business along the way. Those things themselves are worth the air fare alone.
One session I personally really wanted to see was Battery Life, the Final (Mobile) Frontier, the description alone sold it to me:
Africa is a much misunderstood market, but potentially as large as China or India. Computer and internet penetration is extremely low, but cellphones are everywhere. How to tackle communication and social services on a continent where electricity – including charging cellphones in rural areas – is the greatest challenge.
Sadly, the panel was cancelled at the last minute as the key contributor was called away to a personal emergency however, I did get the opportunity to meet the lovely Gaby Rosario who gave me the rundown about how while there are only 65k iPhones in South Africa, there are in fact nearly 45million mobile subscribers. Unsurprisingly, in South Africa at least, the iPhone is not the be all and end all.
But we knew this already, right?
It’s funny, even though the US-based event had such an international turnout, a lot of the content had a very US-centric point of view. The point about the iPhone for example, articulated so well by Gaby just hours before I first started writing this down, was a breath of fresh air against the constant stale wind of how mobile iPhone applications are going to change the world.
This is not to say it was a wasted journey, not by any stretch. Seeing people I haven’t seen since September ’08 – made it even more worthwhile. Being introduced to new faces through old friends and connections – given that 1000heads now has French, Canadian and US offices – again, also made it extremely beneficial.
Of course, working out there, meeting clients and competition winners… the list of how awesome it was just goes on.
Would I go back? Yes. Every day I was up at the crack of dawn to catch an early morning panel, be it on community building, crowd-sourcing, social media, blogging, mobile, neuro-science marketing… (no, really).
If the SXSW selection panel had picked someone to speak, it was (mostly) worth a visit.
Improvements?
Well, I’d still want to see a more clearer grading system for each session (like Vero mentioned the year before), and I think I could/should definitely speak about something at the next one.
Maybe my lucozade travels; staying mobile and connected ’round the world. Tips and tricks for the global traveller…
Or maybe even… …plain ol’ Word of Mouth? 😉
What d’ya think?
Last week, after the madness that was Mobile World Congress, I slipped back into the country over night so I could dash off Friday morning to moderate a panel at the London Tech Summit hosted by the London Business School Technology Club.
The session, entitled: New models for Social Networking: Can Advertising Support Growth? kicked off in earnest around 11:30 with representatives from Goojet, Do The Green Thing, Advent Partners and Google all taking part.
Image via @brendanquinn
That’s me over there on the far right. This panel session, the first of the day, was briefed as follows:
What does it mean to engage an audience? How do you use social networking sites to advertise your business? The advent of social media has dramatically altered how people interact with each other. We will explore what this means to traditional business models, and how companies have responded to these developments to reach new audiences.
And so on.. The theme itself wasn’t a new to me having recently presented on the subject (or something similar) at New Media Age but then again, what I had to say wasn’t to be the focus.
The session was about the panellists:
Having never moderated a panel before it was quite exciting to be taking charge of such an esteemed bunch of industry leaders. I had definitely seen a fair few sessions like this in my time – so I knew exactly what not to do. Believe it or not, it really is a fair old challenge; trying to balance not talking too much yourself with not letting the panellists get too wrapped in in their own respective agendas… as well as trying to keep the audience as engaged as possible. It can get tricky.
However, to all intents and purposes it seems I didn’t do a bad job, but – as I said before – this is about the panellists.
When asked if social networking could indeed support growth in the advertising sector, the panel were unanimous in their disagreement:
“Not in the current model…” said Paul, “..advertisers need to change tact..” agreed Andy “New businesses are out doing it for themselves…” finished Guillaume, who also went onto explain that the model of advertising in France is so utterly painful when it came to anything TV based – “Months of planning for a slot that you might not even want in three months time!”
Here are some more key quotes –
“Purposeful communities will be where the money can be found” – “Remember, volume doesn’t change the human experience”
“Who wants to pay for content today?”
“Interactions speak louder than words”
“an pages (a la Facebook) is more like relationship marketing than traditional campaign based advertising”
“If you can’t interrupt people anymore, then you will have to rely on the quality of your content to get attention”
“The internet isn’t a network of computers – it’s a network of people who happen to use computers”
Pleasingly, the overall theme of the 30mins we had taking questions was that brands and advertisers need to be MORE HUMAN in their approach to engaging with EVER SMARTER consumers who won’t just lap up the first thing that’s put in front of them.
Whether you’re a new mobile startup like Goojet or one of the largest corporations in the world, like Google it would seem contextual and conversational engagements are at the forefront of everyone’s minds.
Hat tip to the smart guys and girls at the LBS Tech Club for organising. You can read all of the output from the day over on the LBS live tweet page.
In the meantime – how are you being human in the way you engage?
You know consumers are getting smarter, right?
😉
This week, believe it or not, is Social Media Week.
As the website says:
“Social Media Week conferences take place simultaneously in multiple cities around the world. The aim of each event is to advance the use and understanding of social media in the corporate, public and non-profit sectors.”
From New York to Berlin, San Francisco to São Paulo and Toronto to London, across the globe people are coming together to ‘explore the profound impact that social media has on culture, business communications and society at large’.
Here in London, the home of 1000heads, there are events happening all week and – hashtag tracking aside – some might find it quite difficult to try and get to everything on the rather packed out event schedule. To aid those in their quest to consume as much knowledge as possible, 1000heads is hosting the official ‘Social Media Week Digest’, this Friday, from 10am at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts.
There are a couple of other events going on Friday morning, including Reputation Online’s ‘Crisis Management‘ session as well as a special Social Media Week Tuttle Club. However, having seen how quickly the tickets for these events have been snapped up, we think there might be scope for one more thing..
So if you’re free and fancy joining us – you’ll be made to feel very welcome indeed.
As our sign up page says:
The Social Media Week Digest does exactly what it says on the tin; by Friday morning at least some of you would have all had the chance to catch one of the aforementioned fantastic events and this end-of-the-week gathering is your opportunity to come together and share stories, anecdotes and generally catch up on some of the interesting things you’ve seen and done.
Come drink some coffee (on us) and have a chat about where we’re all headed next.
Tickets aren’t mandatory (get yours here), they just help us keep an eye on numbers etc…
See you Friday! 🙂
Thanks to ICA London for the super last minute providing of the venue, I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of the place very soon.