Month: February 2011

1000heads: Social Media Week is here!

Social Media Week LondonAnd the official #SMWLDN/1000heads official Social Media Surgery is open!

We’ve been taking appointments over the past few weeks from those in need of some social care and attention and today, the patients arrive for their sesssions.

Keep an eye on the @1000heads twitter stream throughout today for a running commentary on who we’re talking to and about what and please, feel free to fire over any questions you may have.

If you didn’t manage to book yourself in the surgery today then no fear, you can still catch up with one of us ‘heads throughout the week at any of the many events that we’ll be attending –

The venues in bold indicate where we are panellists…

Mon Feb 7th –
Social Media Surgery @ 1000heads HQ
Collaborative Consumption conference @ NESTA
SMW: Opening Party @ Light Bar, Shoreditch [we hear there might be cake]

Tue Feb 8th
Protecting Reputation in a Digital World @ Hill & Knowlton
Social Telly: Campaigning/Commentary/Community @ The Design Council
10 Ways to Suck at Social Media @ eOffice

Wed Feb 9th
Ask Don’t Tell; Talking with Families Online @ Digital Outlook
How Social Media can Influence Purchasing & Drive ROI @ Agency: 2
Like Minds Social Commerce Immersive @ Adam Street
Social Media, Direct Marketing &  Making Money @ Concrete
The BBC & The UK Sports Network present: Sport & Social Media @ The Design Council

Thu Feb 10th –
Social Media Monitoring @ We Are Social
Trust, Transparency and Advocacy: Social Media Trends 2011 @ Addiction Worldwide
Social CRM @ The Design Council
Social Media: Where Behavioural Science meets Measurement @ Ketchum London
Communities Talk
SMW: Last night Community Manager saved my life @ The Hub
SMW: Mythbusting, Propel London @ The Design Council

Fri Feb 10th –
SMW: Tuttle Club @ The Centre for Creative Collaboration

On top of that, a large number of our team can be found at various events around the world supporting Nokia’s random acts of kindness push… aka – ‘NokiaConnects‘

If you’re attending any Social Media Week event anywhere across the main participating cities across the globe, then please ensure to check in using the hashtag #NokiaConnects and you might just bump into one of them yourself…

Have a great week everybody!

We’re #NotatMWC!

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…

Continue reading “We’re #NotatMWC!”

Minty

01022011810

Moleskine entry: January 5th, 2011

I have a new Moleskine.
This makes me happy.

It was a gift from those lovely folk @ Mint Digital (more than likely, orchestrated by my dear friend Utku), to mark the start of 2011*
Thanks Utterz. I like it.

So. Plans for the year then? I have two. Travel and dance. Doing more of both. The former I’m working on, the latter also.

I guess if I’m completely honest with myself, one underlying goal for the year ahead would be not to share as much. For the last two years (more so than before at least) I’ve lived my life openly, on the internet – and decorated it accordingly. In the same way that one would in his own house, I shared my happiness, my joy and my deepest loves on the walls around me.

If it made me smile, or if I thought it would do the same for someone, else then I shared it. But now…?

Now the largest piece of that puzzle has disappeared and, whenever I visit this place I once called home, it is not long before I wander into a memory of times gone past. It’s not like I can even show people around; an image here, a link there, an oblique reference off to the right – it happens.

This year, whatever comes my way, I’ll be keeping a fair amount of it back (more than I did before at least anyway).

For now, that’s how things have to be.

James Whatley
5/1/11

Minty Moleskines...

The web is watching you (well, me)

The web, it seems, is getting smarter.

If you’ve been traversing the interwebs in the same manner as I have these past few months then you may remember these smart little ads from Google, informing us that ad space will work harder.

They’re not wrong. It is.

A few weeks ago I had to travel up to Grantham to speak to one of our clients, MARS, about how to build social into one of their newest (and most exciting) ventures. To get there, it’s a short tube ride from our global headquarters in Piccadilly, up to Kings Cross, from there a train ride to Grantham, whereupon a 30min cab ride awaits to cart you to the the MARS PetCare HQ in Waltham.

Obviously, when making any public transport-based travel plans, militant scheduling is required. TheTrainline.com is useful in this instance as it covers every overground train schedule in the country. Note; all I did was check the times of the trains. My browser knows this, Google knows this and so therefore, the ad that Channel 4’s adspace chooses to serve me when I want to read about the British Comedy Awards knows also.

Contextual web-based advertising. It’s a wonderful thing. The mind races through a thousand thought processes;

Wow, that’s awesome. I should screengrab that for the blog. Contextual advertising, nice. Wait a minute, are they allowed to do that? Hmm, maybe I said they could do that when I ticked some random box.. maybe, just through visiting their site, I’ve already agreed to let them follow me around the web.. is this cookie based? It must be.. What other data am I pushing out daily?

What other data am I pushing out daily?

What other data am I pushing out daily?

And how can it be used?

This last thought in particular is one we’re going to be coming back to over the next few months here at 1000heads. Over the past year or so we’ve been doing a lot of work on conversation metrics, purchase journey mapping and ultimately, the real value that word of mouth can bring to any business, globally.

Combined, these three content streams can provide some very real data about how consumers like you and I go about our daily decision making processes; in the first instance it really is quite scary… but in the second, once all the data is locked down and independently verified – for brands at least – it can be very, very useful indeed.

As Google might say – ‘WATCH THIS SPACE’ for more on this… in the meantime, tickets to Grantham are only £9.

Who knew?

Kinect me up, baby

Recently, I decided to treat myself to the technological wonder that is the Xbox Kinect. But, before we crack on, let me make one thing absolutely clear –

The Xbox Kinect is, without doubt, the most exciting piece of technology I have ever brought into my house (by a clear country mile) and, quite possibly, the most amazing thing I have ever bought. Ever. Full stop.

It really is that good.

What’s worrying, however, is that for a short while I didn’t even realise it.

Xbox Kinect

Returning from my parents this past Christmas (I believe it was Dec 27th), I stopped off in town to pick up the Johnny-5 head-shaped bad boy and left him by the TV for a couple of days, before breaking it open just before New Year and cracking on.

“This’ll be fun” I thought “I’ll give it a whirl”

See, as you may know, I am a gaming geek (some would argue more so than a mobile geek), and so getting my hands on the latest awesome periphery for my current console of choice was fairly high up on my list of priorities.

“Gaming is going be awesome with this…”

Honestly? It’s been over a month now and I’ve hardly played the games at all. Don’t get me wrong, Kinect Adventures IS fun and I’m informed that the yet-to-be-opened Dance Central is pretty damn good also. However, the Kinect has changed something so significant, so utterly mind-blowing that most of the time, I switch it on just so I can play with IT.

Why?

It’s all about the interface. Things that live on my Xbox (aside from the games) include (but are not exclusive to) Last.fm, Sky TV, Twitter, Facebook and – thanks to a handy piece of software called Connect360 (no relation) – my entire music, photo and video collection that resides on my Mac.

[Nearly] everything is available to Kinect with… and it rocks.

Introducing such a fundamental step-change into the way I interact with my main media channel has, perhaps unsurprisingly to some, drastically shifted my usage patterns along with it. Last.fm, formally an Xbox Gold ‘nice to have’ extra that I only used on occasion is now the main reason for switching the Xbox on in the morning/afternoon/evening…

Forget the wavey-roundy, gesture sensitive motion capture stuff (although that’s quite cool also) the Kinect, for me at least, is all about the voice activation.

Let me show you:
.

I can be in the shower in the next room and be yelling out my instructions AND IT STILL HEARS ME! Music, is everything…

In the same way that nobody knew they needed an iPad (and yet now suddenly they now wonder how they ever did without them), the Xbox Kinect slips into your day to day life like the smoothest of gloves onto a well-worn hand. Within a couple of days you catch yourself wondering why on Earth everything in your household doesn’t run in the same way.

“Kettle? Boil.” or “Shower? On.” and of course, “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.“ are suddenly so desperately close to hand but also, in the same breath, achingly far away. The Xbox Kinect really is the technology of the future boys and girls and believe it when I tell you; we’ve not even scratched the surface.

Microsoft have already said that they expect to double the resolution of the on-board camera within the next 6-12mths and the face tracking technology they demo’d at CES recently was again, an equally fascinating glimpse into the very near future.

Maybe it’s the hours upon hours that we spent back in my SpinVox days talking about the future of speech technologies that has got me so excited about all this, maybe it’s because at heart, I’m a massive Star Trek fan and being able to talk to my computer is a pipe dream I’ve lusted after ever since I first saw Jean-Luc do the exact same thing all those years ago… or maybe, just maybe it’s just because that deep down, I am a geek – through and through – and I just love new technology.

In closing:

Got an Xbox? Get a Kinect. It’s that simple.