Events – whatleydude.com

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…

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 isÂ notÂ cheap so many mobile geeks don’t get the chance to go.

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

TheÂ 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 audienceÂ 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 ‘aÂ digitalised version of Edward de Bonoâ€™s thinking hats‘, is quite possibly one of the best compliments I’ve ever received.Â

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 –

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

Hyper Connected

I’m at the Social Media Influence conference today, taking in talks on a variety of topics such as ‘The Future of Online Listening’, ‘Social Analytics and Customer Insight’ and ‘How to Talk Your Way Out of a Crisis’.

But more on that tomorrow.

What inspires me now is a figure that was just given on stage that:

“By the end of 2010, the average American will own six connected devices. People in the UK will, on average, own 4.5.”

Unfortunately this stat wasn’t attributed to any source so I can’t validate it [I’ll look for the slides tomorrow], however – I thought I’d throw the question out onto Twitter –

From my own collection, I count seven. But fifteen minutes (and 30-odd responses later), I’ve managed to pull together an average of 8.7 devices per person.
Which – aside from a few random cases – is quite telling and raises a few points and questions:

My followers tend to be a bit more tech-savvy/heavy (and would therefore own more devices). Fair enough.
If pushed, would the average person know that their internet radio or their TV is ‘connected’?
In this constantly changing, yet ever more connected world we live in – what challenges will this present to the marketeers of tomorrow?

My point is – the internet of things promises a lot. It turns out that your average Joe’s data is going to be contributing a lot to this also – where are the opportunities?

Have a think on that and, while you’re at it, how many connected devices do you own?

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!”

1000heads: Creativity + Curation

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 –

Benjamin Ellis: Why the ‘We’ Generation ‘Knows’ Differenthttp://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=benjaminellis-101028035621-phpapp02&stripped_title=benjamin-ellis-why-the-we-generation-knows-different&userName=wearelikeminds

View more presentations from Like Minds.

We’ll be back with more LikeMinds analysis at some point later this week (or maybe next).

In the meantime, we’d love to hear from you on any of the above.. So why not leave us a comment! 🙂

Not one, but 2Screen

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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Whereâ€™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.