Archive for the ‘Events and Conferences’ Category

Social Media vs. TV – learnings from Amsterdam (part one)

Friday, September 19th, 2008

A few days ago, I was lucky enough to visit Amsterdam for the annual International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) which brings together nearly 50,000 visitors from the world of TV. From traditional broadcast to exciting applications such as mobile and IPTV, the exhibition and conference is a window into all that’s going on in video and radio entertainment. But the broadcast model has never sat comfortably with the wild web – issues of rights management, content protection and the internet’s natural disposition for breeding disruptive technologies have led to these two media channels into prickly relations in the past.

Now, Michael Grade, executive chairman of ITV, has added fuel to the fire, telling conference attendees that “Google and YouTube are just parasites, they just live off our content is what they do. As long as we can create the content, the content is the keys to the castle for us going forward. The day they start spending one billion pounds a year on content is the day I’ll start worrying.”

Grade is confusing professional content with social media content, showing a huge lack of understanding in terms of why people use TV and why people use YouTube. I’m with Shane Richmond on this one, who rightly states that “Online video is not about replicating traditional broadcast TV and it’s certainly not about cannibalising ITV’s meagre audience, which is a drop in the ocean in internet terms.”

The consumer values content above all else and is far from worried about where it comes from. It’s a fact the music business has found difficult to swallow, and the TV industry is equally reluctant to get on board. Fortunately, companies like Shiny Red client APRICO are out there getting content owners to sit up and take notice. APRICO’s software means that consumers can watch programmes from traditional TV sources as well as internet content – like the ever popular Rocketboom - all in one channel, personalised to a particular interest. Once again, content is king… we just have to recognise that its kingdom is a cross-platform one.

Posted in Events and Conferences, New Media, Video | 1 Comment »

Girl Geek Dinner 3rd Birthday @ Google Towers

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

I went to the third birthday of the London Girl Geek Dinners last week which were at Google’s Victoria Offices. The Girl Geek Dinners are a fantastic networking community for women working in a special interest area, often tech, but other areas are welcome and present. They were initiated by Sarah Blow after she attended the original Geek Dinners franchise, and she’s now busy jet-setting around the world with Girl Geek Dinners happening in over 20 countries!

This event was a celebration of the last three years and Google laid on great food – see Neville Hobson’s slide show – and gorgeous branded cupcakes which are already rightly getting fan posts via Annie Mole!

Aside from getting a nose around Google Towers (very swish), and suffing our faces, there were some good presentations and a panel discussion. The panel looked at the work-life balance and some of the technologies that mean we can now work anywhere and everywhere. Especially relevant to the audience both because of what many of us do, but also due to the – in some ways – more isolated way we often work. One of the panel speakers ran a start up with ten people working across five countries, which is amazing, but the negatives of working without the traditional office, and the value of face-time were also emphasised by all. I guess that’s why sites like Twitter are increasingly important to many in niche worlds of work, because they replace the office banter you miss when working alone! (I know my colleagues would miss me really)

Some notes from the presentations…

Karen from Google ““ User-Centric Design

Digital products are rude eg: “˜Updates are complete, do you want to restart now or later?’ popping up, stopping you working and demanding an answer. It’s about designing smarter products which remember and learn
Everyone has an opinion on design because it’s visible, so it’s key to resist design-by committee, Google try to avoid this using personas
The persona’s help them design to goals not tasks as Sandrine covers, eg: people want to write a love letter, not create a word document!
The difference of designing for mobile web, eg: when designing the YouTube mobile app, they had to think about the distracted user and the greater focus on uploading videos rather than browsing them (Blog Til You Drop has more)

Digital Maverick ““ Drew Buddie

Drew is a secondary school IT teacher, and talked about technology “˜giving students wings’.

Drew uses Google docs for shared projects and wikis in school, letting his students engage in and create their own forums, online games and technologies
He’s a fan of Moodle – a free Open Source software package designed to help educators create effective online learning communities
Drew rightly believes in “˜digital natives’ and they’re already consuming, creating and building the web around us
He suggested we check out TED Talks ““ a huge database of inspirational speakers, that are yours to browse and use. – You could get lost in here, great content and very well-designed site, the way they divide up videos as you watch them is great (for my attention span)

A great, evening, massive thanks to Sarah and her team as usual – good to meet LJ Rich finally too!

Posted in Events and Conferences, Mobile, PR and Marcomms | 3 Comments »

Olympics online

Friday, August 15th, 2008

In spirit of the Olympics, I thought it would be fitting to post about the Olympic related activity I have seen on the web recently.

Not surprisingly, reports from Beijing are widely available – I would hope that there’s a lot to report on as Gawker tallys the costs of the New York Times sending 32 reporters so cover the event! In addition to news, sites such as Global Voices are providing some interesting pieces.

It also looks like many people are tuning in via the internet as Brand Republic reports that NBC’s online coverage of the Beijing Olympics is already more than the whole of the Athens online coverage attracted. It is a shame that this has been slightly marred by reports of them unwilling to share the content.

Lastly, the New York Times have created this cool interactive map of Olympic medals so you can keep up to date with who has won what!

Posted in Events and Conferences | No Comments »

Shiny Red schmoozing update

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

As long term readers will know, Social Media isn’t just about staying in and updating your blog. Over the last two weeks, the Shiny Red team has been out and about at various networking events, so here’s a quick update.

The T3 Summer Party - You’d expect this glossy gadget mag to know how to throw a party and they didn’t disappoint. Hog roasts, vodka luge, and plenty of great people to meet, including fellow PR bloggers Dom and Eb.
The Moo Summer Party - This company has made a business out of mini-business cards… simple, quirky and very much a sign of being part of the digital media “in-crowd”… I’m ordering mine this weekend.
The London Blogger Meetup – Organised by marketer and all-round nice guy Andy Bargery, this one in particular was sponsored by Stella Artois who gave away free drinks and several rides in its Star Over London airship. I was fortunate enough to win one of them, but being unable to make the scheduled time, have given it away to another blogger – expect to see a guest post here in the near future. Also check out Annie Mole’s write-up and pictures from the event.

If you’d like Shiny Red to attend your party, please send invites here.

Posted in Events and Conferences | 2 Comments »

Shiny Red’s accidental and unofficial Twitter event

Tuesday, July 8th, 2008

Shoreditch Twit A while ago, a series of events brought me to the conclusions that a) the bloggers’ meetups Shiny Red often attend are a great way to meet like minded people in your area. b) its not just bloggers who can benefit from meeting in real life to share ideas and c) there are a decent number people on Twitter who live or work around Shoreditch.

I therefore accidentally organised the Shoreditch Twit – an event which is happening tomorrow evening in the Shoreditch area. While this is not a Shiny Red thing, there will be a few of us from the team there, so if you fancy dropping down for an informal drink, here are the details

When: Wednesday 9th July, from 6.00pm
Where: The Big Chill Bar, Dray Walk off Brick Lane, E1 6QL (they have Wi-Fi)
How: Follow @shoreditchtwit on twitter

Posted in Events and Conferences, Microblogging | 4 Comments »

PR Newswire Director of Emerging Media event

Thursday, June 12th, 2008

I attended the PR Newswire Web 2.0 event on Wednesday evening where their Director of Emerging Media Michael Pranikoff was speaking. It was a slick and wide-ranging run-through of all things new media – very little new to Shiny Red of course! But it was interesting to see what elements of the tools available, from RSS to twitter, people were familiar with and using on a day to day basis or even at all.
A few nice talking points from Michael below:

The Nike Ning’s – I love Ning’s (create your own niche social network) and this is a great application. Nike take email addresses at the till and follow up with customers post purchase directing them to local running clubs, buddies and communities in their city; providing a big added-value factor to buying trainers.

Comcast Cares on twitter - A pretty well known online anecdote, but still great. Comcast (US cable provider) scan twitter for their brand name – as you can on like of tweetscan and summize and come to the rescue of – quite oftern uber-bloggers, fixing their opinion former problems and getting blogosphere praise. Check out their @comcastcares twitter for some live customer care.

Pearl Harbour the movie in 2001 was the first Multi Media Newsrelease from PR Newswire – you can see Michael getting the word out here on the Hobson & Holtz Report. MMR’s are an interesting area, most elements of which we include in any outreach, however the benefit of getting stories out on the wires and hosting for a year must add value in presence and volume.

Posted in Blogging, Events and Conferences, PR and Marcomms, Web 2.0 | 1 Comment »

Open Music Meet – 14th May

Friday, May 16th, 2008

I had an interesting time at the first Open Music Meet on Wednesday after spotting Andrew Dubber’s, tweet earlier in the week.
The event was a roundtable discussion and social organised by Jonas Woost of Last fm, and Dave Haynes. The get-together got a fab fab kickstart being led by US visitor Anthony Volodkin creator of MP3 blog hub Hype Machine.

It’s been great over the last year getting to know, listening to and engaging with the online music community with Shiny Red client, ad-supported music service, We7. It’s fair to say it’s been an exciting year to be watching and the strong opinions I see online everyday were certainly reflected in the room. Although I have to confess to only catching the last half hour, so I’m keen to get there on time for the next one – check out Grumblemouse’s post for a better account of the evening!

Aside from those already mentioned, there was a great mix of people representing a spread of interested parties, from artists like Antigone, live music start-ups like Ian from Songkick and Jakomi of The Music Void.

A few more details here if you fancy coming to the next one.

Posted in Events and Conferences, Music, Web 2.0 | 3 Comments »

London Bloggers Meet Up – ‘Do I know you from Twitter?’

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

Just seen great posts from Annie and Andy-our lovely poorly host – so thought I’d mention what another buzzy event the London Bloggers Meet Up was last night at the Coach & Horses.

As ever a nice opportunity to chat with regulars, Matt, Chris and Peter - who was fresh from fun and games at our Panasonic event. It was lovely to meet lots of new people including Glitterditch’s Siany, Francine and Malcolm Eggs from London Review of Breakfasts – where I have been enjoying the write-ups and the breakfast-themed pseudonyms today – Rhys Chris Peese is my fave.

Mehrdad of Aref Adib and Chris of lots of places, including this cool gig site provided great banter, and it was exciting to meet the infamous Pigeon Blogger.
Also nice to meet Qwghlm’s Chris who popped along after a last minute Twitter – we discussed the very geeky ettiquette of a ‘Do I know you from Twitter?’ moment.

There was also some fiery debate about monetising blogs which everyone had an opinion on, so all in all a fab evening, I’m already looking forward to the next one!

Posted in Blogging, Events and Conferences | 2 Comments »

Blogging = â€œan enthusiasm mediumâ€? & Twitterers = â€œavaricious connectorsâ€?

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

Having been out and about this week, it was great to meet Neville, Jed, Janet & Mike and see Tim & Ged again at Neville’s social last week which was good fun.

In a more educational setting, there was an interesting talk and Q&A with Shane Richmond Communities Editor of Telegraph.co.uk last night as part of the PR Newswire Meet the Media series…

Telegraph blogs =”a collection of niches”?
Shane talked about the variety, strength and value to PRs of their blogs, especially referencing the political blogs which was interesting after hearing Mike from Brassneck speak a few months ago. Meanwhile the benefits of having the Telegraph brand behind him as a blogger hadn’t escaped him – citing the O2 debacle that day as a great example where he automatically received information and had easy press office access when calling from “˜The Telegraph’ to clarify the story. A situation which many independent bloggers would like to be in on such occasions I’m sure.

Blogging = “an enthusiasm medium”?
My favourite phrase of the evening. Described because bloggers unlike journalists and PRs, aren’t employed, trained or trying to write for others – instead they’re writing about something they want to. They bring a personal enthusiasm and passion to the subject, that us flacks or hacks try to leave at the door. Shane pointed out that this enthusiasm ““ and in-depth knowledge ““ is hard to fake, whether that be “˜Astroturfing’ or good old fashioned journalistic instincts that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. He also added that not only is it hard to fake, but bloggers go to lengths of transparency ““ see Arrington’s vested interest disclosures ““ that the press sometimes don’t

Journalists = curators
A more controversial point perhaps describing a possible future role for journalists. Shane referenced a great story which caught my eye a few weeks ago “if the news is important, it will find me”?. Covering the news seeking and sharing habits of younger readers in particular, which is what the Telegraph is trying to tap into and be part of.

Twitter = “avaricious connectors”?
I did have to look avaricious up to be sure, but it does mean “Immoderately desirous of wealth or gain; greedy”? ““ which probably most of us on Twitter are! Whilst referencing it’s flavour of the month status, he acknowledged it as an increasingly important tool and a great way for PRs to reach him, along with Linked In, Facebook etc – to seal a connection after contact though not for blind adding!

Posted in Blogging, Events and Conferences, PR and Marcomms, Print, Web 2.0 | No Comments »