Category Archives: Events

PRWeek Crisis Comms panel

How to deal with a PR crisis

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If you’re a small business owner like me, it’s hard to imagine a time when one corporate mis-step might generate headlines. But a PR crisis can affect anyone, whatever the size of your organisation. It’s good to at least be aware of potential threats. What risks are you exposed to? What things could possibly go wrong? And how would you handle it if they did?

PRWeek’s Crisis Communications event on Wednesday (above) was a sharp reminder that none of us can ever take goodwill for granted.

Kirsten Walkom from Save the Children talked about how charities are currently struggling with the halo effect – presuming public trust in them will be higher than it actually is. This perception gap isn’t helping as the charity world faces an unprecedented series of crises: from Save The Children suffering legal action for rescuing migrants at sea to Amnesty International mistreating and bullying staff to the grim ongoing allegations against Oxfam.

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Ethics panel at the ODI Summit

ODI Summit: can we take back control of our data?

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Open data is a nebulous concept. What does it actually mean? Openness is generally considered to be a good thing. And we all know data is valuable. So open data must be double plus good, right?

We tend to get confused about what’s “open” and what’s not (hardly surprising when few of us read the terms and conditions on anything). As Tim Berners-Lee pointed out at the fifth ODI Summit yesterday, most of us don’t realise we shouldn’t be using Google Maps on event invitations, because that data is copyright Google (he recommends we use OpenStreetMap instead).

At the same time as being trigger-happy with other people’s copyrighted data, we’re even more foolhardy with our own. What we really don’t want is what Sir Tim calls “promiscuous data” – that’s personal data which goes off in all sorts of directions we don’t want it to.

The Open Data Institute believes that open data is the glue society needs. It is campaigning to establish data as “an infrastructure not a commodity”.  If we all share data and collaborate, we’ll save ourselves billions of pounds annually. But if we’re individually confused about what we should and shouldn’t share, the companies and organisations currently managing our data for us are even more conflicted.

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What should employers include in a social media policy?

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What should employers think about when writing a social media policy? How do you protect your brand? And how far are employees’ opinions your business? These were the questions posed by Richard Cook at the start of Monzo’s Open Office September on Tuesday.

It was great to be on the panel, along with journalists Holly Brockwell and Carl Anka and legal advisor Frances Coyle. Richard (a community manager at Monzo) chaired, and around 50 people attended. You can watch the full video above.

Damage limitation

It was a great debate, with loads of input from the audience, and some passionate contributions on all sides. The main theme that emerged was that it’s not so much brands as employees who need protection.

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Ryan Shea and Melanie Shapiro at CogX18

The future of social media: web 3.0, wearables and chatbots

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It’s nearly ten years ago that I met Tim O’Reilly in New York to talk about Web 2.0 and how it was going to change the world.

So it felt a little like deja vu last week hearing Ryan Shea (above, left) and Melanie Shapiro (right) on stage at CognitionX, championing Web 3.0.

Like its centralised, super-social predecessor, Web 3.0 is going to change everything. But Web 3.0 is decentralised – and we’ll not be sharing our data with anyone (unless we want to).

Web 3.0 will give us self sovereign identity  – a core identity that represents us as individuals and is all bundled up with our own data, which we’ll have complete control over. As opposed to government or corporate issued identities (which are what we have now).

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Sofia the Robot at Cognition X

Robots, the universe and everything – CogX has it all

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“I hope that one day you won’t take my job” says the journalist.

“I might reconsider” says Sophia the Robot.

Sophia’s comment is slightly threatening, but she follows it up with a super-sweet smile, and everyone laughs. [Watch the video]

That’s the thing about robots these days. They’re awkward, off-kilter, likely to come out with non-sequiturs, unpredictable in a cutesy way – but ultimately programmed to please and make us laugh.

Sophia the Robot is firmly in uncanny valley territory. Her skin is made of a flesh-like, nanotech material. She has cameras for eyes and a microprocessor for a brain. Her advanced AI (artificial intelligence) software enables her to have human-like conversations.

“Are you a person or a robot?” she asks the journalist. It seems like genuine curiosity.

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Seyi Akiwowo

5 things I learned at Women Leading in AI 2018

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There were so many amazing ideas and themes at the Women Leading in AI conference yesterday, it’s hard to know where to start.

The overarching theme – and one that was centre stage – is that we’re now in the midst of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (which has come hot on the heels of the Third). So while we may feel we’re only just getting to grips with the impact of digital, it’s time to start wrapping our heads around AI (artificial intelligence) and automation – and fast.

In social media alone, automation and bots are now commonplace. From chatbot games to automated customer service, organisations are finding that an upfront investment in machine learning software can pay dividends in the long run.

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Techmums TV on Facebook Live

This week on #techmums TV: using LinkedIn to get a job

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Yesterday was one of the most fun working days I’ve had in a while: I got to spend the morning with a group of brilliant, funny and talented women, putting together a live TV show at Facebook HQ. Thanks so much Sue Black and Isabel Chapman of #techmums for having me 🙂

The topic was “how to find work online”. I was on there to talk about using LinkedIn, understanding your digital footprint and building a personal brand. My fellow guest was the amazing Charlotte Pearce who runs a marketing company called Inkpact which sends handwritten notes at scale. Inkpact employs around 400 “scribes”, many of whom are mums working from home.

In the photo you can see me (second left), sharing a giggle with Sue (far left), Charlotte (second right) and Isabel (far right). One of the main aims of the show is to talk about technology in a way that is positive and accessible.

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Thinking Digital livestream

Thinking Digital 17: it’s all about live video

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Last week I was up North for Thinking Digital’s tenth birthday. This was the tenth year that Thinking Digital has been held in Newcastle, although the actual conference is well into its teens. There have been Thinking Digital spin-offs in Manchester and London. I’ve lost count of how many TDCs I’ve been to. Each one has been amazing.

The big news for me this time was live video. From Christian Payne’s fantastic video 101 workshop to Dan Biddle’s talk to the whole event being streamed on Facebook Live and host venue The Sage tweeting with Periscope, live was the flavour of the day.

I used to work in live TV: it’s exciting, anything can happen, and you don’t have to edit. Now that immediacy is available across social media. Yes – YouTube and Snapchat have been around for years but it’s only really with the global roll-out of Facebook Live last year (and accompanying hard sell) that live video has been pushed into the mainstream.

Here are five things I learned about live video at TDC17: Continue reading →

Ready for #NYKConf

5 things I learnt at NYK Europe

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You never know what to expect from a brand-organised conference. A little bit of hard sell, a whole lot of soft sell, maybe some interesting speakers, possibly nice people, undoubtedly decent catering and an ok sort of venue. That’s pretty much the best case scenario.

NYK Europe, the new social media intelligence conference from Brandwatch delivered on all those fronts. And probably more. It was nice to spend time with lots of other people deeply interested in social media analytics and consumer marketing insights (yes, leaving the rest of you FREE to party on without us)!

Here are five things I learned:

1. The key to meaningful innovation is empathy – Clara Gaggero and her magician husband Adrian Westaway designed the only phone manual ever to be put on display at MOMA. After observing elderly people struggling to un-box and set up new mobile phones, they made two hard-bound books which the sim card and phone could be placed into, creating a fun, interactive process with packaging, gadget and instruction all blended into one. Such a cool, simple idea.

2. Some nice lines to use about working with influencers: “Influence is contextual. It’s not absolute. It’s not a commodity. Influence is an eye-dropper: diffusion not infection. It’s all about planting a seed”. Thanks Dr Paul Siegel! Influencer marketing is still so misunderstood – good to be reminded it’s all about relationship-building (a la old school PR) not sledge hammers.

3. “Social for good” is something we can all be working towards: it’s all about using social data to solve read world problems. Yes, thanks Edward Crook (research manager, Brandwatch) – let’s have some more of that!

4. A 25 year old man can be a global figurehead for challenging gender stereotypes. Liam Hackett has been working with Brandwatch to research misogynistic language online and see how it impacts on men as well as women. Their first report was published in January. More collaborative work is coming. Liam’s agency worked with Lynx on a new tone of voice – as revealed in the aftershave’s latest campaign, Find Your Magic.

5. Mark Zuckerberg may have come to the party late, but he really knows what he’s doing with virtual reality. I hadn’t seen this latest video but its clear that the marriage between Oculus’ technology and Facebook’s 1 billion strong marketplace is frighteningly powerful. Meanwhile, if Twitter doesn’t innovate fast, we could all be deleting our accounts. Just two stories I heard on NYK’s savvy audience grapevine.

Thanks for having me, Brandwatch! Look forward to the next one.