FUEL Web 2.0 Conference in London 13th June

June 28, 2008 at 9:35 am | Posted in more news | 1 Comment
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Gathered at FUEL the next day (www.fuel-conference.com) were the sons (but not many of the daughters) of the Goodwood delegates. Here are some bullet points copied from the tweets I sent at the event to provide a flavour of the day (with thanks to Alan Patrick for the idea):

  • Richard Moross from Moo.com talked about keeping employees happy with cake and beer
  • Rummble.com allows you to update multiple platforms in one hit
  • The Web 2.0 company praised most frequently today is Flickr
  • The word ‘mashup’ is going out of fashion…but has the mainstream even got to it yet?
  • Innocent drinks use the product carton as media space…and they have a great sense of humour
  • www.summize.com turns tweets into conversations
  • www.twitpic.com allows you to post photos to twitterfeed, worth a look
  • www.ustream.TV provides live video for the opportunistic, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2008/06/mobile_video_are_we_getting_th.html for Rory’s analysis of various new video tools
  • The trend towards pulling required content by RSS means people are bypassing even the snazziest websites
  • This is very cool – check out your brand’s footprint at http://virgindev.saintdigital.co.uk/flash/VirginEye.html
  • Virgin is one of the few corporate brands cool enough to be credible in the Web 2 world

Global Summit at Goodwood House 11th/12th June

June 28, 2008 at 9:32 am | Posted in more news | Leave a comment
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The last couple of weeks have been very hectic and one highlight was the Global Summit http://www.21cglobalsummit.com at Goodwood House, an amazing venue as you can see from the pictures. The delegates were mainly from telco and media companies who were trying to make sense out of developments in technology and emerging collaborative business models.

The owner of Goodwood, Lord March, gave a very interesting talk at the Gala Dinner about the development of the prestige ‘Goodwood brand’. The estate provides high quality leisure experiences encompassing history, fine art, premier league horse racing, vintage cars and champagne.

I was a panel member for the Innovation and Disruption session along with senior managers from Transport for London, Virgin Media and Amdocs. The most memorable aspect of the discussion was the scale of the challenge facing Transport for London in providing an efficient transport infrastructure for the London Olympics in terms of finance, logistics and communication. At the other end of the business spectrum I talked about how the ‘gifted amateurs’ we studied in the Punch Above Your Weight project are making waves with innovative and inexpensive online marketing techniques.

Alan Jenkins from Broadstuff has blogged in detail about individual presentations here: http://broadstuff.com/archives/1019-21st-Century-Global-Summit-Part-I.html

All in all it was a very informative and friendly event and despite being some distance from London the location is hard to beat.

Punch Above Your Weight works outing

June 16, 2008 at 8:09 am | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Last Friday the PayWeight team – Lisa, Jas and me – went to the FUEL conference at RIBA.

Dressed in web 2.0 black, we were lucky enough to hear some great case studies and have our prejudices confirmed.

Tara Hunter (www.twitter.com/missrogue) gave us 260 slides on making whuffie – which largely covered ideas like giving something valuable away, listening a lot, being part of the community, paying attention to detail, embracing chaos and having a higher purpose.

In other words – a policy of live R&D in which we try and add something of value wherever we go.

Then Keir Whittaker gave us a review of tools for collaboration. We were delighted that his recommendations included our core tools like basecamp, google docs. wordpress, flickr and feedburner, you-tube and viddler.

At least it confirmed to us that web 2.0 communication and collaboration are two sides of the same coin – which is where are own Punch Above Your Weight researches are rapidly taking us.

And he introduced us to some new tools – like www.qik.com, www.summize.com, www.ustream.tv and www.libsyncom. Not to mention www.wufoo.com which we’d come across before.

Then we had some great case studies. How Virgin Atlantic used web 2.0 to pressurise the US Department of Transport’s ruling that they couldn’t fly in the US because of non US (ie British) ownership.  How sponsoring the speakers’ room is a great way to get exposure at a major conference and the way that Innocent leverage their genuine, community based, values systems to expand their family. Down to having individual hand knitted hats on the cartons for Christmas.

All in all a good day out, interesting conversations with both Sun and Microsoft.

And if you are into pictures you just HAVE to check out http://labs.live.com/photosynth/bbc/default.htm. You are going to love it.

More at our Punch Above Your Weight Collaboration Pilot on Friday 20th more details here.

Next PAYW Workshop

June 6, 2008 at 9:30 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The next workshop takes place at The Hurtwood Inn, Peaslake, near Guildford on 4th July from 9am with Alan Rae, Lisa Harris and Fintan Clear. Bacon sandwiches will be available so book your place now!

Our next project

June 3, 2008 at 6:30 am | Posted in small business marketing | 1 Comment
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This is Alan Rae writing as the innovation coach.

Lisa, Fintan and I have been doing a further round of interviews with people who are working together collaboratively to expand the reach and delivery of their businesses.

These could be small groups of consultants who can  bid for larger contracts together and then manage the projects effectively using collaborative tools like basecamp or google.docs.  Or they may be people who’ve recognised a particular niche and organised a web vehicle to allow this to happen.

We’re talking to 12 early adopters in this field and will be running a workshop on 20th June at our usual stamping ground at the hub to tell you what we’ve found out.

The University is subsidising it so it’s only £25. More details from the Punch above your Weight site.

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