Uncovering Thinking Digital

What have I learned at Thinking Digital? There™s a lot here and its only lunchtime on the first day. We arrived yesterday afternoon to attend Thinking Digital University. I got the Techbus up from Old Broadcasting House, which was great fun. This was a seriously well-equipped bus “ wireless, coffee, kitchen with fridge and sink, TV and best of all great company.

Our host, Katie Lips, @katielips and sponsor Ian Forrester @cubicgarden from BBC Backstage had done all the hard work organising this so thanks to them. I met Bubblino, invented by Adrian McEwan, who blows bubbles when the Thinking Digital hashtag on Twitter is used, and managed to swap coworking stories with Andy Goodwin from Liverpool John Moors University. Can™t remember the last time I went on a coach trip “ maybe when I was in sixth form? It was a great way to get into the spirit of Thinking Digital.

Thinking Digital University kicked off in the afternoon with a number of workshops. Geoff and Leia went along to the ˜Show and Tell Gadget DIY session with fellow OBH residents FriiSpray™s Stu Childs, Richard Garside and Dave Lynch, joined by Alex Deschaps (who you may remember from UK Ignite here at Old Broadcasting House in January), Bubblino, and others. I headed to The Baltic for ˜Practical Wisdom™ hosted by Mike Southon of the FT. Mike is a great host. He could be a stand-up comedian “ in fact he probably is! Mike is the author ˜The Beermat Entrepreneur™ at http://www.beermat.biz/. He asked the audience to consider their motivation for being an entrepreneur. He argues that the main goal should be to create wealth, which is what you are left with if all your money is gone. It™s your networks, your knowledge, your contacts, your skills. He had some tips on how to perfect your elevator pitch.

Firstly PAIN “ what is the pain or problem your business will solve?

Secondly PREMISE “ what do you do?

Thirdly PROOF “ convince people that you can do it “ this usually comes from your customers.

Finally PURPOSE “ what is the goal of your company? Why are you in business?

Mike then introduced us to Harry Drnec, an old friend of his. Harry was a world war two fighter pilot who then went into marketing. He has an impressive CV - Budweiser, Sol, to name a few. He had a great story to tell about his work turning Red Bull from a loss making company to a highly successful brand. He did this in four simple steps, which he shared with the audience.

Step 1 “ identify your customer
Step 2 “ find them
Step 3 “ touch them
Step 4 - thrill them

These make sense to me. For Red Bull, as soon as they had a clear idea of the customer (students, clubbers, drivers ) they then set out to let them try the product “ and the product worked for them, so they bought it.

Harry told another interesting story today about how Red Bull stood up to Tesco in a battle over margins. Red Bull refused to budge despite Tesco then not stocking the product for a while. Eventually Tesco gave in and started stocking the product again, as there was so much demand from their customers.

The day closed with The Perfume Dinner in the evening. This was the conference speaker™s dinner at Secco™s in Newcastle City Centre. Our speaker was Chandler Burr, The Perfume Critic from the New York Times. Yes he really is their perfume critic. The idea was that we would smell some scents, try to guess what they were, then we would be served a course based on those scents. This started as fun, but my face dropped when an hour later our first course was bread and butter! I was really starving by then and it wasn™t quite what I was expecting. I was sitting next to Tara Hunt so that helped a bit. To be honest it was a great idea, but I was really rubbish at guessing the scents, although Geoff was far worse than me. {Geoff™s has insisted that I add in that he correctly guessed carrot and mango and now feels œthe perfume guy needs to make good on the 1.000,000 euros offer}

Anyway, we were up early today - or rather Leia and Geoff were “ to set up the nti stand. There™s a good Yorkshire contingent here. So far I™ve met Emma Frost from Yorkshire Forward, John Popham from Digital 2020, and Chris Hemmingway from MadeByPi.

I really enjoyed the first talk this morning from Paul Miller, CEO of School of Everything. Paul is a big fan of using technology to solve real problems. He is involved in Social Innovation Camp where people give their weekends to build a prototype web app that changes the world. So far five sustainable start-ups have come out of this project. Sounds like something we could host at Old Broadcasting House?

We got some great coverage of nti as part of our sponsor package for speaker Simone Brunozzi from Amazon. Herb said some very nice things about us and our photos were up on stage “ slightly overdressed as we took them when we were dressed up for the Yorkshire Digital Awards last week. Simone had his job interview for Amazon in Second Life! Another highlight was Mike Southon™s talk on being an entrepreneur “ using the Beatles as a case study of how to be successful. Brilliant! Also isn™t ˜All my loving™ just a really fantastic tune? I™ve been singing it all day. Also worthy of a mention is Alex Hunter “ he does social media for Virgin. The new Virgin website, which will be launched in a few weeks, looks impressive. The clients will generate the content and visitors will rate copy which generates ˜social currency™.

That™s all for now “ will update on the rest of the conference tomorrow. Now I™m off to party! Will be tweeting tomorrow from @lindabroughton

by Linda Broughton

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