Silicon Valley tells London: Be original and open your kimono

Investors and entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley met with more than 300 tech company CEOs at Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication in London last Saturday. Organised by LinkedIn’s co-founder Reid Hoffman and investor Sherry Coutu, the ‘Silicon Valley Comes to the UK’ conference was the perfect end to a series of tech and entrepreneurship focused events happening over the past two weeks, which also included the European tech awards The Europas and the Prime Minister’s visit to Tech City. Hoffman opened the conference with these words: “Entrepreneurship is throwing yourself off a cliff and assembling a plane on the way down.” By the response, many of the attendees were already in a free fall. … Continue Reading

New publication focused on the ‘cloud’ to launch in the UK

Cloud Pro aims to fill a gap among UK tech titles and cover ‘cloud’ from a more strategic business perspective. Expected to launch within the next few days, the publication from the Dennis Publishing family will target C-level executives and technology department managers explaining cloud without being too technical and using cloud jargon. I attended a Cloud Pro event yesterday and caught up with its editor Max Cooter to learn more about his and the publisher’s plans. … Continue Reading

Meet my new friend TED

The first time I came across TED was through a YouTube video of Pranav Mistry demonstrating SixthSence technology and the interaction of the digital and real worlds (included below). From that day, I’ve been following TED regularly and recently attended my first event in London. In one sentence I would describe TED as a conference, a forum and a network for sharing ideas.

Whether you attend or watch online, events like TED make you stop, they expose you to interesting ideas and hopefully inspire you to think about things differently. In this fast pace world, we need time to stop and think – a lot of good ideas come out of it.

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PR – It’s In The Game!

Check-in. Get points. Take a photo. Become a Mayor. Complete a challenge. Earn a badge. Move up the leardership board. Win! These are just a few terms that you’ll soon be hearing much more. Recently, several start-ups have been making quite a bit of noice about new mobile applications that combine social media features with location of a mobile phone and add in rewards, points, challenges and prizes to make it fun. … Continue Reading

It’s One Big Conversation, Stupid

Whether you read newspapers, watch TV, login to Facebook, listen to podcasts, write a review on Yelp or post a tweet, it is still you, the same person with the same likes and dislikes, values, thoughts and ideas. So, why would companies have different marketers with different messages for each of these channels?  Yet, all too often I find companies and PR agencies separating the social media and the traditional media worlds. Recent research by marketing management firm Unica published by eMarketer proves it: “Many marketers keep social campaigns siloed”. … Continue Reading