Tomorrow we will be joining the National Computing Centre at the Cumberland Hotel in London for the NCC Annual Conference – “The Future of the IT Department”You can download the agenda for the day here.
Declan Curry
The event will be Chaired by Declan Curry, the new presenter of BBC Two’s ‘Working Lunch’ programme, and with a packed programme with presentations from IBM, Google, Sage and many more, it looks like it’s going to be a brilliant day.
For those of you who aren’t able to make it, we will be filming all day and updating the blog with interviews with Declan and the speakers. You can also follow our twitter feed @futurefocus to stay up to date with the best bits from the conference, and get notifications of the video blogs.
The dreary clouds of gloom have been shrouding business for many months now. Negative commentary from business leaders has been this year’s flavour. So it has been a welcome relief to focus on the future with less blinkered entrepreneurs.
According to polls at the Future Focus conferences in June 2009, most British business owners and senior personnel either believe the economy is already starting to grow again or expect the recovery to begin within the next six to twelve months. The mood is not so optimistic in Ireland, where economists forecast it will be another five years before GDP returns to the levels achieved in 2008.
But wisely, the main priorities of Future Focus delegates were forward looking. Many revealed plans to “find new ways to grow business”, “enter new markets” or “take share from competitors”. But most common was a desire to keep innovating and use the economic problems as an opportunity to transform company and change their business model.
They had come to the conferences in the hope of being “inspired to think differently about managing their businesses”, and for the vast majority, the Future Focus events fitted the bill. As well as offering a good blend of IBM and external speakers, the events were unusual in featuring a large proportion of ‘case study’ examples. Listening to how other medium-sized are profiting through original thinking and wise use of technology was inspirational for many.
There was certainly a huge amount to learn from the real-world experience of successful business innovators. But just as important was the role played by so many different technologies and communications media in the success of this first phase of the Future Focus programme. It drew together everything from traditional printed White Papers delivered by post and press advertisements in the Daily Telegraph to videos delivered via the Internet and 24/7 commentary via Twitter.
Fully one third of conference delegates reported that flexible, remote and mobile working accounts for more than half of all their work. So it is clear that many forward-looking businesses are already operating to new business structures and using ICT to build success in the face of adversity. There will be many more casualties before the recession is fully over, but the path to future success is clear. Fresh thinking and wise investment is the foundation of future business success.
The dreary clouds of gloom have been shrouding business for many months now. Negative commentary from business leaders has been this year’s flavour. So it has been a welcome relief to focus on the future with less blinkered entrepreneurs.
According to polls at the Future Focus conferences in June 2009, most British business owners and senior personnel either believe the economy is already starting to grow again or expect the recovery to begin within the next six to twelve months. The mood is not so optimistic in Ireland, where economists forecast it will be another five years before GDP returns to the levels achieved in 2008.
Future Focus Dublin – Round Up
But wisely, the main priorities of Future Focus delegates were forward looking. Many revealed plans to “find new ways to grow business”, “enter new markets” or “take share from competitors”. But most common was a desire to keep innovating and use the economic problems as an opportunity to transform company and change their business model.
They had come to the conferences in the hope of being “inspired to think differently about managing their businesses”, and for the vast majority, the Future Focus events fitted the bill. As well as offering a good blend of IBM and external speakers, the events were unusual in featuring a large proportion of ‘case study’ examples. Listening to how other medium-sized are profiting through original thinking and wise use of technology was inspirational for many.
There was certainly a huge amount to learn from the real-world experience of successful business innovators. But just as important was the role played by so many different technologies and communications media in the success of this first phase of the Future Focus programme. It drew together everything from traditional printed White Papers delivered by post and press advertisements in the Daily Telegraph to videos delivered via the Internet and 24/7 commentary via Twitter.
Fully one third of conference delegates reported that flexible, remote and mobile working accounts for more than half of all their work. So it is clear that many forward-looking businesses are already operating to new business structures and using ICT to build success in the face of adversity. There will be many more casualties before the recession is fully over, but the path to future success is clear. Fresh thinking and wise investment is the foundation of future business success.
You can now find all the presentations from the Presentations page on the blog, from all of the conferences split between the morning and evening. You can also now connect with us on Scribd where you can download the presentations direct and comment and share them with colleagues and friends.
Thank you for all of you who were able to attend, stay tuned over the next few days to the blog for the wrap up video and news about the continuing work from the Future Focus programme.
As I wrap up today, James Poulter (@jamespoulter) Tweeted that we had connected through Twitter to over 160,000 people with our Tweets about Future Focus -and I hope we provided some useful insights on what the speakers talked about.
Here are some of the people I know who Tweeted about Future Focus Dblin – if I missed you please add your name/Twitter handle to the comments. Thank you so much for helping share the information that was shared.
Go follow these people and get to know them – they are generous with their time and are people who are using social networks to bring content and value to their own tribes.
That I can not Tweet, live blog, network and record podcasts and videos at the same time! The job of live reporting online is challenging.
And if you are looking for someone to help you build a community online, you find someone who is a journalist who has recently lost their job due to the current downturn in traditional media.
They know how to connect, how to engage, how to create content. Hire them now before your competitor does.
Author: Krishna De speaks, writes and consults on brand engagement and communications to build your visibility, reputation and profits through traditional and social media; follow her on Twitter @krishnade.
Did you know that IBM has 400,000 people and use social book marking, instant messaging, blogs and wiki’s in the company improve productivity?
And did you know that the fastest selling product for IBM is their social networking product and developed here in Dublin?
Bill Kearney of IBM spoke in the session at Future Focus Dublin about using social media and social networking to enhance communications in your business.
His tips for introducing social media in business were:
Identify a problem that web 2.0 can assist you with in solving
Introduce the technology platform for your business
Allow it to spread virally
Consider optional training
And feel free to visit the IBM lab as they would love to hear from you.
I personally don’t agree with point 4 – I would not make training optional. I remember a conference I was at last year run by Simply Communicate where a FTSE 100 company had introduced an internal business blog but after 90 days when they explored why there was little engagement, their internal communications team found there was little engagement as people did not know what to do. So they then went about educating their people in how to engage with the blog and what was in it for them.
What is standing in the way of your company engaging in social media?
Who could help you?
Is it due to lack of understanding? Or lack of a budget? Or are you unconvinced about social media applications for business?
Or don’t you have a business challenge where you have identified social media could help you?
And if you have integrated social media into your business, what are your top three learnings?
Author: Krishna De speaks, writes and consults on brand engagement and communications to build your visibility, reputation and profits through traditional and social media; follow her on Twitter @krishnade.
Richard Farleigh – what do we know of him? Well we might have seen him on Dragons Den UK and perhaps have enjoyed how he has made decisions on who he invested in such as Reggae Reggae sauce by Levi Roots.
He started the day with sharing his story; he had us hooked. Growing up in an underpriviledged family of 11 children with a background that was troublesome, when he was just 11 years old the family were split apart.
While he did not cover the real impact that had on him I am sure that it informed him and must have made him resilient.
Richard shared his journey in entrepreneurship and what particularly struck me were his comments about the fact that “management is more important than the product”.
Some of his companies have failed spectacularly, but when they have succeeded he comments that he had not always known that they were “winners” he was backing, but when he took his eye off the ball in terms of managing the business they did suffer.
But if you are looking to Richard Farleigh to be an angel investor, he is rarely convinced with web businesses as “most don’t know how to market”. One company who changed his opinion though and was a worthwhile investment was Net A Porter in which he invested £10,000 and before the recession was said to be worth %500 million.
And a final word from Richard: “analysing and copying the success of other people can be a waste of time – just trying to model Richard Branson will not ensure your success. You also need to look at those companies that failed and learn from them”.
Author: Krishna De speaks, writes and consults on brand engagement and communications to build your visibility, reputation and profits through traditional and social media; follow her on Twitter @krishnade.
Future Focus takes place in Dublin on 16 June and it is going to be a terrific day with industry experts and speakers from the UK and Ireland taking part.
The venue is the Guinness Storehouse and the day starts at 12.30pm.
The Chair of the event is James Bellini who describes himself as ‘an historian of the future’ and is interested in the key strategic challenges facing current and future business up to Horizon 2025, stretching to 2050.
I am delighted to have been approached by the Future Focus team to be a guest blogger, so I will be doing my best to capture insights from the event.
If you have not booked a place yet it is still not too late to book – HERE.
I also hope to catch up with a few speakers during the course of the day and capture an audio or video podcast which we can share later.
Be sure to watch out for the Twitter hashtag #futurefocus as I am sure there will be a few people Twittering. I’ll do my best to do so too – but it might be a bit challenging – you can find me at @krishnade.
And if you have questions for the speakers be sure to either Tweet me, DM me or leave a comment for me here and I’ll do my best to see if I can put your questions to the panels discussions during the day.
Just checking on Twitter Search and I see that two of the people attending tomorrow are @green_goddess (aka Caroline Taylor, an IBM executive – IBM being one of the sponsors of the Future Focus series) and @ronanlyons (Ronan Lyons is an economist and will be speaking at the conference).
I hope that my commentary will provide a useful summary of the event especially for people who are unable to attend.
And if you are unsure about how to follow conversations on Twitter with hashtags, here is a video I created a little while ago to explain how to use them:
1. You don’t need to have an account on Twitter to follow the conversation – you can watch it HERE
3. You might like to use Tweetchat to filter all the #futurefocus conversations – it will automatically add #futurefocus at the end of your Tweet. You just need to register with your Twitter ID and password then enter the room #futurefocus.
Disclosure: I am not an employee of IBM or The Telegraph Business Club and all the opinions that I share here are my own – am also not paid to blog this event.
Author: Krishna De speaks, writes and consults on brand engagement and communications to build your visibility, reputation and profits through traditional and social media; follow her on Twitter @krishnade.
Recorded live at The Hub in the heart of Edinburgh, we hear from Chris Liversy, Sales Manager for IBM Scotland about the changing face of IBM, and how both internally and externally the company is embracing new technologies to grow, and help mid-market businesses grow with them.
jamespoulter
davesumnersmith
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Krishna De
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