Category Speaking

Entries 56 Total

Speaking at the Buy.at “Speakeasy”

May 23, ’08 6:52 PM

Bafta

Last Wednesday I was pleased to give the keynote at the Buy.at 5th annual “Speakeasy” event, held at 195 Piccadilly, home of the BAFTAs.

It was an eclectic gathering of a couple of hundred people: merchants, affiliates, programme managers and entrepreneurs in a very open, engaged forum.

I spend a lot of time talking to and writing about retailers and the need to engage fully with the digital, demanding customer, and so it was interesting to have an opportunity to examine the role that affiliates play in connecting products and brands with customers’ wallets.

The blend of large-traffic sites, aggregators (like MyDeco or HousetoHome who put a very professional experience design onto the feeds they receive) and very, very niche affiliates (whether MobileShop.co.uk or perfectlyshapedworld) who put retailers to shame in their focus on customers) covered the gamut of retailing.

Given that we had people from the commercial and operational sides of affiliate marketing it was also an opportunity to examine the drivers for profitability, areas of collaboration and the developing needs that affiliates will have from merchants as they seek to remain relevant to customers in an evermore-demanding marketplace.

Following some good questions (both directly, over coffee and then on the subsequent panel discussions) I met some fascinating affiliates and niche businesses who I’m sure we’ll be seeing in upcoming issues of Internet Retailing.

My thanks to the team at Buy.at for their welcome and hospitality. The event was an examplar of stakeholder communication and networking.

It’s also about the only time I’ll ever get to stand on the stage at the BAFTAs… ;)

Update: Ian Jindal’s slides from Speakesy, May 2008 – contents and images are all copyright, but you’re welcome to use with attribution.


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Adobe, Agency.com: some recent speaking

Apr 5, ’08 10:37 PM

I was invited by Agency.com to speak at one of their ‘brownbag lunches’ and managed to do so on 29 February, 2008.

The format is a relaxed one: an external speaker, an ‘open mic’ in terms of topic (I spoke on rich internet applications, underlying data and the challenge of selling in a contracting market) and a group of people all clutching and munching their lunches and throwing in questions. It was a fun and interesting session and I’m grateful to Nick Corston, Agency.com’s Sales and Marketing Director, for the invitation.

Last week I provided the keynote for the Adobe Scene 7 and Bazaarvoice ‘best practice seminar’ for retailers. Held at the wonderfully-located Adobe offices in Park Crescent, London, we were treated to good hospitality, excellent facilities and great company – a broad range of retailers and publishers. Chris Poad, Head of eCommerce for Otto UK spoke in his usual engaging style, and had some really thought-inducing questions about how to replicate the notion of “play” and “playfulness” within internet shopping. Justin Crandall, Commercial Director of Bazaarvoice gave a whistle-stop history of ratings and reviews and then proceeded to move quickly beyond the obvious into the future challenges at the heart of “customer to customer marketing”. I learned a good deal from these presentations – and left with a number of new questions to ponder.

Marty Cornelius and Ijaz Bhattee of Adobe Scene 7 then treated us to a tour of the capabilities of the imaging platform, made all the more memorable by Ijaz demonstrating live the ‘hackability’ of the Scene7 URLs (instructional parameters) and really showing how one could ‘drive’ the application. I always admire someone with the confidence to do a whole presentation ‘live’!

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Adobe, Agency.com: some recent speaking

Apr 5, ’08 6:47 PM

I was invited by Agency.com to speak at one of their ‘brownbag lunches’ and managed to do so on 29 February, 2008.

The format is a relaxed one: an external speaker, an ‘open mic’ in terms of topic (I spoke on rich internet applications, underlying data and the challenge of selling in a contracting market) and a group of people all clutching and munching their lunches and throwing in questions. It was a fun and interesting session and I’m grateful to Nick Corston, Agency.com’s Sales and Marketing Director, for the invitation.

Last week I provided the keynote for the Adobe Scene 7 and Bazaarvoice ‘best practice seminar’ for retailers. Held at the wonderfully-located Adobe offices in Park Crescent, London, we were treated to good hospitality, excellent facilities and great company – a broad range of retailers and publishers. Chris Poad, Head of eCommerce for Otto UK spoke in his usual engaging style, and had some really thought-inducing questions about how to replicate the notion of “play” and “playfulness” within internet shopping. Justin Crandall, Commercial Director of Bazaarvoice gave a whistle-stop history of ratings and reviews and then proceeded to move quickly beyond the obvious into the future challenges at the heart of “customer to customer marketing”. I learned a good deal from these presentations – and left with a number of new questions to ponder.

Marty Cornelius and Ijaz Bhattee of Adobe Scene 7 then treated us to a tour of the capabilities of the imaging platform, made all the more memorable by Ijaz demonstrating live the ‘hackability’ of the Scene7 URLs (instructional parameters) and really showing how one could ‘drive’ the application. I always admire someone with the confidence to do a whole presentation ‘live’!

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Speaking at Manchester Digital/e-consultancy’s “Digital Shorts”

Jan 24, ’08 12:05 PM

View Event :: Manchester Digital

I spoke in Manchester last night at the Digital Shorts event, organised by Manchester Digital and e-consultancy. I spoke at this event last January and this gave me the opportunity to review the predictions I’d made, compare this last Christmas with that of 2006 and consider the key areas of interest for 2008 (and how these have developed from those of 2007).

There was a great Manchester welcome, a good opportunity to catch up with people from the Littlewoods diaspora, as well as the growing number of agencies and digital entrepreneurs in the North West. Thanks to some deft use of the corporate card the conversation (and drink) flowed in the bar afterwards and we didn’t seem to lose _too_ many people rushing over to the MEN to hear the Spice Girls’ triumphant return tour – the other Big Event in Manchester last night ;)

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Speaking: Leeds Digital Shorts

Nov 21, ’07 12:04 PM

Leeds digital shorts | Events | E-consultancy.com

As the evenings draw in and Santa’s little helpers are doing their stretching exercises, Ian Jindal, Editor in Chief of InternetRetailing.net, will be reviewing the key developments of note to ecommerce professionals during 2007.

Looking forward to heading up to Leeds tomorrow to speak at a Digital Shorts event, entitled “Digital Resolutions”. This is a similar format to the Digital Shorts event in Manchester last January (indeed I’m going to be reprising that evening in January 2008 when I return to Manchester for another Digital Shorts evening).

Looking forward to seeing some friends, colleagues and clients in Leeds both for the session and for drinks afterwards.

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e-Consultancy: Harnessing the Power of Social Media

Nov 1, ’07 12:02 PM


DSC00372

Originally uploaded by ikj
This is a really fun training day and you can (see details of the event) and I was speaking on “Emerging trends in social media”.

This is a photo of the audience as I manifestly fail to update my site via SMS… thankfully it worked the second time :)

The slides from the morning are on e-consultancy’s site and I recommend having a look – Ged, Ros and Will were great presenters and I learned a great deal in each of their slots.

It was interesting too how engaged the audience was in the ‘social media’ arena – there was a mix there from agency-side, publishers, government, retail and professional bodies. All are active in SM – from basic starts to pretty extensive activity. However, everyone’s now looking for a certain ‘edge’, to making money and to a more sophisticated exploitation of the opportunities.

Props to BSG for the venue too. I was trying out Apple’s Keynote and their nice ‘embed a web page’ capabilities to switch in and out of presentation and live demo/use. This is always high risk, but the excellent bandwidth and presentation facilities pulled this off. Much better than the time I tried it at a client’s where their wireless network was flakey and saturated and all of the windows blocked mobile/3G signals… There’s nothing worse (or more ironically sublime?) than doing a presentation on Web2.0 interfaces using nothing but a flipchart and the power of mime!

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Barclaycard

Jun 24, ’07 10:38 PM

My thanks to Barclaycard for their welcome at their Internet team’s Innovation Awayday on Friday. I enjoyed presenting on “the Working Web” – a development of ‘Web2.0′ which takes a customer-centric perspective on the issues for major brands in an era when the web is expected to work as promised.

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cScape : Thought Leadership Workshop

Jun 11, ’07 11:18 PM

I’ve known the good folk at cScape for many years and recently they’ve been making a splash with the launch of their Customer Engagement Unit, headed by Richard Sedley. It was my pleasure therefore to open their Thought Leadership Workshop on the topic of the migration “From User Experience to Customer Engagement”. The Brewery on Chiswell Street, EC1 is a great venue and the audience of some 100 people was enthusiastic, engaged (no pun!) and eclectic.

Write-ups of the event are available from cScape.

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Magazines 2007 | Independent publishers

May 1, ’07 11:20 AM

May 8th will find me at the Periodical Publishers’ Association’s annual conference, speaking to the Independent Publishers’ stream about the monetisation model I’ve developed with e-Consultancy.

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“Internet and digital technologies: their role in engaging the next generation” – British Council’s Global Leadership Team

Mar 28, ’07 6:06 PM

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I was pleased to be asked to address the Global Leadership Team of the British Council at their biannual GLT summit. The GLT comprises the UK directorate as well as the Country Directors, some 35 people in total, and they spent a couple of hours on the topic. In addition to a presentation delivered in London the session was webcast to the offices globally, and the Q&A session included some from ‘web attendees’ in addition to the GLT.

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