Month: April 2016

I was honoured to be invited to close IBM’s first get-together of its European eCommerce team, bringing together over 400 professionals from across Europe for a couple of days in Windsor to kick off their newly-structured team.

We’ve worked with IBM on a number of editorial projects and I was asked to bring to life some of the themes on the direction of retail and the pressures upon retailers to perform at the highest level.

I’d expected a tired group (I was closing the event on a Friday afternoon, post-lunch… ) but there was a great vibe and I was met with a very warm reception.

The keynote drew on some advance insights from the IREU Top500, InternetRetailing’s new research publication due out in June 2016 and culminated in recounting an approach of ‘TotalRetail’™.

Thanks again for the welcome!

Congratulations to @RupaGanatra, Viktoria de Chevron Villette and Simon Berger for an impressive debut conference in Millennial 2020.

The conference addressed the business challenge of how to approach the millennial customer, and key themes throughout were insight, authenticity and experimentation. This was brought to life on the conference stage with a real wealth of speakers – I was lucky to chair sessions ranging from the founders of Planet Organic and Ceviche to Pepsico and Fortnum & Mason (yes, I was chairing the food stream!).

Here’s a vid of the session on data…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFh7YNwcWnA

The exhibition area was particularly fun and very hand-on (in true millennial style) with more of a ‘fun fair’ feel than an expo.

I learned a great deal and I’m pleased to see that the concept is already rolling out internationally with events planned in New York – February 2017, London (take 2) in April 2017 and Singapore in September 2017.

You can sign up for info at their website – http://www.millennial20-20.com/