The Fantastic Tavern usually takes place of an evening with plenty of discussion, fun, pizza and the odd beer or three. The Lock Inn was a day long version with 3 different tracks: Innovation (sponsored by yours truly), Craft and Effectiveness and 9 different speakers (plus a couple thrown in for good measure between sessions).
After stuffing our faces with bacon butties and pastries (it’s a hard life), Matt Bagwell kicked off the day with a review of the key trends picked out back in January as being ones to watch out for in 2010. Since the January Fantastic Tavern, Matt realised the trends discussed at the beginning of the year are actually not a prioritised list but a mish-mash of ideas, some of which will work, others won’t, but we can’t necessarily predict that success or failure.
He then ran through the predicted trends and showed how events of the past 6 months demonstrated their relevance (or otherwise). For example, Foursquare and Scvngr encourage you to engage in a fun and playful way – and playfulness was the winning trend back in January.
Matt’s experiences reinforced the idea that we can use social media to get results in customer service – comments on an expensive Pizza Express meal meant his comments got presented to the board and hopefully changed the way they work. In contrast, clothing label Mandarina Duck weren’t available to deal with his complaint and when they did eventually surface simply told him the part he needed wasn’t available, sorry. This terrible experience was of course then shared to all their followers. The opportunity to improve the brand perception was completely lost. The social web can guide purchasing decisions – if you want to buy something you ask friends in similar circumstances what they have and then buy on their recommendation.
Anthony Mayfield from iCrossing then took the ‘stage’. Anthony believes we’re getting past the ‘wow’ – we don’t always have to do everything immediately. He sees a real shift from stability to complexity – there’s so much data out there it’s difficult to know what’s useful and what’s superfluous. Once we accept this shift we need to develop useful ways of thinking to allow us to hone down what’s right for your business.
Gartner’s Hype Cycle describes the trajectory of technologies as they arrive in society. We watch what’s on the rise and also expect those at the peak to drop off – into the aptly named ‘trough of disillusionment’ and then finally to the ‘plateau of enlightenment/productivity’ where it becomes useful and part of how we live. These types of models are most useful for enterprises/CIO’s. However this model itself is being disrupted – for example there are so many different kinds of micro blogging and they move so fast there’s no time to plot where they are on the model.
So out of all the new technological tools, how do you work out what to hang onto?
3 things are firmly established:
- Social Web
- Data Deluge
- Data: emotion mining
Individuals get to decide how they bring data into the world and how they deploy it, resulting in the layering of media and experiences. Anthony recommends you choose your toolkit, make sure you think big (trend) and small tech and be bold and agile with what you decide.
After some lunch and some networking the day changed pace with the start of the sessions. I chose Kathy Brown from Seven 7’s Consulting on the Innovation Track. Essentially, she told us that innovation is about inventions which is about making your ideas real which forges a route to market.
Innovation is about redesigning and improving things that exist already (nothing is new) – ideas come from a diverse number of sources. The trick is to partner with different organisations and entities to make innovation happen. Partnering enables you to:
- Extend your sales reach
- Extend your influence
- Expand your capabilities and competencies
- Improve your credibility
Kathy then asked how you move from being reactive to being innovative? She encouraged us to play the ‘Jedwood Game’ – this involves partnering with someone, joining your names together and then working out how your skills complement each other, and selling it in a sentence to the rest of the group. So, for example:
Hish: Focus is content management, email management
Sara: Produces content and exposes it
Together we are Saraish: We take artefacts people are concerned about and using software make it real for them
The ‘7 C’s’ are the reasons people have partnerships. We went through all the different benefits, for example:
Coverage (extending sales reach)
Capability (you can’t do everything brilliantly, focus on what you do well and partner with people who do the other things you need)
Credibility (Certified partners/people will vouch for you/risk offsetting)
Compatibility
Competitiveness
Conflict
Communication
Culture
Champions
Contracts
Kathy concluded that you need to partner to ensure you understand all the elements above and grow them as part of your business strategy.
We covered Tricky’s session on The secrets of sketching earlier in the week.
The day closed with an awards ceremony celebrating ideas in Innovation, Craft and Effectiveness – and of course plenty of drinking and networking.
See you at the next Fantastic Tavern event!
great post thanks
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