After being in the lucky position of being sent a couple of free afternoon tickets for Thinking Digital Manchester (I am guessing because I have such digital clout?!?) - myself and a couple of colleagues went along to the conference. Killing babies, exploring bodies and readying yourself for the zombie Apocalypse - it was an interesting and thought provoking afternoon!
There were five big take-aways for me:
1) Myles Dyer - one of Britain's first and most successful YouTubers stressed the importance of being authentic from brands online. Not just because audiences respond much better to authenticity, but they can also very easily look back at your long history of communications to check if you have always been genuine.
2) Ed Barton - who is a Wired fellow and CEO of the Virtual Reality education company Curiscope- discussed how curiosity can so often be killed by the constant need we have to 'find our passion'. And he added that there is an interesting fact in everything - and virtual reality might be the way to unlock those facts in education.
3) Jennifer Arcuri - an 'ethical hacker' who teaches people how to hack, so that they understand how to protect themselves. The analogy is like teaching you how to break into homes, in order to protect yourself from buglers. The big take away from her is that we do need to take this stuff seriously - 'the future apocalypse isn't going to be one with guns and governments, it is going to be people being hacked through their microwaves'.
4) Amy Zima - who is a project manager from Twitter discussed a number of preconceptions we 'all have about Product Managers (not sure if I had any preconceptions, or indeed had ever thought of that job!). Her big one comes from a concept called 'Sunck Cost' - where you hang on to what you had before because of the investment you have made in it - despite the fact you can't get that back. Her advise - 'Kill your babies. They aren't actually human'.
5) With the last talk of the day, James Veitch gave us his hysterical take on how he responds to spammer emails. The first one he received four years ago, a friend of his had her email hacked, and was asking for $2000 for hotel bills. So he decided to have a lovers-tiff with her about how she never called him any more, and why was she spending all that money on hotels when she could have stayed with him, eventually getting the hackers to confess their undying love for him. Brilliant. Lesson - reply to spammers, as it wastes their time so they can't scam the vulnerable.
A lovely bit of afternoon thinking.
Here is the two minute full round up on video if you want to see it. https://vimeo.com/169664489