I was very lucky to get a ticket to the 3rd version of TEDx Helsinki, the locally-organised TED mirror event. You can find a small summary of the talks below.
Jody Turner Opportunity: Developed world vs Developing world means industrialised and ready versus human touch and in progress. Your passion is the most valuable thing you’ve got. There’s no ownership in innovation. Empowerment. The change generation is all of us.
Kaikki muuttuu paremmaksi (It all gets better, in Finnish) video premiere
Matti Posio: Future of Finnish culture. Culture is threatened by new culture. Media endangered by social media, if they don’t know how to use it unlike CNN. Finns believe in authority somewhat, Americans not really, which influences the way they approach media.
Alf Rehn: Love and raw materials. Passion for doing, extreme production. What can chefs teach of management: Linking strategy, esthetics, passion and implementation & Organized caos.
Mikko Hyppönen: Internet. Evolution leads us to Facebook =) . What threatens the net? Web crime.
Hannu Lauerma: Psicopathy. Antisocial personality disorder. Nervous system doesn’t react to stress like majority of people. Feelings missing. Can develop with lack of physical contact when young. Lack of empathy. Leading to crimes against humanity.
Itay Talgam Conductor video first, then live talk.
Video of 3 year old jonathan conducting beethoven 5th. How to do the same but different? Leaders are afraid of being ignored. Making people get out of their comfort zone. Build order and then destroy it. Empowering instead of command and control. Create metaphors and bring people into them. Customising message to relationship. Authenticity matters. Leadership is suspension of disbelief. Do it all wrong, but still get it right (think out of the box).
One of the best aspects of attending industry events is the opportunity to exchange points of view with other participants. This was brought home during the last panel I watched at SIME, where some of us in the audience didn’t necessarily agree with the panelists in one small point.
Don’t get me wrong: great creative is fundamental to a well-run campaign. However, as a former sales guy I’m a little tired of the intense focus we have as marketeers on the creative and winning awards. Cannes Lions are a beautiful thing and definitely don’t do you any harm as a brand or an agency, but when evaluating a marketing activity I’m more interested in understanding four aspects:
Will the activity live after the first or second push (is it built to live, or built to die?), or are we just thinking about separate, ephemeral campaigns?
Are we measuring impact, and what were the results? Are we focused enough on ROI instead of bells and whistles?
How is this communication adding value to our audience? Why should they care other than because it’s really cool?
As mentioned, I was not the only attendee thinking about these topics after hearing the panel, and we had an interesting chat later on. Funnily enough I found a very relevant presentation of his on this topic below:
Warning: this is quite a long post about marketing. If you’re interested, get a big cup of coffee and a comfortable seat
I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Scandinavian Interactive Media Event, SIME Helsinki for short. You can follow the real-time notes of the attendees in Twitter.While there was no streaming of it, I did take quite a few notes I’ll share with you below.
Introduction – Business as unusual (Ola Ahlvarsson)
Evolution of digital from Windows 98 & Wolfenstein 3D to MacOS & blogs to… the Matrix 😉
Facebook is the big opium of the people, growing faster than any web service ver.
Google branching its business into physical, mobile
Rise of apps
Traditional media mixing with new platforms: BBC on the PS3
Listening is more important than ever
Vision-based augmented reality emerging as a trend
Cloud computing
Cheap iteration
Easier access to international markets
Internet of things: robotic internet
Old industries (books, records) totally disrupted, but content is more alive than ever in the digital world
Games going social (sharing gameplay clips an emerging activity)
Branding is dead, or isn’t it? Originality more appreciated than ever.
Owned, bought, earned media model intro.
B2B going B2C
Measurement panel
What to measure, what not to measure, how they combine: good discussion but inconclusive.
70% of teenagers would rather go without sex than music.
Bring together music & lovers.
New bands sign in, get listeners and fans.
Social media workshop
Social media is a diffuse, container term
Engaging with as many people as possible… really?
Mass communication coming to an end.
Quality, not quantity communications
Number of communication messages everyday increasing times 10.
Internalise social media practices in your organisation.
Keep on developing, things never get out of beta.
Participate, don’t just enable if possible.
Sociology know-how important.
Aggregate & summarize (widgets, RSS, etc)
Package but allow unpackaging.
Data is owned by users, make it portable.
Absolute clarity for licenses and permissions is vital.
Monetisation is possible & can be planned for: make it free first, charge for additional services later. Made me think of the growth of SMS in the Philippines.
Segment product on different layers: Spotify basic vs. premium
Presence / status update important, becomes social currency.
The combination of social media and mobile has the potential of becoming very powerful, especially with its links to location (& even more, proximity).
Recommendations for companies getting started:
Start with content calendar.
Basic listening tools (Tweetdeck, Google Alerts).
Authenticity crucial: you have to be close to the essence of your brand/service proposition.
Customer care can be a great way of getting started if you do a good job. Look at it as cost vs. opportunity.
Don’t do external-facing communications if too stiff, but internal blogging/comms are also a great opportunity.
Don’t experiment, commit to do it well.
Marketing communications workshop: From one-night stands to meaningful relationships in marketing
The full talk from Hasan & Partners. Please make sure to check it first before reading the rest.
Heineken Milan Champions League case: One night stand using earned & paid media
Gatorade replay: Huge ROI, much more than a one night stand. Concept can be scaled up or down, and continue even if the brand is no longer behind it.
Livestrong, Nike Chalkbout: Post-digital executions. It’s all about you (reminds me of that Time cover)
Wrap-up and Conclusions
Change is not a choice, it’s a necessity.
All marketing is performance based.
Social media must be entertaining, useful and/or relevant.
Finns can make world-beating services if their vision is big enough.
E-health will be close to your heart 😉 .
Innovation is definitely accelerating.
Creativity in communication is more important than ever.
A very readable, if slightly biased, book on the origins and philosophy behind Facebook. If you want to know more about how startups grow and how Facebook works (or says it works), read this book.
Was invited to attend the second edition of TEDx Helsinki last week, and I have to thank the organizers for a fantastic event. We had great speakers, awesome videos from official TED conferences and some very interesting insights. A quick bullet-point summary below.
Sebastian Wernicke and how to create the ultimate TED talk using statistics (video). “Tool” available from get-tedpad.com.
Esa Saarinen introduced us to the idea of Baby Radicalism, or what should we learn from toddler behaviour in our daily life: the power of smiling, growth and love.
Juuso Nissilä went over how our biology hasn’t evolved as fast as our culture and society, and our bodies struggle to catch up with our conduct and environment.
Bjarke Ingels showed us the power of letting ideas evolve in the architectural design process (video).
Virpi Kuitunen gave us a very personal talk on the challenges of giving up something. “The most difficult thing of quitting is not leaving stuff behind, is starting anew as you don’t know what lies ahead”.
Anssi Vanjoki explored the power of volunteering and volunteer organisations. He mentioned the open source software movement and sports clubs as good examples, while contrasting them with the sad state of political party volunteering in Finland.
Mikael Jungner talked about the illusion of control and how it affects the decision-making process giving biting examples from his time at the helm of YLE.
Tom Wujec on the nature of collaboration (video). Openness, expertise and facilitation will go a long way.
Kirsti Lonka showed us some of the challenges the Digital Natives pose to the way the education system in Finland currently works, and what are they doing to change it.
Teppo Turkki talked about the rising economic, technological and even cultural influence of South Korea, Japan and China.
Temple Grandin on how autistic minds work, and why they can and should be allowed to contribute to society (video).
Jufo Peltomaa showed why the coming singularity won’t mean the end of the human race. In fact the emerging AIs will evolve so fast they will not care more for us than we do of, say, wolverines.
Miina Savolainen closed the event with a bang, talking about the empowering quality of portrait photography: what it says of the photographer’s values and ways of communication. When you look at pictures, don’t only focus on what’s present, but also on what is not being photographed. More info on her website. You’ll never see family albums in the same way again.
All in all an enjoyable and inspirational occasion which I hope I can attend again.
Severing links, however temporarily, is extremely painful in both personal and economic terms. You can ask the 7 million stranded passengers for their opinions if you think otherwise. Many of them have been using social media tools to somehow cope with the situation, as Teemu Arina explains.
The past few days have looked quite a bit like a teaser of what a world without oil would be. Hopefully it serves as a wake-up call to us all.
The video above (via alt1040) explains Chatroulette better than I would. My experience with it has been mixed, but it reminds me a lot of the old BBS/ICQ free-for-all 10 years ago. I’ve read metaphors comparing it to TV zapping with people, but I think it’s more akin a people player in shuffle mode. Some of the nice people I’ve found (after nexting all the flying male body parts) included:
A bored Filipina (at 3 a.m. her time) asking what music was I playing (Nortec Collective, of course).
A Dutch law student with a great sense of humour.
A German dude interested in banking for development (we were chatting about Muhammad Yunus)
Random male stranger asking questions on existential philosophy (my conclusion is he had watched The Matrix too many times).
A Texan in his 50’s very interested to know my views on the Mexican drug violence situation.
A French literature student just interested in a chat, also with a really nice sense of humour.
A young Indian female doctor waiting for her night shift to start who gave me a couple of nice suggestions of Indian indie after I mentioned I collect “local rock” from all over the place.
Serendipituous, yes. Extreme, sometimes (but you can also next them or even better report them, jerks!). An interesting study of the human condition, absolutely.
TEDx Helsinki was organised this year as a local mirror for the wonderful, famous TED talks. The event was quite good overall, even if the level of the talks was a little uneven. The only problem they had was with misleading marketing in one important aspect: while their website and the registration process was in English, 80% of the event was in Finnish with no translations, which meant those attendants who didn’t master the language of Aleksis Kivi (and there were quite a few), were given a cold shoulder from the get go.
This was one of those situations where I was really glad to have learned the local lingo. If you are interested to know more about the event, you can check twitter or Anssi Kela’s post (in Finnish).
Update 18.05.2010: Videos from the presentations here, here and here (in English).
Mexican public finances are not in the best of shapes given the economic crisis and the extremely difficult year so far for the country, so in their budget proposal for the next year Congress has proposed to raise taxes on pretty much everything instead of trimming down public spending further and closing useless ministries and bureaucratic institutions.
One “small detail” that has gotten pretty much every Mexican netizen riled up is a raise of 3% on telecommunications, including the use of internet, as Congress considers it a “luxury good”. Great way of stifle the development of the nation even further, especially when comparing it to what is going in in places like Finland where brodband access is a right (which doesn’t mean it’s subsidised by the state). Here in Finland it is understood that connectivity brings economic advantages and growth, unlike our prehistoric Mexican politicians.
