Thursday 17 December 2009

Technology and PR networking events for January 2010, plus a review of TechCrunch (#xmascrunch)

Tuesday's TechCrunch for the UK and Europe's vibrant start-up sector, organised by @mikebutcher, @PetraJohansson and @rassami, was excellent. This now-regular gathering provides a place and a space for the latest thinking in the technology space, attracting start-ups such as Catwalk Genius, established businesses such as Skype, VCs and angels such as Balderton, as well as journalists, PR and SEO communities. Here is an excellent review of the day's proceedings by Basheera Khan.

In front of an audience of almost 1,000 (including those via live-streaming) key notes speeches delivered by TweetDeck, Festbuzz, Seesmic, The Filter and Tweetmeme provided some interesting insights into developments in the Web 2.0 space. Key themes for 2010 that came up again and again were hyperlocal, sentiment analysis, and real-time.

Here a selection of my Tweets from the day:
  • Tweetdeck - has 19% of non twitter based applications
  • Tweetdeck 10million downloads to date - but what's next! Funding, services eg: LinkedIn, updates to directory, mobile
  • Tweetdeck essentially locks people in via lists/organised experience
  • Sentiment companies are chasing the Holy-Grail. There will always be a trade-off in real-time.
  • What does 'real-time' mean to you? Immediate? Soon? Later?
  • It is reputation, content, context or location that makes information relevant
  • Same content different delivery: successful paywalls are rare
  • Location in online delivery is going to be a significant theme for next year. 09: cloud + real time, 10: real time + hyperlocal
  • Quality journalism is not dead, long live quality journalism
  • Info about info is more valuable than the info itself
  • Vertical and real time is where the true value of search lies

Networking is an essential part of building any business. January 2010 is much quieter (probably due to detoxing requirements after December's frenzy of events), however here are just some of the technology and PR events happening up in London that we could find:

21/1/10: CloudCamp London - unconference style event striving to advance cloud computing
27/1/10: Digital Lounge - topic to be announced, but always a great group of people
28/1/10: MashUp - Apps: What's your strategy? - investigating the link between mobile web strategy and apps
2/2/10: First Tuesday - To charge or not to charge - though leadership seminar
15/2/10: The Debating Group - topic to be announced, but a great proper debate held in the heart of the House of Commons

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posted by thebluedoor at 11:55 0 Comments

Twitter: Surrey networking - a review

Last week, we organised the first Twitter networking event in Farnham, Surrey (aka a Tweet-up). On a busy week full of festive gatherings we were delighted with the interest and attendance.

We organised this gathering following encouragement from all sides, led by @emmafirth of the Daily Telegraph. It was great to see quorum of Twitter enthusiasts rocking-up, including: @jamesfirth, @andypiper, @guy1067, @toni_jane, @jeniferdav, @kwright5, @pascalw and rachel_adams88.

There were a good number of conversations including:
  • Telegraph expenses story
  • Paywalls / free content
  • The rise and rise of Google
  • The digital goldfish bowl
  • Programming: Ruby, Adobe AIR, .NET
  • The perils of marathon running (!? - @guy1067 is gearing up to his second Marathon and is tackling London in April 2010)


We will definitely have another evening Tweet-up in the New Year, so the conversations can continue.... currently thinking end of January, beginning of February. Do let us know if you would like to come: info at thebluedoor dot com, and when.

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posted by thebluedoor at 10:46 2 Comments

Monday 7 December 2009

Is there such a thing as online privacy?

On Friday night, we spent an interesting evening in London listening to a talk by a security expert and well-respected author of titles such as Beyond Fear and the Crypto-gram newsletter. Bruce Schneier is a world-renowned security technologist and has researched issues of security spanning password protection through to illegal wiretapping.


The focus of Friday’s talk was the ‘Future of Privacy: Rethinking Security’. It was an extremely informed insight into the digital footprint of the average person today – from Gmail accounts, social networking sites such as Facebook, through to surveillance technology set up at Government level aimed at protecting our personal security, such a security cameras and licence plate monitoring.


It’s not realistic to be a full member of today’s society without having an online or digital social footprint – whether proactively created or not. And the majority of what is captured about us digitally can help us in our daily lives – for example behavioural marketing. How many of us are still impressed by Amazon proactively offering us suggestions for other books we’re likely to enjoy based on past purchases? We’re all seduced by the convenience of what technology can offer us.


What does raise concern is that legislation is lagging behind technology developments. Technology is amazing as it disrupts and changes the balance of the way we work and live – normally for the better. To ensure there is a good balance between liberty and privacy, however, laws like the data protection act are required. And these laws need to keep pace with technological advances to ensure our licence plate details, for example, are used for the right reasons.


As is often the case, it may take a scandal for the general population to change their online habits and become more aware of sharing too much personal information online. Few people realise that a closed Facebook account still exists, it just can’t be seen. And how many of us check the privacy settings of our email and social networking accounts before blindly accepting the default option?


Bruce Schneier pointed out that it is now cheaper for companies such as Facebook and Google to retain our data than it is to destroy it.


Although I won’t be stopping writing blogs and talking to friends and family online, I will be thinking more about what I share from now on.


This talk was organised by the Open Rights Group (ORG), an organisation set up to protect the public’s rights in the digital age. Founded in 2005, ORG has become the UK’s leading voice defending freedom of expression, privacy, innovation, consumer rights and creativity on the Internet.


The talk was a real eye-opener and based on the number of questions that kept on coming at the end of the evening, I’m guessing there’s a lot of information to process both on and offline for the majority of the audience and will be for some time to come.

posted by thebluedoor at 13:22 0 Comments

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