Category: Speaking

Retail Summit

Google UK have convenened an interesting and senior morning on etail and ecommerce. You can see the list of speakers at the website – quite a gathering.

I’m pleased to be moderating a session on “Scaling and Managing the $1bn Online Business”. I do this with some humility since the last ecommerce business I ran (while Group eCommerce Director at Littlewoods Shop Direct) was “only” £405million. The current £:$ rate is flattering of my efforts though – $800m sounds like a lot more – but failing a slump in the value of the dollar (!) I currently do not qualify for membership of the $1bn-club. Not yet, at least 😉

The panellist will include Bruce Fair (MD, Kelkoo), Matthew Hardcastle (MD, Shopping.com) and Peter Fitzgerald (Retail Industry Leader, Google UK).

It’s been a busy time on the speaking front, culminating in a ‘double decker’ for Adobe and then Sky.Adobe’s Scene7 folk have initiated a series of retailer briefings and, having spoken at the first, it would have been rude not to speak again when invited 😉 The topic of this presentation was “Excellence in Online Retailing”. I opened proceedings, then Ijaz and Marty shared some of the Scene7 roadmap. Michael Ross of eCommera then gave a presentation on the “The 10Ps of eCommerce“. This was a great presentation. Michael’s dry and direct delivery was really engaging and certainly brought the 10 Ps to life. I’d read these (since we published an article on them in Internet Retailing Magazine last issue – you can see the PDF here), but seeing the presentation was certainly more fun.

I’ve put the presentation on slideshare.

Then on to Sky University for an afternoon opener on “Online Selling – a customer experience”. The day was organised by Sky for their top teir affiliates and my session was an opportunity to take a broader look at the customer landscape. It was also a good opportunity for me to ponder further the affiliate landscape – an area of increasing interest to me, to which I’ll return in later posts.

A real eye-opener for me though was a presentation from Joost de Valk, a search strategist at OnetoMarket in the Netherlands. Joost is engaged in “white hat” SEO (ie legal, well-behaved, effective SEO activities) for some major brands. Joost also knows a lot – from hearsay, no doubt – about “black hat” SEO: the sort of activities for which the word “naughty” was coined. I spend a bit of time working with client teams to improve their SEO, but I had no idea of the scale, complexity and cunning of the operations attempting to outfox Google, searches and credit-card owners. It’s an area I need to look at! Hopefully, with Joost’s help rather than a DIY remedial course in high-contact, combat SEO!

Here are my slides on Slideshare:

The Future of Digital Marketing | Events | E-consultancy.com

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• Socialisr from Yell – an interesting take on making their database into a social event organising support thing.
• Microformats.org – the space for little things. Little, structured and portable things. Standards therefore.
• APML – the standard, interchange, thinking space for Attention Profiling Markup Language.
• engagd – useful and early implementations of APML. Worth bookmarking and keeping under watch.
• Tastebroker.org – a place to grab and see your APML.
• Phorm’s “Open Internet Exchange” – read, consider and see whether it’s threat, opportunity or both. And to whom…?
• TrueKnowledge – really interesting take on structured, explicit and inferred knowledge.

Nico Macdonald and the BBC have announced The Media Futures Conference, being…

“… a one day exploration of the dynamics and trends shaping the future of media. As well as an opportunity for lively debate, the conference will feature presentations showcasing innovative projects, showing smart thinking in practice and illustrating the scope of what is possible “

No small promise then 😉

The conference is the culmination of a year’s conversation with the BBC by Nico (of Spy.co.uk), and builds upon the regular series of Innovation Forums (fora?) and the Innovation Reading Circle (as mentioned here previously in my review of Andrew Keen’s book, Cult of the Amateur).

The website – Media Futures Conference 2008 – has information on the agenda and speakers (I’m Chairing a session on provocations).

The tickets have already sold out once so if you’re interested in attending I’d suggest you register promptly (Update: there’s also a “Waiting” list available via the ticketing page).

Last Wednesday I was pleased to give the keynote at the Buy.at 5th annual “Speakeasy” event, held at 195 Piccadilly, home of the BAFTAs.

It was an eclectic gathering of a couple of hundred people: merchants, affiliates, programme managers and entrepreneurs in a very open, engaged forum.

I spend a lot of time talking to and writing about retailers and the need to engage fully with the digital, demanding customer, and so it was interesting to have an opportunity to examine the role that affiliates play in connecting products and brands with customers’ wallets.

The blend of large-traffic sites, aggregators (like MyDeco or HousetoHome who put a very professional experience design onto the feeds they receive) and very, very niche affiliates (whether MobileShop.co.uk or perfectlyshapedworld) who put retailers to shame in their focus on customers) covered the gamut of retailing.

Given that we had people from the commercial and operational sides of affiliate marketing it was also an opportunity to examine the drivers for profitability, areas of collaboration and the developing needs that affiliates will have from merchants as they seek to remain relevant to customers in an evermore-demanding marketplace.

Following some good questions (both directly, over coffee and then on the subsequent panel discussions) I met some fascinating affiliates and niche businesses who I’m sure we’ll be seeing in upcoming issues of Internet Retailing.

My thanks to the team at Buy.at for their welcome and hospitality. The event was an examplar of stakeholder communication and networking.

It’s also about the only time I’ll ever get to stand on the stage at the BAFTAs… 😉

Update: Ian Jindal’s slides from Speakesy, May 2008 – contents and images are all copyright, but you’re welcome to use with attribution.

I was invited by Agency.com to speak at one of their ‘brownbag lunches’ and managed to do so on 29 February, 2008.
The format is a relaxed one: an external speaker, an ‘open mic’ in terms of topic (I spoke on rich internet applications, underlying data and the challenge of selling in a contracting market) and a group of people all clutching and munching their lunches and throwing in questions. It was a fun and interesting session and I’m grateful to Nick Corston, Agency.com’s Sales and Marketing Director, for the invitation.

Last week I provided the keynote for the Adobe Scene 7 and Bazaarvoice ‘best practice seminar’ for retailers. Held at the wonderfully-located Adobe offices in Park Crescent, London, we were treated to good hospitality, excellent facilities and great company – a broad range of retailers and publishers. Chris Poad, Head of eCommerce for Otto UK spoke in his usual engaging style, and had some really thought-inducing questions about how to replicate the notion of “play” and “playfulness” within internet shopping. Justin Crandall, Commercial Director of Bazaarvoice gave a whistle-stop history of ratings and reviews and then proceeded to move quickly beyond the obvious into the future challenges at the heart of “customer to customer marketing”. I learned a good deal from these presentations – and left with a number of new questions to ponder.

Marty Cornelius and Ijaz Bhattee of Adobe Scene 7 then treated us to a tour of the capabilities of the imaging platform, made all the more memorable by Ijaz demonstrating live the ‘hackability’ of the Scene7 URLs (instructional parameters) and really showing how one could ‘drive’ the application. I always admire someone with the confidence to do a whole presentation ‘live’!

I was invited by Agency.com to speak at one of their ‘brownbag lunches’ and managed to do so on 29 February, 2008.The format is a relaxed one: an external speaker, an ‘open mic’ in terms of topic (I spoke on rich internet applications, underlying data and the challenge of selling in a contracting market) and a group of people all clutching and munching their lunches and throwing in questions. It was a fun and interesting session and I’m grateful to Nick Corston, Agency.com’s Sales and Marketing Director, for the invitation.

Last week I provided the keynote for the Adobe Scene 7 and Bazaarvoice ‘best practice seminar’ for retailers. Held at the wonderfully-located Adobe offices in Park Crescent, London, we were treated to good hospitality, excellent facilities and great company – a broad range of retailers and publishers. Chris Poad, Head of eCommerce for Otto UK spoke in his usual engaging style, and had some really thought-inducing questions about how to replicate the notion of “play” and “playfulness” within internet shopping. Justin Crandall, Commercial Director of Bazaarvoice gave a whistle-stop history of ratings and reviews and then proceeded to move quickly beyond the obvious into the future challenges at the heart of “customer to customer marketing”. I learned a good deal from these presentations – and left with a number of new questions to ponder.

Marty Cornelius and Ijaz Bhattee of Adobe Scene 7 then treated us to a tour of the capabilities of the imaging platform, made all the more memorable by Ijaz demonstrating live the ‘hackability’ of the Scene7 URLs (instructional parameters) and really showing how one could ‘drive’ the application. I always admire someone with the confidence to do a whole presentation ‘live’!

View Event :: Manchester DigitalI spoke in Manchester last night at the Digital Shorts event, organised by Manchester Digital and e-consultancy. I spoke at this event last January and this gave me the opportunity to review the predictions I’d made, compare this last Christmas with that of 2006 and consider the key areas of interest for 2008 (and how these have developed from those of 2007).

There was a great Manchester welcome, a good opportunity to catch up with people from the Littlewoods diaspora, as well as the growing number of agencies and digital entrepreneurs in the North West. Thanks to some deft use of the corporate card the conversation (and drink) flowed in the bar afterwards and we didn’t seem to lose _too_ many people rushing over to the MEN to hear the Spice Girls’ triumphant return tour – the other Big Event in Manchester last night 😉

Leeds digital shorts | Events | E-consultancy.com

As the evenings draw in and Santa’s little helpers are doing their stretching exercises, Ian Jindal, Editor in Chief of InternetRetailing.net, will be reviewing the key developments of note to ecommerce professionals during 2007.

Looking forward to heading up to Leeds tomorrow to speak at a Digital Shorts event, entitled “Digital Resolutions”. This is a similar format to the Digital Shorts event in Manchester last January (indeed I’m going to be reprising that evening in January 2008 when I return to Manchester for another Digital Shorts evening).

Looking forward to seeing some friends, colleagues and clients in Leeds both for the session and for drinks afterwards.

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Originally uploaded by ikj
This is a really fun training day and you can (see details of the event) and I was speaking on “Emerging trends in social media”.

This is a photo of the audience as I manifestly fail to update my site via SMS… thankfully it worked the second time 🙂

The slides from the morning are on e-consultancy’s site and I recommend having a look – Ged, Ros and Will were great presenters and I learned a great deal in each of their slots.

It was interesting too how engaged the audience was in the ‘social media’ arena – there was a mix there from agency-side, publishers, government, retail and professional bodies. All are active in SM – from basic starts to pretty extensive activity. However, everyone’s now looking for a certain ‘edge’, to making money and to a more sophisticated exploitation of the opportunities.

Props to BSG for the venue too. I was trying out Apple’s Keynote and their nice ’embed a web page’ capabilities to switch in and out of presentation and live demo/use. This is always high risk, but the excellent bandwidth and presentation facilities pulled this off. Much better than the time I tried it at a client’s where their wireless network was flakey and saturated and all of the windows blocked mobile/3G signals… There’s nothing worse (or more ironically sublime?) than doing a presentation on Web2.0 interfaces using nothing but a flipchart and the power of mime!