Get Digital Conference 2016

Introduction

Get Digital, the last DICE conference took place on Tuesday 12 2016. It was shorter than the previous ones as we had the presentation of the Posters before. The topic today was cloud computing. 5 different speakers talked about their experiences within this area.

1. Paul Dwyer
2. Brendan Murray
3. Ryan Ball
4. Carl Dempsey
5. Fergus Gloster

Speaker 1: Paul Dwyer

Our first speaker, Paul Dwyer worked with the US secret service and companies like the FBI. Moreover, he wrote a book about cyber security and cyber risk.

“The cyber world and the physical world are integrated.”

This citation lead us through his speech. However, there are some significant differences between the two. Mr. Dwyer explained this with a simple example. A criminal in the real world needs access to assets that he wants to steal. A criminal in the cyber world can copy things from the other end of the world and we maybe would not recognize this.

According to Mr. Dwyer it is way easier to become a criminal in the cyber world than in the real world. One cause for this is the growth of the Internet. The workers behind this scene do not have any morals at all. Examples like the JP Morgan company show, that without the real world the cyber world cannot exist.

When looking at the web we have to differentiate between two different types. The surface web and the deep web. The surface web is 10%, the deep web even 90% of all the contents online. US Navy analysts, Dwyer calls them “spies” found that out.

The deep web contains websites with for example prices for crime. I was really shocked when I saw the table, differed into murder, rape, beating and many more and the prices what they cost. Paul explained that the people behind those sites are businessmen who also know how to target their group. In the deep web it only takes one click until you will be arrested whereas in the surface web you need at least 3 clicks.

It can be said that the cloud contains lots of opportunities but also many challenges. Those challenges are not of a technical nature as many think, but of the legal one. One of the opportunities in Ireland is the fact that the top five companies in cloud computing are headquartered here. The problem is that the “bad guys” collaborate and share their knowledge. Nevertheless, Europe started building a community to defeat this.

Speaker 2: Brendan Murray

Brendan Murray is DCU Alumni and talked us through the revolution of Cognitive Cloud.

 

 

There are three main points in this revolution:

1. Cost
2. Innovation
3. Business value

It all started with Cost what describes the simple infrastructure of cloud computing. It was developed to mobile or web apps until where we are now, the business perspective. According to Murray we are at the very beginning of this step and the clever analytics.

The Internet of Things, which was his main topic is one of the most exciting and dynamic areas of IT. It links physical entities with IT systems. Whenever we are in the Internet we leave little tracks that can be traced back. Data is the whole point of the Internet of Things. Finally, the analytics part is to extract the insights or rather the patterns of e.g. the consumers.

Today there are about 13 billion connected devices. This number is expected to double in the next 5 years. In the next 10 years the economic value of it will be 11 trillion dollar. Soon it will be the largest single source of data on the planet. However, over 90% of it will be unused.

Cognitive Systems on the other hand are fundamentally different. They understand. This means that they adapt and make sense of data. Moreover, they reason. They interpret information and come up with a conclusion. And finally, they learn what means that they accumulate data and derive insight at every interaction.

Cognitive technologies are for example: vision, machine learning, language processing, planning & scheduling or speech recognition.

speech recognition

 

With cognitive technologies you create an intelligence that learns from the real world. They can present unbiased hypothesis.

Speaker 3: Ryan Ball

“Content Context Marketing: The art of not sucking” This was the title of the speech of Ryan Ball. It immediately made me curious about what will come now. Ball is the Head of enterprise sales. His speech was one of the most interesting ones, as he had a real good style of presenting and catching our attention. Probably this was because he first of all wanted to get us up and have a little stretch.

Ball started with a little review of how marketing was in former times. In the case of Nike for example it was all about social positioning and peer pressure. Nike had a paper with statements that made people think about their actual state and what they might want. What was really interesting was that with such a campaign Nike invented the word “jogging” which is now used all over the world.

Marketers are the ones responsible for growth.

However, 60% of the sales cycle is over before a buyer has contact with a salesperson. It is all about recommendations in the Internet or of friends.

We have to differentiate between inbound and outbound marketing. Outbound marketing is about interruption and is thus seller-centered. Inbound marketing is more about attention and is buyer-centered. The inbound sector grew a lot in the past years as traditional marketing is broken. 86% skip TV ads. 94% unsubscribe from Email. 44% of direct mails is never opened. These numbers show very well that there was a change and that it is important to adapt.  Ads are a great way to build audience but when the money is away this will stop.

Therefore, Ball’s company, a cloud company, uses a new set of tactics such as free tools. The website websitegrader.com took them 8 weeks to develop and is a tool that can be used without paying. This is how you keep customers. Another technique would be to build contests. We don’t want to be part of a big crowd, we prefer being individual. Therefore, we expect websites to be in a constant change. An example for this would be the speech of the pope in 2005 compared to the one in 2013 where way more people had a smartphone.

Speaker 4: Carl Dempsey

Dempsey’s speech was about the IT and their exercises. Customers expect software to be easy and not to change very often. On the other side there are the business people who want changes so that the revenue rises. IT workers are on the constant struggle to develop new tools and to satisfy consumer expectations. I found quite interesting that 85% of time and money is used just to keep the software on track. Only 15% can be used to develop it!

According to Mr. Dempsey we are living in the Age of the Customer. Customers are nowadays also able to get information. The example he gave us for this was a bank. Customers are able now to research everything in the Internet and to even have access to the information in the bank during the discussion with the personnel. This is a total change to what such a situation was some years ago.

One of the customer’s needs is consistency marketing. It is important to recognize things as we have so many choices today. The problem for businesses is to keep the customers as they can simply switch to the competitor if they have a better offer for the thing customers are looking for.

Speaker 5: Fergus Gloster

Mr. Gloster is non-executive director. His speech was about SaaS. These four letters stand for software as a service. It was a bit sad that he didn’t explain that word, as it was then really hard to follow his speech.

SaaS is the new business model. Cloud computing allows us to create an app for example, and it is immediately available all over the world. We apparently moved from a product to a service. This also includes the fact that the power switched from the vendor to the buyer. As Mr. Dempsey mentioned before, the customers have the choice and also the possibility to easily switch if they like. This makes it harder for companies to keep them. The whole thing lead to a shift in the distribution model. We have to think about the role of resellers in  the process.

Marketing will change in the future. What the others mentioned before was also the key in Gloster’s speech. Most B2B solutions need to be changed. In former times companies did what all the others did as well. However, now the key is to differentiate from the others and deliver devices or rather services that are distinct. Nevertheless, this will not happen without an effort. Companies have to specialize in one thing and probably decide to only serve one segment.

Conclusion

The last conference is over now, and we got a full picture of all the opportunities and challenges in cloud computing. This conference was related to the one which dealt with online marketing and again demonstrated the changes that happen now in that area. People become more connected and use more online devices.

I’d like to thank all the guest speakers of all conferences and the module’s organizing team that made it possible to listen to so many different speeches and get to know companies and their views much better!

All the best,

Dicedcu9968

 

 

Get Started Conference 2016

Introduction

“Ladies and Gentlemen, today we have something like the Oscars of Start Ups!“ was the first sentence with which Eoghan Stack introduced the conference “Get Started”. Like the two former ones it took place in the Mahony Hall of the Helix at the DCU campus.

Owen Stuck is part of the DCU Ryan Academy, which supports entrepreneurship. There are different programs for people who want to start their own business, such as the propeller program or even something only for women. There is even one especially for DCU students called Ustart. The Ryan Academy accelerated 75 start ups so far. Sure, not every is a success, but most of them made it.

The DCU Ryan Academy, which was found by Tony Ryan and his family supports start ups with real engagement such as mentoring.

With a picture and the sentence: “Keep calm and hire yourself!” the 3^rd DICE conference started.

List of speakers:

1. Mark Little – Storyful
2. Ollwyn Moran – CogniKids
3. John Byrne
4. Ciara Glancy –  Beats Medical
5. Gerard Forde – Bizimply
6. Panel Discussion
7. Paul O’Hara – ChangeX
8. Pat McDonagh
9. Gerry Duffy

Speaker 1: Mark Little – Storyful

Mark Little is the founder of Storyful the first social media news agency. Now he works at Twitter. Mark graduated from DCU in 1990 and worked as a journalist. In 2010 he sat at his table, a laptop and a bottle of water beside him and started writing his business plan. This was the start of his start up life. After 3 years he sold his business to Peter Murdock. Mark told us that he then realized that his start up life began much earlier than in 2010. Moreover he knows, that it was also luck that brought him so far. Nevertheless, the most important thing he learned was that he learned from his failures and not from his success.

Next, Mr. Little gave us some tips for starting our own start up:

• It’s not about learning skills – No, it is all in our mind! We have the control about our life and what we want to do.
• Face your worst fears. – Start up life is hard and not always easy. However, fear affects decision making and this takes place in the front part of our brain.
• Culture beats strategy. – It is all about really leading your team
• Stay true to yourself. – You are the same person, at home or as entrepreneur.
• Know when to fold. – Lots of start ups do not succeed. It is a business full of risk. But you should see it as a lesson and go on.
• Always learn from failures. – Not only success is important. Risk – Failure – Learning. These three words form a continuing cycle.

Mark Little ended his speech with the words that the best moments in his life were when he was with the back on a wall but with his team he likes and a concept he believes in. I completely understand him. If you want to reach something and you really believe in that it is the best thing to manage challenges.

Speaker 2: Ollwyn Moran – CogniKids

Ollwyn Moran was a secondary teacher for many years. Then, knowing how important the crawling stage for babies is, she decided to develop a suit that supports them when crawling.

CogniKids suit

Her startup was founded in 2013 and is still in its early stages. Mrs. Moran showed us two pictures in the beginning that can be seen here.

If we only see the duck we think everything is good and easy. However, it is important to have a deeper look. She is paddling and needs lots of effort to swim. I think it is the same thing with studying, although I know that studies can’t be compared to founding one’s own company. People ask me what I am doing and I tell them that I’ll study the first 4 semesters abroad, in Dublin. They think it is so cool, living in a capital, in a foreign country. Nevertheless, my main work are my studies. It is not always as easy as we think.

Ollwyn also told us her story. She won some competitions, among them the student entrepreneur competition to fund her business. When presenting her business plan the other people talked about SWOTs, PESTs and PNL. It took a while until she understood that it is not PNL but P&L, an income statement. She absolutely had no idea in leading and founding a company. She told us that it is important to make little steps.

Mrs. Moran explained us three key ingredients that we need for starting our own business.

1. Resilience: It is important to see a “NO” not as a no, but as an opportunity.
2. Keep calm and have patience: things take way longer and much more money than assumed
3. Passion and hustle: an own business becomes a 24/7 thing. Moran describes her company as her 3^rd baby, as she already has two boys.

Following the three key ingredients came some more words of wisdom. Among them are for example that you are always selling you and your company. Your behavior always reflects you and your business. Moreover we have to see the exercise in little steps (“Eat the elephant in small bites.”). And finally, do not accept a no as an answer.

Speaker 3: John Byrne

John Byrne is CEO of Corlytics that was also founded in 2013. His startup is a cloud to 100%. Thus Byrne was talking about the opportunities for an enterprise in the cloud business.

It is important to realize that with a cloud you are straight away in the global market. As soon as you launch an app, it is online and users have access to it. Thus, it is an easy place to get going initially, BUT it also is a very competitive market place, as large companies do the same. Microsoft and IBM as only two examples are also part of the cloud business and hard competitors.

“Everything that can be invented has been invented” – Charles H Duell

Big Data and bears challenges as well as opportunities for the entrepreneur. A key competitive advantage for him are the speed and time to the market. Moreover, the team plays a very important role for his company. Byrne has legal analysts, bank risks experts, Data scientists and banking analysts. It is important to have in each part the best people possible.

But how do we get success? According to Mr. Byrne it is first of all important to spot a gap and then quickly filling it. It is important to move faster than anybody else what means today, much faster than in former times.

Speaker 4: Ciara Glancy – Beats Medical

The speech of Ciara Glancy who is CEO of Beats Medical was one of the most interesting speeches in my opinion. The company created an app for treatments of the Parkinson’s disease. The symptoms of this disease limit the quality of living dramatically. In a video she showed that people with the illness can’t really walk and some are even bound at the wheelchair.

The app, which is accessible in every country around the world plays an metronome which gives the rhythm of walking for the people. Without the metronome they shiver and walk very slowly and with it their walking becomes more confident and smooth. The treatment with the metronome was first introduced in 1950 and Beats Medical developed it.

As the other entrepreneurs Ciara didn’t plan the entrepreneurship. She worked as a physiotherapist, also with people with the Parkinson’s disease. When the idea of the app arose she started working in the Parkinson charity to better understand the people’s needs. The company was funded with fundraising and finally they started a market research. For Beats Medical the customer is at the center of everything. They wanted feedback to know what else they can do to help the people with the disease. Soon it became clear that one type was excluded: the people sitting in the wheelchair. Thus the company started to develop new technologies to also help them.

For Ciara Glancy the greatest motivator are her users. People with the Parkinson’s disease face challenges every day and master them. They make their dreams reality. This is something she also wants to reach and it means for Ciara that nothing is impossible.

Speaker 5: Gerard Forde – Bizimply

Our next speaker is one of the founders of Bizimply, a workforce management app for restaurants, bars or hotels. With this app HR management. schedules, or attendance can be managed. Gerard Forde presented us 10 startup lessons:

1. Tell a story – no one planned to become an entrepreneur and has his or her own story of how he reached it
2. Build a great product – It is important to sell to customers all over the world. For his company this meant that the app was created for IOS, Android, etc
3. Find a great team – You need the very best people for your company that are worth working with.
4. Create hype – In a competition they convinced the judges that they had the best software ever, although there were other startups that were also very good. This reminds me to our company we had in school. We also created an app and presented this in front of other CEOs. What we created was completely new and for us it was very important to get as many users as possible. Thus, our marketing was really important.
5. Boot strap – We are not in Silicon Valley where money plays no role. When creating our own startup we must be aware of the fact that we have to calculate with only a small amount of money.
6. Love your customers – In the beginning the product is not perfect. However, the feedback, especially the negative one helps improving and developing the product.
7. Build a sales machine – The sales team is very important to get revenue.
8. Win competitions – It is a hard time at the beginning, but preparing presentations gives practice and also different awards.
9. Find great investors – People with expertise who did this before are very important as they push you.
10. Have fun – It is a great time!

Panel Discussion

In the following panel discussion, led by Connor Sweeney who is Project Manager at Seedcorn Competition the three speakers talked about their experiences during this competition. They are the ones who won the first three places of it.

All in all they all recommend taking part in a competition because this helps concentrating on the most important facts that makes one’s own company out. It helps focusing on the most important points. Moreover, you meet more people in the same situation and you can only learn from them and there feedback.

Speaker 6: Paul O’Hara – ChangeX

Paul O’Hara is the founder and CEO of ChangeX which is a marketplace for social change. He told us his story of how he reached this step. He graduated with a master in marketing from UCD and had his first job at Unilever. However, he was fired after one year. He admitted that, well, he was not easy as employee. The whole hall laughed when he told this. His next job was marketing chocolate bars. However, he became more and more aware of social problems around the world and wondered what he can do or rather, whether marketing chocolate bars has a deeper meaning. All he knew was that he wanted to change something.

This was the first step of his journey. He decided to develop the perfect business plan but learned very fast that this is not that important because other companies may have the same idea and be faster. He then started to develop his own idea and raising money for his business. Paul was disappointed that all happened so slowly, that spreading his visions is not that easy as he thought it would be.

According to him we live in a privileged world and can change something. We should help people who are not able to change something. For him the most important thing in his career was to find something meaningful to work on.

Speaker 7: Pat McDonagh

Pat McDonagh was introduced as the most popular of our “Oscar’s” speakers. He is the founder of four different companies. He was born in the working class in a very small stone house in Ireland. In his leaving cert class no one had believed that he would become so successful once.

First of all, Mr. McDonagh worked as a school teacher in his village. However, he decided to have a worth life and became a salesman. With his companies and products he had to face lots of challenges and success as well as hard times. He lost everything and bought it back later, and had to face really tough time with a house, his family and no money. Nevertheless, he faced these challenges and never gave up. He continued living his dream and the things he really believes in.

Like the others, Pat gave us some tips:

First of all, it is important to maintain one’s privacy. Strong links to the family are really important but no interviews about this should be given to the press. Moreover we should always be prepared and value the impact of others, in form of feedback for example.

Speaker 8: Gerry Duffy

Finally, let me present you our last speaker of the conference. Gerry Duffy who is motivational speaker. Gerry’s presentation was quite different than the others but I liked it very well. He started letting us moving our places. No one liked this, me neither. However, this was really useful to show us that to reach something we must leave our comfort zone. 80% of people live in their comfort zone where they don’t have to change or develop something. However, only 20% live in the so-called learning zone which includes things such as taking courage or changes, in fact things that are difficult for us.

The two zones

Gerry himself was completely unambitious and had no confidence 10 years ago. Then he decided to change something and faced clear aims. He reached 99% of all his visions.

Gerry introduced us in System2 thinking. We thought about what we want to reach in 1, 10 or 50 years. Imagining clear aims and things we want to reach helps us really achieve them. His hint was thinking every week-end about our aims. This should help us achieving it.

I think this is a very good method of reaching what we want. Although I think that there are some aims, such as health, happiness or family which we cannot influence that much.

Conclusion

The conference about startups gave a very interesting insight in what it means founding one’s own business. Things are not always easy and it was good to hear that failures are one of the most important things in life. We do not learn from success, we learn from our mistakes. Facing challenges is very important because when you mastered them you have a great feeling.

dicedcu9968

Get Digital Conference 2015

Introduction

Get Mobile – the title of the second DICE mini conference indicates that the topic has to deal with mobiles. However, not only with mobiles, another issue of the presentations was mobile marketing. Eoghan Stack led us through the program. He is the Chief Executive Officer of the DCU Ryan Academy. First of all he explained what the Academy is. It is a partnership between the Dublin City University and the Ryan family who are also the founders of Ryanair. The aim of the Academy is to support entrepreneurs, especially new StartUps. There are various programs for young entrepreneurs, as for example one for females.

What is a StartUp? According to Mr. Stack this is a company that is confused about:

• What its product is
• Who its customers are
• How to make…

…in fact it is a newly established company.

Mr. Stack introduced the topic with some facts about mobiles. Think about what is the first thing in the morning we touch? It is the alarm button of our smartphone. Afterwards, most of the people start browsing even before they got up. We use our smartphones nearly the whole day and this leads to new behaviors. The following speakers talked exactly about this topic. How much the importance of smartphones changed and what impact this has on our daily behavior.

Here you can see the list of speakers:

1. Colm Dwyer – Microsoft
2. Owen O’Byrne – Fire
3. Stephen Jio – Dell
4. Paul Berney – mCordis

Speaker 1: Colm Dwyer – Microsoft

Colm Dwer is the Head of Sales of Microsoft Ireland. Since 16 years he works in the mobile industry and is glad that he chose it. One cause for this is, that this industry changes extremely fast and there are lots of new innovations. He started with a little review of the early days in the mobile industry.

We only have to think back to the year 2006. Ten years ago it was not normal for everyone to have a mobile and no one knew what a smartphone was. The first Nokia phone was able to transfer data with 28,8 kilobytes per second. Today this is nothing as we transfer data with megabytes, now.

The Windows devices group is huge. There are various phones, clocks and x-boxes. To make all these products famous and known Microsoft uses the so called funnel theory. The aim of the company is to make the funnel as big as possible.

Marketing Funnel

Nevertheless, if a product has no big market share this means no bad thing. According to Mr. Dwyer it is very important to see this as an opportunity. There are so many potential consumers that might be reached in future. The Smartphone Lumia of Microsoft is one example for this. When Mr. Dwyer asked who in the hall has a Lumia, there were very few hands to see. However, for him this is an opportunity to convince the rest that the Lumia is a very good product and reach them as potential new users.

In a video shown by him it becomes clear that the mobiles, or rather being connected changes our behavior. We all have the same 24 hours each day. This is something like the global currency. Nevertheless, the aim is how to become more productive and efficient in this time. The Microsoft devices help to be connected wherever we are. We can for example use the Smartphone Lumia to connect with our PC who runs Microsoft 10. Although they are connected via cable both can be used independently. The user can create PowerPoint presentations on the smartphone but via the PC and many more things. In my opinion this is a huge chance. You always have everything you worked on and you had to do with in your pocket. Nevertheless, for this you always have to need the latest products which are very expensive. This is probably the problem why not so many people use the latest technology, because they can’t afford all those products.

Technology does not only help us to be more efficient. It can also keep us safe. In another video Mr. Dwyer showed that Volvo, the Swedish car brand works with a technology called HoloLens. They can see the details of a draft from a car and change it as they want. Consumers can also see more technical details if they like to, just by wearing those “glasses”. The technology also helps during driving. If you get too close to the car in front of you it brakes and thus, prevents you from an accident. It is really important to make the roads safer, so that there are fewer accidents. Some lives might be saved. Nevertheless, if the driver knows that if he doesn’t pay enough attention there is always a technology which does this, the general attitude towards attention in the car changes, which might be a negative aspect of new technologies.

2. Speaker: Owen O’Byrne – FIRE

Owen O’Byrne is the Head of Product of FIRE Financial Services. This company consists of a StartUp team which developed a mobile platform for paying. They started as Realex and had big dreams, as Mr. O’Byrne tells us. Finding a solution so that no more cards need to be used was their aim. Thus, the company decided to transform banking services. However, it was very important for them that it needs to be safe. The idea was to create a mobile app. There was just one problem: lots of other firms already had apps for their products and services. The next step was to create a website where the users can fill in their details and create a business account. With the connection between the website and the app their problem was solved. But how does it work? You get a payment request via message with a link that leads you to the website. As all your details are saved, the process of paying is fast. QR-codes or NFC can also be used as means. On your mobile it might look like this:

Now, who are the potential users? The answer is easy: everyone. Trades people, bills or restaurants and cafes are only few examples. It can also be useful for the people in a market stall, as they don’t have so much cash in their cash box, what reduces the case of being raided. With QR- codes on posters it is easier for charity organizations to receive money and even lockers can be paid with Fire. That means that you stand in front of the locker and get access when you pay with the app.

We now see that mobiles play a huge role as even paying can happen with an app. Thus, we use it more often. It is easy to spend money in this way, as we don’t need cash or any cards.

3. Speaker: Stephen Jio – Dell

Stephen Jio is Global Social Media Marketing Manager at Dell what means that he develops social media strategy and content for new products. He also mentioned the increasing number of users that become more and more mobile. Dell made a huge survey about the new trends concerning new technology. They found out that there are about 3 billion active global internet users and among them 2 billion people who have an active social media account. These are huge numbers. According to Mr. Jio this development will continue to evolve. An interesting fact he mentioned was that the majority of the content that’s created is done on mobile devices. I think that one cause for this is that mobiles are no longer only mobiles, but little PCs, also in their capacity. The consumers also don’t need to possess for example music; they only want to be able to stream it everywhere they are. Another new trend is that more and more people work at home and no longer in the company as they also have access to all the important data from their home. This is why Dell started to differ between proprietary user personas.

The different personas are:

1. Desk centric
2. corridor warrior
3. on-the-Go Pro
4. Mobile worker
   
5. Specialized use

Mobile worker

In his speech, Mr. Jio concentrated on the mobile worker. His needs are software, hardware, productivity and, sure, a remote service. This is a problem while working at home that there is no IT support in the house but in the company. The primary concern of the mobile worker is data. Cloud applications are needed to structure the whole content. Mr. Jio explains that an employee is happy when he has the latest technology. The desire is there because they want to be able to show in the public that they possess the latest generation of a product. Surprisingly, the devices which they desire most are tablets. The market is changing from a consumption to a productivity tool. The fact that 55% of the workers use tablets as their primary device in work underlines this. For a company it is really important to look at the users and what their needs are in a workforce that becomes more and more mobile. Then you can develop new devices that suit best. Dell for example has a mobile portfolio with devices for everyone. One example for this is the Alienware for DJs.

4. Speaker: Paul Berney – mCordis

The future of Marketing in the mobile era presented by Paul Berney was today’s keynote. Mr. Berney is the Managing Partner EMEA and Co-Founder of mCordis. He has more than ten years of experience in mobile marketing. Additionally, was voted one of the Top 50 influencers in mobile marketing in the UK by The Drum magazine 2013 & 2014. This presentation was the most interesting one as it dealt with mobile marketing and some examples.

“Change is the enemy of the competent” – Jonathan McDonald

This quote shows that the marketing industry is changing very fast. It is important to learn now how it works as Mr. Berney stresses because otherwise we won’t have good job chances in the future. Mobile Marketing is connecting, engaging and influencing people. It is like a mixture between science and art as it contains elements such as quality, quantity, tactics, creativity, strategy and data. The selfie of Obama that can be seen here shows this very well. It was Nelson Mandela’s funeral and they are just taking a selfie with a mobile.

Selfie at Nelson Mandela’s funeral

 

“Distraction is the new normal” – Daniel Goldstein

Today most of the people spend most of the time of a day looking on their smartphone. An important fact to note and what a former speaker also mentioned is that people don’t want to possess an own device. They just want to have access. The sales of CDs decrease more and more whereas services as Spotify become more and more popular. Another example is the number of sales for chewing gum. Sales dropped 25%! And why? Because when queuing in the supermarket most people don’t just wait and regard the environment but they are constantly distracted by their smartphone.

decreasing bubble gum sales

This development leads to a shift in marketing from simple targeting to personas. Even one single person is a different one during the day. You can be the worker, the parent, the friend or the footballer. However, whoever you are you get and need special targeting. This leads to a huge challenge for the marketing as they never know who their consumer is at the moment. Thus, we need to create a deeper marketing. In former times when you needed a mortgage you went to the bank and they advised you on their products. Afterwards, you decided which one you take. Today, if we need something we immediately have a research in the internet. Naturally, there are more and more digital businesses available. And those Digital only businesses as Facebook, Uber or Airbnb change the consumer’s expectations.

The Digital only businesses all contain 3 aspects: Platform, Data and Access. These aspects are the only things a consumer expects, wants or needs. The end of the linear consumer journey is the loyalty loop. This simply means that if consumers are happy they come back again and enjoy the service of the websites. The content needs to engage consumers, according to Mr. Berney. Thus, the conversation with the consumer is the most important thing. Nevertheless, this only works if the product, digital experience and physical experience are harmonious with each other. One example for this is selling coffee in a shop, as most of the clients combine shopping with a coffee.

Another important topic of Mr. Berney’s speech was contextual relevance. This is the influence of mobile marketing. The challenge is to reach the right person with the right message at the right place at the right time, so that this person immediately changes his or her behavior. Let’s come to a very illustrative example for this. In a video shown by Mr. Berney we saw how consumers get influenced by their mobile. They got a message which explained that now the time is running and they have to reach a shop as soon as possible. When they reached it the time was stopped, or rather the percentage numbers which they get off their price. Wherever the people were when they got this message they changed their behavior the way the marketing wanted them to do. Mobile enables directed shopping, was a phrase Mr. Berney used. And there is another example for this. When you look for a jacket on your smartphone and enter the shop they immediately know what you were looking for. Then, the light changes, so that you can easily find the product. In my opinion this is a strange thing. On the one hand it is good if you can find what you want that fast, but on the other hand it is a strange thought that the light changes when you enter the shop because your mobile “communicated” with the shop technology. However, this recognition in the shop is a good strategy to bind consumers. The mobile app loyalty connects, engages and influences the consumer’s behavior.

During Mr. Berney’s speech I thought about privacy. The last conference showed that the internet and various websites know nearly everything about the users. And again it was shown, that the personal data exchange is very important today. People have a different thinking towards privacy today and it may have become a luxury in the 21^st century.

“If you want something new, you have to stop something old.”

This quote from Peter Drucker indicates that progress doesn’t mean to only have new things in addition to the former ones. It means that things change and older things are replaced by the new and better ones.

The Get Mobile Conference was very interesting concerning the mobile marketing. Getting information from real insiders showed us the potential and also the influence of mobile marketing. I wasn’t aware of the fact that there is such a huge potential in marketing with mobiles. I really look forward to the next conference as both conferences now influenced the way I am thinking about marketing and the impact of technology on our everyday life.

 

 

Get Social Conference 2015

Introduction

As the title of the conference, Get Social, indicates, Social media and their impact on marketing were the main topics of the first DICE mini conference which was held in the Helix. Darragh Doyle introduced the conference with some questions. They showed immediately that everyone in the hall is connected and uses lots of different social media.

Maslow’s Pyramid

Mr. Doyle showed different pictures from the Internet, that represent what Internet means to us, and that for most of the persons it’s horrible to have either no battery or no WIFI.

Moreover, he wanted us to note that nowadays it is so easy to publish private videos. Videos of children, animals or special moments in a person’s life. Everyone can see them. Nevertheless, what do the “children” think about those videos in, let’s say, 20 years?

I didn’t know how this conference would be and what exactly would be mentioned during the 4 hours. We had 5 different speakers of well-known firms and at last a panel discussion with 5 people of SME’s (small and medium size enterprises). Everyone talked about a different topic concerning social media and marketing.

Here you can see the list of speakers:

1. Paul Buckley (Aer Lingus)
2. Damien Dunne (Oracle)
3. Nina Gallagher (Accenture)
4. Cian Corbett (Radical)
5. Seán Connelly (Econsulting)
6. Panel Discussion

Speaker 1: Paul Buckley (Aer Lingus)

Paul Buckley graduated at DCU and works since 3 years as Head of Social Media at Aer Lingus, a popular Irish airline. He has responsibility for social customer care, content strategy, online reputation management and social insights, in fact, to demonstrate the airline as innovative and creative.

Mr. Buckley explained that our lives consist of plans we make in advance and unscheduled things that happen, when we are for example on holidays. Nevertheless, the airline also uses Facebook, Twitter or Vine to only name some to promote their self. With a documentation of a trip the followers can see what journeys are possible and what can be seen in a city, as for example D.C. Perhaps they then decide what their next travel can be and that there is a way to reach D.C. from Dublin with Aer Lingus. The exercise of the company is simply to engage and inspire. For Aer Lingus this is a cheap and easy method to advertise and reach as many people as possible. This happens very fast, as with those media it reaches the customers real-time.

For Aer Lingus, the social media is very important. Mr. Buckley explained that often it is not the content which is the most important thing. No, it is the fact of how fast you can reach the people even if the content is not perfect. However, Aer Lingus can’t always employ other people to make videos. It is better when the employees of Aer Lingus make the content, as it often depends things that are deep in the administration. Spontaneity is also a word that appeared. The company made a video where some fighterjets spot an Aer Lingus Jet. Buckley explained that this action was not planned but as the jets all have been there the people responsible for the jets decided to make a little video that would help Aer Lingus to promote their green image.

What was really interesting was that Aer Lingus has a special team for social media. 3 people are working fulltime for this. Nevertheless, as the company grows it is important to grow the team. Paul Buckley was asked how to get a job in his team, as nearly everyone can make videos with some programs. He explained that the applicant should be able to show his creativity and broad skills. The job is not about having all the social media but skills in, for example, marketing, that you learn in the university. For us this means that the all the different things we learn in DCU are very important for our future jobs, especially if we don’t have work experience yet. The applicant should also be able to show his or her own brand, own special skills that make him or her to someone special against the mass. At home, I once talked to a man who told me the same things and I totally agree with that fact. Today there are so many graduates that apply for one job, but it is really important that you have your own personality that makes a difference from all the others.

 

Speaker 2: Damien Dunne (Oracle)

Our next speaker, Damien Dunne, also graduated at DCU and works now as Senior Direct of Sales Programs at Oracle.

Oracle is a very international company which has at the moment 138 spots or rather “open opportunities” for people in Dublin. The cause for so many new jobs is simply the fast growth of the economy. Nevertheless, Mr. Dunne explained that it is the biggest challenge for him to get the spots filled with productive people.

Thus, his topic were 5 tips for selling ourselves on social media. Some of these tips I knew in advance but some were new to me. I was surprised that you can attract the company’s attention with the right posts and accounts in different social media. Sure, the bosses check your sites and posts on social media, however, the media is not only for private things, but also to show that you have something special so that the firm only wants you.

So let’s come to Mr. Dunne’s 5 tips.

1. Develop a shortlist of companies you want to join/speak to

Mr. Dunne told us, that when he was in college people were really happy when they had a job because it was very hard to find something. Today it is the other way around. We have the chance to decide which company we want to join. However, we should have a plan of firms that we would be happy with and take this as an aim.

2. Build your professional profile

To attract the attention of the companies we would like it is necessary to have a professional profile. Content that should be seen in this profile are internships, who we are or Clubs and Societies we joined during our time at the university as these actions show our interests. I think this is really important, also to have a good and professional photograph as this is the first impression firms get of an applicant.

3. Share your knowledge

Most of the young people share too much information of their private life. These are not the things future employers are interested in. A professional profile on LinkedIn should be used to post articles or things the applicant read in the Internet and that have to do with the studies or job.

4. Find the right people

Applicants need to spend time to find the right company and also the right people as this makes it simpler to connect with the company.

5. Start conversations on- and offline

Once you have created your shortlist and your professional profile you should start to contact the firm, explains Damien Dunne. Such a contact often starts online, but offline conversations will follow. In my opinion it is important that applicants are now able to show that they are not only good in selling oneself on social media, but also in the real life.

 

Speaker 3: Nina Gallagher (Accenture)

“Every business is digital business” and “Digital is changing the world… and all aspects of our lifes.”

Our fourth speaker, Nina Gallagher, graduated from Trinity College with a professional Diploma in Marketing and works now since 10 years at Accenture. Accenture is a global consulting and outsourcing company. The company helps their customers with their long experience, marketing and customer analytics, of course also with the different contents and at last the digital commerce and sales.

Her speech was about the personal ads and disrupting of original markets. Companies like Uber, Facebook or Airbnb are well-known and often-used websites, but they don’t create their own content or sell their own cars. So how does this work? The answer is simple: with personalised ad. However, this leads to a disrupting of the original market and shops have less and less customers as it is so easy to just order stuff in the Internet. We see, that as the citation shows, the digitaliation is changing the market.

Even for travelling or paying it is important to have as much information as possible about the customer. If a bank knows how you spend money, they can advise you how to spend it wiser, says Mrs. Gallagher. For the companies it is important to take care on what they offer in their ad, as the customers don’t want to be spammed with things they don’t want or use but with more ideas on what to consume. Digitalization of the world has thus a huge impact on everybody’s life. In former times it was probably just one aspect, but today it affects nearly every aspect. We can perform everything in the Internet without leaving the house. Creating new ads and plans must happen very fast, for example in 48 hours.

Speaker 4: Cian Corbett (Radical)

“The valuable By-Product of Digital Activity is Data” – Justin Cullen

This quote indicates briefly that as soon as we’re in in the Internet, the collection of data starts. And it is exactly that kind of personal data, companies want to know to make personal ads.

Cian Corbett is Business Director with Radical Dublin. He also graduated from DCU. Radical is a company which solves brand problems with the use of data.

I was really excited when I saw, that this presentation was about the “Evolution of Social Media”. According to Mr. Corbett there are 7 different steps in the evolution.

Let’s start with the first step, called Peer-to-Peer. At the beginning, about 90% of the people had a lot of trust in their friends and relatives. That means that good recommendations played a huge role, not only for the customers but also for the companies. It was interesting to see that only 14% trust advertisements.

The second step is Awareness, as Cian Corbett mentions. Public Relations became more and more important.

During the third step, Fan Growth it became clear that Facebook payed a big role. The people cared about the likes and fans on Facebook. Thus, Facebook started Customer Queries and a so-called Sentiment Analysis.
The fourth step brought a bigger change then. Advertising started to become important. Our fourth speaker explained that this was the time the social media started to use profile-based targeting. According to Mr. Corbett, Facebook is a good example to demonstrate this. A few years ago they introduced the timeline. I also was wondering why they did this and I understand it now. Facebook wanted as much information about its users as possible. And why? Well, to show you ads that perfectly fit to your interests, your age or way of life. So that ads are less wasted. In Mr. Corbett’s opinion this is very good. Me for myself, I am two-minded on this topic. On the one hand it is good that if you are looking for something, you get new proposals of e.g. other brands or alternative products. Nevertheless, it sometimes starts annoying me. Since I took a research about Munich for our mobile app, I get suggestions for hotels or guidebooks for that city. This picture shows very well how much Facebook can find in a profile.

 

The fifth step, Organic Reach enabled companies now to see how many people were reached with an ad. They can also indicate how many seconds of a video were seen and when the users stopped to watch it. Nevertheless, one time the organic reach will become zero, as there are so many people who could see your activities, but actually only a few can see them on their first site, as there’s much more to see.

Increased analytics are the sixth step. That means that since that time we are able to exactly see how many persons have seen a post and at which time. I remember that since some months I can also see in Facebook beneath my post, who has already seen it. This picture also shows a table which shows this fact.

 

The last and current step is called Social Video. This means that Facebook acts vs. YouTube. Since some months one can watch videos on Facebook. The only thing we have to do is clicking on “play” or even just turning on the sound. This is very comfortable for users and could become to a problem for YouTube according to Corbett.

He also explained that Facebook has a special algorithm that serves everyone’s content. But what about privacy? Cian Corbett thinks that when you use social media, privacy should be no topic or worry for you. If you care about this you shouldn’t use them. Nevertheless, he mentioned that students should pay attention on what contents they upload, as their future bosses could google them and find everything.

The question today is what will be the next steps? How will the impact of social media change? According to Mr. Corbett there will be more money spend on personal advertising and less organic reach on all the channels. As the impact of machines grows and thus, the ads will fit better on each target group.

 

Speaker 5: Seán Connelly (Econsultancy)

Seán Connelly started recently to work at Econsultancy as Senior Research Analyst. In his presentation he mentioned the traditional marketing funnel and how it changed within the last ten years. For companies the customer experience is really important as with this they know the needs and wishes of an individual person.

However, advertising changes very fast and even if you are a master in, let’s say, Facebook advertising in a few months everything can change as new things will be developed.

According to Mr. Connelly, Amazon is a model for other firms concerning customer experience. You can order things now and have them tomorrow or in big cities even today if you wish. The company and others too, use a model called loop(see picture) as Seán Connelly mentions. That means when a customer has made such a good experience with a company as e.g. Amazon they stay and don’t try to find a new firm. Those patrons are really important.

Since only few weeks there is a special website for mobiles of Ryanair. I was surprised when I heard this fact, because Ryanair is very popular and Smartphones don’t exist since few months. This website was created because of personalist experience, explained Mr. Connelly. It remembers personal data as e.g. names, pass numbers etc. so that it’s more comfortable for users to book flights again and again.

In the opinion of Connelly this collection of personal data and experience leads to a so-called Omni Channel as they want to get all the information of a customer via Smartphone. Thus, advertising is more personalized what eventually leads to Uplift in Sales.

In my opinion it is fascinating how fast economy grows and especially the development or Evolution of social media which took place in the last few years. Thus, the whole world becomes connected better and better.

 

Panel Discussion (5 Speakers)

The last point on the program was a panel discussion of 5 people from short and medium sized firms (SME’S). They all had different positions as e.g. CEO or Marketing Manager. The topic was how important social media is for their companies.

However, the first topic was what qualities an applicant should have to become an employee of those firms. The answers were nearly the same as with the bigger companies. The knowledge of social media is important, but also additional qualities what separates an applicant from the whole mass. A tip of one speaker was to bring a portfolio with case studies, assignments or special experiences the applicant made during his studies, in case of not having any work experience yet. The most important thing is to get recognized and that the persons of the company remember you.

Just like the big companies most of the SME’S also use Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn to find new employees. It also works the other way around. We, as applicants, can also use social media to attract attention by the firms. This means, that the applicants don’t have to use social media, however, it helps to start a communication. Thus, it is important that an applicant knows that social media is not only for private stuff and that he or she should pay attention on what the person uploads. It’s about “building one’s own brand” according to one of the speakers.

Another point what was mentioned was the way SME’S use social media. This also works the same way as with the big companies. It is important to find out what the needs for customers are, and what the best way to connect with them is. Recommendation to friends also plays a huge role, as the target group becomes widened like this. Nevertheless, which social media an SME uses depends on their products or rather their content. Bombarding customers is a no-go and personalized ads are just as important as with the bigger companies. The accounts have to be trustworthy and good-looking.

I didn’t expect any differences between bigger and smaller firms, and my thoughts were confirmed during the panel discussion. Today social media determines our lives and the way how new products get common. It is a very interesting fact that all of this developed during the last few years. Nevertheless, no one can imagine a life without the Internet or social media. They made our lives easier and, concerning topics like ordering products, much more easily and relaxing.

Conclusion

After the first conference in the Helix I had lots of new impressions and new ideas. I wasn’t aware of the fact that social media, especially LinkedIn is so important to find a company where I’d like to work and that even with and interesting LinkedIn profile I could be recruited by a firm.

Thanks for reading this post! I look forward to get your comments. 🙂 In December the next post will follow this one.

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