CEO of The Trusted Network and Smart Anchor Ventures. We talked about the future of VC funding and the role of the Chief Funding Officer, as well as the changes needed in education to develop the next generation of entrepreneurs. 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prgjones/

CEO of NY Collective.  We talked about her new book Rough Diamonds - Turning Disruption Into Advantage in Business and Life 

Book Synopsis

In life, you are most likely to regret that you didn't do more of what you love. You will likely feel as though you spent your professional life getting up, going to the office and living the same day over and over, week after week, year after year, decade after decade.

Ironically, it's the same people who wind up regretting not doing more who spend their careers resisting change and shutting down creative ideas. I know, because I spent nearly two decades as a change agent in a large advertising agency.  If you found your way to this book, chances are it's because you have a fire in your belly, a hunger for change, and a belief in the transformative power of disruption. If you found this book, it's probably because you know it's time to shake things up but you're not quite sure how. This book puts you on notice. You have it within your power to do more and be more, and I'm going to give you the tools to start. This is your opportunity to change your destiny, so you are the statistical anomaly - the Rough Diamond - who shines bright, even if unpolished, and savour each day for the opportunity it presents to innovate, connect and disrupt the status quo. 

CEO of Willow Ridge Digital we talked about experiential marketing and the future of voice-commerce.  We talked about the changing world of e-commerce and the rapidly growing role of Experiential Marketing - what it means for retailers, how it challenges traditional CRM and loyalty marketing practices both online & offline?

About Jane

Jane has over 15 years in marketing technology, working on personalisation, email, loyalty and relationship marketing strategy with retailers on behalf of technology companies - predominantly high street brands including Burberry, Boots, Marks & Spencers and Easy Jet to name a few.

- Founder of Willow Ridge Digital; CRM and Marketing consultancy

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeedixon/

Why Experiential Marketing?

Experiential marketing is a growing trend which involves marketing a product or a service through experiences that engage the customers and create an emotional attachment to the product/service.

Physical and interactive experiences are used to reinforce the offer of a product and make customers feel as if they are part of them.

Experiences are positively related to customer's attitudes, mood and behaviours. They also represent a means through which a company can gain a competitive advantage by differentiating itself from competitors.

To achieve success, experience should be engaging, compelling and able to touch the customer's senses and capture his/her loyalty.

Case Studies: 

- Builds brand engagement - Sprite Showers

- Live the brand - House of Vans skatepark

- Technology to excite and delight - Burger King and burn rival ads AR app

- Argos - teamed up with Google home shopping last year

- Waterstones - 3 consecutive years of profits, oldest loyalty scheme on the high street, knowledgeable booksellers and enhanced in-store experience, coffee shops

- Virgin Holidays - experience store in Cardiff - mock-up of airline cabin and VR ride over some of the resorts

- Zara, FarFetch & Chanel trialled Augmented Reality and are now rolling it out

- McDonald's purchase of DynamicYield ($300m), personalisation of menus and offers

- TGI Fridays - cloud-based POS & integrated app = customer rewards & nudge marketing 

- Amazon Go - frictionless shopping in your lunch break 

- Alibaba's Hema store, QR codes for product information, app to book seat, robots stocking shelves

- Glossier - in-store editors writing editorial/marketing collateral based on customer experiences (Purchases completed offline)

- Rothy's - ethical and all women-led

- Nike By You - personalised and community orientated

- Peloton - app-based, digital memberships & personalised classes, leaderboards based on biometric data 

CEO Diversity UK. We talked about how to improve diversity and inclusion in Tech UK. Listen to the podcast or subscribe on iTunes or Spotify.

--- Sam interviewed the wonderful Lopa Patel (MBE) - CEO of Diversity UK - she describes herself as a Digital Entrepreneur and she is the founder of New Asian Post, Asians in Tech, Redhotcurry & Diversity UK - the latter being a think tank to research, advocate that promote new ideas for improving diversity and inclusion in Britain.

We discussed white privilege, the tech engineer bros culture and how these engineers are developing algorithms to be biased towards their views on sexism & racism which is why diversity really matters across companies and in the boardroom both gender and ethnicity.

We discussed how the non-western world is culturally different and is adopting the web differently to how we in the west adopted it.

---

Lopa Patel is a digital entrepreneur with significant experience in creating start-ups and transforming businesses through technology. The founder of two ventures in online media and a data-driven marketing consultancy, she is also the Founder & CEO of equality and inclusion think tank Diversity UK and a Trustee of The Science Museum Group.

Asian Stars in UK Tech – https://www.asiansintech.com/ Asian Power Couples – https://www.asianpowercouples.com Diversity UK – https://www.diversityuk.org NewAsianPost – https://www.newasianpost.com/ Redhotcurry.com – https://www.redhotcurry.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lopapatel/

David Webster & Steve Kaminsky talked about the Web turning 30 this week. We discuss the early days of the web, the jumbled mess of protocols, the slow dial-up and the browser wars when I was at Netscape, through to the present day with companies like Facebook and WeChat trying to replace the web with their silo'd platforms.

Finally, we discuss the future of the web. Can it become secure, private and distributed in the vision of Sir Tim Berners-Lee?

"the future is here it is just unevenly distributed" - William Gibson.

The first Google employee hired outside of the US.  She went on to be Google's UK MD before running AOL, Bebo, DailyMotion and BuzzFeed in Europe.  Today she is a VC partner at Hambro Perks.   We talked about her early days selling online classified adverts at The Sun and blinking banner ads for AltaVista.  How Google changed online advertising forever and became the cash cow behemoth it is today. We discussed the rapid growth of Google and it's 'don't be evil' culture and how Kate fought for diversity against the bros-culture found in the US.  And finally, we discussed some of the major challenges facing Google today from EU regulation over copyright and threats to break it up for being anti-competitive, through to the higher tax levy proposed for online giants like Google in Europe, as well as the opportunity and threat of voice search.     As the web turns 30 this week, Kate can safely say she has been there, seen it, done it and even has the many t-shirts!!!

CEO of Beep. (the behavioural empowerment enterprise platform). We talked about a platform to help leaders create a smart organisational memory from the bottom up by listening to the people that matter most, your employees. ie "It's the people, stupid."

We talk about her early days as a Punk Singer, theatre designer and digital innovator through to her epiphany at Burning Man that led to her work in digital transformation for large corporations at

www.wearebeep.com 

CEO of TrackMyRisks. We talked about the numerous 'Privacy & Data' breaches in 2018 that compromised the personal information of millions of people around the world.

Some of the biggest victims in 2018 include T-Mobile, Quora, Google, and Orbitz. Facebook dealt with a slew of major breaches and incidents that affected more than 100 million users of the popular social network.

Matt will help us understand how companies can manage this privacy & data risk before they face significant GDPR fines.

We also talk about the challenges of managing data if there is a Brexit No Deal and finally we touch on the idea of Company Directors needing a license to start and run their company.

Founder Geek Girl Dinners. We talked about how she began her career as a mobile .NET developer before joining Microsoft as an MSDN Evangelist and starting her side project Girl Geek Dinners to connect women in IT. This project grew to 100 countries running Girl Geek Dinners.

We discussed the recent announcements from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, namely foldable phones from Samsung, Huawei and numerous phones launching/claiming to support 5G already!

We also discussed the recent trend in companies helping us take back ownership and control of our data such as Sir Tim Berners-Lee's Solid and Sarah's company Digi.me

Will Web 4.0 be all about unlocking/reclaiming our data from silos like Facebook & Twitter.

Will we get paid for our time and attention in bitcoin tokens like the Brave browser by Brendan Eich?

--- Sarah Lamb is the Digital Strategist at Digi.me whose mission is to enable a decentralised world where data is controlled by people for their own benefit and not held in silos by big companies.

CEO of SocialOptics. We talked about the numerous EU regulations being proposed against GAFA web giants (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon).

Is it time to regulate their power or is it too early? Some have even called for them to be broken up, as they are monopolies abusing user data.

We also talk about the UK Parliament's call this week for an antitrust, data abuse probe of Facebook. Parliament even called Facebook 'Digital Gangsters'.

We then talked about the proposed EU regulations article 11 (link tax) and article 13 (copyright tax) as well as the EU commissions proposed platform-to-business (P2B) law to outlaw some of the most unfair trading practices and to create a benchmark for transparency.

And finally, we touched on the copyright challenges now appearing in AR/VR worlds.

--- Related Links:

https://www.theguardian.com/…/facebook-fake-news-investigat…?

https://techcrunch.com/…/uk-parliament-calls-for-antitrust…/

https://www.reuters.com/…/google-amazon-among-those-targete…

https://www.wired.com/…/mirrorworld-ar-next-big-tech-platf…/

---

Benjamin Ellis is the CEO of SocialOptic a SaaS driven technology business serving the Government, Education, Medical, Health and Professional Services sectors with AI/ML powered large-scale data analytics, planning and analysis tools.