Sam Talks Technology

Sam Sethi talked with Paul Ayres about the future of your street. From Electric Vehicle (EV) charging points for cars, bikes & buses to the future rollout, potential benefits but also the current limits of 5G today.

The biggest talking point was around the terabytes of data collection this enables and how AI will be used to build smarter cities that flow and are less polluted.

Paul also talked about his days as European MD of Netscape (he was my boss) and the 'browser wars' as well as his time as GM Europe of Real Media and the early days of video streaming which led us to discuss the current 'content wars' between Amazon Prime, Netflix and the recently announced Apple TV +

Sam talked with Josh about how Techfugees have used technology to "empower the displaced".

Josh is also the co-founder of Tech For UK which tried to engage communities from all over the UK to fight Brexit and campaign for a meaningful vote on the terms of Brexit using tech and social media.

Sam talked with Peter about the future of VC funding and the new role of the Chief Funding Officer, as well as the changes needed in education to develop the next generation of entrepreneurs

Sam talked with Nicole about her new book, Rough Diamonds - Turning Disruption Into Advantage in Business and Life. We talk about her early life, her career influences and how she setup the Ogilvy Lab.

Nicole was formerly the Director of Ogilvy Innovation Labs

Sam talked with Jane 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?

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.

Nowadays, experiential marketing is getting more technologically advanced and personalised. The widespread of the Internet and the increasing competition among online retailers has led to the rise of Virtual Experiential Marketing (VEM).

VEM uses the Internet and its various channels to create an enriched and engaging experience by using visual and audio tools. VEM relies on an electronic environment that engages customers and arouses their emotional responses to create an unparalleled experience and consequently capture their loyalty.

The elements which characterize virtual experiential marketing are: sense, interaction, pleasure, flow and community relationship. Furthermore, affective involvement has been identified as a key factor which affects online purchase intention.

Thus, the online experience must emphasize an emotional appeal to the consumer in order to build purchase intention.

Sam talked with Lopa about 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.

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!!!

Sam talked with Katz 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.

Sam talked with Matt Hodges-Long 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 helped us understand how companies can manage this privacy & data risk before they face significant GDPR fines.

We also discussed my idea of Company Directors needing a license to start and run a company. We don't allow people to drive a car or speed boat without a license but we do allow any Tom, Dick or Harriette to start a company for less than £100.

Just knowing what your fiduciary duties are as a director and what you need to file before you start on your next big idea would seem sensible. Equally refreshing the license every few years would allow Directors to keep abreast of the latest developments.

Sam talked with Sarah  about 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 talked about 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?