You can now find all the presentations from the Presentations page on the blog, from all of the conferences split between the morning and evening. You can also now connect with us on Scribd where you can download the presentations direct and comment and share them with colleagues and friends.
Thank you for all of you who were able to attend, stay tuned over the next few days to the blog for the wrap up video and news about the continuing work from the Future Focus programme.
Posted in Event Update, Presentation Materials
Tagged cloud computing, dublin, economics, economy, edinburgh, facebook, future focus, london, manchester, Presentation Materials, social media, technology, twitter
Posted in Presentation Materials
Tagged dublin, economics, economist, economy, edinburgh, facebook, future focus, green shoots, recession, ronan lyons, social media, twitter
Did you know that IBM has 400,000 people and use social book marking, instant messaging, blogs and wiki’s in the company improve productivity?
And did you know that the fastest selling product for IBM is their social networking product and developed here in Dublin?
Bill Kearney of IBM spoke in the session at Future Focus Dublin about using social media and social networking to enhance communications in your business.
His tips for introducing social media in business were:
I personally don’t agree with point 4 – I would not make training optional. I remember a conference I was at last year run by Simply Communicate where a FTSE 100 company had introduced an internal business blog but after 90 days when they explored why there was little engagement, their internal communications team found there was little engagement as people did not know what to do. So they then went about educating their people in how to engage with the blog and what was in it for them.
What is standing in the way of your company engaging in social media?
Who could help you?
Is it due to lack of understanding? Or lack of a budget? Or are you unconvinced about social media applications for business?
Or don’t you have a business challenge where you have identified social media could help you?
And if you have integrated social media into your business, what are your top three learnings?
Author: Krishna De speaks, writes and consults on brand engagement and communications to build your visibility, reputation and profits through traditional and social media; follow her on Twitter @krishnade.
Following on from Edinburgh, we catch up with Ronan Lyons and get his perspective on the Irish economy and how the government may be able to intervene to ease the pinch of the recession on mid market businesses.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged #futurefocus, blogging, business, dublin, edinburgh, facebook, ireland, london, manchester, mid market, network, social media, twitter
Future Focus comes to you from Dublin, Ireland today, for the fourth of our business conferences, hosted by the Telegraph Business Club, in association with IBM. Before our speakers take to the stage, we caught up with some of our Irish delegates, to discuss their perspectives on technology and communications. We also hear from both IBM and our mid market clients about how they are embracing these new technologies and practices to develop their businesses to become “future proof”…
Posted in Dublin, Event Update
Tagged #futurefocus, comms, communications, dragons den, dublin, gadgets, IBM, IBM business, ireland, irish, James Bellini, Richard Farleigh, tech, technology, UK
Future Focus takes place in Dublin on 16 June and it is going to be a terrific day with industry experts and speakers from the UK and Ireland taking part.
The venue is the Guinness Storehouse and the day starts at 12.30pm.
The Chair of the event is James Bellini who describes himself as ‘an historian of the future’ and is interested in the key strategic challenges facing current and future business up to Horizon 2025, stretching to 2050.
I am delighted to have been approached by the Future Focus team to be a guest blogger, so I will be doing my best to capture insights from the event.
If you have not booked a place yet it is still not too late to book – HERE.
I also hope to catch up with a few speakers during the course of the day and capture an audio or video podcast which we can share later.
Be sure to watch out for the Twitter hashtag #futurefocus as I am sure there will be a few people Twittering. I’ll do my best to do so too – but it might be a bit challenging – you can find me at @krishnade.
And if you have questions for the speakers be sure to either Tweet me, DM me or leave a comment for me here and I’ll do my best to see if I can put your questions to the panels discussions during the day.
Just checking on Twitter Search and I see that two of the people attending tomorrow are @green_goddess (aka Caroline Taylor, an IBM executive – IBM being one of the sponsors of the Future Focus series) and @ronanlyons (Ronan Lyons is an economist and will be speaking at the conference).
I hope you will follow and join in the #futurefocus conversation.
I hope that my commentary will provide a useful summary of the event especially for people who are unable to attend.
And if you are unsure about how to follow conversations on Twitter with hashtags, here is a video I created a little while ago to explain how to use them:
1. You don’t need to have an account on Twitter to follow the conversation – you can watch it HERE
2. To participate in the conversation on Twitter you need to register your account on Twitter – here is a video that shows you how to get started on Twitter
3. You might like to use Tweetchat to filter all the #futurefocus conversations – it will automatically add #futurefocus at the end of your Tweet. You just need to register with your Twitter ID and password then enter the room #futurefocus.
Disclosure: I am not an employee of IBM or The Telegraph Business Club and all the opinions that I share here are my own – am also not paid to blog this event.
Author: Krishna De speaks, writes and consults on brand engagement and communications to build your visibility, reputation and profits through traditional and social media; follow her on Twitter @krishnade.
I wonder if Dr James Bellini puts ‘futurologist’ as the occupation in his passport? It sounds like a rather strange role, but he’s obviously well connected and certainly talks a lot of sense.
James’ objective, he explains, is to make businesses ‘future proof’. That means they have taken account of the changes that are going to happen and factored them into their strategic planning, rather than reacting when the changes have already taken place.
Far too many businesses fail to spend time thinking about the future, according to James. The majority make their ‘big decisions’ largely on gut feel. Not surprisingly, many of those big decisions turn out to be big mistakes.
Wiser organisations keep up with the trends regarding things that are going to take place 3-5 years down the line, he maintains. By investing time into thinking about the future, they are positioning themselves to take advantage of the changes.
One major global bank, he reveals, is planning to invest in new generation video conferencing. Not only will it make the bank more ‘green’, but also slash its global travel costs.
Major changes such as this are a ‘must’ for 70-80% of businesses, he says. A decade from now, James suggests, companies will own far less fixed assets and will use much less office space. Mobile technologies, remote working and collaboration will soon become the business norm.
Recession is a great time of opportunity for businesses, he maintains. Wise business professionals use the time to revisit the business fundamentals and think about their future path. Those that fail to seize the opportunities of change will probably go to the wall.
Dr James Bellini sounds like the ideal chairman for the Future Focus conferences in June. And there will be the chance for delegates to talk with him afterwards, which will round off each event perfectly. Must remember to ask him what it says in his passport!
Posted in vlog
Tagged blogging, business, business strategy, communications, dublin, economy, edinburgh, future focus, future proof, James Bellini, london, manchester, mid market, mobile, recession, social media, strategy, technology, teleconferencing, telegraph, telepresence, twitter, UK Business
Successful business professionals have an “animal instinct to change and survive” according to Richard Farleigh. He should know. Having been described as backward by a school-teacher, his career path has ranged from stock market trading in Australia and running a hedge fund in Bermuda to investing in technology companies in Britain. His face is most familiar, of course, as one of the investors in the third series of the TV series Dragons Den.
Farleigh is going to bring a hard-edged business flavour to the Future Focus conferences taking place in June, at which he is the keynote speaker. He has commercial interests in dozens of companies and has seen them all having to get “leaner and meaner” over recent months. “Some businesses are still recovering from the shock,” he says, “but cleverer businesspeople have now moved on to focus on strategic planning.”
In the short ‘taster’ video recorded to outline some of the subjects to be covered in his presentation, Richard concludes “Those that don’t adapt to change will die”. When the economy moves back into growth, there is “no way” it will it return to ‘business as usual’. Economic problems have triggered a fundamental change in the shape of business, and the winners will be those that learn about the changes and re-engineer their businesses accordingly
To register for one of the conferences where you can meet him in person, click here.
- Post By: Dave Sumner Smith, Programme Director at Telegraph Business Club
Posted in vlog
Tagged blogging, communications, dublin, edinburgh, future focus, london, manchester, Richard Farleigh, social media, technology, teleconferencing, telepresence, twitter
