TAX WELL SPENT - The Young Entrepreneurs Festival, Digital LIfe Design and more...
Well what a week it's been; Cybergirl had the unutterable joy of accompanying the GWG's editor Alice Kahrmann to the first day of Tech City's Young Entrepreneur's Festival - the three day event was a joyous example of what can be achieved when our tax pennies are well invested; in this case by The Department of Trade and Industry. The sheer elation of seeing over forty of the UK's brightest young minds pitch their way to success (and significant investment) gave Cybergirl a real glow of pride… Log onto The GWG next week for a full report, complete with interviews with both mentors and young entrepreneurs, both full of earth shattering business acumen.
With regards to Cybergirl's activities this week - I'm more than a little excited to be attending the Digital Life Design Cities Conference. Today's event will bring together some of the greatest entrepreneurs and digital minds from across the globe to discuss the issue of 'sustainable urbanisation' and how to build 'smarter cities for a better future.' Esteemed speakers include:
Jürgen Mayer, Founder of J. Mayer Architects, Kostas Mallios, Vice President, Intellectual Ventures, Pedro Miranda, Head of Global City Centre of Competence, Siemens, Felix Petersen, Founder & CEO, Amen, Carlo Ratti, Director Senseable City Lab, Juliana Rotich, Co-Founder, Ushahidi, Saskia Sassen, Sociologist, Colombia Universtity, Ole Scheeren, Architect, Ludwig Siegele, Editor, Economist, Rohan Silva, Digital Advisor to the Prime Minister UK, Yossi Vardi, Serial Entrepreneur, DLD Co-Chairman,Clemens Weisshaar, Co-Founder, Kram Weisshaar, amongst many others...
It will be nothing if not a fascinating insight into the evolution of our digital landscape...
On another note this week offered the casual cyberstalker a hilarious example of social networking gone wrong; earlier this year oil giant Shell felt the wrath of a social media campaign gone topsy turvy when it fell pray to a fake website masterminded by Greenpeace; the site offered photographs of nature affected by the detrimental effects of oil spillages (birds covered in oil, melancholic looking polar bears etc) and offered a forum on which visitors to the site could post comments on each photo. Fast forward a few months and supermarket giant Waitrose wades into similar territory with a Twitter stunt that backfires spectacularly - this week the company asked customers to tweet the answer to the following question; 'I shop at Waitrose because…' Here are two of the answers; 'because I don't like being surrounded by poor people' and 'because darling Harrods is just too much of a trek mid week.' Hilarious and another brilliant sign of the subversive freedom given to the public via the juggernaut that is social media. Needless to say the offending question were swiftly deleted.
Now no Cybergirl blog would be complete without a weekly comment on, yes - you guessed it Apple. And I'd hate to let you down on that front so for this week I'm going to divert from previous diatribes and instead offer you a a little anecdote that's fallen straight from the Apple tree; let's call it 'Freebies in Store' - consider it my gift to celebrate the launch of the IPhone 5, which has in one short week accrued two million pre-orders. I'll hold back from commenting on that little statistic - of you want my opinion on the IPhone 5 debacle just read last week's post.
So here goes 'FREEBIES IN STORE'; a very dear friend of mine goes into the Regents Street store with her IPhone 4s complete with a shattered back. She looks a little dishevelled having pulled a work all nighter and neglects to do her make up, or brush her hair. She asks how much it costs to fix? '£150' replies the well trained Apple attendant. My friend (let's call her Milly) gasps in shock; she's a successful young professional but even this seems a bit steep (well it would do - check out the cost of a new back on EBay - ok, ok I know they might not be real but they're identical!!!). On the verge of tears, Milly accepts the fee - gets her handset fixed and goes to the till to pay, at which point the attendant looks her squarely in the eye and says "that's all taken care of now" Milly stands there flummoxed. She opens her mouth to speak and the attendant looks her squarely in the eye and again says "that's all taken care of now."
Milly is baffled; no cards have been exchanged, no cash handed over, but with people all around and the assistant's beady eye staring blankly at her, Milly backs away. The assistant keeps smiling and turns her attention to another customer. Milly walks out happy as Larry recounting the story to all and sundry. So what to make of this anecdote; a cynical marketing ploy or the kindness of a rogue Apple employee? Hmmmm - well as I'm pretty sure every single item of stock is tagged, logged and scanned to within an inch of its life - it would seem to me a very clever case of silent marketing. Give away a few freebies and see those altruistic rumours start spreading. Ok I know I'm the cynic in this equation, but it's clever ploys like this that detract consumers from the bigger issues at stake - the ethics of a company with a monopoly over the tablet, computer and smartphone market and two million pre orders of the IPhone 5. But I have to say the handset I keep seeing over and over on the street, on buses and most of all on the tube isn't an IPhone - guess what, it's a Samsung Galaxy S III.
September 2012.
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