Today, I attended my second digital event in as many weeks in Birmingham. On 21st October, I attended Hello Digital, Birmingham’s first digital festival at Millennium Point. It was a day jam-packed full of seminars, lectures and workshops tackling the issues and topics surrounding the use of digital media in Birmingham.
Fast forward two weeks and I am sat in another conference hall, this time at the ICC to take part in The Big Debate. Today’s discussion: Can the Midlands Creative Industries revolutionise the UK economy? And with keynote speakers from Wunderman and Mudlark, there was a heavy weighting towards the importance of digital media and it’s role within this revolution.
As I looked around both conference halls, I saw hundred of faces. Faces of people representing PR agencies, digital agencies, media agencies, public sector organisations, independent companies … the list goes on and on. And the same look was on all of our faces. We were all waiting for the answer.
People are still looking for answers when it comes to digital. People are looking for the definitive answer for how digital will work for them. And it doesn’t exist. Technology and innovation is moving so fast that just when you think you are getting close, something new arrives on the scene and throws a proverbial spanner in the works. But whilst there are no right answers, the people who are having success are those who have taken a risk and have got involved with digital media so when new innovations happen, they are better placed to incorporate them in their comms strategy. Take my favourite speaker at Hello Digital, Heather Gorringe . She is the creator of Wiggly Wigglers and her story was one laced with success in connecting to her audience via social media and developing customer service by added value services such as podcasts. Her approach was so fresh, so enthusiastic and so refreshing in the current climate and she truly embodied the analogy of Cinderella and Dick Whittington that Jon Grisby, Channel 4 Director of Future Media and Technology, offered earlier in the day. It went something like this; those who wait for their digital fairy godmothers to turn up to change their life will be waiting a long time. Those, however, who practice, try, fail, try again and again and finally succeed, the Dick Whittingtons of the world, like Heather Gorringe, will succeed … and they are!
So with that in mind, I look around these crowded conference halls, with frantic typing and scribbling and I wonder how many people are at the event just in case the fairy godmother turns up as a key note speaker. We all need to take a leap into the unknown. No think tank, no conference, no seminar is going to give the definitive answers we are all waiting for … it has been almost 15 years since digital media took off and if we haven’t got the answers now, we aren’t going to.
So less talking people, and more action please!
November 3rd, 2009
