Getting Digital

Tuesday the 14th of April brought about an end to the business conferences in the Helix, attended by all DICE students during the academic year. It began with the presentation of the cloud computing posters worked on by the groups in conjunction with their mobile apps developed in semester 1. Each group was met by 2 to 3 judges in the form of academics and entrepreneurs associated with DCU and questioned on their project. The questions varied from “what does cloud computing mean to you” to “describe the thought process behind your poster”. The presentations were a success and the students were an outstanding representation of what DCU has to offer in terms of innovation.

Mary Moloney was the first of the 4 speakers present at the Get Digital conference, and she kicked off by talking about CoderDojo. For those that may not know, CoderDojo is a voluntary programme through which kids from as young as 7 to as old as 18 can learn technological skills such as coding and programming. The Dojos began in Cork, and now 600 of them operate out of 58 countries worldwide, and have an estimated total of 50000 students. She first became involved when she noticed that her 8 year old son was spending a ridiculous amount of his time on the Xbox, but without gaining any understanding or appreciation for the technology he was using. With this is mind she brought him to CoderDojo and immediately noticed that he was more innovative and could problem solve better. She also mentioned their rules, of which there are two.

1. Be Cool
2. Ask 3 Then Me

I particularly liked the “ask 3 then me” rule, in which children are encouraged to first see if they can solve the problem at hand themselves, then ask a friend and finally the Internet. After this they are more than welcome to ask a volunteer for help. I love how this promotes creativity and problem solving from the individuals, a skill that they’ll have for life particularly in the business world.

Richard Garsthagen of Oracle was next up. He talked a lot about cloud computing, and made a point of calling it cloud computing as opposed to “the Cloud” which suggests some sort of set location, where data is stored, when in reality it is everywhere. Oracle themselves make databases for companies, and I really liked the analogy of a restaurant which he used to describe them. In a restaurant there is a set menu, and you choose the meal you want. In Oracle, he wants to have it so that you can walk in and pick the database which you want, rather than create it from scratch, and customise it with the technological substitute of mayonnaise or ketchup.

These days, innovators and entrepreneurs are “bypassing the IT department” so to speak, thanks to the technology available to them. Why pay someone to do someone in twice the time when you’re capable of carrying that task out yourself?

Next up was John Massey, the EMEA Business Development Lead for SAP Ireland. They have 2000 people, millenials even, fluent in 29 languages working for them. He reiterated the point of the importance of cloud computing, and its impact on our business day to day. “The future is now”, the world is at our fingertips. Whilst writing this post, I am putting it out into the world wide web and anyone can remotely access it on any device. We take this service almost for granted these days. He told us to embrace technology (mind you, I do believe we’re already doing that but leaving that to one side) and left it at that.

Finally we heard from Shay Garvey from Frontline Venture Capital, a €50 million fund designated for investment into new software companies. “Giving it a go” is cheap these days, as the cost of starting a company is 1/10th of what it used to be, having fallen from a whopping €2.5 million to just €250k. There are 3 stages to the investment process, and they are the following:

• Discovery: €100k
• Seed: Up to and including €600k
• Series A: €1.3 million of a €5 million investment

Again we heard about the change that cloud computing had brought about in the industry, and how it has shaken off the structure as we know it. It is essential for companies to be responsive and able to adapt to this change in order to continue to prosper in the coming years.

Alas, the conferences are at an end, however the knowledge and skills focused on starting and maintaing your own company have been imparted on bright young minds. Maybe in 10 years time we can be the ones on stage in the Helix, regaling undergraduates of our business ventures and successes.

Getting Social with Media

Get Social, Helix

If you’d never come across ‘Get Social’ before, don’t worry, I hadn’t heard of it either until I attended the conference on Tuesday 14th October. Introduced by Dr Theo Lynn and held in the Helix, myself along with roughly 400 audience members settled down for a 4 hour event, consisting of 7 different speakers from various different companies specializing in social media marketing.

What does this whole Get Social thing actually mean though? Well it focuses on finding out what people are talking about and why they are talking about it. It looks at who’s influential on the world wide web, and uses this information and much more in order the ‘predict the future’ if you will, in terms of what kind of products there will be a market for in the future, whether it be the iPhone 27 (that’s the next model right?) or simple holiday deals. In short, it does a lot more than you may think. When many of us hear “social media” we think ‘Facebook,Twitter, Instagram and Youtube’. The big guns. Created to keep in touch with friends, family and the world’s population. However there’s so much more use they could be put to from a business perspective. Allow me to explain.

The first speaker was Deirdre Hogan, a recent graduate of DCU, and the brains behind Gajo. The “quick and easy way to discover your target audience”. Remember when I mentioned the whole “predicting future products”? That’s primarily what her company does, or is setting out to do since its early days yet. A big part of her job, is the question of how to make machines that can in short, understand our generation. We have a tendency to abbreviate words, use hashtags and generally tweet as if we were deprived of inventions such as spell check. One way Deirdre explained that they overcome this struggle, is to use a process known as ‘Key Word Targeting’. By matching travel agencies, for example with customers tweets about “holidays”, “Spain”, and “travel”, they can narrow down the extensive range of tweets out there, and only target relevant consumers interested in what they’re offering. Simple but effective, especially in this day and age.

Second to take to the stage was Jane McDaid, director of Thinkhouse, a youth communications industry based in both Ireland and the UK. After some initial technical difficulties (always ironic in these technologically orientated events), and the promising words “we are recruiting”, Jane launched into a fascinating video presentation specializing in the “7 Sins of Killer Content” online. Viral videos are a huge part of social media. The smarter they are, the more likely they are to hook a viewer and sell them their product, brand, service or information. So what are the 7 sins you ask?

• Comedy
• Epic
• Emotive
• WTF?
• Zeitgeist
• NSFW (Not Safe for Work)
• Informative (check out the amazing documentary below)

The next speaker was Lucy Campbell, RTE’s marketing director. Her focus is on the needs of the  audience, and following the leadership of digital economy. As technology has evolved and progressed over the last few years, it has been her job to ensure that RTE as a television and radio based medium, has evolved with it. This has led to the creation of services such as RTE Player, a catch up web player that is also available in app form, one which I have used many times myself. Brilliant for keeping on top of Home and Away! She also made a very interesting point, that shocked me when she mentioned that although 89% of adults regularly surf the internet and do most of their online work on smartphones, only 4% of Irish companies actually have mobile-optimized websites. They’re immediately setting themselves up for a loss in my opinion, as unlike RTE they aren’t engaging with the majority of their viewer demographic. Madness, right?

Our next speaker was Alex Coleman, of Wolfgang Digital,a website that although we didn’t immediately recognise it, once reminded of the sex shop story that broke in March this year, we were quick to remember where it got its fame from. However thats not all that Wolfgang are about. They essentially offer digital marketing and advertising to companies of any shape or size and have worked with brands as big as Littlewoods Ireland and Brown Thomas. Alex told some fascinating tales, such as the time Google went down on Thursday 16th August 2013 for less than 5 minutes. In those 5 minutes alone there was a 40% fall in internet usage, giving evidence to the claim that Google makes the world wide web go ’round. Alex also talked about the “Google Effect”, and the ongoing rivalry between Google and Facebook, the two leading social media outlets for advertising. I especially liked his point, about using social media to create brand advocacy, something that is so simple and easy to do, yet I had never really considered it before.

Next we listened to none other than Nicolas Cappiello, the creater of the infamous LinkedIn website, an en-devour to connect the world’s professional community- think of it as a Facebook for business people if you will. Or even better, an online CV. As someone who admittedly had never really come across LinkedIn before, I was confused as to how it could possibly benefit me. Cappiello sold it to me, simply stating that it is for those who “want to be better at what they are doing” and “want to be informed” in terms of the opportunities available for them in their careers. So once I’ve got a spare minute, I’m going to set up an account, because why wouldn’t you want to give yourself every single chance at succeeding in life?

Last but certainly not least was Eric Weaver, the chief social media officer of IPG Mediabrands Worldwide. So he’s kind of a big deal. As you can imagine, after 3 and a half hours of listening to people, your brain might start to switch off, however with his enthusiasm and booming American accent, that didn’t happen at all. He talked about Facebook and paid advertising and asked who was the most important in ensuring the success of a business. Is it the CEO? The staff? The janitor? Nope. Its the consumer. When a consumer shares a link on Twitter, likes a page on Facebook, emails or texts their friend telling them about an amazing product they’ve used, thats essentially free advertising for the company. Its called Social Performance Optimization, and its happening all around us,every minute of every day. Need an example? Throughout the course of this post, I’ve unintentionally advertised for all of the above companies, and it didn’t cost them a single cent.

Social media marketing is without a doubt, where its at right now.