Communication Futures

There’s no crystal ball that can predict the future. But one thing we do know – it will bring increasingly fast changes which will affect working lives.
What does this mean for us as communicators? This is a current topic for debate and our half day workshop brings together forward thinkers to discuss five main challenges:

Will communicators have to rethink their role?
How is the world of work likely to change?
Can we use new techniques to understand how people think?
Do we need to extend telling important stories across multiple platforms and formats?
What developments can we expect from social media and technology?

1.30 pm Registration and coffee for a 2:00pm clock start

2:00 pm Keynote: Traditional Internal Communications is Dead Lucy Adams, MD Firehouse
Traditional internal communication is finished and must be replaced by a more individual-centric approach, says Lucy Adams, former director of HR at the BBC and now MD of comms agency Firehouse. In her keynote she challenges the “tired old” approaches but believes there is potential for business if communicators tailor initiatives to individuals rather than “one size fits all.”

Lucy Adams led HR and internal communications in major corporations for over 15 years including the BBC where she was director BBC People. She is now managing director of Firehouse, the award winning communications agency where she leads the consultancy arm for leadership, organisational development and engagement.

Twitter: @lucyatfirehouse

2:40 pm Business Futures: Adrian Wooldridge, Management editor, The Economist
The forces that are disrupting today’s fast-moving business world will be reviewed by Adrian Wooldridge who says: These developments are shaking business and social life to its foundations, producing a new set of winners and losers, and forcing everyone to adapt and change.

His new book “The Great Disruption” describes those forces that are disrupting today’s business world and considers what the future holds for companies and society.

Adrian Wooldridge is The Economist’s management editor and writes the thought provoking Schumpeter column. Previously based in Washington, DC, as the Washington bureau chief , he has authored books including “Masters of Management: How the Business Gurus and their Ideas have Changed the World—for Better and for Worse” and his most recent “The Great Disruption – how business is coping with turbulent times” copies of which will be given to delegates.

Twitter: @adwooldridge

15:10 pm Mind Futures: Hilary Scarlett, Director of Scarlett Associates

Neuroscience is about deciphering how the brain works and now this scientific evidence helps us understand employees by identifying factors that influence our ability to perform at our best. Here Hilary Scarlett combines her communication and change management background with neuroscience:

“Neuroscience explains why our brains struggle with organisational change and it also brings practical insights into how to help people through transition. It brings hard science to employee engagement and communication, proving, at long last, that these are not “soft” topics but have a direct impact on our ability to think, focus and innovate at work.”

Hilary Scarlett is a frequent international speaker on applied neuroscience at in-house and public conferences and her work is focused on the development of people, change management programmes, coaching and employee engagement. concentrates . Her career in the communication field includes ten years at the pioneering Smythe Dorward Lambert communications consultancy.

Twitter:@Hilary_Scarlett

3.50pm Coffee Break

4:10 pm Story futures: Steve Spence, TransMedia Storytelling

Using story telling to involve and inspire has become part of business life. In today’s technological age we now look at a variety of ways to tell that story. Transmedia storytelling is the technique of telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms and formats using current digital and traditional platforms. Steve Spence combines his background in both design, technology and writing to explore how this medium could work for communicators.

Steve Spence has worked as conceptual copywriter for three of the UK’s most renowned agencies. He writes for print, authors digital content and has penned numerous scripts for commercials, film, TV and radio. He has taken his design and writing skills, an interest in gaming and a fascination with ‘Big Stories’ into TransMedia Storytelling

4:50 pm Social media futures: Silvia Cambie, Digital Strategist and Lesley Crook, IC Digital Manager

Existing media constantly evolves while technology newcomers burst on the scene. What might the future hold for fast moving digital and how to keep ahead of the loop? Silvia Cambie will look at a number of trends likely to revolutionize our profession. She will talk about their impact on the corporate communicator’s role and the changes we should all get ready for.

Silvia Cambie is a thought leader in social technology with insight into both the start-up environment and the corporate world. She works with organisations like Unilever, Diageo, the European Commission and the United Nations Development Program Silvia is also an accredited journalist, author and blogger.

Twitter:@silviacambie

Lesley Crook helped to grow an emerging and vibrant Yammer network in a global healthcare company. She will share her unique Working Out Loud in A Network #wolan model which has many benefits including measure the social network business value and help to position the business case. It also introduces the relevance of “business intelligent” hash tags to capture meaningful insights.

Lesley, previously IC digital manager, GlaxoSmithKline, has wide experience with enterprise social networking adoption strategies; communication campaigns, digital project management; intranet business solutions; intranet governance and bench-marking. Twitter: @LAC999

Event ends 5.30 pm

Our session will end with a discussion about the future of communication and the role within it of the professional communicator.

Note: Ticket cost includes a copy of “The Great Disruption – how business is dealing with turbulent times” by our speaker Adrian Wooldridge, management editor The Economist

Venue
BIS Conference Centre, Address: 1 Victoria Street, London SW1H 0ET
Map and directions

Book your place now

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Design thinking + Gamification = Business Innovation

November 9, 2014February 26, 2015Ezri Carlebach

The now-established IABC Rápido session format (5 min presentations) promotes three important things:

storytelling
concision – the art and craft of being concise
design thinking

Design thinking is about applying problem-solving skills, typically associated with the design process to other areas, particularly in a business environment. Probably the least well-known term in communications circles and despite a relatively short and somewhat checkered existence, is now taking off by virtue of being hitched to another buzz-wagon: gamification.

David Kelley, founder of the innovations company IDEO, began to use the term design thinking in the early 1990s to describe what IDEO did. In 2008, current IDEO CEO Tim Brown made the case for design thinking in a well-received Harvard Business Review blog post, and its influence seems to have been growing since then.

Now it seems to have found a soul-mate in the shape of gamification, the much-touted introduction of game elements into business processes from recruitment and onboarding to sales training and various flavours of employee engagement programmes.

Gamification guru, Mario Herger wrote recently about How Gamification Design Thinking Helps Your Business – without creating an even more hideous neologism like ‘gamidesignifying’ (sorry) and in doing so sets out some simple steps that you might use as a way of framing an issue or challenge you’re facing at work.

After all, the core idea of gamification is simply to provide a different and more engaging take on an existing business process or need.

Herger says “I believe that design thinking has much to offer a business world in which most management ideas and best practices are freely available to be copied and exploited. Leaders now look to innovation as a principal source of differentiation and competitive advantage; they would do well to incorporate design thinking into all phases of the process”.

Herger’s article which suggest as a process to 1) define the problem, 2) observe the users and 3) iterate on ideas for responses
strikes me as a useful heuristic that can easily be applied in any number of situations. He advises a player-centric approach to constantly remind us that design must satisfy the play instinct in the target audience, otherwise they just won’t join in.

He acknowledges that in a business context this kind of language might sound trivial but the reality it’s quite the opposite.

Only by focusing seriously on our innate desire for play, and its manifestation as an organized activity in games, can we hope to capture the kind of engagement that will see your HR or sales process become the next Angry Birds.

Whether you then go on to build a multi-level, immersive game experience that drives columnar geo-spatial data warehousing – well, that’s up to you.

Ezri Carlebach is a consultant, writer and lecturer with a background in senior communication roles for public, private and nonprofit organizations. He consults on communication and stakeholder engagement and writes for The Guardian, simply-communicate.com, and other publications. He is a visiting lecturer of contemporary issues in public relations practice at the University of Greenwich, and has recently led sessions at communication conferences in Slovenia, Canada, Italy and the U.K.

Carlebach is a director at large for the IABC Europe, Middle East and North Africa region, and is a Fellow of both the Institute of Internal Communication and the Royal Society of Arts.

Twitter: @ezriel
Blog: www.ezricarlebach.com

See Ezri in action during the European Training Foundation, Communication Week initiative.

Shel Holtz talks digital..

October 28, 2014January 25, 2015Dana Poole

This is a summary of our recent event – Keys to Digital, Social Media and Content Marketing Success

Shel Holtz, one of world’s most renowned corporate communicators provides an overview of the social, digital and content marketing landscape as it exists today – and what it will most likely look like tomorrow.

His presentation contains these topics:

• Where to invest your resources to generate the greatest benefit
• How to take advantage of the eroding barriers between earned, owned, paid, and social media when developing a content marketing strategy
• The importance of mobile and context in developing 21st-century communication programs
• Why the new mantra must be “every employee engaged”
• Why staffing for specific competencies is a vital activity

Shel’s presentation and others are available on IABC UK’s Slideshare

Follow the Twitter discussion via @iabcuk #digisocial

#digisocial Tweets

Watch all our videos- IABC UK YouTube channel

About Shel Holtz

Director of Holtz Communication + Technology, and an Accredited Business Communicator, he has extensive experience across strategic corporate and employee communications, corporate public relations, crisis communications, media relations, financial communications, marketing communications, change communications, and compensation and benefit communications.

He has authored six communication-focused books, including “Tactical Transparency”, Corporate Conversations”, “Blogging for Business” and “Public Relations on the Net”. He is currently co-authoring “Beyond Sharing”, a book about the emerging collaborative economy.

Shel is also a prolific blogger and a pioneer podcaster. He launched “For Immediate Release”, the first communication-themed podcast, nine years ago. He is a founding fellow of the Society for New Communication Research and, among other accolades, a Fellow of the IABC.

More information: http://holtz.com/