Media 140 – Ande Gregson one year on..

By Richard Baker

Ande Gregson

Ande Gregson can come across as an unassuming and softly spoken man. He’s one of those rare people who have a quiet charisma and the ability to draw the attention of a room of people.

I first met him in November 2009 after I was asked by Kate Pickering to appear at the media 140 event covering brands in London. I was using social media to build relationships with customers for the company I was working for and people were keen to learn from my experience.

The event, like many that have followed (and the one before) was a first in the UK;  it brought together people using the real time web to connect with customers. I’ve written about the events I’ve appeared at on this site and you can read about them here.

To be honest, I’m not even sure I spoke to Ande at the media140/brands event; it was my first time speaking on a panel and I was pretty nervous. Ande was busy working with the rest of the team to deliver the days agenda.

It wasn’t until January that we got to know each other – meeting for a coffee in Soho and sharing ideas. I remember he carried his little notebook everywhere with him, and scribbled furiously as I threw out ideas and observations.

It’s fascinating watching the journey Ande is on – from an idea last year to raise funds for MENCAP, to leaving his full time career to focus on building a global brand. I talk to him one year on about the challenges, the learning and how he almost had Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder at an event..

Ande – how has the last year been?

A rollercoaster of a year! The 20th May for me was a milestone in it’s own right in that we launched an event into London under the banner of realtime news. It trended on Twitter at #1 and raised the £7000 I needed to raise for Mencap for a mad race across the Sahara, known as the Marathon Des Sables, which was of course the primary reason media140 came about.

What countries have you had media140 events in?

Countries include Australia, UK and Italy – I think from memory it’s around 12 events in Sydney, Perth, Perugia, London, Oxford, Glasgow, Bristol with plans afoot for Spain, India, North America and a few other places we are considering – it’s exciting stuff!

What’s changed in the industry since you began?

There has been a massive explosion in social media events and conferences all over the place, each month a new event or conference is announced looking as aspects of social media. It has become difficult to see the differentiators across some of these brands.

What’s a typical day like for you these days?

Busy. Everyday is different – whether it’s speaking to sponsors, sourcing content, finding venues, running logistics for future events, catching up on emails  – which seem to never go away. Everyday is fabulous and it’s all part of growing a small business.

What’s the best piece of advice you have had in the last 12 months?

Focus. Don’t try to do everything at once – there is a huge amount of opportunity in this industry and you need to focus on the bits that create the most value not only for the community we are developing but also the people that are part of the media140 global team.

What’s been your worst moment?

There are no such moments, there are just challenges. The biggest one I suspect was dealing with a volcano and disrupted flights during the Italian project in Perugia. We lost a number of international speakers including Julian Assange of Wikileaks, and I had to motorcycle across Europe to re-jig the event.

Claire Wardle, our lead editorial producer, had to contend with being stuck in the London after planning most of the Italian event, which was very stressful, as she had committed a tremendous amount of effort to try to make it happen. However, as usual the media140 team pulled a rabbit out of the hat and with the help of Claire, Kate Pickering, Christian Payne and others; they produced a live TV show that ran concurrently to supplement the agenda in Perugia  – now that was amazing!

What would you do differently in the last year if you could go back in time?

Generally? I guess learn how to speak Spanish and Italian

In relation to media140 I think I would have started in earnest sooner and done more events in Europe. But that’s all I guess; the team we have working on media140 is amazing. All committed, passionate and determined to make it a great success. Over the past year Dee Jackson, Kate Pickering, George Nimeh, Petra Johansson, Sejal Parekh, Lisa Zilberpriver, Julie Posetti, Sarah Allen, Rebecca Cole, Bree Mitchelson, Lechelle Gerrard, Brad Keeling, Graham Langer, Glenn Lesanto, Chris Hall, Mark Jennings, James Griffiths, Nick Hazel, Monica Garriga, Gemma Urgell and Maria Ripoll have all contributed to make #media140 what it is.

What do you think is your greatest strength?

Motivation, commitment and inspiration coupled with a creative mind. So spending 3 years studying a design degree has helped tremendously.

If you could change one thing about yourself what would you change?

Hmmm I would probably try to change the workaholic in me and spend a little less time focused on working and more on relaxing.

What are you most excited about this year?

The prospect of what’s coming next year: growing the brand into new markets, developing the new ideas we have and building our global community.

Media140 now offers events, training and consultancy at their new site at http://media140.com. They are always looking to build connections with interested people and organisations. Go take a look or connect with media140 on Twitter!

#sharemyscreen on iOS4

Hello!

I’ve never really collected anything before. When I was young I tried most things; football cards, stickers, even stamps but I never really saw the point.

The launch of iOS4 on the iphone means that people can now arrange and classify their apps into folders and perhaps most importantly, name them. The ability to add wallpaper also allows people to express their individuality which again is interesting.

‘So what?’ you might think. At first thats what I thought. It wasn’t until I began organising and renaming folders that I began to realise that this process says something about a person. It’s a window into someone’s life and the things they are interested in. Does it also say something about how people compartmentalise their lives?

I decided to create a hashtag on Twitter called #sharemyscreen. I sent the following tweet;

‘I’m building a collection.. if you have iOS4 take a screenshot of your home screen and tweet it with #sharemyscreen hashtag. Pls RT!’

and shared my home screen below;

You’ll notice the way I classify folders isn’t a normal approach but it works for me! Since the, the lovely folk on Twitter have been retweeting my request and theres quite a selection growing. I’m going to share some below, with their owners twitter names so you can follow/sayhi/copy!

@Antalianna

@michaelvermaak

@jamescastleton

@DaveTreadwell

@mazherabidi

@AMonkster

@KDonohoe

@Scott0792

@Warrior7885

@makauk

@ulumarketing

If you’d like to share how you compartmentalise, please post a screenshot on Twitter using the hashtag #sharemyscreen and let me know @richard_baker

© richard baker 2010

Media140 Scotland

In case you missed it – you can watch the full live stream taken from last nights brilliant Media140 event in Scotland. Hosted by Mark Jennings – @markofrespect, MD of D8 Digital, with guests including Pat Kane, Steve Berry and the brilliant Trey Pennington. Oh, and an introduction that starts about 9 1/2 minutes in from Mark that made me blush furiously… Thank you!

PR and not throwing stones – who wins?

I’m writing this as a response to the interesting blog post by Polly Becker over at wallblog, which is from the Revolution stable.

The story covers a controversial blog post by Jed Hallum from Wolfstar concerning the email ‘spam’ (Jed’s words, not mine) from the agency that recently won the lucrative and high profile Vodafone PR account. The post criticised the Agency’s emails and was, in my opinion, a little harsh.

Adam Vincenzini at the Agency in question responded here saying ‘its a shame you have chosen to take this route’.

Now, before I carry on I should say I like and respect all the people above. This post isn’t about what they did or didn’t do. My thoughts instead are about the industry itself as a bystander – and Polly’s summary learnings from the incident. I’ve copied them below;

1. Don’t slate your rivals in public. It will bite you in the arse.

I disagree. Rivalry is an essential part of the competitive environment in which we operate. In every other industry people do it. Senior figures in industries do it (I’m looking at Richard Branson, Michael O’Leary etc) and probably at the advice of their PR departments.

2. Bloggers are like journalists. They publish and so you need to treat with a degree of respect and care.

Umm I agree generally.

3. Don’t send out rubbish beyond belief emails with bad grammar.

Err yep I agree!

4. This is early early days for social media.

Social Media may be relatively new (although I’m not that sure it is; exactly how long are we going to keep on using this as an excuse?) but the competitive business environment isn’t. Neither is PR.

Let’s assume we choose to live in a world where we never criticise each other or point out where we make mistakes. We would get along very well and have jolly nice meetings and tweet ups but would never actually learn anything from each other.

In my opinion, criticism (and yes, not always constructive) is a healthy part of learning and subsequent growth. People don’t always need people around them who agree with them all the time – look at our Government. It’s also part of business life.

Finally, I do wonder if the industry is being a little bit hypocritical when it says it shouldn’t be criticising the competition, when that is exactly what it (sometimes) encourages its clients to do.

I’d be delighted if you disagreed with me.