business & innovation

Wrapping up SMW London, on Friday, September 28 2012, was our Tech 4 Good Showcase.

It featured social innovators showcasing their startups as part of our Disruptive Social Innovation Day, exploring how social media platforms, tools and technologies can be used to create social good.

Contributors included FairPhone, the world’s first ethically made mobile handset; #wewillgather, an initiative to get people together to do good things, as inspired by the upsurge of ad-hoc volunteering in response to the London riots, and DrDoctor, a start-up changing the way hospitals and patients communicate using mobile technology.

It's been said, not far from here, that home working doesn't work. Why? Poor management now, or in the past.

‘Managing’ remote staff requires experience. If someone is in the office, it’s easy to ‘feel’ they are being effective because they can be observed. That’s an illusion accepted by ineffective managers.

Here's a thing: the business isn’t paying someone to sit at a desk, it’s paying them to be productive. If I am measuring output rather than activity I can measure that just as well if the employee is at home. So that’s the first management failure: valuing presence over productivity.

Chinwag Psych (@ChinwagPsych) is coming to London on Thursday May 9th.

It is a conference and online publication covering psychology, neuroscience and machine learning for business and marketing.

We have some super special speakers to share with you Leigh Caldwell, William Higham, David Stillwell and Benjamin Ellis.

In this session, Ross Nichols of The Daily Mail Group, Adam Stewart of Play.com, Carie Lewis of The Humane Society of the United States, Craig Hepburn from Nokia, and Richard Jones, CEO of EngageSciences, discussed how social marketing is changing, and the processes organisations need to put in place to generate real world value.

Government backed IC tomorrow, part of the Technology Strategy has launched its latest competition, Digital Innovation Contest 2013, with up to 7 awards of £25,000 up for grabs.

Backed by HarperCollins, Constable & Robinson, MediaCom, Ogilvy Mather UK Group and JCDecaux, FremantleMedia UK, Samsung, and YouTube, it focuses on media, publishing, mobile content and outdoor media.

Communicating with markets has never been easier. But those who have the skills to create direct and compelling dialogue are in a tiny minority.

This session takes you on a tour of Share This - the best-selling social media handbook for PR professionals from Chartered Institute of Public Relations, tackling topics including: