Last night we had the pleasure of debating the future with a lovely audience of over 70 in attendance it was an amazing evening of opinions being thrust forward, parried and put to rest. With a star panel from Amadeus, Nokia, LexusPR, Article8 and the mobile/telecom industry there was a fantastic representation across multiple sectors.
If you haven’t been to a mashup* event before, you really should! Over 50% of the audience were new and fresh last night and were very vocal 
We like a lot of digital activity around the event and 30 minutes into the evening the twitterwall started to speed up, after an hour there was no stopping the flow.
As with the usual mashup* format, two speakers warm the event up with a dedicated 5 minutes on their thoughts. First Laurence John painted the picture around investments, check-in fatigue at SXSW due to apps overload and what he is looking for in the industry with a focus around micropayments. He was followed by Gary Gale expressing his thoughts on privacy, location and how Google beat him to the announcement of geo-fencing
After which they were joined by the rest of the panel, James Poulter and Steve Kennedy joined in the conversation. Andrew Gerrard was moderator for the evening and what an excellent job he did of steering the flow of debate into the audience and back to the panel discussing privacy, data, social recommendations, location and advertising as key topical trends. A really hot subject that resounded throughout was social commerce – an area which we will cover in depth at being-social later in the year.
What were the take aways ?
We still can’t conclude the discussion on Privacy -for many it doesn’t matter, for others it’s their top priority, ultimately it may be dependant on your role in the technology world. It’s certainly key for both parties to be aware of privacy issues, even if you don’t care!
Thoughts from the panel were:
1) Privacy Matters
2) Sensor Convergence
3) Location is a feature not business.
Security came in and out of the debate, alongside privacy, but as was pointed out: it always has been an issue, always will be up for debate and will stay that way, therefore – not a trend
Lastly, will Digital Agencies catch up in the technology rush or will they keep focusing on delivering the standard offerings to the client ?
NEXT EVENTS:
Being Open ‘11 – 16th Feb – half day conference & Family 2.0 -17th Feb 6pm
#mashupevent twitter feed for the event
Write ups:
Andrew Gerrard’s crazy notes – neat system
From an audience perspective read David Gross article on Technorati.
@Ultraman – Top five trends from last night
An interview with Gary Gale by Imperica
Anymore? Ping us on twitter and we’ll post them here.
