Time to look back on the 2017 predictions from 12 months ago…. how many of the predictions came true?
If there was one on-demand service that was in the headlines this year, it was Uber. And it wasn’t always for the right reasons. Uber and Deliveroo also led to a debate on the gig-economy and workers’ rights. Continue reading Review of 2017 predictions
Here’s a summary of interesting stories I’ve seen over the last week. I try to concentrate on the stories which aren’t necessarily mainstream.
There might be fewer [free] ATMs in the UK soon. Link, the banking organisations who fund 70,000 UK-based, free UK cash machines, want to cut their contributions by 20%. https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/31276/link-plans-could-slash-number-of-free-atms
McKinsey wrote a report about banks needing to create their own platforms and new business models as Alibaba, Amazon and Google start competing with them. McKinsey said that banks need to capitalise on their consumer trust and wealth of data. I agree and wrote a comment on the article which then spawned an online debate. https://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=31251 Continue reading Weekly news round up 2 November 2017
I was kindly invited to an event today called “The Ad Apocalypse And The Rise Of Interactive Brand Experiences”, hosted by wayin. Wayin runs a content management system for brands to run interactive campaigns in their digital advertising.
Although the event proved how wayin was the answer to several of life’s challenges, there were a few interesting thought leadership pieces at the event which I’ve tried to capture below.
My apologies for brevity in the notes format and any spelling mistakes.
Richard started by describing how Mondelez has pulled £100M from their advertising recently due to the lack of impact that their digital advertising spending is having. They’ve never pulled ad spend before the holiday season. Continue reading The future of digital advertising
One of the best practice digital principles we talk about at Endava is regular rollouts to users. The more regular and automated you can make them, the quicker you can provide additional functionality to your users.
Amazon’s release to live every 11.6 seconds. This was the mean average for weekdays during May 2011. During that month, they had up to 1,079 production deployments per hour. Continue reading Digital best practice: Release regularly
This is now the seventh year of my digital predictions for the forthcoming twelve months (see here for 2016).
There are industry commentators and research analysts who release their predictions for the coming year. But I’m the only one brave enough to mark their homework at the end of the year! Last year I scored a respectable 61%.
Although President Trump and Brexit-at-some-point won’t have a direct impact on technology, there will be an indirect impact on consumer prices and investments into startups. Whether this affects the technology market in 2017 or later is difficult to say. Continue reading 2017 digital predictions
This week I spoke at The Future of General Insurance event about our latest Insurance Industry Technology Trends report at Endava. Here’s a brief summary of the presentation.
Endava works in many industries, and we can see what companies outside of insurance do really well, that insurers can learn from. We have found 20 ‘trends’, of which we covered five most relevant ones to general insurers at the conference:
Continue reading Five trends from The Future of General Insurance event
So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed is a fast paced, easy-to-read book that highlights the power of group behaviour on social media.
So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed is the latest book from Jon Ronson, the journalist from the Guardian. Jon Ronson is the English equivalent of America’s Malcolm Gladwell, combined with Louis Theroux’s modus operandi. Jon Ronson’s books cover those sections of society that are either taboo or push us slightly outside of our comfort zone, and it’s here that Ronson often defends those people the most.
The book is about the public shaming that some people have been subjected to on social media. He provides some case studies of people whose lives have been significantly changed by a single post on Facebook or Twitter. These individuals aren’t always celebrities – some had just a couple of hundred followers. These case studies set the context of the post right up to modern day consequences for the user. Continue reading Book review: So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed
Friends Reunited, one of the UK’s Internet stars, announced yesterday that it will be closing in a month’s time.
In the UK, Friends Reunited was the Internet version of Woolworths – it’s a site which we all had some affinity to, but didn’t use, and are sad to see depart. How could this household name fail to succeed?
There are five reasons why the site couldn’t compete with later social networks. Continue reading Friends Reunited: 5 reasons why it went so wrong
Fresh back from a summer holiday – well actually mine was a bit of a knackering washout really – here are some recommended web reading links.
I’ve also taken out a 12-week trial subscription to The Economist. Between reading one of the issues and a book at the moment, I can’t keep up. I struggle to reach half way through the magazine before another one arrives.
The quality, depth and opinion of the articles is top-notch. I’m not saying I always agree with the opinion, but the manner it’s conveyed is excellent.
From relationships to revolutions: seven ways Facebook has changed the world – Facebook has changed our lives, and I believe it’s mainly for the better. This article shows 7 key aspects (including mass employment). Continue reading Weekly reading list – August
This post coincides with some thoughts that I’d been collecting about communication methods and was finally provoked with an article in the FT about Coca Cola and JP Morgan removing voicemail from employees’ phones.
I seem to have too many communication methods, spilling over between my work and personal life. Each morning I get into work and go through a process of attempting to keep up with all these methods via a myriad of smartphone apps, PC applications and web browser tabs.
And it’s getting worse. Last week Mrs H went on a holiday abroad while I led a Scout camp in the New Forest. (Mrs H likes camping, but is strictly a good-weather camper, and we had the worst weather during the camp that I can remember). Before departing for a flight to a sunny destination she asked me to install WhatsApp.
I’ve always abstained from WhatsApp because my kids all use it and I don’t want a zillion more notifications from them while I’m at work. And besides, I have enough alternative communication methods for people, including my kids, to reach me. Continue reading Contact me (20 different ways)