Women in technology

Today I attended the inaugural CWT everywomen in Technology awards and have come away inspired by the amazing work that women are doing around the UK with technology in their businesses.  Winners talked about mentors, finding inspiration and leading teams.  One of the winners (Nikki Walker from Cisco) shared a quote from one of her mentors; “you don’t need a title to lead’.  This really resonated with me and reminded me that it is about what you everyday to influence the people around you to make a better company and create more success, it is not about waiting for the promotion or title to make a difference.

When I stated my blog I chose to focus on how I think technology makes advertising better.  As I sat there today I was wondering if I felt out-of-place being from a media agency rather than from an ‘IT’ company and then I was reminded of this original thought.  Technology has slipped into the media world and taken quite a few of its inhabitants by surprise and I’m quite sure if asked they would deny all knowledge of working in the technology industry at all. 

For me having spent my career to date in digital it is the technology element that I find most interesting and it is that technology that is changing our industry beyond recognition. Technology affects both how we do business and what business we do.

Everyone in the room today was there because they believe in the power of women working in technology and want to see more representation for many reasons but particularly because on the consumer side it is women with the spending and decision-making power.  When you look at the billion dollar digital businesses (facebook/groupon) they might be run by men but they are driven by the female customers so it makes sense to reflect this in the business structure. 

Wendy Tan-White founder of Moonfruit and winner of the entrepreneur of the year award said that when she was in Texas last week for SXSW the VCs were talking about actively looking for new businesses being run by women.  So there has never been a better time for women in technology.  

If you are in Media then you are in technology (or at least I think you should be). The companies that our clients want to spend time with are tech based and if we as media agencies truly want to understand them we must become more like them.

Next year at this event I would love to see a woman from media winning an award for how she has developed or used technology to change something for the better.

The effect of technology on business and culture

There is no doubt in my mind that technology has more power to change our world than anything else.  Where did you first hear the news on Michael Jackson?  If you are under 30 it was probably facebook.  The availability of content has put the consumer in the powerful position of being able to choose.

Young people today are bringing with them media habits that hold great concern for traditional content businesses like newspapers and broadcasters.  They don’t want to read long winded opinion pieces, if it can’t be summed up in a 140 characters then they are unlikely to spend much time with it.  The format of the newspaper is not appealing to them at all, it takes too long, it is too big and generally doesn’t offer anything to them that they can’t get elsewhere.  This generation are all connected on facebook, the listen to music on the iphone/ipod or other mobile, radio to them is lastfm, TV is watched o playback skipping the ads unless the are cool enough to stop and watch.  I am wondering what will happen when more content has a paywall attached to it?  How will they lure the under 25 s in?  If they don’t hook them into habit based consumption soon then chances they never will.

Mind the Gap – This is from an opinion piece on paid for content, coming soon….