Last week I didn’t get to blog as much as I would have liked but the trade-off was well worth it. I was attending the back-to-back IYP Search Meet and Local Social Summit events in London. They were held at two locations operated by Wallacespace. The IYP Search Meet was held in a relatively small room that looked like this:
The LSS was held in this building nearby, last Thursday:
Both events were different but highly complementary. The IYP event was focused on the strategic and tactical interests of directory companies. I was only able to attend the second day but the conversation was frank and interesting. The attendees were largely managers and directors charged with executing but not necessarily formulating strategy.
YPG’s Stephanie Lemieux did a terrific job organizing. It was an opportunity for people to explore ideas and speak candidly in a small, conversational setting.
LSS, organized by Simon Baptist and Dylan Fuller, was a somewhat larger and broader event that focused on a range of local themes and issues including mobile, social and “real time.” Perry Evans gave a great (capital G) presentation on Daily Deals and where the space may be headed. I gave an opening talk about the state of things in local. I also had the privilege to interview Yell’s Mark Canon. Mark’s openness and direct views proved to be highly provocative and insightful. Terrifically outspoken, there were no platitudes coming out of him.
Praized’s Sebastien Provencher gave a very provocative talk about time.
Another highlight for me was the panel of small businesses using social media to promote themselves. On the panel were a coffee roaster, a restaurant and a food events producer. Each was using social media (Twitter, Facebook) differently but effectively. One thing that became very clear however is that these people had made a huge commitment to social media. That dedication and their sincerity were the clear success factors here. Perfunctory attention to social media clearly won’t “work.”
So while social media are easily accessible and “free,” unless there’s a sincere commitment by the business it’s not going to be a particularly effective channel.
LSS also featured a good deal more strong content beyond these sessions. It was probably a day and a half worth of information in a day.
The two conferences together formed the best local event in a long while because of the frank and varied discussion, as well as audience participation (particularly at LSS). I’m grateful to the organizers for giving me a chance to participate in these two terrific events.
November 22nd, 2010 at 4:17 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Greg Sterling, ExpressUpdate. ExpressUpdate said: RT @gsterling: London Local Conferences a Great Success http://bit.ly/bEyDqN [...]
November 22nd, 2010 at 6:40 pm
Nice post! And thanks for doing a great opening keynote at LSS ’10.
You can get all the presentations here: http://www.slideshare.net/LocalSocialSummit
Plus Antony Mayfield’s is here: http://www.antonymayfield.com/2010/11/19/thoughts-on-privacy-and-location-nosey-neighbours-and-norming/
Good insight in the lack of “big brands” at LSS ’10 on this post (we did try to get some agencies & brands to attend, but had little traction):
http://duncanos.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/think-br-are-big-agencies-failing-to-engage-in-local/
btw – Local Social Summit will also be doing a series mini events as part of Social Media Week in February.
February 9th, 2011 at 2:57 pm
[...] year’s Local Social Summit event in London was a great success. Intellectually it was a really interesting event to participate in and attend. Highlights for me [...]
March 22nd, 2011 at 12:47 pm
[...] Perry Evans, who runs Closely. He had a great presentation about where deals could go next at the Local Social Summit last year in London and spoke about the role of deals in the SMB marketing mix at the C3 conference in San [...]
October 17th, 2011 at 9:36 pm
[...] SMB sessions were among the highlights for me last year. One of the highlights this year will be BBC’s Tim Plyming providing a preview of the BBC’s [...]
March 19th, 2012 at 12:33 pm
[...] London Local Conferences a Great Success [...]