Phare Conference
My notes and thoughts.
Today was an interesting day: I got to spend it in Ghent while listening to inspiring talks from digital creatives in a room full of Chief Digital Officers. Or something like that.
These are my notes and thoughts—the things that stuck.
Hope they can inspire you to go to Phare Conference in 2015.
“Digital times and the fabric of our society.”
Catherine Van Holder, Digital Nomad.nu Philosopher
The first talk of the day. Inspirational, but I’d heard most of it before. It was basically a nice summary of the TED Talks I’ve seen in the past few months, enriched with Catherine’s personal views.
“Future opportunities for the internet, crowdfunding and the role thereof in finance.”
Tom Vroemen, Crowd About Now
A story about a Dutch crowdfunding company. Interesting to hear about how they do crowdfunding in the Netherlands—even for ‘just’ a bar, a barrista or a carwash— when all I know is Kickstarter. Tom made me think: “How do we do crowdfunding in Belgium? Are there any success stories?” Maybe I should look beyond Kickstarter and search for local initiatives I can help fund.
“What about business in the future?”
Paul Boag, CEO & Founder at Headscape
Employees no longer take orders from a manager just because someone is their manager. Instead they follow their idols—the people that inspire them. Paul’s advice to managers: give your employees the freedom to decide how and when they work and let them work on what they want to work on. “Digital professionals manage themselves.”
This talk was probably more useful for the managers and CEO’s at the conference, but I enjoyed it. Given that sort of freedom as an employee—I’d love it, it would be great! But I don’t think we’re ready for this (yet).
“NSA, WTF?”
Jillian C. York, Director for International Freedom of Expression
I never took the time to read anything about the NSA and our online privicy, nor did I take the time to think about it. Jillian C. York’s talk was an eye-opener. One thing she said really stuck with me: “Living openly online can harm your friends.” Metadata maps us all together. Scary.
It’s bizarre how Jillian cites these arguments, but still lives a very open life online herself. I guess now it’s up to me to decide whether I should make changes in my own online behavior.
“Content marketing and its future.”
Will Hayward, Vice President Europe at Buzzfeed
This was an interesting one for me, even though I don’t care much about Buzzfeed. Will gave us a great tip (among many): “Don’t worry about SEO-ing your website, worry about sharing.”
For example: when you use a headline like “Funny images,” your post will be viewed many times. But when you use a headline like “Funny images only people from Ghent will understand,” your post will be shared a lot. People from Ghent can relate and show their pride of being Gentenaar by sharing.
“The future of branding or: how digital will change brand strategy forever.”
Josh Grau, Head of Brand Strategy at Twitter
In his talk Josh was selling Twitter to a room full of experienced Twitter users. He talked about what Twitter can do for businesses—even cited the famous Oreo Super Bowl blackout tweet— but didn’t tell us anything we didn’t know already. Too bad.
“How to use cultural psychology to boost your conversions.”
Nathalie Nahai, The Web Psychologist
Everything Nathalie told us sounded really obvious to me. One thing I’ll have to remember: checkmarks often do the trick! (When listing product features for example.)
If you’re interested in web psychology: Nathalie wrote a book about it.
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