Yesterday I sat on the panel of one Leeds Digital Festival’s famous Digital Lunches. I was pleased to be invited by Simon Wilson (@idlesi) to sit on the ‘Putting Geolocation in its place’ panel at Leeds Digital Festival to throw around some thoughts with some great minds in Geolocation.
We were presented with some really interesting questions, so I’m planning to revisit them in the near future and publish my answers to each question and I’d love to see the other panelists to do the same. If you follow me on Twitter I’ll let you know when it’s up. In the mean time I thought I’d use some of the tweets to spark some thoughts and throw up an immediate response.
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@LDSDigital | Getting ready for #digitallunch on geolocation would be rude of us not to check in! (@ The Adelphi) 4sq.com/sgdAcw
As I walked towards the Adelphi I smiled at this very appropriate tweet. It was almost a pun. I tried to check-in myself but couldn’t seem to find the mobile signal I needed to join in the fun. I often find signal strength a barrier to using geolocation tools. A point that was raised by a member of the audience.
@LeanneBuchan | Looking forward to feeding my 4sq addiction #digitallunch (@ The Adelphi) 4sq.com/w3cGd8
Foursquare was potentially a dirty word today as the panel wanted to show that there was more (way more) to geolocation than foursquare. However I was glad to see people talking about it because it’s had a pretty big impact on the digital community. I don’t love foursquare but I must confess I actually enjoy seeing some of the great places that my friends have discovered.
@Sevik (Sean Parker) | Sitting at the back of #digitallunch like a naughty boy pic.twitter.com/Op9RCH8T
The first photo of me and the other guys on stage.
@LDSDigital | TomTom is probably most well used geolocation device and has a community who can and do add things like shortcuts/speed #digitallunch
This tweet followed one of my comments on my favourite uses of geolocation. It’s easy to forget TomTom (other Sat Navs are available). When you’re sat amongst geeks and middle class marketing agencies it’s easy to think that everyone has a smartphone. However long before people were flashing their iPhones and Apps wasn’t in every household’s vocabulary TomTom was meeting an audiences need with GPS technology.
@LDSDigital | Do city’s need to be more in tune with free WIFI for geolocation to really take off? #digitallunch #LDF2011
My simple answer to this is YES. If shoppers were able to easily access the web from the high-street it would open up more (and possibly stronger) communications between them and retailers/brands. The infrastructure, a wifi hub, is a pretty low investment for high street retailers.
@LDSDigital | Facebook Places failed because it was one-sided nothing happens, 4sq might give a badge twitter it’s secondary – @adrianinman #digitallunch
I’m not sure if I agree about the failure of Facebook places or that Twitter is secondary. Imran used Twitter as one of the good examples of Geolocation partly because of its privacy. I also really like the way that a location can be a ‘post-it’ of information like a link or quotation.
@LeanneBuchan | Fight on at #digitallunch @adrianinman thinks businesses shouldn’t utilise it as a user he feels it’s intrusive and annoying #LDF2011
A hasty call from Adrian here that people checking into Foursquare aren’t interested in seeing offers or suggestions for similar places.
@LeanneBuchan | But @seaneeboy is having none of it the information is useful and by using that platform users are seeking it #digitallunch #LDF2011
And a rebuttal from Sean that I have to agree with that as long as information is relevant and has value people will definitely want to see it. I think Adrian was having a hard time separating spam from marketing as a whole.
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A great big thanks to Simon and the other panel members for being very welcoming and for giving me an enviable soundboard.
Sitting on the panel were…
Me, Lawrence Alexander
I’m the Digital Strategist at Bezier, one of the UK’s largest retailer marketing agencies. I came to this panel knowing that there would be some digital heavyweights sitting next to me so i was keen to bring the viewpoint of the everyman to the audience. Most of what I think can be found somewhere in @larrysbrain
Imran Ali
Founder of LSx Festival of Technology. Imran is at a coffee house in the future waiting for the cutting edge to catch up with him. That his twitter handle is @imran should give you a hint of his early adoption.
Ashley Dawes
Creative Director of Zapmenow, creator of Zap! the free App gives you access to What’s On! & On Offer! in your City. Straight to your Smartphone!. Lover of exclamation marks, tweeting as @zapmenow
Adrian Inman
From Order of Magnitude self described as is a digital agency based in Leeds that offers unrivalled technical and creative thinking. Tweeting as @oomagnitude
Sean Murricane
Online Business Manager for Welcome to Yorkshire and all round nice guy. Sean was representing there with two hats on, representing Yorkshire but also to give a client side point of view.
Matt Seward
The charming and excellently bearded Managing Director from Kilo75. Matt has an impressive resume so I was looking forward to hearing his view from knee-deep in technology. Tweeting as @mattseward
Tim Waters (GeoIQ)
From Geo experts GeoIQ, Tim brought an oceanic depth and expertise to the panel. Geo-insights here … @tim_waters