Workplace

SDF podcast 11: From winning with data to the future of fake facts

Neville Hobson Leave a comment Business, Communication, Innovation, Marketing, Politics, Public Relations, Reputation, Small Data Forum, Social Media, Society, Technology, Trends, Workplace

For the 11th time, the SmallDataForum convened – this time to explore questions related to the opportunities and challenges of data in business, the rational and emotional side of decision-making, and the continuing erosion of trust and confidence in the truthfulness of information. Stephen Fry’s fabulous narration of the complete works of Sherlock Holmes formed the backdrop to musings about data sleuthing and the skill sets required for successful forensic analytics. This episode’s show notes were written by Thomas Stoeckle. Big Data’s Business Value A recent Harvard Business School article discussed the issue that Companies Love Big Data but Lack the Strategy to Use It Effectively. Neville sums this up succinctly: “You don’t need big data strategy, you need a […]

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Spectacular opportunities coming in the digital economy says Gartner

Neville Hobson Leave a comment Business, Communication, Hardware, Innovation, Marketing, Software, Technology, Trends, Web, Workplace
Hype cycle

  The latest emerging technologies report from Gartner, announced last week, contains a wealth of analysis and prediction about what technologies will be the drivers of the digital economy during the coming decade. While many of the technologies cited by Gartner will already be familiar – they include artificial intelligence, the connected home, machine learning, autonomous vehicles, blockchain, augmented reality and virtual reality – the focus is very much on the relationships and inter-connectedness between individual and related technologies, and the business opportunities they present for those who are prepared and able to take advantage of them. In the Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies 2017, Gartner sees three distinct technology trends that the firm believes will profoundly create new experiences, […]

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For Immediate Release 96: The crisis that keeps on giving

Neville Hobson Leave a comment Artificial Intelligence, Business, Communication, Employee Communication, For Immediate Release, Marketing, Public Relations, Reputation, Social Media, Social Networks, Technology, Trends, Workplace

In the July installment of The Hobson & Holtz Report, Shel and I talked about these topics: A 15-year-old participating in a work experience program took over the Twitter account of the beleaguered Southern Rail in the UK. The response to #AskEddie was undoubtedly a welcome break for Southern Rail’s social media team, but what did it ultimately accomplish? The online publication Quartz experiments with display-type ads in the text of stories that let users ask an artificial intelligence-based chatbot named Hugo for more information about just the stuff you’re interested in. Will artificial intelligence eventually take over the creative side of content marketing? Takata’s air bag crisis is in its second decade, leading ultimately to the once-mighty company’s bankruptcy. […]

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Why the gig economy fits well with the lives of Baby Boomers

Neville Hobson Leave a comment Books, Business, Communication, Experiences, Guest Post, Personal Development, Society, Trends, Workplace

We Baby Boomers are benefiting significantly from the gig economy, says author, speaker and optimist Tim Drake. Not just as consumers by it providing lower prices and more convenience, but as participants too. It’s an important bolt-on to something bigger, he says, enabling new ways of doing business to emerge, and a fresh outlook on what ‘work’ is. But is it something we should think about taking a much more active role in? Baby Boomers fit into what I call Generation Cherry. Indeed, that is the title I gave my book on the subject. The profile is slightly wider than Baby Boomers, as Generation Cherry covers people in their fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties (possibly even forties and nineties). We […]

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For Immediate Release 92: Marketing failures of the UK’s Conservative Party

Neville Hobson Leave a comment Artificial Intelligence, Business, Communication, FIR Podcast Network, For Immediate Release, Marketing, Podcasting, Politics, Public Relations, Social Media, Technology, Trends, Workplace
Labour won social media election - Guardian front page

We said we’d do one episode together of the For Immediate Release podcast as a ‘limited return engagement,’ emulating The Hobson and Holtz Report that Shel and I did for ten years. We did do that with episode 84 in April. We enjoyed it so much we decided to do another one, and so we recorded episode 92 yesterday. In keeping with our ‘hefty but good’ slogan, Shel and I enjoyed a conversation over an hour and forty minutes that covered a big agenda: There’s a new mobile-based social network that has been described as Twitter for audio. Neville has been using Hear Me Out for a week, and Shel has been listening to the 42-second audio clips. Neville delved […]

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