Out & About: London Tech Week

Each team member at 93digital has a £1,000 personal development budget each year. In our ‘Out and About’ series, we catch up with the team following their adventures at conferences, events and learning.

This time we chat with Head of Marketing Jeremy, following his recent travels around London Tech Week 2018.

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1. What is your role at 93digital?

I’m Marketing Manager, in charge of all externally facing communications at 93digital.

2. What have you attended recently and where?

So last week, was London Tech Week, with an array of events scattered all across the city. It was a real smorgasbord of events, from panel discussions discussing future uses of current tech buzzwords such as AI, to Exhibitors at the ExCel showing off the latest AR & VR technology, all the way through to frank discussions on important, yet often forgotten topics such as driving sales in a digital world (our industry often hates using the S word).

3. What’s the premise behind the event?

As the name suggests, it’s a week-long celebration of all things Tech and all things London. This year, there did seem to be an added emphasis on showing that London is ‘open for business’. It’s a phrase I heard a lot whilst out & about.

4. What did you learn that you can take into your work day-to-day?

I have discovered some new tools which could help our design and development teams be more efficient when working. I’ve met some good people from agencies and tech companies with complimentary services, which is always a significant bonus reason for attending these events.

5. What did you learn from a more long-term perspective?

I learned that the term ‘Artificial Intelligence’, is currently used as a catch-all phrase to effectively describe Marketing Automation. For all Elon Musk’s worries about a ‘Skynet’ situation occurring, we’re a long way from that. The tech industry is always looking for the next ‘shiny new thing’ when I think we could be focusing more on marginal gains to improve the technology we’re currently using en masse. So I have learned not to worry too much about how Blockchain is going to disrupt my customer retention strategy.

6. What other events that reflect your role in the agency would you like to participate in?

London FinTech week will be interesting for me, from 6-13th July. Considering this is an international event, connecting a huge variety of innovators and business individuals within finance, this can be a great opportunity to collaborate. There will be a series of exhibitions and workshops we might get involved with. With our experience in delivering in the B2B tech/SaaS sector, particularly in FinTech

7. What made you decide to go to this event?

We are London’s leading WordPress agency. WordPress is a growing, incredibly versatile bit of open-source technology. In my opinion, it’s a complete no-brainer that as the marketing manager here at 93, that I am attending these sorts of events. It’s key that as an agency, we are constantly evaluating new technology, and seeing how we can incorporate that into our offering. Our clients will be asking about these things, and our role as an agency partner is to help them with their tech decison-making.