Great event combines my passion for social media and motorcycles

I’m pleased to say that I’ll be one of the speakers at Torque Social, which is a new social media event dedicated to the motorcycle industry. It runs from Thursday 9th February until Friday 10th February 2012 at The Manor House Hotel in Gloucestershire, and should be a fantastic event as it combines two of the biggest passions in my life – using new technology to benefit businesses and their customers, and motorcycles.

Incidentally, if you book before December 16th, 2011, you can save up to £124 on tickets. And in addition to the focus of the event on explaining how to get real returns on using social media and technology, there’s also a networking dinner and the chance to grab 1-to-1 sessions with the speakers, meaning you can come away with really specific advice and actions for your business.

Social Media is perfect for motorcycling:

Without wanting to give too many spoilers as to what I’ll be running a seminar on, it’s great to see the motorcycle industry starting to embrace social media as a way to engage with their customers. Motorcyclists are some of the most passionate, knowledgable, and enthusiastic people on the planet when it comes to spending time and money on their hobby, but also sharing their love with other people.

And there’s always been a social aspect, whether it’s ride-outs, bike meets, or the experience of being part of a convoy of hundreds of bikers heading to an event. And along with the usual age, location and other social strata, there’s the fact that motorcyclists handily tend to divide themselves into groups by the type of bike they ride, and often the make and model.

Add the fact that most bikers are also keen on gadgets and technology, hence the huge number of forums and messageboards that have been around for many years, and the fact biking often becomes part of life rather than a hobby, and you can see the massive opportunities, especially as motorcycling is often under pressure from outside forces, such as Government legislation.

Plus, bikes are cool.

 

M-Publishing – a must attend event for publishers…

Most media companies are either publishing mobile applications or looking to increase their activity on mobile handsets – so where can you get some insight into the best ways to get mobile successfully?

Looking at the line-up and agenda, M-Publishing on June 1st at RIBA in London will be one of the best ways to find out in a short space of time – which is all most people have at the moment. I’m always impressed at the quality of people speaking and hosting round tables at Camerjam events and this one is no exception (Disclosure – I’m friends with Camerjam founder James Cameron – which came about after seeing his previous events).

So you get a mix of speakers, panels and roundtables – with speakers and hosts from companies including the Evening Standard, Nokia, Admob, Microsoft, Harper Collins, Guardian, FT, Thomson Reuters, and a range of mobile developers and specialists.

Plus I’m hosting one of six roundtables which aim to create a mobile strategy for fictional publisher, aiming to get into specific challenges to develop more insight. Other roundtable hosts include my good friends Jonathan MacDonald and Neil Perkin.

So you should be interested by now – and there’s more good news. James has given me a discount code so you can save on the £292.58 price, and get tickets for just £199 +VAT. Just go to M-Publishing Tickets, and enter the code ‘mobiPUB’.

Upcoming events and a bit of mobile

At the moment it’s hard to know which events I’m guaranteed to attend – there’s a lot happening and my diary is subject to massive change at the last minute.

But I’ll definitely be at two upcoming conferences, as I’ve been kindly asked to host roundtables at both of them.

The first is the Specialist Media Conference on May 25th, which takes place in the delightful surroundings of Peterborough, about 5 minutes walk from one of my former employers. And the table I’m on will be all about mobile, hopefully discussing what lays beyond the iPhone, developing a mobile strategy and application development etc. What’s interesting is that the Specialist Media name brings to mind niche targeted magazines, but obviously websites, blogs, radio etc which have a defined belief and purpose are all specialist media outlets.

And then on June 1st, I’ll be on another round table at the M-Publishing event. This is going to be really interested as it’s part of a full schedule of mobile knowledge and insight. And in the midst of it all, each of five roundtables will be given the task of creating a mobile strategy for fictional publishers. And the other tables are being hosted by some very intelligent people: Nick Lane from MobileSQUARED, Belinda Parmer from LadyGeek, and my friends Jonathan MacDonald (JME.net) and Ilicco Elia (Reuters).

So it’s a bit handy I was able to share some news about one of Absolute Radio’s mobile apps (Cos that’s where I work). The Absolute Radio Player for Nokia phones has now been downloaded over 100,000 times by people who are not only lovely Absolute Radio listeners, but also happen to own a 3rd or 5th edition S60 handset. And considering it’s only been out for about 2.5 months, that’s not bad going. And it also goes someway to counteracting some of the oft-quoted figures on mobile which are using a U.S. audience, rather than European or global. Which will make Tomi Ahonen happy.

So hopefully I might see you at an upcoming event, and if not, just go and download the Absolute Radio iAmp for iPhone/Android or Absolute Radio Player for Nokia/BlackBerry.

Speaking, presenting, writing, and catching up…

I’m finally able to do something to assuage my blog guilt, after a week of some great meetings and working hard on a lot of cool stuff which unfortunately I can’t share just quite yet…

But I can share a very nice testimonial from Julian Thorne, Managing Director of Dovetail after they kindly let me present at their client conference recently…

‘Dan is incredibly knowledgeable about the social networks in all their myriad guises. He also has that rare ability to enthusiastically inform the uninitiated without ever being patronising’

You might not have heard, but my blogging absence coincided with some small computer and phone company launching some kind of computing device. Hence a post about what it could mean on the One Golden Square blog. Which led to the pleasure of writing a bit of a follow up on the Music Week site. And I’m also flattered by the fact Michael Leis credited me with inspiring his latest post on the iPad. (Incidentally, Michael has been on a bit of a roll with his blog posts recently – some great writing about the usage of APIs for example. Well worth reading/subscribing to).

On balance all that good stuff, this was the week when my Xbox decided to encounter the dreaded ‘Error 74’ – which basically means it has self-destructed just out of the warranty Microsoft specifically extended to three years to counter the fault. That means a £68 repair bill or buying a new Xbox in the post-Christmas month notorious for sending people into debt anyway.

What’s been interesting is that I don’t actually miss playing video games during my enforced break (I have to admit to also owning a PS2, PS, Dreamcast, N64, Sega Saturn, SNES, NES, Megadrive, Master System and various other consoles and computers if needed – reverting to the geek stereotype).

But I really miss the social side of online gaming. Particularly as a core group of friends who I rarely see in real life have all been online every time I’ve logged onto Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. It’s the fact I’m now barred from this interaction which is the stressful part, and the reason that I’m rebalancing the family budget to accommodate a solution asap.

It makes me wonder about the effect of a more complete disconnection – I’m still online and keeping up with my social life on Twitter, Facebook, forums etc – it’s purely the team-based adrenalin of online warfare I’m missing… But between work, commuting, writing for my personal projects and family life, it’s the one vicarious bit of entertainment in my life at the moment.

Still, it’s spurred me into arranging a couple of drinks with some friends, so I guess it’s not all bad…