Speaking and press engagements

In 1997 or 1998 I found myself on stage at Promax Europe in front of six hundred TV execs in Rome, courtesy of the creative director of Syfy Channel. I was there to present a reel about Head-Space, one of the web’s first creative social media projects. It had already won around 150 awards and would go on to be described by Forbes as having been one of the world’s ten most influential websites. On this particular occasion the event’s organisers had flown four of us to Italy and put us all up at a fancy boutique hotel overlooking the city. No expense spared.

As the MC finished a glowing introduction I stood up to give a short speech before hitting play. I told the assembled audience that their industry was doomed, that the internet would completely take over, that collaborative creative and social play were going to signal the death knell for broadcast television. I told them what they were about to see was the future. And I pressed play. At which point the tech broke, and I was left standing like a perfect idiot in front of a blank screen and hundreds of seasoned execs who knew it probably wasn’t quite time to call it a day.

Since then I have given keynotes and speeches to thousands of people, lectured at great universities and spoken to small groups of people about the future. I haven’t forgotten Italy. And when I headlined the Drum’s agency growth conference a few years ago and the tech broke, I had a funny story about a trip to Rome to fill in the time before launching into a prop-free keynote.

Why tell you this? Just to say that I love framing what I’ve learned through stories, and sometimes tech gets in the way. If the projector breaks, give me a glass of water and an audience of people who want to learn and I am happy.

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