Digital Berkshire - the inaugural event at BlackBerry

The inaugural Digital Berkshire event kicked off yesterday, kindly sponsored and hosted by BlackBerry-RIM at their fantastic HQ in Slough.

The evening kicked off at 7pm with just shy of 60 attendees arriving before our speaker took the floor.

We were lucky enough to have the amazing Stephen O'Brien, Director of Digital EMEA for BlackBerry-RIM to speak and share his knowledge and opinions on the world of mobile and how we are going to see it change over the next few years. Some really interesting points came out of his presentation, which featured some great interactive discussions with the audience too, as well as a few tricky questions that flew Stephen's way!

He ended his presentation with some details on a great integrated campaign that BlackBerry has been running since late 2011 - amazing what you can achieve with a big budget, or even no media spend at all. One of their viral videos had hit 110k views without a penny spent on anything but the production of the video.

As this is just a brief summary of last night's event, I'll just highlight some  of the key thoughts that stood out for me:

• Data + mobile + digital is currently the eye of the storm - the most incredible place to be right now - exciting times for digital developments and moving so fast you can't afford to take your eye off the ball - we can expect a lot of change here over the next couple of years
• Despite BlackBerry's well documented issues in the last year, they still grew their customer base from 70 to 75 million customers - it's how you handle issues that really matters - don't forget to say sorry!
• BlackBerry has seen strong social growth in emerging markets - with continual improvements in connectivity in these markets it will be interesting to see how this shifts the world balance of the digital consumer
• Do not underestimate the importance of local search - according to BlackBerry, 80% of people who search on mobile then take action, highlighting the importance for business to be visible locally, on mobile and at the point of making the decision - don't miss out on impulse or urgent consumer actions
• Despite the importance of mobile, the user experience is still fragmented, both on devices and on mobile compatibility of websites (only 17% optimised for mobile) - improved user experience will have a big impact on the market in the near future
• One of the biggest marketing challenges are the complex synergies with mobile, tv and web - ROI calculations can be complex, but the integration of all three delivers significantly better results
• A big challenge for corporates as social media continues to increase in importance: how to balance the need for a rapid response with sending the right corporate message - the wrong message can be as bad if not worse than saying nothing at all!

To find out more about future events, follow the @DigitalBerks Twitter account or join the LinkedIn Group.

Jocelyn Kirby
Head of Marketing at Metakinetic & Co-Founder of Digital Berkshire
@JocelynKirby
@Metakinetic

What is Digital Berkshire?

Digital Berkshire was founded by Metakinetic and Rawnet and is a spin off of the popular Digital Surrey group and events, started in 2009 by The Blue Door. Digital Berkshire will maintain the original values and goals of Digital Surrey, forming a community for like-minded people wanting to stay up-to-date with the ever changing digital landscape in Berkshire. Digital Berkshire is proud to have the amazing South Hill Park Arts Centre in Bracknell as its official home.