Creative entrepreneurs, start-ups and charities cheat themselves when they only focus on one side of a necessary duality: creativity and sustainable income. Instead each should harness the two.

The key to any creative process is a balance between structure and chaos. But how do you then make that ephemeral idea the core of a stable business?

With experience working for large arts organisations and currently supporting 60 creative start-up companies in IdeasTap’s Creative Space office, I will speak on the academic research and practical advice behind creativity theory and running a company that integrates creative chaos into a balanced business.

Questions Answered:
As a company director, am I managing creativity as best as I can?
Does my business model harness my/our creative process fully?
What supports one team member’s creativity or the entire team’s culture?
How do I review if I have the right structure and enough chaos?
What should I be evaluating if I’m good at business management?
What should I be evaluating if I’m good at creative chaos?
What “structure” options such as space, tools and personnel are available for cash-strapped creative companies?
How do I make this sustainable?
If it’s sustainable, how do I make my own/our creativity a credible, concrete brand?

Consumers live in a fluid and connected environment, it’s time for digital to be built-in and no longer tagged on. Branding lies into the inception of a strong and holistic experience across your business and beyond media.

The opportunities for your brand to lead the market have completely shifted as new devices and interfaces are at stake. It’s key to proactively convert those environments into brand assets. Advertising has become secondary and more than ever the brand is the answer.

We’ll explore 4 key ingredients make your brand exciting in a connected world: the dream, the experience, the communities and the velocity.

Questions Answered:
- how to create a strong digital brand?
- how to make your brand work better in digital?
- how to unite your online and offline brand experiences?

I would present few practical techniques that would let people learn how to use simple visuals and mindmapping techniques in their business in whatever way they need it: for a pitch, presentation, client meeting, brainstorming and more. You will come out if this session with new skills and you DONT have to know how to draw great in order to do this workshop! You will come out of itwith great new ideas for your business and make it stand out in the crowd!

Questions Answered:
- how to use simple shapes in order to grow your business, make it more fun and engaging?
- how to learn mindmapping which will help to easily brainstorm your ideas and get your team involved and creative?
- what styles are there of mindmapping?
- where to use them and in what way?
- how to make communication in your business less boring and more interesting?

>> People reuse and customise things, even if they do not always realise it.

>> Reusing is more effective than recycling and higher in the waste hierarchy but nobody works towards that.

>> Recycling is good
but works within the system that creates the problem: over-consumption.

>>Design goes open
and the roles of designer and user are merging.

These are the foundations of Design for Repurposing (DfR), a system that aims to:

1. Provide designers and users with proper design tools, cultivating democratic quality.

2. Create a digital space where users and designers can share and evaluate ideas.

3. Brand and communicate repurposing properly.

Questions Answered:
How can open design change human behaviour towards sustainability?

A fast-paced hour long-long masterclass in Atomic Networking, where a scientific approach to networking will help you build your own network and find value in every contact you make.

Questions Answered:
How to approach networking at events and online.

How to make introductions.

How to understand the value in the people you know.

And teach you how to drop ‘Heraclitus’ into your next conversation.

Talk to most brands who have used Mobile in their marketing over the past few years and you will usually find they are huge advocates of it. Yet budgets remain small and many top brands still don’t even have a site that is optimised for people arriving at it from a mobile device, effectively shutting the door on 10, 20% or even more of their audience. Even Apple, the inventor of the iPhone, does not have a mobile-optimised site.
In this presentation, David will examine why most brands still don’t get mobile and what it will take to make them change their minds.

Questions Answered:
Why mobile is so hard to sell to brands
Why mobile budgets are still small
What it will take to change the current situation

Since last year, Karen Topp and I have been running events and workshops to look at ‘hard to measure’ areas of business like brand reputation, innovation, customer centricity. we will be presenting our findings, as well as the tools and techniques we believe can best tackle these issues

Questions Answered:
How to understand the benefit of brand reputation, customer centric strategy, and innovation for businesses. Which tools and metrics you can use to tackle these issues.

Condescending Corporate Brand Page. The Facebook page that shot into infamy in the marketing world in 2012. Social Media’s answer to Charlie Brooker. Sarcastic, cutting, unforgiving and to the point. It’s mission: to name, shame and ruthlessly satire the worst social media trends and practices committed by brands. But how does the fearful social media manager avoid it’s vicious glare? This talk will discuss the main offending posting patterns being scrutinised by the page and the underlying sociological explanations for why these are being labelled as social media fails. Following on from this the talk will give top tips to get honest brand engagement and avoiding the page of shame. Attend this talk if you LIKE cute cats, Fridays or pictures of success kid… or if you want to learn about how to create decent social media profile content.

Questions Answered:
Why was the page brought in to existence?
What are the bad habits being observed by brands and why are they considered condescending?
How can social media managers avoid the page of shame by creating decent social media content?

This workshop will look into the details of decision making for startup businesses and at spending capital in a selective way to generate sales as early as possible. This session will share our in depth experience of market trading and customer interaction as well as developing products and understanding market trends.
Attendees will receive a good understanding of the current retail environment and techniques to avoid loss and bankruptcy.

Questions Answered:
1) How to use market trading to grow your brand.

2) How to increase your profit in this retail climate.

3) Inexpensive ways of building your brand.

4) Raising money for your ideas.

Everyone is talking about storytelling, but how do you actually bring a brand to life through an authentic story?

Carla Faria, Solutions Director at Say Media, will share the secrets of telling a great brand story that demonstrates the qualities of immersion, interactivity, integration and impact, which are key ingredients of a successful brand story exercise through a story. Think Jackonary for the digital age!

After being inspired, the workshop attendees will create a brand story for Shoreditch and promote this creative, clever and cool Borough of London to the world. Working in real-time with social media and with advice from Say Media’s content experts, Digital Shoreditch delegates will work together to create a compelling story (with prizes to be won).

Questions Answered:
How do you bring a brand to life through an authentic story?