Written by Paula Torres Moneu
Hopefully, like us, you’ve *just about* settled into 2019 and you’re looking forward to everything this year will bring! We’re already planning our next Glug Bristol shindig (spoiler: it’s in February) but as our final event of 2018 focused on what the future holds for the creative industries, we thought we’d share a quick recap for any Gluggers who couldn’t make it.
Titled ‘Glug Bristol Presents: What’s Next?’, our November event had another cracking line-up of speakers.
In true Glug fashion, we started off at the bar – albeit this time by hunting for the QR codes hidden all over The Square Club. These were then exchanged for free drinks (hurrah!) provided by epic local start-up and Glug Bristol’s latest sponsor, Huggg.
The Hugg team kept the drinks flowing and we were also treated to appearances by Getty Images & Microsoft Surface. It was Microsoft Surface’s second time with us and they returned to let us have another play on their innovative tablets ahead of the evening’s inspiring talks.
Tara Moore, Photographer at Getty Images
First to take the stage was talented photographer Tara Moore. She walked us through her creative process and explained how she focuses on photographing the trends of tomorrow by looking at the social and political issues of today.
She showed us some of her concept-driven work and gave us an insight into the way art can act as reactive medium to reflect the issues and concerns which are prevalent in today’s society.
“Visually, I think 2019 is going to be about plastics, environment, mindfulness and digital empathy – having some sort of warm connection digitally.”
Paul Wickers, Founder and CEO of Huggg
Following our glimpse into what the future holds for photography and the visual arts, Paul Wickers took us on a trip down memory lane to reflect on the evolution of our precious hand-held devices. From the bricks of the 90s to our snake-filled phones of the noughties, we followed the journey all the way to today’s phablets.
He pointed out that although we’ve reached a point where instant messaging has surpassed social by becoming one of the core ways we communicate with our friends and loved-ones, there is something today’s emojis simply can’t convey – which is where his start-up Huggg comes in.
“I want new trends to do something to get people away from their screens rather [than] increase the amount of time we spend on them.”
Kerry Harrison, Co-founder of Tiny Giant
Up next was Kerry Harrison. Kerry recently co-founded an innovative agency that aims to use A.I. to solve clients’ problems by using cool new tech in creative ways. She’s convinced that artificial intelligence is going to change marketing and advertising as we know it, by enabling us to go creatively where we’ve never been before. She predicts it will have an enormous impact that will revolutionise creative industries.
“If you want to make it in the industry; be curious. Explore things that aren’t in your realm. See what’s out there and form an opinion on it. Speak to people and soak up as much as you can. That’s why networking events like this are quite good – you learn so much about different areas.”
Alison Battisby, Founder of Avocado Social
Social media expert Alison Battisby closed the evening by filling us in on the hottest developments in the industry. She’s the founder of a specialist social media consultancy, Avocado Social and we were excited to hear her predictions for 2019.
Alison foresees the upcoming dominance of vertical video over horizontal due to explosion of stories across the social media landscape. She highlighted the opportunities this will present for businesses who may wish to integrate with these apps (and truly hurt our wallets in the process).
“Now you can share what you’re listening to on Spotify – but I think that will expand to the point where we’ll be ordering pizza via stories, booking things like yoga classes, even buying tickets to events like this via Eventbrite for example. It’s going to be terrible for our bank accounts but amazing in terms of usability.”
Oh what a night! Huge thanks to our talented speakers for inspiring us and for providing us with a little taste of what’s to come in 2019.
Fancy joining us for the first Glug Bristol event of the year? If so, make sure you sign up to our newsletter as we’ll be launching our exclusive ticket pre-sale later this month! It will be held at The Square Club on 28th February and is titled ‘The Risk Takers’ – our speakers are going to be discussing what it means to take risks and how they can really pay off.
