Get gold with a digital influence

Mozfest 2016 is at the new style experience university known as Ravensbourne College, next door to the O2 Arena. Or the millennium dome as I affectionately remember it.

I have been working with websites and digital media for a good 10 years now. Wow, 10 years of self employment has happened! I even made both my silver and gold Arts Award portfolios as websites. My bronze award was a PowerPoint. So digital has always been a part of my life. I spent a lucky 2 years in Toyota GB digital marketing, part of a surprisingly small team and coordinating, briefing and evaluating the agency output - particularly all things tech related. An interesting part of my role was saving the company nearly £40k a year just by taking charge of the web analytics. This component is vital to digital work and is a big influencer to arts funding too - knowing who you're reaching, how many and where they come from. But most importantly, what are they most interested in. Is it your ticket booking page? Is it a particular artist, your blog from behind the scenes or how to reach you?

Anyway, making the most of digital reach when you're thinking of your artistic output is vital.

You might also think about your creation process. What digital tools could make you're life easier? Project management tools like Wrike, creative brainstorming with Pinterest or team conversations with Slack.

Another benefit of technology is what you can create and find. Mobile access to a world of information means you can research ideas anywhere, anytime. You can also make presentation on the fly, record your notes, or even record images, video & audio to look back at later.

All this is possible in our digital world, and I'm not going in to the details because you're reading this now, a digital blog, and you probably know enough about what you can do with your phone or laptop already. Although I am going to flag a handy resource that you should consider: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/findoutmore/help-me-out-staying-safe-online - sometimes we forget to stay sensible in our usage, share stuff without thinking or just get careless. This guide is about being online, but I'd also say that you need to make sure you have backups of your portfolio & work if you're working digitally - use Google Drive, Dropbox, One Drive or many other online services. At the very least, have a USB pen backup. But as many, and as automated as you can, the better. Even if you do your portfolio offline - take pictures as a backup of it - you never know how hungry the dog is, or how strong that coffee you spill on it is...

Now to another part of digital life. Social media. It's a great marketing tool for your projects, you could have group chats and all sorts. One thing it's also good for is 'viral'. I've seen this a few times now, and I wanted to share it with you in case you hadn't. It links to some of the blogs we have here on Voice about education, and not only how it can lead you in to an arts life, but how sometimes it can be frustrating. This is American, but the points are clear. And it's a great example of the power of spoken word, and even stronger with it's combination of good film production values.