It seems to be time for change around here in our little digital world. First we have the transmigration of Revolution, one of our industry stalwarts. Then, today, another – Juliet Blackburn, head of digital for the past nine years at agency selection and management gurus AAR, has taken the plunge and is off client-side. It’s a pretty bold step as it happens, as I think everyone thought that Juliet would either cave in and join an agency one day or remain at the head of the table of digital agency selection forever.

Personally I think it’s a good move – and Skype will make the best of her ability to cut through the bullshit to get to the real thing. Many of us will be sorry to see her go. Some won’t… I’ve heard various agency heads over many years vent their frustration at Juliet’s sometimes disconcerting ability to navigate past flimflam. To be honest, and no matter how we’d all love to have been put forward for more (and here I’m speaking as AAR’s digital agency for the past five years: we’ve had no special favours) it has meant AAR’s client-to-agency matching process has been unimpeachable. Kerry Glazer, AAR’s CEO, will have a challenge on her hands finding a replacement who is half as good.

This Monday the world’s leading contributors to mobile technology will gather at the BFI Southbank to celebrate an industry that is transforming how we connect with each other, access the Internet and entertain ourselves with the Heroes of the Mobile Screen event, in conjunction with Mobile Monday.

The event invites industry gurus, along with total newbies to mobile to join several hundred attendants in a fully packed day of insightful discussions, and special insight to the minds of a group of teenagers who will be taking centre stage to share their thoughts on how they use mobile phones. Expect plenty of opportunity to learn about what the future may hold for the little devices that most everyone carries, and for whom many report that they just can’t leave home without their mobile phone.

Nothing more than communications devices? Or are mobile phones truly our heroes? Think about it — in many cases mobile phones are re-shaping the world as we know it, by helping people in developing nations cross the digital divide, by saving countless lives when they are used to phone emergency services in accidents, or becoming the tool for voices sharing reports from war torn nations and places of political unrest.

The line up of heroes from the mobile industry for the day includes:

And bring your old mobile phones to the event to give to the World Film Collective!

Hurray for the heroes that are behind the little device that I can’t leave home without,

-Lisa

Pain can be a beautiful thing. And in my case quite an inspiring thing too. For the last 5 days I’ve been stuck in hospital with severe back pains – which have meant I’ve been totally bed bound, and completely dependent on the nurses at Kings College Hospital London (who have – by the way – been really great!)

Anyway, lying in bed – in pain – inspired me yesterday morning: could I be of any use to hospital lying here? The hospital staff are being great – but could I add anything – could I help improve how the hospital is run?

And the answer is of course YES. As a patient I – and the hundreds of other patients – are in the best place to help the hospital improve, as we’re the ones at the coal-face, experiencing the end products that the hospital delivers – whether that’s a quick fix in A&E, or a longer stay in one of the wards.
The only issue is how you collate and make sense of this collective experience. And the answer to that is the internet – create a crowd-sourcing website with a focus on collating “ideas of how to improve the hospital” and let patients share ideas, and self-organise the value of those ideas via rating and commenting systems. Given I’m the co-founder of an e-democracy company – Delib – that specialises in citizen empowerment – this was the easy bit!

So lying in my hospital bed – I asked a couple of my colleagues in Bristol to quickly put together a patient crowd-sourcing site using our one of our apps – and 2 hours later we launched “Help us Improve Kings”.

Check the site crowd-sourcing site here (and add ideas if you have any!)

With the prototype site up and live, I’m now in the process of getting patients to take part and share their experiences and ideas – a bit of a tricky feat given I can’t walk, but they’re coming in slowly as I lynch people walking past my room! I’m also in the process of talking to the Patient Involvement team @ Kings – as obviously to make this work, we really need them on board to actually turn the ideas generated into concrete actions.

So there you go – an example of bottom-up patient power – empowered by the wonders of broadband and a wonderful set of e-democracy apps. Social media empowerment at its finest!

And most importantly this is a lesson to all those brands / businesses / government departments out there who are trying to work out how to make their business work better – the answer: empower your customers and employees and they will in turn help power your business!