Square one

I'm currently at home googling 'shakespeare for 7 years olds'. It's not how I imagined spending my evening when I woke up this morning but this is completely normal for a 'square'. This is one of many reasons why Squared is keeping me on my toes and i'm loving it.

For those of you who don't know Squared, it's a ground-breaking education initiative, led by Google to empower the leaders of the future to make the most of the opportunities offered by emerging technologies.

 Empowering today's and tomorrow's leaders to drive the industry [r]evolution

Is it too early to get excited? Definitely not. Within the first two days we have packed in so many different things that I can only imagine what it will be like looking back after 6 weeks. I've started a diary again as I'm so eager to keep up with all of the incredible information we are receiving through inspirational talks, team work and projects. I'm also already spotting things that I know will really help make a difference when I go back to my job in 6 weeks.

It's already difficult to pick highlights but here is a snapshot of the people who have visited us so far:

Inspirational talk from Amanda MazKenzie, CMO at Aviva
As a fellow marketeer working in the Insurance industry I was delighted that I would get to meet Amanda. Being the first woman in a 300 year old company on the board isn't the only impressive thing about her, the list really does go on. Within seconds many of us were franticly trying to take note of the inspiring and refreshingly honest insights Amanda shared.

She spoke quite a bit about being brave enough to 'pipe up' and always ask why. What is the preverbal big picture? The cost of silence is massive and it's much better to get the idea in the room rather than let an opportunity pass you. This is most definitely something I need to put into action more often.

Amanda is a real champion of understanding peoples behavior. This has been a big focus for us all as a group this week and I'm very quickly understanding the true importance.

"Be aware of what gives you energy and go back to those moments"

Recommended reading: 7 Habits of highly effective people

Anthropological view on digital from Neil Perkins, Founder of Only Dead Fish

Earlier today Neil joined us for a fantastic talk all about our favorite subject, digital. It was a jam packed session that focused on:

- Importance of a content strategy for brands (paid, earned & owned)
- How digital has influenced business models
- Importance of destination vs distribution thinking
- The vertical stack
- Value of facilitation
- Agile working practices

Working client side I thought the video he shared from John Jay offered a really interesting perspective on the role of agency partners. It's so important for agencies to help brands understand the sole of their brand and how to make it relevant for customers.

Neil's presentation has inspired the idea for my next blog about bottom up success stories on social media coming later this week.

Now back to my preparation for tomorrow's very exciting task with the Shakespeares Schools Federation.