TuringFest - A Taste of What You Missed in Edinburgh Last Week

Turing Fest 2019 is over. Two days of epic talks and meeting great people.

It still feels a bit strange going to a conference on my doorstep as we’re generally a bit lacking in these sort of events ‘up here’. I’ve seen Turing Fest grow each year and it’s great to see it constantly attracting such great speakers (and attendees) to Edinburgh. 

Given the concentration of tech startups in makes sense that the conference has a strong focus on tech and growth content. But one of the main themes I’ve seen emerge throughout talks is the emphasis on ‘people’. More specifically, the need to consider them as individuals rather than just a team or audience. Then on the other side of this coin; an increasing realisation that we need to look after ourselves as ‘people’ too.

I thought I’d pick out a few of my highlights for this post. But after having a look at my notes it turns out that pretty much every talk I saw was on my list of highlights. So I shall instead present to you a haphazard collection of notes, commentary and thoughts in no particular order. 

I’ve added links to slide decks where available. If video of talks is made available to non-attendees I’ll update with links as and when. Otherwise, you missed out. See if you can catch the speakers somewhere else, and get yourself a ticket for the 2020 Turing Fest.

Kirsty Hulse - Avoiding Feedback Failure: Brain-Based Techniques For Getting the Best From Your Team 

So it turns out that the way we give feedback is usually pretty bad. Kirsty talks about the psychology behind giving feedback and how the way it’s delivered can often make the difference between it being an effective tool or damaging to those on the receiving end. It’s often easy to dismiss topics like this as being ‘fluffy’ or not as important as the like of tech. But this isn’t about just being nice, Kirsty backs up her case for a different approach to feedback with a solid business case. 

If you’re not familiar with what Kirsty does, I suggest you change that. What better way to start than with her deck from Turing Fest: ‘To be better leaders, we have to stop telling people what to do’.

Tiffany Da Silva - Unmasking Imposter Syndrome: 6 Lessons From a Marketing Fraud

Contrary to what you might think, the majority of people get imposter syndrome in some way or another. And those really confident seeming ones you’ve been watching on stage are apparently no different. This was unexpectedly one of my favorite talks of the conference: an immersing story (sadly Tiffany’s dog walking career was short lived) along with plenty of practical, real-world advice for dealing with your own imposter syndrome. 

Unfortunately, I’m afraid I haven't got any slides from Turing Fest for you. But as the next best thing here’s a video of Tiffany talking at Learn Inbound instead: 6 Lessons from a Marketing Fraud: How to Stop Imposter Syndrome & Get S@# Done 

I also feel like I should give a plug for FlowJo’s new Growth Hacking box. If any fancies buying me one, you can do just that here: https://flowjo.co/collections/frontpage/products/growth-hacking-box 

Paddy Moogan - How to Build a Team Culture That People Leave — And Then Come Back To

Paddy talked us through the journey of building the team at Aira and how they achieved the culture that they have today. With talks like this I always find the ‘what not to do’ parts even more interesting than what worked. Paddy doesn’t shy away from the fact that they’ve had their own share of problems at Aira. One of my key takeaways was the concept of ‘What got us here, won’t get us there’ - i.e. just because something got you this far, it doesn’t mean that the same thing will take you to the next stage. This is something I’ve seen many times with companies resisting change on the basis that “it’s worked so far”.

Paddy shared his slides here: How to Build a Team Culture That People Leave — And Then Come Back To.

Jono Alderson - What Happens When Everyone's Website is Fixed?

One of the biggest talking points of the conference was Jono Alderson’s talk on ‘What Happens When Everyone's Website is Fixed?’. True to form, Jono painted a pretty apocalyptic picture of what’s to come for brands and marketers (Spoiler: Google owns us and we’re all screwed). While I haven't quite decided if I agree with all of the predictions, this is definitely something we need to be at the very least considering. 

I’m pretty sure it’s safe to say that Jono will be talking lots more on this subject. So I suggest you keep an eye on the interweb for subsequent ranting.

Craig Sullivan - Death by Design

As ever, we got some epic (and completely justified) ranting from Craig Sullivan demonstrating examples of just how common really bad UX is. This is the stuff I find myself ranting about on a daily basis too, so fully support the raised level of swearing on stage. I’d go as far as to say that a lot of it doesn’t even warrant the label of UX, it’s just common sense! Craig takes things a step further in his talk and lays out in practical terms what a minimum level UX testing setup should look like. Luckily for you (and me as I missed the start), Craig has shared his slide deck on dropbox. Grab it here: Death by Design.

Phil Nottingham - Big Budget Video Marketing on a Small Business Budget

I think the ‘big budget’ part in the title of this talk was a bit of a red herring. Phil shows us just how ineffective video marketing can be regardless of budget. It’s an embarrassing truth that most of the metrics we use to measure success are pretty meaningless. Much of this was summed up by one of Phil’s slides:

“You need to build brand affinity, not brand awareness”

We need to get better at ideation and creativity, but also more clever about it. Being funny or controversial for its own sake achieves nothing. 

With this in mind, have a look at what Wistia are doing with their own video campaigns:

• https://wistia.com/series/one-ten-one-hundred 
• https://wistia.com/series/brandwagon 

Hana Abaza - Unicorns, Ice Cream and Puking Rainbows: Driving Growth from Startup to Scale

Hanna has been driving some serious growth at Shopify Plus. At first glance it could be easy to assume that when Shopify launched their new Shopify Plus product a ‘more of the same’ approach would deliver the growth and changes needed. Early on in the talk it becomes very clear that this isn’t the case; it’s a whole different beast. Hana talks about how important it is to get your positioning right. On Hana’s recommendation I've added ‘Obviously Awesome’ by April Dunford to my reading list. I suggest you do the same. 

I’ve not got any slides to share with you right now, but I’ll share if and when any surface. 

Britney Muller - Machine Learning for Marketers

Even if you have no interest in machine learning, don’t let that put you off. If you consider yourself even vaguely ‘geeky’ or inquisitive about technology, there’s a shitload of stuff to play around with here. I resisted calling it ‘fun stuff’ because although there’s some great examples of daft things you can do with it, it’s very easy to see the massive potential in practical applications too. I’ve already got myself a list to investigate! I haven’t got Britney’s Turing Fest deck yet, but many of the same resources are available in her talk from Search Leeds here: Machine Learning for SEOs. I'll add the Turning Fest deck if I can find it. 

Aiden Carroll - Hack the Stack – Five Ways to Automate Like A Human

If the theme of the day was tech vs people, then Aiden’s talk provided a perfect segway between the two. People seem to be increasingly talking about ‘data driven’ approaches with little thought to the people that the data actually represents. This talk focuses on going beyond the data for a more considered approach. Aiden explains it much better than me, so look at his slides here: Hack the Stack – Five Ways to Automate Like A Human 

Arianne Donoghue - Why The Way We Track Campaigns Is About To Change Forever

There’s not really much I can add about Arianne’s talk other than it looks like tracking is going to be changing massively and you really need to be aware of what’s going on. I’ll let Arianne explain the what, how and whys of it all: Why The Way We Track Campaigns Is About To Change Forever

Oli Gardner - The Marketing IQ Manifesto 

I’ll be honest: It was early, my hangover was starting to kick in, I didn’t take any notes, and I was pretty overwhelmed by the inevitable bombardment of energy and info. Oli laid out his principles and framework for a “methodology to create marketing that matters”. My own dumbed down interpretation of this would be to stop doing stuff for the sake of it, just because ‘that’s what we do’, instead: get clever about it. I won’t try to explain any further. If you missed it then I suggest you keep an eye out for Oli talking about it more, as I’m sure he will be. It would also make for a pretty good excuse to go visit Vancouver and see him at the CTA Conference.

Danae Shell - Stop Recruiting for Rockstars: The Skills You Really Want to Hire For, and Why

Unfortunately I can’t really say much about Danae’s talk as I didn’t see it. I did however hear great things about it so wanting to give it a mention. I’m hoping to see a video of it at some point, but in the meantime here’s the deck: Stop Recruiting for Rockstars

And breathe…

Well that turned out to be more of an epic than I’d planned. If you’ve read this far, congratulations! The only thing left is to thank all the speakers and organisers for such a great event. See you again next year!