Get Digital returns, dynamic online event, 12-16 April 2021

When and where is it on?

Get Digital is on from 12-16 April 2021. It will be held from 0900 – 1800 Irish Standard Time. It will be held via Zoom.

How many years has it been going?

Get Digital has been run since 2009; this year is the first year it has been held online.

Get Digital returns

What was the inspiration to start it?

While there are many digital marketing and technology events online, when Get Digital started there were few local and free events, where students and businesses were welcome. Get Digital thus started as a public outreach activity and has gone from there. This year’s Get Digital is a response to requests from our business network for an event that covered various aspects of digital business and so features sessions on everything from TikTok marketing to SEO, as well as motivational speakers. We also felt people needed a boost so we feature a number of leading motivational speakers – Hannah Shields, Gerry Duffy, and Frederik Imbo.

What exciting things can people look forward to?

There are a wide variety of speakers, both domestic and international. For example:

• Ernan Roman (12 April, 2021) – Author of Voice of the Customer Marketing is speaking. He was inducted into the DMA Marketing Hall of Fame due to the results his VoC research-based CX strategies achieve for clients such as IBM, Microsoft, QVC, Gilt and HP.
• John Danner (14 April, 2021) – Author of Wall Street Journal bestseller, Built for Growth: How Builder Personality Shapes Your Business, Your Team, and Your Ability to Win (Harvard Business Review Press, 2017), about the personality characteristics of highly successful entrepreneurs; as well as the Amazon bestseller, The Other ‘F’ Word: How Smart Leaders, Teams, and Entrepreneurs Put Failure to Work (John Wiley & Sons, 2015).
• Evan Fishkin (15 April, 2021) – Evan is a Partner with Logic Inbound, a leading Seattle digital marketing agency, and has over a decade of enterprise search marketing experience, and has worked with SEO extensively. Most recently, Fishkin was the SEO director at online marketing company Soda.com.
• Alistair Croll (16 April, 2021) – Author of Lean Analytics – Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster. Alistair and Emily Ross will be discussing their upcoming book, Just Evil Enough.
• Amy Zalman (16 April, 2021) – Duturist, author, speaker and professor. Author of Strategic Narrative: a Framework for Accelerating Information: A Practical Guide for Leaders and Organizations. Amy will be discussing how corporations need to take a greater role in social and political life.

In addition, we have a number of great motivational speakers:

• Hannah Shields (13 April, 2021) –  the first Northern Ireland woman to ever scale Everest and the first Irish woman to reach the North Pole and has competed in over 50 marathons and ultra-marathons.
• Gerry Duffy (15 April, 2021) –   Since completing his first sporting challenge “32 Marathons in 32 Days” Gerry Duffy has been speaking at events to address the workforces and clients of companies such as Facebook, Google, Bank of America, Standard Life and Coca Cola.
• Frederik Imbo (16 April, 2021) – Actor, producer and motivational speaker whose TedX talk on “How not to take things personally” has garnered over 6m views.

Finally, we have some of Ireland most well known brands and agencies speaking including Paul Farrell from Virgin Media TV, Alan Coleman from Wolfgang Digital, Jane Casey and Cormac McCann from Pluto, Darragh Rea and Hannah Corkey from Edelman, amongst others.

What opportunities are on offer for those attending?

As well as practical sessions, motivational speakers, and keynote speakers, there are two specific additional participatory elements:

• Ask Me Anything Panels – every day at 1145, the public can ask a panel of experts questions on social media (12 April), content marketing (13 April), SEO (14 April), E-commerce (15 April), and Paid Advertising (16 April)
• Careers Hour – every day at 1300, there is a session of careers in digital including career stores, CV workshops, and interview skills.

Who will be speaking?

There are over 39 sessions and 60 speakers (see https://getdigital.iidb.ie/speakers/) from Irish and international organisations including Amazon (USA), Cpl (Ireland) DCU, Each & Other (Ireland), Edelman (Ireland and the UK), IKEA (Spain), IBM (Ireland) Imboorling (Belgium), GreenLight (UK), Inkvine (Ireland), KerryGold (Ireland), LinenBundle.com (Northern Ireland), Logic Inbound (USA), Microsoft (USA), NoA Connect (Sweden), Pluto, SuperUnion (UK), Transparent Path (USA), Virgin Media TV (Ireland), White Hag (Ireland), Wolfgang Digital (Ireland) etc etc.

A full list of speakers is available at https://getdigital.iidb.ie/speakers/ and the schedule is at https://getdigital.iidb.ie/schedule/.

Ask me Anything sessions feature experts including Jane Casey (Pluto), Evan Fishkin (Logic Inbound), Martin Hennig (NoA Connect), Polle van Elsacker (Marketing Consultant), Mimi Rouge (BMW and Mini Ireland), Mary Phelan (Glanbia), Thomas Glackin (Linenbundle.com), Mark Byrne (Greenlight), Sara Kennedy (Uplift Marketing), Sheena Cattigan (Creative Consultant) and many more.

What tips would you give to people attending to get the most out of it?

There are a lot of sessions and it is via Zoom so attendees should choose what they feel they will get the most value from:

• SMEs should attend the AMAs and submit questions for the AMAs in advance at https://getdigital.iidb.ie/ask-me-anything/
• Students and job seekers should attend the 1300-1400 daily sessions

We highly recommend picking a path through the event e.g.

Business Strategy – Ernan Roman, John Danner, Eric Weaver, Amy Zalman

Mark Mullooly, Alex Meisl,Brian Cleere,Alistair Croll & Emily Ross, Darragh Rea & Penelope Mantzaris,

• Search and Social – Cormac McCann & Deirdre O’Sullivan, Hannah Corkey, Gary Fox, Evan Fishkin, Darragh Doyle & Rebecca Humphrey, AMA (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday)
• E-commerce & UX/CX – Brian Herron, Alan Coleman, Mark Congiusta, Ciara Dolan, Martin Hennig, AMA (Thursday)

How can people book tickets / when does it usually sell out?

People can register for discrete sessions via our website at https://getdigital.iidb.ie/register-for-getdigital/. They will be automatically registered and links to each session will be sent via email.

While we used to sell out when limited to the Helix, this event should allow us to meet demand.

Anything else you’d like to add / we should have asked?

It is online and COVID-friendly ; ) See more stories here