So I was lucky enough to be sent to Hong Kong by work to participate in the Ogilvy APAC Digital Influence Summit. Basically Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence teams from around the Asia Pacific region met at the regional office in Hong Kong for a very intense and jam packed 3 day bootcamp. This was an incredible experience for a number of reasons:
- We got to share what we are doing in the Australian office with our team members in different countries.
- We got to hear about challenges that were being faced in different countries, which we have never had problems with in Australia; the demand of payment for blog posts in Korea and Singapore, the government restrictions on social media in China or the fact that Taipai have a real problem with Facebook fans using the platform to vent customer service issues about a brand rather than engage in a positive environment.
- We were able to form relationships with our team members who we have exchanged so many emails and phone conversations with and develop friendships with them.
- We were able to participate in intense training sessions and interactive workshops that were ran by global industry leaders such as John Bell, Thomas Crampton, Brian Giesen, Scott McBride and John Stauffer.
Workshop with John Bell
Break time - Hong Kong, China, Korea and Singapore teams
The Ogilvy APAC team on the way to dinner at Lantau Island
The days were exhausting but I couldn’t get enough. When you combine social media experiences from the Ogilvy offices in the whole of the Asia Pacific region and then add in the experiences of the 60-70 team members in the Ogilvy U.S. team, we are bound to experience a bit of information overload.
The below picture was taken in the middle of a twit-pic war. The idea was that you had to get the worst, most embarrassing photo of someone and twitpic it before they noticed (such nerds), unfortunately the majority of these pictures have been deleted due to threats of being fired, but I managed to keep a picture of Graham White with his latest party trick – gets me giggling every time!
Twit-pic that and you die!
Graham's Party Trick
Photos attributed to Thomas Crampton: Flickr
You forgot to mention the people who held the fort and maintained the day to day management of the 360 DI team in Sydney whilst you were gallivanting around eating food and flirting about who’s better at Facebook.
Thanks to @KobyGeddes and @Annabelle who looked after our clients while we were away
I must say though – we were not firting about WHO was better at Facebook we flirting about HOW WE could be better at Facebook.
Looked like an amazing trip! You must have learnt bucketloads.