The event gave each of the journalists hands-on time with HTC’s flagship smartphone, HTC One. A local expert led the tour, and both a professional photographer and a member of HTC’s tech team were on hand to provide specialist advice along the way. The sun made a timely appearance, and the afternoon was spent learning about and photographing historic architecture, unique views of the city and the subtle features of East London that most people never even notice.

Each stop was tailored to showcase different features of HTC One’s camera, from capturing vivid photos using HDR mode and taking quality snaps under a bridge in low-light, to having fun with HTC’s Zoe function, which allows you to shoot high-res photos that come to life in three-second snippets. It even allowed them to capture a brilliant sequence shot of Corey, HTC’s resident camera expert!

After 90 minutes of exploring, the tour ended with some well-earned food and drink at the Tramshed, famous for its Damien Hirst installation, to give media one last chance to capture a show-stopping image for their articles and social networks.

Keep your eyes peeled for some amazing photos on the likes of the Huffington Post, Obsessed with London, Amateur Photographer and This Little Lady.

These events are designed for the community to come together and discuss a range of topics, share technical knowledge and best practices, develop community policies, and to build on their professional networks.

Lucie and Natasha were excited to hear the latest updates on the on-going deployment of IPv6, something that is critical for safeguarding the future growth of the Internet. And take advantage of the bountiful supply of free fun goodies, like t-shirts and stickers, of course!

It only takes a few statistics to show the influence that Facebook has on the app market – 81% of the top 100 iOS apps and 70% of the top 100 Android apps are integrated with Facebook. It’s probably not a coincidence either that apps like Candy Crush Saga and Slotomania, which are top of the App Store, all began life inside Facebook. Like most things, games are more fun with your friends and Mobile Devcon was all about helping developers learn how to integrate with Facebook to drive distribution and build their business.

James Pearce, Facebook’s Head of Developer Advocacy, kicked off the conference by saying Facebook’s next billion users will have never used a computer so mobile has never been more important. ‘Mobile First’ is more than just a catch-phrase – last year Facebook put all its engineers through extensive mobile training to ensure they had the skills needed to fulfil the company’s vision for the future. And with London’s thriving developer scene (second only to San Francisco), developers big and small are growing with Facebook.

Grant Kemp from Android Bloke was one of the influencers who came along for the day – you can read his full account, through a developer’s eyes, here.

The science of sharing: video

You go on Facebook, you see that your friend has posted a video of goats singing like Taylor Swift, you share it with your friends. But why, what made you do that?

Cat Jones at Unruly Media walked us through the science of sharing: how the average video share rate is just 4% of all video views, an explanation of why videos go viral and how ¼ of all video shares happen within the first three days of posting. Cat primarily focussed on a tool they launched earlier this year, ShareRank; an algorithm trained on a data set of more than ten thousand points about video sharing, helping to identify which factors and social motivations push people to share.

Hilarity, happiness and warmth all scored highly as reasons for sharing – Cat showed the Three ‘Dance Pony Dance’ video to emphasise this. She stressed the algorithm registered and recognised both cognitive and primal responses, finding that in this case these triggers were the ones that drove people to click the ‘Like’ or retweet button. Cat highlighted that as PR consultants we can look at a client’s video characteristics and consequently use this information to help inform the distribution and sell-in strategy. Using the correct tools we can effectively tailor our approach to targeting media, based on what the video’s strengths are.

Designing your day

As Aristotle once said “Excellence is not an act, but a habit”. This talk looked at how, as professionals, we should challenge and change our habits in order to perform at our best and work smarter – without having to work harder or longer hours. Nokia and Brilliant Noise devised the ‘Design your day’ e-book to help encourage productivity. They spent months working in conjunction with Dr. David Rock, an expert in applying neuroscience to the workplace, to develop this.

So why should we be striving for excellence in the workplace? Well, with the brain using 20% of our blood glucose each day thinking is expensive, and a key reason as to why – as PR professionals – we need to effectively plan our day. Antony Mayfield discussed the ‘three Ps’ we should be contemplating on a daily basis.

Firstly, purpose: you need to understand your purpose and what you want to achieve in order to be excellent. Secondly, prototyping: each day is a prototype, plot your day out and learn what works best for you, as well as noting activities that drain you. Lastly, prioritisation: we must all learn how to effectively prioritise our activities; we need to plan our energy as well as time as both are a finite resource.

Throughout the day I learnt a huge amount from the sessions I sat in on and left feeling positively overwhelmed with great ideas. This blog post can’t do it justice but if you want to find out more there are plenty of updates and interviews being posted on Chinwag’s blog.

By Harriet Mumford

Image courtesy of Benjamin Ellis

Throughout the day the talks were split into four themes: approach, optimise, predict and behave. Each included dynamic and engaging discussions from academics and business leaders at the forefront of behavioural psychology and neuroscience. Whilst there’s not enough time to go through everything I learnt (my brain was slightly frazzled by the end), I thought I’d share some of the most interesting bits:

Psychological predictions: ‘show me the money’

The guys at Cambridge Personality Research (part of Cambridge University) discussed the importance of understanding individuals’ behaviour from basic online activity. The team ask people to answer scientific personality questionnaires; they then combine that with observations about their online behaviour (such as ‘Likes’ on Facebook), to indirectly find out what kind of person likes which kind of product without having to ask them.

Image courtesy of Benjamin Ellis

With an ever-growing database of over 6 million respondents it gives brands a strong platform to tap-into the brains of consumer groups. As PR consultants, we can use this to help predict audience behaviour to see what kind of customer the brands we work for are currently attracting, along with specific personality traits. This information can then be used to address the audience with a targeted strategy, to create loyalty, or event to poach customers from rival brands.

Tomorrow I’ll be sharing more of my event highlights, from the science of sharing to why we should be designing our workdays.

By Harriet Mumford

Felicity was joined by two business owners – Maggy Velsquez, Direct Cosmetics and John Peters, Serenity Spa ­– who both use Facebook to market their small businesses. They shared some lessons they’ve learned along the way and what has been working especially well for them. In particular, both guests highlighted Facebook’s powerful targeting capability, which crucially enables them to target very specific audiences for particular products or spa packages. John commented: “We’ve found [Facebook] works better than anything else to target specific markets.”

The feedback from attending media was extremely positive, and the session demonstrated how compelling Facebook’s story can be when businesses bring it to life through real-life examples.

George Hu, salesforce.com’s COO, urged companies to sit up and take notice of the ‘customer revolution’. He outlined the new era we’re facing where the customer is still king, but we’re able to create richer, deeper and more authentic relationships with them. Hu argued that ultimately, if your company doesn’t adapt it won’t be able to compete – a shocking 64% of people will take their business elsewhere if they receive bad customer service.

Additionally during the event, salesforce.com announced an ‘Innovation Challenge’ for enterprise app developers, a great opportunity for UK start-ups to receive funding. You can read more about in the Wall Street Journal: Europe Enterprise-App Market Is Poised for Take-Off.

Everyone had a great time, engaged with some incredible people and learnt a lot – it was hectic, but brilliant. Next stop: Dreamforce 2013.

The week wasn’t short on lively debate. The sessions we attended clearly demonstrated that topics such as mobile advertising, the measurement of digital campaigns and the monetisation of social platforms continue to divide opinion amongst even the most senior figures in the industry. Facebook had a very strong presence throughout the week, taking part in nine sessions in total, and with senior spokespeople including Mark D’Arcy (Head of Global Creative Solutions), Paul Adams (Global Head of Brand Design) and Christian Hernandez (Director of UK and EMEA) leading the charge with a keynote, seminar session and panel debate, respectively.

A fast-paced event packed with the best minds in the business, we hope next year’s Advertising Week Europe is even bigger and better! For some top tips on designing creative, engaging and above all, effective campaigns for Facebook, our pick of the week is Paul Adams’ seminar session, “Designing for Facebook”. You can watch it on demand here.

A couple of weeks ago, we launched Home for Facebook – a new way to turn your Android phone into a great, living, social phone. It was something of an agency affair as our client HTC also launched the HTC First, the world’s first phone to come pre-installed with Home and EE was announced as the exclusive UK launch partner for the phone when it arrives in Britain this summer.

At a live streamed media event in Facebook’s London office, Home was unveiled as a completely new experience that lets you see the world through people, not apps. Getting a sneak peak of Home before it launched, we’re already addicted to some of the features like chat heads which let you continue talking to your friends even when you’re in other apps.

Home was launched globally in the Play Store for compatible Android phones yesterday.

To coincide with the availability of Home in the UK, we worked with The Sun to test drive the new experience so have a read to find out more or visit: https://www.facebook.com/home

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, came to Facebook’s London office this week to talk to journalists about its efforts in Europe and its upcoming focus for 2013. The trip provided a rare opportunity for UK media to meet and put their questions to Facebook’s leading lady, and we were pleased to be able to host some of the most influential UK business technology journalists from national outlets such as the BBC, Telegraph and Financial Times at the briefing session. As Sheryl explained to the media in attendance, Europe is an extremely important region for the company, with almost 1000 employees and some of the most engaged users in the world: 63% of European Facebook users visit the site every day, compared to 59% of global users.

Joined by Carolyn Everson, VP Global Marketing Solutions and Marne Levine, VP Global Public Policy, Sheryl spoke about Facebook’s growth in Europe, the steps the company is currently taking to address challenges including advertising measurement and user privacy, and the recent release of Home on Android. She also reaffirmed the importance of strong senior leadership at the company, pointing to global leaders like Carolyn (who is currently based in the UK) and the current search for a new VP EMEA.

Coverage so far (including  BBC, Guardian, Independent and Telegraph) has focused on Facebook’s mobile strategy, advertising and Sheryl herself as a highly influential figure on the global stage. We completely support Sheryl’s campaign to get more women into leadership positions around the world, spearheaded by her new book Lean In. At Nelson Bostock we love a strong female role model and Sheryl is a real source of inspiration for business women everywhere.