On Thursday 16th February Club Workspace was delighted to host 8Fold’s Social Media Week event, ‘Life, Work, World’.
The event’s title comprised of three words that were charged with importance. These words - ‘life’, ‘work’ and ‘world’ - were taken as starting points by three knowledgable speakers.
‘Life’ was the launch-pad for Claire Beegan of Wellbeing in the City, Francesca Geens of Digital Dragonfly shared a veritable bounty of ‘Work’-life tips, and Sinead MacManus - also the event’s host - played effortlessly on the audience’s heart-strings, by explaining how her new Social Media campaign could make a beneficial difference to the suffering women of our world.
Sinead - who is, herself, a Club Workspace member - gave everyone a very warm welcome to the Club venue at Clerkenwell Workshops. After Sinead’s greeting, Claire Beegan kicked off the evening in earnest.
Life: Wellbeing in the City
Claire spoke about wellbeing. She explained that before her involvement with ‘Wellbeing in the City’, her own health and happiness had slipped to second place behind her hectic work-life.
She was a slave to her own perfectionism, and to the demands that her workplace put on her. Peer pressure also played its part. If her colleagues took their meals sporadically and necked a bottle of wine every night to numb their fatiguing limbs, why shouldn’t she?
Claire did the brave thing: she quit her high-stress job and took some time to regather her thoughts. The next thing she knew, she was part of the team heading up ‘Wellbeing in the City.’
Wellbeing in the City believe that wellbeing isn’t just another point on the to-do list, they want to inspire positive life-choices.
There are seven main areas of your life in which wellbeing comes to the fore: community, health, relationships, money, career, self-regard and ‘the big picture.’ If you can ensure that these life-segments provide adequate comfort and happiness, then you’ll be a more content inhabitant of the metropolis.
Wellbeing in the City work with partners to help improve the wellbeing of their members. They bring in external coaches who can help encourage members to the make small changes that can irrevocably improve their lives.
Work: Improving your Digital Life.
Francesca Geens was next up to the plate. Francesca, of Digital Dragonfly, gave the audience plenty of manageable advice that has the potential to make huge changes to their digital lives.
Francesca told everyone: ‘Cloudify your business’. By putting your documents in Dropbox, for example, your small business becomes even more flexible than it was before. Dropbox allows you to access your documents from wherever you are in the world - all you need is an internet connection.
Do not use a free email provider - such as Gmail, or Hotmail for example - to run your business. Francesca warned that if you do, you will give-off an unwanted air of unprofessionalism. Instead, use a service such as Office 365 or Google Apps for Business.
If you still have a Rolodex full of business-cards on your desk, please drag yourself out of the nineties: get on linkedin! It’s a great service that has powerful search functionality.
The importance of Twitter can’t be overlooked. Francesca warns, however, that you need to think before you tweet. As your time is of paramount importance, make sure the hours you spend on Twitter are not wasted. Optimise your tweeting!
Francesca also advises that for gorgeous and engaging newsletters, look no further than Mailchimp. Additionally, if you want to garner the opinions of your members, customers or users - Surveymonkey is a good bet. Why the simian nomenclature? Your guess is as good as mine.
World: Sinead’s new mission
The evening’s host, Sinead MacManus, waited until last to give her talk about the ‘World.’ However, if Sinead had taken to the stage any earlier, the audience would not have been able to concentrate on the subsequent speakers due to their clouded eyes.
Sinead’s address was truly and genuinely moving.
Sinead began by introducing the book ‘Half the Sky: How to change the World’, by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. This volume gives voice to women from all four corners of the globe who have suffered intolerably and inhumanely at the hands of their oppressors.
Sinead explained, with great passion, that ‘throughout the world women are treated as novelties, to be bought and sold for the price of a mobile phone.’ Sinead, of course, realised this before reading ‘Half the Sky’, but because the book contained so many abhorrent and distressing tales, it ended up acting as a call-to-arms.
It isn’t just Sinead who has been thusly affected by the book. Global megastar George Clooney is on record as saying, ‘it is impossible to stand by and to do nothing after reading Half the Sky.’
So what is Sinead’s new initiative? It is the Sky High Challenge.
Currently detailed on Facebook, the Sky High Challenge sets participants three challenges. All of the tasks involve sharing information or content via social media. For instance, one task - which I can highly recommend that you complete - is to share this video with your friends.
Sinead played us this short video via the big projector-screen at Club Workspace. Please take some time to watch it, and then you will be able to better imagine the stunned silence of the Club crowd.
Thank you very much, Sinead, for bringing Club Workspace an event that was unique in its ability to help people with the practicalities of digital, and to shake their emotional foundations. Thank you to Claire and Francesca for sharing such beneficial advice. Thanks also to everyone who came along to the event. It was a pleasure for us to host you all.
Monday, February 20, 2012 at 06:59AM 
Home to one of the country’s largest exhibition arenas and in close proximity to the capital’s biggest and best tourist attractions, Earls Court is an increasingly attractive area for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to do business.
