• Innovation
• Transformation

Written by Robin Knowles, Founder and CEO, Digital Leaders

Week three of the lock-down is upon us and along with many others we are continuing to pivot our virtual programmes to the fore. Everyone is being creative and I am very pleased that the Digital Leaders Virtual Lounge has proved both fun and very popular as a creative space to meet other leaders. I have always aspired to have a physical Club or Workspace for Digital Leaders to meet in, but the costs and geography of our community has made this impractical. The current crisis has now made it a reality, but not in the way any of us imagined.

The Digital Leaders Virtual Lounge opens for an hour and has attracted 210 of you in its first sessions. It’s a little hard to describe, but it’s sat cabaret style with 6 to a table as well as having a main stage.There is another Lounge today at 11am and then the next one is on Monday at 2pm. Monday’s lounge is the first of our Hosted Lounges, with the space being hired by a partner. DigitalAgenda in this case is running an hour with a Tech for Good theme for its community, but Digital Leaders are invited. Do come and try one. All details are here.

However, today is about two announcements.

The first is that following consultation with our many partners in the public, private and non-profit sectors, we have decided to postpone Digital Leaders Week 2020, including DLWeek Online. Not surprising I know and in line with many other planned events. Please make a note that:

Digital Leaders Week 2020 will be held from 12th-16th October.

I would like to thank all our partners, our fantastic advisory board and our sponsors for their incredible support and we now look forward to welcoming you and them to a great Digital Leaders Week starting on 12 October.

Secondly, nearly two thousand of you got involved with our first Virtual Summit last November. So I am excited to let you know that DL Week will be replaced by: 

Digital Leaders Virtual Summit from 8-19 June.

This virtual summit will have 100 sessions all for free. I am particularly excited that the two weeks will include the 15th National Digital Conference being held virtually for the first time in its history and also, what we believe to be a UK first, the DigitalAgenda Impact Awards, celebrating 36 tech for good and social impact innovations that we all need digital to deliver. If it’s not the first virtual awards do please let me know as we are keen to learn from others. 

Those that know our Virtual Summit platform already know its great. It lets you dip in and watch the specific talks on any of our ten digital transformation topics that matter to you. It is fully automated: populating your diary with all the sessions you want to join; sends links and reminders to you; and recordings of any sessions you miss.

We are now calling for speakers so please do take a look here. 

Finally, I couldn’t agree more with Charlie Muirhead, who you may have seen this week sent what I can only assume was an attempt at the Guinness world record for the longest email, saying that “at times like these, leadership matters more than ever”. His email highlighted his and Tabitha’s plans for a virtual CogX 2020 event in June. I can recommend you take a look. 

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