I think we can get cracking, so without further ado, anyone that is new for those who are joining us for first time, these events run by West Sussex County Council being taken place in September of 2021. So last year, organised to help small and medium businesses utilise digital tools and gain expert knowledge and advice in how best to grow the online presence and attract and retain new customers. Previous series from Freedom Works and Creative Blooms presented sessions around getting online customers, marketing and systems and productivity. As I said, once the final series ran by it was possible while we're looking at growth expansion and new products. So the aim of the series is to help businesses create the right conditions for growth in a digital world, something that we can't get away from anymore. So anything we've been talking about online sales, cyber security, automation and keeping productive whilst working remotely, which most of us are doing these days. So I just want to take this moment to introduce it to our digital champions. They've been joining us for all the sessions and I'm just going to pop up here some of the names. I think Lisa's going to be joining us today, so I'll hand over to her after the session. But Andrea, Lisa, Malcolm, Rachel, Rob, Susan and Roya are seven digital champions and basically they're going to be. Sorry, let me go back. They're going to be explaining a bit more later just around how they can offer up to eight hours of free support for people in the businesses. So each of the digital champions have different expertise and can offer you eight hours of free support around a certain area that you want to look at, whether it's digital tech, e-commerce, productivity apps. There's one consultant that's got a specialist in each field, so they'll be able to support you with that, but I'll let Lisa cover that a bit later. So, as I said, this is our penultimate session of the whole series, a little different from the previous ones where we've talked through different tools. I'm going to be handing over to CEO Richard, I've always possible in shortly, and we're joined today by a panel from different visitor economy businesses in West Sussex. They'll be sharing their own experiences of digital disruption during the pandemic, and they all have a unique take on digital adoption and how they navigated this. And where they are now. So over to you, Richard. Thank you, Steph. And yeah, good afternoon, everybody. Really delighted to be asked to facilitate this recovery and rise workshop. I know that the whole, the rest of the program series one to four has been really rich with the topics and content covered. So I'm trying to be getting so close to the end, but as Steph said, I think this session is a real treat, a little different in its focus and design, but I think it will be very really helpful and useful to tap into the wisdom of my special guests today. So just before I introduce our special guests, just, you know, to remind people that this is around the role of technology and tech driven solutions and growth in small businesses in West Sussex. And today we're looking very much through the lens of the visitor economy. Obviously such a huge part of West Sussex's prosperity, but also given the extraordinary couple of years we've had shows some of the vulnerabilities when that sector is forced to close or to adapt at speed. So we're going to be exploring that in some depth and the role of technology in that. Obviously the visitor economy in West Sussex, you know, is broad in its scope. So we're talking about everything from travel and aviation and the role of Gatwick all through to the accommodation and tourist attractions along the coast, but also very much the natural and rural economy of the downs in the middle. So I'm really excited that the guests that we've got talking to us today bring a local and national perspective and can cover in their views a range of those different elements of the visitor economy in West Sussex. So, as Steph said, I'm Richard and I'm the Chief Executive of Always Possible. It's a strategic development consultancy that's been working on these programme-rise programmes and I'm joined today by Joe Brokott, who is from the National Trust site Sheffield Park. Whilst in East Sussex is one of all of Sussex's sort of most visited attractions is a huge gardens and house. But certainly one of my favourite places in the world to go and visit and she's going to be talking shortly around the end user and how a historical site like Sheffield Park has to rapidly up its digital game in a pandemic and I think we're looking forward to hearing from that. We're joined by another Joe today as well. We've got a clutch of Joe's, which is always exciting. Joe Hunter from Piglet's Pantry, which has been almost unparalleled, I think, as one of West Sussex's real success stories in terms of innovation and growth and using technology as an enabler, particularly when working in a sector that was so badly hit. So, if you've not heard of Piglet's Pantry, then you've been hiding under a rock and this will be your opportunity to hear what extraordinary things they have been doing in their growth journey. We're also joined today by Sylvia Oates from the Consultancy 6-6. Whilst not a Sussex-based consultancy, they work all over the country and do really exciting things in the visitor and nighttime economy. So Sylvia will talk a lot about the impact on bars, pubs and restaurants and what technical innovations haven't worked in that sector to try and create safe spaces for people to come back in terms of booking systems and so on. I think that's going to be really, really important to get a look at the skin of that. And then lastly, but certainly not leastly, we have Jeremy Taylor, former chief executive of the Gatwick Diamond Business Network and more recently known as the company connector. So there's a lot of consultancy and mentoring for businesses, particularly looking or connected to aviation and the Gatwick area exporting and international sales. So there's an awful lot about some of the challenges and opportunities faced by West Sussex businesses. So I hope you'll agree, an esteemed panel and I'm really excited to be chatting to them today. So I'm going to invite them one by one to talk a little bit about their work and their view on this topic and then we will open it up to questions. I'll have some questions for them. I encourage you all in the audience today to come up with as many questions as you can. Big, small, hard, easy, whatever you like, but let's get under the skin of what tech driven growth is looking like in the industry economy at the moment. So first of all I'm going to welcome Joe Baruchot then from Sheffield Park. Thanks, Richard. Yeah, I'm the visitor experience and operations manager here at Sheffield Park and Garden. As Richard said, we're a national trust visitor attraction. We have about 300,000 visitors a year coming to the garden. The majority of those are national trust members. And about 50% of our audience fit into what we categorise as senior or senior plus life stage categories. So that's 60 years old and over. When we closed during the first lockdown we were shut from the March to the June and when it was decided we were going to reopen, there's definitely felt a need to control the numbers of visitors that were coming through, not just for our property obviously, but across the national trust as a whole. We were concerned as we would be one of the few places that was reopening as for people to go for days out so we didn't know what kind of numbers we might be expecting. I don't know if you remember in the papers there was a bit of a disaster just before lockdown where the national trust decided to open for free on I think it was Mother's Day weekend, which was a bit of a mistake really because we just had a massive influx of people. So we weren't really sure what the numbers were going to be like and so the national trust put in place a booking system for our visitors so that we could limit the number of people we were having through the doors every day. What they did initially was they used the existing system that we had in place which was Eventbrite and that was being used for ticketed events that properties were running so small workshops, carol concerts, maybe something that might have a few hundred people. So that system wasn't built to cope with 500 odd properties and multiple visit types and things so initially it was just rolled out to a few properties and we were one of the first properties to reopen so we were one of the first properties to adopt it. We started off limiting the visitor numbers to about 350 a day and then as we became more comfortable with that we gradually increased it so we were up to, by the August we were up to about 1200 slots, visitor slots in a day. And what that did for us enabled us to spread the visits through the day as well which can be a problem for us because everybody wants to turn up at 11 o'clock. So if we can spread those visits it means we haven't got that bunching up of visitors so that was one of the main things we wanted to do as well. And it was all about obviously being able to maintain that social distancing so that we weren't bunching people up in reception areas or welcome areas or the car park or whatever. So yeah it was really about spreading the visitors. And then the booking system was removed in July 2021. In the meantime the National Trust had been working in the background because they knew that the system wasn't robust enough to cope with what we needed and they set up a new system with Digi tickets and that was launched around autumn time. And again we adopted that for our autumn period because that's when we're really very busy. We can experience anything up to 6000 visitors a day on a peak autumn day and we only have 280 parking spaces so the numbers don't quite go. So we thought if we could use the booking system again in the autumn then we might be able to control some of a different set of issues that we had. So now not about COVID safety or social distancing but just about managing those super peak days that we have. So not every property was using Digi tickets at that point. It only really was being used by properties that were experiencing super peaks like us and very small properties that usually with houses that have a limited number of visitors per day. So it sort of ranged the very top of the properties and the very smallest of the properties and generally the ones in the middle weren't using a tool. So that's sort of where we've been using the system in terms of sort of how it's worked. We found that during COVID it worked really well. The visitors were really responsive to it and understood what we were doing. Most people reacted to the communications that we were sending out and were happy to use it. We found when we bought it back in autumn that that was more of a challenge because people were questioning why do you need it now, social distancing is gone, we don't know why you need it. And using it because we have car park issues didn't land as well with the visitors as it had the first time. So there was definitely some issues around communication. And then in terms of, I'm very aware I'm rushing through this but I don't want to go off too long. In terms of the visitors response to it, we know that a lot of our audience is in the older age bracket and we did have a percentage of people who didn't use the internet or weren't comfortable with the process. And they found that definitely frustrating. We had a small percentage of visitors that missed the spontaneity of a visit. So a lot of people would just look out the window, see what the weather is today and come and our bookings had to be done by 9pm the day before so there was that lack of spontaneity. Pied in with that is then wanting a refund because it's raining or whatever, which was difficult. And then for us as sort of the users in terms of the staff and the property, our real problem with both systems is the lack of flexibility in the system. So we have to set our visitor numbers two weeks in advance and that's tricky because weather affects the number of visitors we might be expecting and it means we can't react to situations as we would have liked to. And the other downside of it from our point of view was that the technology didn't talk to each other, so we have tills in reception and they don't talk to the booking system. So we can't bring up the names of people who booked or scan the QR codes that are produced by Eventbrite or Digi Tickets. They don't mean anything to our tills. So really that lack of connectivity was a bit of a problem for us as well. So that's a really brief overview of what we did and how we found it. But yeah, happy to take any questions, but don't ask me techie questions because I won't know the answer. Thank you, Joe, really, really good overview of what the problem was that needed solving and some of the ways of doing that. But also, as you've highlighted there at the end, some of the additional challenges brought along and some of the learnings around integration and finding the tech that suits your need rather than just the tech that's available. And it's always a challenge to do that when you're doing it at speed. I'm interested to hear about how the sort of staff training, perhaps, you know, some of the ways in that happened as well. So we've volunteers and so on that are having to use new technology that they may not be used to, but we'll come back to that in a bit. But really, really great to hear from you. Thank you very much. So now I'm going to go to the other Joe and to hear from, to hear a bit about the Pickett's Pantry story and Joe, tell us, you know, what was the challenge that you faced with in March 2020? And how did you use tech to do something about it? Hello, good afternoon everybody. Thanks for, thanks for listening. I'm Joe Hunter, chief food lover at Pickett's Pantry. So March 2020 was a bit of a D-day moment for us over at Piglet's. Prior to Covid, we were completely reliant on a wholesale market, a very buoyant wholesale market. We had over 70 to 80 customers, all large, you know, kind of large household names, Chelsea Football Club, Brighton Herfalbion amongst those Wimbledon, et cetera. And we built a really good brand. We've been in business 11 years, very good following, and then Covid hit. And it had always been our intention to go online and we explored, we started building a shop, we hadn't really done much with it. It was one of those projects that you know you need to get to, and then you don't necessarily drive it forward as hard as you would like. And we had nothing but time after March 2020 because all of our industry got shut down. It was a bit of a shock and no business plan in the world probably would have prepared me for that. However, being quite an entrepreneurial bunch, we did sit down and look at what can we do with our shop, how can we get online quickly. During that time we had people queuing around the block, which was probably not very Covid friendly looking back now, but we had people coming in to buy the pies they would have bought Brighton Herfalbion that weekend. So there was a real loyal following of local people and people that wanted to support us and make sure that we kept going. So we started selling our products from the shop or from our actual wholesale premises to start with. In the background, we were then looking at how could we enable our shop quite quickly. So we had about three days, frantic sort of discussions with IT people and contacts that we had.  That sounds like it's really a simple job, but it really isn't. And I've learnt so much about WooCommerce, Stripe, how to connect payments and how to connect that to a production system.  And that went well for a while, but I recognised quite early on that people would only buy a certain amount of pies and sausage rolls before they got a bit bored. So we were looking at innovation alongside trying to enable our connectivity. And while we were building all of that connectivity, I was looking at Easter coming on the horizon, people probably wanting some kind of Easter hamper, some kind of treat. At the same time, supermarket didn't have food, there wasn't anywhere to go, everything was shut down. So it was a real opportunistic moment of, we can give you a beautiful Easter hamper to your home and wouldn't that be a great idea? So we explored some packaging, we bought what was on the market because that's all we could do at the time. We had a local print advertising person within our group that designed some labels and helped us with the labels and made it look a bit prettier. And we got our Easter hampers out and we saw quite a few of them. It was a real sort of like kind of definitely we're on the right track here. This is something that people want to buy. So coming out of Easter, we sat down and was like, well, we've got all the products that we currently make for a wholesale market. We also do capes and sweets and most things that would go in an afternoon tea. So moving on from kind of our first stab in the online market, we decided, well, let's invent a really beautiful afternoon online tea that will have sweet and savoury elements and that will really kind of be something that people want to get behind and gift to people because they can't get to see their loved ones around the country. So this was our next kind of big innovation piece. And alongside that, we were then having to work really hard with our IT to make sure that the products were well represented. You've obviously got the allergens and that sort of work in the background. So there's quite a lot of work going on in that side of it at the same time. Our biggest challenges were around packaging because couriers tend to not just deliver them nicely in a little box on your doorstep in case you haven't noticed. So we spent a lot of time and effort. So Steve, one of the directors was very much focused on the packaging side. How can he stop people breaking the boxes? He worked with a company to get insert so that things didn't rattle around and get smashed to pieces. We had about 50% failure rate with one of the couriers. It was very heartbreaking. So Father's Day was a bit of a disaster for us, but we kept learning and adapting and working hard. Alongside that, we then had to bring in a customer service team because we'd never needed that before. So we had to grow a whole new customer service team. We needed marketing people. Luckily, my stepdaughter is going to do a marketing degree. And she's been an 18-year-old and sitting at home with boring old us a lot to keep her entertained. She decided to kind of look at our Instagram account. And we had about 100 followers at the time. She was around the kind of June time. And she was sort of like, why don't we reach out and start talking to some of the people out there that were probably sat at home like us. And so she started this process of engaging with Made in Chelsea, Vicky Patterson, some real household names. Some of which I hastened to her. I didn't know at the time who they were. And she grew our Instagram account exponentially overnight. There was people kind of queuing up to actually asking us if they could have the afterties and they were dressing up in the gardens and having champagne and making it like a real lifestyle product, which was something we wouldn't be able to pay for today. It was just literally, we asked and we got and it delivered. And it delivered in such huge volumes that we had trouble keeping up at the time. From that standing start, Lara has grown our Instagram account to over 50,000 followers. Our Facebook account has gone up to about 15, 16,000 followers now. And that really set us on the mark on the map. So from a standing start of nobody to see online to an online platform to an engaged afternoon tea piece in the first year we turned over 3 million pounds on that alone so nobody to be at all. So I'll be to be before that was at 1.75 million. And now have put those two back together and because it's such a massive growth, we had to move premises last year. And so we move from a 7500 square foot factory and we are now purpose built 2028,000 square foot building where it's kind of actually designed to have a beta C root courier picking and packing section separate from our massive building, which has now segregated areas for pie, sausage roll, scotch eggs, afternoon tea, patisserie, and it has changed our world quite frankly. So it has been quite a year. And what have I learnt from that? Don't put your eggs. As once somebody told me at the time, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Continue to look for things that you might not have seen before and just keep innovating innovation is the name of game in the food industry. And I think that's what sets us on the map and we are constantly evolving that piece we started with. So we've gone from a very sort of basic afternoon classic afternoon tea to seasonal winter sparkles. We've got a love made with love one out at the moment for February, which is not just for Valentine's it's to say, you know, thank you and we love you to whoever it might be. The lines around that are really sort of quite special. We've got very beautiful handmade raspberry cheesecakes going in there. So the innovation from the team coming up is just phenomenal. And we have over 100,000 people on our database now that are bought from us. So we've got a really healthy database growing and we continue to kind of look how we can expand that. Coming back out from that into the B2B market, what was really interesting is that all of the chefs that were furloughed that were in our network before and some people that we didn't know were all watching us and all asking for the afternoon tea. So we were sending all these afternoon teas out to all of our chefs and general managers around the UK. And what that has done, which is a byproduct of this whole process, is it's meant that we've gone from 70 wholesale B2B clients to over 150 today. So it's been quite a two years for us, really quite a journey. That feels like the biggest understatement to anyone feasibly made. I mean, impressive doesn't even come close. What an extraordinary way to delve into the unknown. And I think that's what I want to explore with you shortly is just how you're creating the playbook here for how to do this without having all that knowledge prior. All that learning, and I'm sure there'd be many mistakes on the way, as well as those moments that you couldn't possibly have foreseen having a success that it is. So how that's been captured and shared and bottled up will be really interesting to explore. So thank you very much for sharing that with us. Sylvia, let's now move to the nighttime economy, the bars, clubs, restaurants that have had a turbulence. Stop, start, stop, start a couple of years without doubt. Tell us a little bit about what you've been doing in that sector. Thanks a lot. And thank you very much for having me. So yes, so my name is, you said it's Sylvia Oates. I am my company's called 626. So it's sort of 6pm to 6am, which gives you a bit of an indication about the area of focus for us. So I've worked in the wider leisure and hospitality industry for my career, and it's a real passion of mine. So the work that we do supports local authorities and police forces, businesses, business improvement districts and all the kind of partners that help to make towns and cities work really well and successfully in the evening at night, or more broadly just sort of the leisure sector really supporting that. So we do quite a lot of projects that, you know, sort of drive benefit, I guess, for my clubs, pubs, bars, et cetera. So it's actually really interesting sector to work for, and you can imagine when sort of the pandemic hit. Yeah, the virus seemed to have a kind of a penchant for social settings, didn't it? And as did the government's regulations and restrictions. So, so yeah, the effect on the leisure economy through the pandemic was sort of disproportionately devastating. There's no doubt that it's obviously impacted other sectors hugely, but I think there's a widespread recognition that it was particularly damaging for those businesses that rely on face to face interactions and sort of sitting and shooting the breeze, et cetera, with friends and family. So aside from the closures themselves when obviously none of those premises were operating and had to think about pivoting and how they could keep themselves afloat. You know, aside from the small pots of grant funding, et cetera, that came through. And even when they were out to reopen, there were restrictions that needed to be adhered to, that posed certain challenges and that technology played a role in helping to support. So, for example, outdoor only, up to everybody remembers, luckily, when that happened, we had a decent weather for some of it, didn't we? Some of it wasn't. I think it was in July when it reopened last year where it was a washout and there was always a picture of people sitting on picnic tables with umbrellas and stuff up. And I just thought, I feel on you for going out and supporting your local licensed premises despite it being miserable weather. So we had outdoor only, only there was table service only and yeah, list goes on. And then there was other restrictions which had an impact, which weren't necessarily restrictions on the trade, but things like the working from home directive, which had a huge impact on towns and cities and premises and particularly on our capital, who, you know, obviously the sort of a fast casual dining market there, but you really kind of rely on workers being in the city and suits on the street as we call it. So, so some of my examples and observations I'm just going to run through quickly are some of them relate to my business and how we kind of use technology to pivot and support some of the businesses and the regulators as we call them. So that can be like licensing officers from the local authority or from the police. And also, you know, businesses themselves that were trying to adhere to these restrictions and trying to work out how they could survive. But also some examples that I've heard off through some of our contacts and clients around how they've used technology through this difficult period. For example, I mean, a lot of people did this, but webinars were so valuable for us through through the pandemic. We were very fortunate to be involved with the Institute licensing and delivered a program of different webinars around things like how to navigate the ever changing restrictions and how to ensure that you were adhering to them. And actually, they were as popular for the businesses that attended as they were for the regulators because, you know, local licensing authority officers and people like that that have to enforce these regulations were just as much in the dark about them as they were published as the businesses. So it's kind of getting the heads around how to enforce them and what approach to take and really kind of bringing those communities together. So we have things like licensing solicitors, noise experts, environmental health professionals, businesses, and then, as I say, these regulators enforce all those rules coming together and going like a good example is, for example, when businesses reopened. A lot of people on their license have a restriction that says, you know, after 10 o'clock you need to close your windows to stop noise escaping. Well, clearly the public health directive was to keep your windows open to allow a circulation of air. And a lot of the environmental health professionals that were on the phone call from local authorities were kind of like on the webinars were like, what we've been doing is we've been taking quite a pragmatic approach. So when residents have been complaining about noise and saying, well, you know, they should, I understand that pub down the road should have their windows closed. And, you know, the regulators going back and saying, we really understand your position, but can you just, you know, understand we want to be able to allow these businesses to operate and open. And actually the environmental health consideration of keeping the windows open is more important at this moment in time than the noise. So it's really interesting kind of opened up some really good joint working through sort of webinars and things. And I'm sure everybody on this call has got examples of how they've leaned on industry experts, et cetera, through things like webinars. We also did some sort of reopening ones to, you know, share best practices and ideas about supporting businesses to reopen. So things like having, you know, the importance of flushing out water systems and ice machines to ensure there was no Legionella to, you know, having somebody perhaps up front of the house to explain how the COVID, how the venues COVID safe and what the, you know, one way system look like and how the table ordering worked, et cetera. It was a really good forum for sharing best practice. The other thing that we were contacted a lot about was table ordering apps, so they kind of exploded, didn't they, out of out of nowhere into sort of several tens of, even maybe hundreds of examples and options for table ordering apps because of this requirement to people to order their foods at the food at the tables. And one of the interesting things that are so, you know, we didn't have a preferred supply for that because there were just so many and, you know, I know there's a lot of kind of partnerships between different organizations, but they have, but thinking about this webinar today I was just thinking about how they drove quite a lot of change because I think when businesses had to do table ordering and they realised actually doing that through an app and taking digital payments. I know of a number of businesses who now are completely cashless so it sort of accelerated everything towards that cashless position. And even those that didn't use that table ordering apps preferred often to take card payments because of, you know, minimising handling of cash and the COVID transfer along the notes, et cetera, and the coins. But I know people that haven't gone back to cash and that's actually provided them a bit of a opportunity for some cost saving and for some efficiency. So things like, you know, human error of handling cash is reduced because using the technology. And then also one of my clients was saying how he's not nice to reduce his insurance policy because he now no longer has cash on site. And so it's kind of considerations that you think, well, yeah, that's, that's interesting and quicker service is another one it's often speeds up service if you can just tap your card what worry about the exchanging cash and change. So I was thinking about how that's really sort of changed the way that premises operate. The other thing is that some, some of our premises were thinking about how they can use digital platforms to bolster their income or the very least maintain consumer loyalty and interest. So, for example, hosting music events or quizzes or other forms of entertainment online. I know the Alchemist, I heard a webinar on Tuesday about the Alchemist tried augmented reality cocktails. I didn't dig into what actually entailed, but I think they sort of tried it and realised maybe it wasn't wasn't the right direction for them. And actually, we helped quite a number of cultural venues through the Arts Council grant funding application process and much of that was about how you're going to pivot your business to remain open and operating or remain kind of visible to your customers through COVID even if you can't open your doors. So clearly there was a massive digital element to that. And when we talk about the Arts Council businesses, it tended to be things like nightclubs, cabaret clubs, theatres, and that sort of thing. And so a lot of what they did was think about putting on digital performances. Interestingly enough, through the pandemic and as you know, it's become more possible to host audiences again. They have decided to move away from those because initially people were willing to pay something for them towards the kind of end of the pandemic. People really didn't want to pay for them. So it's difficult to kind of cover costs, but also I think the businesses were really keen not to make that a norm because obviously it's really important for them to get people through the doors. They were kind of, they were just as keen to kind of move away from those online interactions and ensure that people were engaging physically with culture again. Some other examples of tech and how that's kind of supported reopening is that obviously cases like this are ever our case and you might have heard increased incidences of kind of violence and disorder as we've reopened, understandable because people were not in terms of descents and so they were aware again once we reopened. The issue of vulnerability more broadly has raised its head quite severely through reopening after the pandemic. So things like drinks, biking, incidents, reports have increased. Interesting to highlight the word reports because there is some conversation about what that actually looks like. But nonetheless, that has led to a kind of a reticence and a sort of fear of crime and a sort of consideration about whether or not to go out in the night time, even the night time economy. We had a whole raft of 18 year olds who turned 18 through the pandemic and never been out for a drink in the 1060 centres. So they were sort of new to it and particularly vulnerable people that haven't been used to going out and perhaps went a bit crazy the first few weekends that they were able to do. So I mentioned Sarah Everard, which drove a very valuable focus on women's night safety. So there have been a number of funds released by the Home Office to address those issues for vulnerability and women's night safety etc. We've seen some great kind of use of technology to help support those issues. So, for example, when in relation to businesses, there is these at-table ordering apps I've mentioned before, some of them have included an Ask for Angela element. So Ask for Angela is an initiative where if you feel vulnerable, you ask a member of staff at a licence premises for Angela and they know that you need some help and there's a process then to support you. And I know a number of at-table ordering apps have included an Ask for Angela cocktail that you can then order and it's sort of a discrete way to set that process in motion. I'm nearly finished because I know that I don't want to hog the limelight, but another interesting aspect is digital accreditation tools to support businesses to be compliant through reopening. So you will all know on this call that there's a number of licensing and regulatory requirements for businesses to open and especially if they serve alcohol or if they provide entertainment or serve late night food. And then there was the COVID restrictions as well that I've mentioned earlier. So we saw some really interesting uses of digital tools to support that. So, for example, there's a company who have a COVID-safe accreditation that is done through a digital assessment. So, you know, how to ensure that you meet the requirement to maintain two meter distances between tables, et cetera.  We manage the National Best Buy None scheme, which is an accreditation for licensed premises. So it looks at, you know, how they keep their customers safe, how they keep staff safe and also how they manage their venue. We translated that into a digital assessment. So before COVID it was pen and paper when we inherited it sort of end of 2019. So we took the pandemic as an opportunity to turn that into a digital assessment. But then also throughout the way, as and when the opening restrictions were published, we created digital checklists that businesses could use to ensure that they were hitting all those requirements. And it sort of generated a report in the background that went to the business to say, you know, great that you're doing all these things, but did you know you should also be doing this? And here's some guidance and we'd link to the sort of government paperwork to enable them to work out how to implement that in their business. So, yeah, and I think like Joe mentioned, the first Joe mentioned, I think the overarching learning that we took out of all of this is kind of making sure that technology has a role to play. But it's ensuring that you use it in the right way and that it's fit to purpose, and all those things. And I think one of the things that they sector has got a real concern about is ensuring that these cultural experiences are not replaced through a digital platform and ensuring that they are still an opportunity for sort of face-to-face interaction, which is clearly how they can be most successful. So I hope that's my summary. Thank you, Sylvia. Again, a really rich overview of some of the challenges and opportunities there. And I think particularly interested in some of those innovations and changes in business models that have come about that will be there for the long term. You know, actually, that old adage of not letting a good crisis go to waste, and that's, you know, whether it's about safety or accreditation or digital visibility. I've worked with many hotels and venues over the years that really felt their online presence was just a website with some listings. So the challenge to that to becoming much more interactive, to becoming much more of, you know, a shop window to what those face-to-face experiences could be using digital kind of pre-experience tools. I think it's been really fascinating. So we'll delve into some of that as well. Thank you. And so now to introduce Jeremy, Jeremy from a company connector. A lot of knowledge around the travel industry in particular. And again, we know that that's been decimated in the sense of that word cut back by about 90% of the people that have done it. But was also on a big growth trajectory before that. So interesting to hear about some of how tech was driving innovation in that sector and will do again, maybe even more so because of this disruption. So over to you. Well, thank you very much and thanks for the opportunity. Just a quick bit of background. I actually have a hospitality retail and leisure background when I escaped from public service a few years ago. I got out of it and now I give advice to people who are still struggling with long open hours and God bless them the public. A lot of hospitality hotel and restaurants experience. But as Richard said, most recently I've been working in and around business support and then over the past few years working closely with Gatwick amongst others on plans to develop that. It was interesting just listening to the other speakers because quite a lot of emphasis made on technology and the use of technology, but also the use of appropriate technology that works with existing systems. And I think also the one thing I would say is making sure that technology works with your customers. And a very real example of that is obviously how many people actually choose to go to the self service checkout how many people prefer to use a cashier. And that lovely phrase which doesn't seem to be repeated quite so loudly anymore of unexpected item in the bagging area. So how can your technology prevent or cause or minimize the number of people with unexpected items in their bagging area is something just to have in the back of your mind. While we were preparing for this and thinking about what other people said, I think just as examples of how hospitality businesses especially have used technology and Richard mentioned aviation particularly. And one of the things we've seen obviously is that there's been a real difficulty in businesses accessing customers. If you can't travel, then international trade is severely restricted. If you can't go and have meetings then networking, which is my old forte, that was severely restricted.  And we've seen some very interesting examples of how people have addressed that. I was doing some work with businesses in Bulgaria, bizarrely, and one of their big exports from Bulgaria is wine, wine industry is very big in Bulgaria used to be government funded and subsidised actually which is quite interesting. And they actually created an opportunity out of COVID by hosting virtual online tasting sessions tying up with a distributor in the UK that if you wanted to, you could order a special pack. It would be delivered in time for a virtual tutored wine tasting delivered through Zoom and so on and so forth. So still trying to manage and give the experience, but opening it up to markets that would actually be a lot more difficult and more expensive for the producers to reach. You had the wine maker speaking from Sofia about their wine, which would be quite expensive for them to get everyone in a room and so on. Another example we saw around networking and a number of you may know the network by club business which again was very much a physical meeting place go to a venue and have a business networking event. And what the guys they did which was very very inventive was they built a virtual pub that was opened on Friday afternoon and then tied in with some suppliers that if you used to code you could be discounted you'd be sent some beers or crisps or whatever it was. And then those items were then promoted through the virtual pub to give people that very real first person experience, albeit through the screen. It also cut down on worrying about whether you were driving home and what you'd had to drink before driving home. So obviously we're already there but it's adapting your business to ways that suit those business, the customers that you've got. One of the things I think we've also seen is the stronger collaboration between businesses as well. Joe mentioned the reliance if you like on the courier side of business in relating to moving to a business to consumer area, because obviously you're only as good as the delivery service that puts the pies in the post and delivers the for you. We've also seen quite a lot of collaboration between venues, forming closer itinerary planning. And I think this is something where we're going to see aviation change as well. If you, as Richard said, aviation was done very much an upward curve. Things were looking good in terms of the businesses that were involved in aviation. We could pretty much fly wherever we wanted whenever we wanted the rights of wrongs of that we need to maybe come back to on another day but it was very much an open market and then when it closed it shut it down. And people started to really see the impact that the lack of aviation caused on destinations and doing some work, for example in the Caribbean when COVID broke the Caribbean island governments actually started realising that they had to work together. They had to collaborate to become more or become less dependent on tourism. They had to look at their own growing cultures, their own provision cultures and things like that and their reliance on tourism. So they were looking at how they could work together and that's a kind of a distance one. Again, we saw early in the COVID era that a lot of hospitality tourism inbound organisations across the Sussexes were working together to build itineraries to make the most of newfound domestic tourism. We heard all sorts of people talking about how can I be a tourist in my town, what can I discover in my town because we shouldn't be travelling. And so how could we make the most of that so I think it's really about the collaboration. It's about making sure that the technology works for your business and for your customers and the people that you want to use it and making sure that the staff know how to use it as well that adaptability is very important. So I think I'll pause it there Richard and we'll move into the questions if that's okay. Thank you Jeremy. Thank you Jeremy. Again, some really interesting threads of thoughts introduced into this. So I'm very much welcome anybody tuning in to ask some questions, stick them in the Q&A. Bar, fork or whatever you want to call it, I've come to terrible tech terms myself there and we'll do our best to get them answered by the panel. But I've been gripped listening to all of you and got a few questions myself that I think would be good to kick off with. One I'm particularly interested in. I think this has come up really with all of you is that the process of acknowledging that there's a challenge of problem or opportunity and that technology may be the thing that might provide a solution or get you out of it. However, all of your businesses, all the businesses you support, aren't IT businesses, they're not in the tech sector. So suddenly having to make decisions about what tech to go with, what suppliers, what apps, Joe you talked about, suddenly needing to build up almost a customer service team that was very digitally integrated. Other Joe also talked about the new apps that were being used to get visitors booking and coming to network trust, et cetera, et cetera. So you said how many apps were on the market for the table service booking and actually you don't recommend any particular because who knew which ones to go with. So my question is, where did you make those decisions? Who did you turn to for help? What playbook was out there that said, go through these steps, answer these questions and then you'll find that the outsource company or the IT consultant that's going to be able to help you get over the line. What worked and what didn't in terms of solving that? So in our experience, it's always who you know, not what you know. We had connections with people that were in other jobs, but they had IT software experience that Steve knew, and he tapped into those avenues because they weren't able to work or they weren't working, they'd been furloughed, whatever. So we used connections that were close to us that could help us quickly. And it was a combination of that and supply chain that we already worked with that got us off the ground and gave us the WooCommerce platform and then connected that to our back end systems. So it's a combination of people really. But it was very much quick, can you help us? And they were working, some of them were working overnight. So they were working from midnight till four in the morning to try and enable us. So it was really, you know, gratefully received from my point of view, but it was people we were connected with. I think I'd second that as well. I mean, I was quite close to there's a group up around the Gatwick area, the Gatwick Hotels Association, but you can't guess what they do. And a number of the businesses, a number of the hotels, they already had app ordering, they had tablet ordering, I think courtyard by Marriott had actually started with a table ordering tablet within the bar areas. And of course, when the hospitality closed or reduced because there were some hotels that were still able to operate and particularly a couple and obviously became quarantine hotels where you had to have that distancing. They were able to put the tablets into the room, which meant that the experience was marginally better for their guests because they actually had some choice about what they were given because they could order through the app. And then it could be delivered and they could use another method of communication with people who were to all intents and purposes constrained by their circumstances. But I think it's actually having your network in place. It's very, very difficult because this kind of scenario is where you're trying to find information that you don't even know that you need information about. So it's your network and its speed of response and trusted individuals. The other thing which I think was challenging if we can't start lying back to the beginning of COVID is the amount of time and the amount of people probably a bit like me, who were just shouting at social media saying I can help you I can tell you what to do without potentially a lot of content within there because a lot of us were making it up as we went along so it is difficult. I think the value of today particularly has been hearing about what people have been very honest about the mistakes they've made because a cheap mistake is someone I've got to come back to that noise that you can describe there as well when everyone went, here's some advice, here's a problem, here's a solution. Which became a bit chaotic and obviously that drowned out a lot of marketing messages as well so we'll come back to that in a minute but Sylvia or Joji did you have any experience of people having to make decisions about what those solutions might be like and where to go from? I mean have Joji imagined that? It's really interesting listening to everyone else and reflecting on the processes that we went through because obviously we're part of a huge organisation and I think in a lot of ways that made us a lot less agile than some of these other examples were able to be. I think we weren't able to move at such a quick pace because we have so many processes in place. There's not the ability to just free up a budget or move a team onto something. I mean a lot of people were put on furlough quite quickly anyway so it was a case of getting teams back. So where we didn't perhaps so much outsource the process, they did a lot of it internally and as I said tried to adapt a system that they already had in place. I think we're not perhaps the example of the best way to do things, too big in a way. However having said that I think a lot of the teams both on the ground at property and in head office have reflected on that and made some changes so that in the future we can be a bit more agile. And I know as time went on temporary procedures were put in place to try and bypass some of those processes that were holding us back. So it is interesting to think back on it and what we've learnt really. So I guess agility key, you know when when it's about testing and trying and getting that quickly but also there's a balance there isn't there because leisure decisions and lots of money invested in one thing over something else can can can end up costing quite a lot of problems if there isn't a process to work out why and what. I'll come to you in a second Sylvia that's all right there's a question from Vicky there specifically around using e-commerce platforms and taking strike payments Joe you okay to answer that. Yeah, I was going to say what was because it was so fast and furious we had like three days to try and enable and we had no finance platform platform I had no platform let alone a finance connected to it. What's really interesting is we already have well pay, and due to the kind of it being so chaotic, well to pay couldn't enable us at all for like weeks, and of course we wanted to enable overnight and strike were really quick. Literally the next day, it was enabled and we still use stripe today two years later because of the efficiency of the reporting it gives you the connectivity of API is into our finance software. And it's really been very useful, but we wouldn't necessarily have chosen them it's just it was just again it was a case of, we have to have something quickly stripes available and they were quick to react so my experience was overnight to that question. Just for those of us seeing that the question was, how quick did it take for us to kind of strike for e-commerce to kick in once strike as a processing tool was added to the website. Thank you for that. Sylvia anything to add then on around the way to go for help, you know how particularly the nighttime economy, again might have had a small IT department or outsource bits and pieces for some of the payments and basic tech, but probably need to think quite differently about who they partnered with. Yeah, and I think, you know, one of the really beautiful things about the pandemic, you know, I'm very much a glass half all person and I think one of the things I really enjoyed through the pandemic was the sense of community working and supporting each other and I mean even businesses within their own within their each other's towns and cities would you know really understand how important it is to have a you know a vibrant community and wanted to support each other to survive so what we found is right. I did say that I didn't we didn't recommend any payment solutions but what we did do is where we knew that there are the similar businesses we would try and make that connection and say well, we don't know what the best payment solution would be for you at that table ordering app, but I know that the pigment whistling. You know, in South West London is using one and they really love it so shall I choose you and then they'd go off and have their chat and talk about the pros and cons and how it worked for their particular business so and whilst I work in the sphere of supporting the licensed economy, you know, I don't run a premises so we were very aware that we wouldn't necessarily know the intricacies of what would work so in that situation it was kind of making those connections for my business. Some of the software we needed like I talked about this digital assessment software was very specific in nation is probably only three or four options. I've got amazing digital. I've got an amazing amazing kind of office manager who is just such a technical whiz that she just did me like you know this sort of tables about, you know, it doesn't do this tick doesn't do this tick and sort of just did me a grid and we made his decision based on that so I think it's just working out what the appropriate decision making processes and following that. Richard, if I can just on this one it's quite interesting to hear that everyone's mentioned agility. And the two joes are probably, I'll say this is polite as possible at the end of the scale of the agility in the business or the ability to be agile. And I think it's quite interesting for anyone on the call that one of the things. I thought this for a while that we ought to teach at school and universities or within businesses is what do you do when it all goes wrong, because we spend a lot of time trying to get it right. But what do you do when it goes wrong. And that's not kind of having plans for every eventuality. That's actually a mindset of how do we cope when it goes wrong. And it was interesting just reflecting that when the when COVID struck I was talking to one of the big law firms up in the gap area really big law firm about remote working and they said they've been planning for about four years what their remote working industry was going to be. And the results of that was that they've written some documents but they thought it would probably take at least 18 months to 30 months to implement. And they did it in five days. Because they had to. And that required the first thing that changed was the mindset about we can do this because we have to therefore. And that pressure that comes in from crisis is that openness so how do you create a culture where you're open to it going wrong but you kind of you don't get panicked by fear. The other side of that is that phrase again which was kicked around an awful lot which is don't don't make long term decisions on short term problems. Of course back then it was going to be over by Christmas. That mindset of understanding the problem, whether it's short term or long term it's been, you know, being conscious of how the problems of all things being flexible and open having a kind of slightly playful approach to it. What about this try this shouldn't do that. You know that if you get that mindset right within a business and that's where innovation comes from that's where growth comes from which is you know what we are looking at today so I think you're right. There'd be a lot of businesses that were maybe a bit more risk averse or were focused very much on the solutions all the time you know what it was how do we just tweak this thing so our customers by a little bit more of it rather than okay what problems are we solving in the world for ourselves and for others. And so on that note I'm quite keen to hear you know hear about how technology has completely changed or transformed or adapted business business models. Short term that then that then maybe kept for the longer term so you know will the National Trust now look at booking. You know in a different way although that system served a short term purpose is that going to be something that that you know almost over time perhaps shifts the business model and makes centres accessible in a different way. Joe from Pickett's Pantry office you've given some great examples of around how your business models completely changed but but then what what next will you look at how you use tech differently as a as a way to perhaps innovate for the next period of growth, whatever that may be. And again, you know Sylvia businesses that you've been working with that have adopted technology to solve a problem short term but have gone and your example of the ask Angela thing you know there's a problem there with with perceptions of safety and the reality of safety for some women at night. So actually if that if now there's a whole different mindset about how to tackle that and work together and use tech to help women feel safer. You know something more innovative and changes some some models around that. So yeah just kind of business models changing growth innovation. You know, can I out of the crisis and what you think might might stick in terms of processes and ways of doing that. Who wants to take that first. Yeah, it's a good question. We're having to adapt our business model, even now we were in the last few months because there was still this the COVID had a different angle we thought it's all going to come out we built this beautiful new building. In football matches for cancer left right and center events for cancer before Christmas and we had like another spin off of COVID in a different way it wasn't controlled so much by the government it was more a case of need because people couldn't go to events will turn up because the Omniprom just took a life of its own so the the adaptation part of a business plan in our current guys is frequent and I somebody once gave me a. business plan that you could use and we use that monthly and it has key strengths weaknesses opportunities threats all the usual obvious business bits but it's a short term focus plan. So what are we doing this month what are we going to do about our problems this month, we're just focus on this bit because at the moment it's changing too much for us to be able to give a longer term view. We've introduced that during COVID and I'm still using it at the moment and it's an opportunity for our team to look at it in a very focused way in terms of the software and we're actually introducing more software. I've actually gone out and commissioned a company to come and write software for our for our company because what's happened is we are currently matching and this is a very laborious process. A label for a PC or couriers to an invoice so that our pickers and packers can pack it correctly and send it out and there's a lot of you can imagine a lot of challenge around that. And having not done this before it's in the e-commerce probably an Amazon type e-commerce I'm certainly not familiar with in my career. And so what we've done is we've again gone out found some expertise and we're getting a software company to actually write software for us so that it can print on demand when we pack that box that APC label. And so, from where we started off with a very simple with commerce platform, the amount of plugins and APIs and connectivity we've had to introduce to get the whole company working and behind the BTC platform has been significant. But the net profitability of it is worth it. And certainly we were about, we weren't sure what was going to happen post pandemic, but we're still running at around 70% average of what we were taking during COVID times. We're still making to grow that kind of that that customer base so it just goes back to, you know, where we were during COVID so there's a real commitment from the business to continue. But to do that, because of the volumes we've had to introduce more technology to connect all of those pieces together to make it run smoother. So for me it's still learning curve. I'm still enjoying it. It's been fun. And it's, it's certainly here to stay and we will hopefully, you know, take that into the future. I think just just going back to the hotel really the fact they they started trialling tablets for table ordering in the bar in the restaurant, which has now moved into the rooms and now that spread throughout. Hopefully we're back to a conventional way of hotel operating. But that's linking through as well and it's it's one of those things where within hotels.  But of course during COVID, particularly in the severe times, they weren't allowed out of the rooms. So how could you deliver the experience or improve it? And what it's done now is it's it's still continuing. But you can almost see that the app's going to say, well, yes, you can order your drink from your room and we'll let you know when it's ready at the table in the bar. So it's trying to draw people in to the environment where they want them to grow. So it is that adaptation of the existing technology. I think the other thing that's happened and talking on a kind of a bigger business context is that a lot more people are more willing to blend their experience. So it used to be that if you wanted to export and work in a new market, you definitely had to go to that market and you had to spend some time and you had to embody yourself in the market and find a place. You still need to do that. But the servicing of that market can happen remotely. It can be less personal. You still need to check in with people, but you can kind of step back a bit because we're a bit more comfortable. And you can also open up to new markets as well. Slightly different context, but in the past few years, some of the work we were doing, Richard, with the arts organisations in Brighton. There was a lady and she's a disability disabled dance teacher. And pre-COVID, she was restricted teaching in venues that she could access purely in light of her ability. During COVID, and we did some work with her using Zoom and using technology, she became a dance teacher in Prague from Brighton. And that internationalisation of her business offer has continued as well. So you can see within constraints that it works in different ways, but we can see that people, if you start to blend your offer, if it's appropriate, little difficult to show off a National Trust Gardens year round virtually, but you can still engage with people and offer kind of live webcams and things like that so people can access the environment that they want to and add value to whatever it is. So it's the additionality in the blend that I would suggest. Absolutely. My children loved watching the National Trust webcams during the lockdown, the fact that we could see the lily pads or barn alcams and things like that. I know those things are available usually, but needing to focus and think about that made us have a different experience. And we still look at those things now that we haven't done before. Lisa makes a really good point in the chat bar about schools. Schools have to adapt very quickly in terms of online and blended learning and accelerated digital plans by many years long, and that's why I had to be in a number of weeks, but a lot of that will remain and it will add a bit of innovation into this. Anyone else want to make any points on that or Sylvia? Yeah, I think echoing what some of the others have said, but hopefully adding some extra examples. At table ordering is here to stay, I think there's most people that implemented it through the pandemic have carried it on and have sort of grown that and thought about some of the implications. So for example, one of the implications of that table ordering that some of our license premises was finding that actually makes it very difficult for you to tell if somebody's had too much to drink. Normally what would happen is people would get up, walk to the bar and you could kind of tell they're a bit skew with and sort of, you know, you might say to them, well, I'll serve you this one, but that's it for you for this evening or whatever. Or can I suggest you might want to have a glass of water instead? So actually we found that some of our premises have started to integrate things like, you know, where a table has been ordered a certain number of rounds of drinks, then the next time they serve, when the order comes through, someone goes over and says, you know, I just wanted to come and give you this glass of this jug of free tap water, et cetera, and trying to sort of think about how to reduce some of those issues. So I think kind of retaining the technology that was a necessary step through the pandemic, but then thinking about how that evolves and develops. Another thing I've noticed is that I know that a lot of national teams, sort of multiple operators across the country, through the pandemic obviously couldn't use their offices and now obviously haven't necessarily instigated going back to the office. And they use technology to ensure that they, you know, maintained that sort of sense of team and spirit, et cetera. And a lot of those have carried on so, you know, weekly team quizzes and, you know, opportunities to do like online pilates together and things like that. And I just think that's a really nice use of ensuring that you're sort of valuing and retaining your staff. And then the other really great example of businesses being able to use technology to reduce costs and perhaps sort of try and add to their resilience and get through the pandemic is staff training. So I know a lot of training now is delivered through kind of online training, interactive training platforms because there's a recognition you can't just kind of make someone watch a video and it will stick. There's quite a number of kind of modules now that require interaction and confirmation that person has listened and understood that piece of learning, but it's done digitally. And that opens up a lot of extra possibilities about where it's done, when it's done, and it reduces costs. So hopefully those are also useful examples for you. Absolutely. And yeah, I mean, Joji, I don't know if you wanted to come in on that or. Yeah, I was just going to say a lot of the ways that changes that have been made through the pandemic with regards to technology, things that people have already mentioned, like online training, remote working, online access to content or collections. Those things I think are all here to stick in terms of the, the booking system for the visitors. I think we have to go back. I think we have to go back to that thing of being audience led. And I don't think for the majority of our visitors, they see it as an improvement. So I think we have to be led by that, that that's where it may make things easier for us if we're thinking about what's better for our audience. I don't think using the booking system all the time is something that they want. But I'm interested in, you know, are there certain audiences that may, you know, it may be targeted or quite a small proportion, but who do find a benefit, for example, you know, people with mobility issues or people with agoraphobia, things like that, knowing that there's going to be a particular slot where it might be slightly less busy. You know, options around being able to kind of get a sense of what's happening at the venue before you get there that may not have been in place before. I know a lot of concert venues and things are now doing that, you know, you doing 360 degree tours and things like that for people who who've got now. We know there's some increased anxiety around going out in public to certain people, people have been shielding for a long time. You know, hopefully that won't be a long term problem, but it's still there for some people who want to go and enjoy outside spaces. They don't want big crowds. So a lot of venues are sort of showing them through, through, you know, pre video work, what, what, what to expect. Hospitals have started doing that as well. So yeah, I just wondered if there was anything, anything there that might be carried on. Yeah, that's a really interesting point. I think I think that's why there's the booking system still pops up now and again where we're expecting either large numbers of people or we've got a very tiny property where we don't want to have too many people around. And in terms of accessibility, yeah, I think that's a big question. Definitely something that I know the National Trust are focusing on in 2022, really looking at all of those options. I don't know what their plans are in terms of using technology for that, but it would be really interesting to hear about how other people are using that. Definitely. What's come up quite a lot is, you know, examples around innovation in marketing and, you know, the extraordinary Instagram growth that you enjoyed at the Piddlers Pantry, but, but, but also webinars and the kind of knowledge exchange that sharing of ideas publicly and putting out information, whether that's on a sector basis or to customers or to, you know, whatever. That's been something I've noticed a lot where people have tried to curate, you know, kind of online spaces in different ways. I'm thinking of a music promoter, I know, down near where I am that obviously had all of their events cancelled, but started to create masterclasses for other promoters around, you know, what they were doing about it and some tips of the trade. And then they became from quite a small, a small promoter in, you know, with, with kind of one town suddenly got a reputation and an authority for being quite a leading kind of voice in the sector generally because they were starting to to to kind of show some leadership on that through their webinar series. So I think things like that are quite interesting and I just wondered what your experiences were of how, how to cut through what's become a really, you know, acutely noisy digital marketplace with everybody now needing to up their digital marketing content and to in the race for for followers and influence. You know, I wonder what your experiences were of that and and and when it works, how that really does drive growth. I think any kind of content has to be relevant and focused on the on the consumer. You can see that particular sort of when I put Joe out of business but the people's pantry Joe, the, the rise and kind of the home cooking and the menus, the gustos and the simply food and the simply eat where you get the recipe things. I can see some content around this is how people is make pies. And then you look at it think I'm got a chance of doing that. I'll buy one is the. Again, going back to some of the work we did like Richard with with the creative industries there was a lady who ran a small bespoke jewelry company in Brighton. And she started one of the ideas that we shared was that she could maybe do some online workshops to sort of just demonstrate her skill. People won't do it, but they're interested in how stuff's made. And she actually ended up becoming a mentor to another 10 small home based jewelry businesses, which then became a subscription business for her to mentor small jewelry businesses around the world. So that's that's a way of that reaching I want to go back to the beginning when we're talking about access to markets because you don't have to travel to do this stuff but you have to find on his. I think the main thing if you're going to become the person, the go to person in a particular field, then you have to have something of interest and confidence and knowledge and things like that. Joe wicks got where he got to a degree because he's incredibly focused he's very good at it, but he's very focused. And I would also suggest there's an element of luck again going back to Joe, Joe piglets. I'm going to call you so yeah but Joe piglets Joe pantry probably sounds a bit lighter. Does my nickname it's fine having having having a daughter who was Instagram aware in that moment at a time when Instagram was looking for content when actually we missed out on afternoon teas because we couldn't go and have them. You kind of almost that happens as well. And I think goes back to the agility of being ready and available to seize the luck that you create is really really important. And then also recognising that the knowledge you've got is valuable that can be presented in a way that adds value to other people to the question. Yeah, absolutely. And maybe, you know, there's an issue with a lot of people giving up that stuff out for free and I know certainly in the in the creative industries there was felt people put pressure to do online concerts and, you know, performances that people weren't paying for and that's been addressed a little bit here. But those, but those have been able to monetise that or find a way to do that, not been easy, but that has powered some growth. You know, was to do some work with a with a creative media training organisation based in culture directly near where you I know you've been doing a lot of work to it. You know, and they were running some Eastern workshops in that in that first lockdown you'll they would have done when they would have had a 2025 young people coming along paying few pounds to do some video games making workshops but they put them online made it free but they reached 12,000 people all around the world their people in Canada and Australia. So whilst they didn't make much money from that and would have been great if they charged everyone just a pound. But but now they have a model you know and can think okay well see there's a reach here we could do some online training we can pivot this and that's made a big difference. Sorry, Jeremy. Yes, just pretty quick friend of mine is a musician and pre COVID he had loads and loads of gigs COVID came he lost all his gigs. So he started doing stuff online, and he put a tip jar virtual tip jar. He gave him nothing, but he had friends in America. And so he started doing his concerts to match American time zones and tip jar is widely accepted in America and he made lots of money. So choose your market. That's it's about finding a niche isn't it finding something you're passionate about. I mean it's yeah finding something that you can credibly talk about that you are that you know that the way your passion will shine through. Also partnering with the right people sometimes it's you know useful to find the right platforms and sometimes that they already exist and it's just about making a connection with the right company or the right trade association or the right marketing team or whatever it is and and looking at it there's any collaborations you can you can take advantage of as well. There's been lots of examples of success isn't there through the pandemic around that so. We're close to time but Joe or Joe if you want to do a final point on that marketing point. I think my, my experience both sides one in interaction with customers so we put a lot of kind of competitions out and asked people to show their best afternoon tea or the, you know, with a brightening of Albion fans locally on the local group so we did different things with different groups, and they were posting their kind of like match at home, recreating their match at home experience and that was fantastic and got a lot of traction so that was great. But interestingly the other side talking about partnering, we got a videographer that does videos for Disney that was at work and lives in London and he reached out to us on Instagram and said I'd like to do a video for you for free. And we were a bit like, okay. And he did some fantastic work with us that then led to him being a long term videographer for us. So there was lots of stuff that came out of it not least the fact that we now engage with a marketing team that were made redundant during the pandemic. And they now are acting as our whole marketing and marketing department. It's all came through interactions and collaborations through LinkedIn and different places so I think it's, it's opening yourself up to the opportunity is the biggest thing I can say really, never being close to any opportunity and always looking for new ways of, of, you know, taking your journey forward both ways both interacting with customers and also the other side where you might find opportunities you've been a thought of ready. Thank you. Joe, have you got a 30 seconds to one minute closer for me. I'm not sure I'm going to be the highlight of this section, but our messages are slightly different. So we, it's not always visit driving messages that we're trying to get out there. A lot of it is about what we call cause messaging so people understanding what the National Trust is and what we're about. Just sort of that brand awareness and gaining supporters really so slightly different approach but what we find works is lots of pretty pictures. Definitely. Thank you. Thank you so much to our panel. I hope you'll give a virtual round of applause to Joe, Joe, Sylvia and Jeremy at their time. Thank you so much. We've, those are still with us. Lisa Kerr is one of the digital champions that Steph mentioned earlier and I know is available to support people if they want to book a bit more individual support. But I'm going to hand over to Steph now to round up the session to let people know what next steps are, but thank you so much again to all of our panelists and for you listening in. I thought that was a really, really insightful conversation. Great. Thank you, Rich. I'm just going to pop some slides up on the screen and hand it over to Lisa. Yep, so how to access the digital champion support. You can get to eight hours of support from any of the Coast Capital digital champions. There are seven of us will run through that in just a quick second there, but you just literally use the contact form the link is there. It's a brief details and you just need to say what area of expertise you'd like some help on, but that doesn't need to be any wider than saying that you'd like help from a digital champion. You need some help with digital strategy or you need specific help. We all work together. So we all know each other's strengths, and we will signpost you to the right digital champion and help you. I mentioned said that you just have a quick chat with someone and you undertake a digital review. That is nothing to be concerned about. It's very quick online form. So it's just a 20 question ticking boxes to see where you're at digitally. And then we'll be able to put you through to the right digital champion. Thanks, Annemarie has shared the contact form there. And this will all come across with the slides that you get after today's session as well. I can just go on one step that so just quickly run through. So there are seven of us. This is the first four you'll see we all cover different areas. So Andrew for websites and CRMs. I cover digital tech so productivity tools processes. If you're looking for e-commerce say the strategies to go out there for that then Malcolm Duff is an expert in e-commerce. Rachel Dines does SEO. And then we've got Rob, Roya and Susan who cover digital transformation and digital strategies and initiatives. So seven of us covering quite different areas and do reach out the support is entirely free to you. It's funded by Coast to Capital and we're all here to support you as part of this program. Thank you. Thank you very much Lisa. That's brilliant. Thank you. So thank you for joining us today. As I said, it's the penultimate session today. We do have one final session running next Tuesday at the same time until 1.30. And it's more of a as the experts networking session where you can any burning questions that you've had throughout the whole series. Then it there is your time to do it. So all our facilitators will be joining us for that as well as our digital champions. So you can get a bit more information about the support that they can offer and answer any questions there. All right. So thank you very much for joining today. And thank you to all our panellists to Joe and Joe, Jeremy and Sylvia and thank you to Lisa just finishing up there.  Thank you.


Japan has actually a very long history of addressing the past and its tangible remains from the chronicles spanning from the 7th century to 12th centuries, to the scholars from the 17th century to the 19th century and then to the different timescales of the modern era. Every period shows a distinctive approach towards the material remains of the past. And this know maybe is the fact that the same actually applies to its uninterrupted history of natural disaster. Floods, deluge of rain, extreme winds, earthquakes, hurricane, tsunami, landslides and volcanic eruptions, whatever you name it, they have it all. Even heavy pounding in industrial catastrophes such as the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. However, even in a land so aware of its aggressive environmental situation, the question of how to make sure that previous knowledge about these events can actually be taken into account shows up very often. Each time a new disaster occurs, actually those questions show up. And this is of course not a Japanese issue per se, but Japan being a very well equipped land from higher centricity requires a systematic approach of recording catastrophes folding upon its inhabitants. One can feel that it is of great importance to understand why and how parts of very valuable available knowledge documented both by historical records and recent archaeological research tend to eventually slip into the void. And giving this kind of false impression that they are only to research when a new disaster strikes again. Japanese preventive archaeology, rescue archaeology actually addresses very well the matter of documenting past disasters and for a long time. This comes probably from a deep awareness of what the Japanese archipelago is and after the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, which was a big, big one, this preventive archaeology spawned another version of itself referred actually to as disaster-led archaeology. Both an archaeology of disasters and an archaeology under the circumstances of disaster. And well, this may sound like a kind of Japanese specialty somehow, but as a research field, of course, it's set in a broader, actually even an universal set of issues of very roughly three orders, I would say. First, a framework of ignorance and denial of the past conversions of the planet. Second, a framework of very ancient past, present and future events of climate change. And finally, a framework made of the challenges posed by a responsible, unsustainable human development. We could think of others, but let's go with those three. These different issues come often in the way of what could be the value of disaster archaeology for the progress of society, but also its raison d'être. And Japan may be an excellent spot of observation by its maturity observing those phenomenon to learn what are actually the real problems of transmission and application of knowledge regarding those recurring disasters. So first, obviously, there is a priority which is documenting disasters. I was in Japan shortly after the 1995 Kobe earthquake. I was also in Japan for a long period of stay after the 2011 earthquake. And in both cases, a resurgent question was that of the preparedness or rather the unpreparedness of Japan regarding these cataclysmic events. And well, actually, Japan society and authorities are quite prepared. Of course, it can never be enough, but this is my own opinion that if anything close to what happened in Japan happened in any European country, it would be far worse in consequences. And as I already mentioned briefly in Japan, documenting natural disasters take a very noticeable place in many shapes from distant historical past to recent history. And I'd like to have an overview of what kind of documentation we are actually talking about. The most ancient one are official historical state records. This kind of record goes back as far as 684, meaning the very first steps actually of scripture in Japan, meaning disaster records and the invention of scripture in Japan are related. They happen nearly at the same time, if they're old. This record is called the Nihonsuki, one of the two oldest official chronicles of the Japanese state. And at the entry of the year 684, so the 10th year of the reign of the emperor Temmu, you have quite a description about the Hakuhou earthquake, which is followed by a tsunami on the Pacific coast of Shikoku and laying destruction. I think this one is the first historical occurrence of natural disaster in Japan. Another official source from antiquity, which called late attention after 2011, is the relation of the Jogan era earthquake in 869, which struck the northeastern province of Japan. The account of the disaster is very vividly written, reporting extreme shakes, tsunami and earth tsunami that went well over three kilometers inside the coastal limits in very similar ways to what happened actually in 2011. It's a doppelganger. Another source on those disasters is literature. Japanese literature in its many shapes, very on, is very rich on accounts on the calamities that fell upon the population of the archipelago. One of the most famous translated in several western languages is the Hojouki, visions of a torn world in its English translation. It exists in English. Written by Kamono Chome at the beginning of the 13th century. Here again we can find very vivid depiction of fire, tornado, famine, and last but not least the great earthquake of the Bunji era in 1185 that led to the destruction on a massive scale of entire parts of the capital city of the time, the actual Kyoto. Then we have a lot of graphic depictions. Japan is well known for its wood block prints, wood block prints, and even before that for its maps or illustrated scrolls. And many of these actually are very reliable sources of information on past disasters, information that we can cross-reference with archaeological findings. And a very well documented earthquake, the earthquake of Ido in 1703. And you have this painting which proposes a narrative of the events. On number one you have the daily life and happy life in the streets of Ido. On the second one you read it right to left. On two you have the city shaking, actually. On three you have the destruction landscape. And on four you have big fire that usually shortly comes after the massive destruction. Then you have the chaos after fire and after destruction. You have on six the habitation that are roughly built in order to shelter the survivors of the shake. Then on seven, eight, and nine you have procession, religious procession in order to pray for the death. Then progressively you go to nine and you have the city of Ido that is rebuilt and everything is fine again. So you have a loop, a circle of how people used to consider those events. Another well documented disaster is documented by the map made in the aftermath of the great Zankozi earthquake, not far from Nagano. It shows the consequences of the earthquake of 1847 in the form of landslides and flood. All the brown parts are landslides, which is the flood of the Sai River which is a big river in the region. And you do not only have those kinds of documentation on what happened but you have also a very analytic one who explained what really happened. Meaning by that they had a big earthquake and a lot of debris came to build a natural dam in the Sai River and eventually the dam collapsed. And this is after the collapse that all the valley went submerged by the river and that landslide occurs. So you have very precise depiction on the consequences after the shake. And maybe the most famous of all those rather recent era earthquake is the great Anse earthquake in Ido again and this time in 1855 and other kind of graphic depiction. This is for earthquake and consequences of earthquake. Actually you have a lot of graphic depiction of all kinds of disaster, not only earthquake. I will pass on other kinds because there are so many and we could go on for hours. But basically they are all well documented, be it volcanic eruption with their lava flow, gas, flying rocks of volcano. So you have really precise depiction of any kind of disaster you can think of. And of course you also have tsunami depiction. We also have, of course, and this is the main issue for us, scientific documentation and education. And all this historical documentation is actually followed until today by more modern investigation methods such as geology, archaeology and is participating in the education of the masses concerning the recurrence of disasters in Japan. Museums hold regularly exhibitions on the matter. Specific places are frozen in time at the time of the disaster in order to keep the experience very alive in the memories of people. And scientifically speaking, archaeology has a very important role in the construction of disaster-related narratives. And since the end of the 80s, the GAAA, Japanese Archaeological Association, recognized archaeology of disaster as one of its specific research field. And after the quake in 1995 in Kobe, archaeology became even a tool participating in the construction of a kind of rhetoric of resilience among the people of Kobe. Just a small example, the rescue excavation in Awaji-Jima Island near Kobe of a settlement destroyed during a great earthquake during the Yayoi period, meaning 2,000 years ago, showed how past population overcame a great disaster, implying that present populations could not do less. And another example more about semantics this time, the excavation performed in the context of the reconstruction after 1995, often criticized, became Fukko Chosa, meaning excavation for relief accompanying the reconstruction rather than obstructing it. And this rhetoric reemerged in the northeast after 2011 and helped a great deal to build somehow positive thinking about rescue archaeology in the context of, well, you have to put people back to their life really quick and archaeology can be perceived as a problem, as an obstruction. I'm almost done. In Japan, both excavation at Tagajo Ancient Provincial Palatial Complex and later geological investigation revealed the scale of the Jogun Era earthquake I was referring a few minutes ago. And the results were translated into the reinforcement of the seaside protection of the Onagawa nuclear power plant near Sendai. But unfortunately, not at Fukushima Daiichi, and these are two different companies which each its own policy, let's say. And well, at the modern era you also have photographs about earthquake and disaster, and this is the settlement from the Yayoi period that collapsed 2,000 years ago because of a really, really big earthquake. But for sure, obviously, documenting is not enough to be sure there can be loopholes in the documenting strategy, but Japan until present times is certainly not characterized by general lack of documentation on the natural calamity that before its land. So one can safely consider that documenting is not the only parameter to control in the larger spectrum of preventing catastrophes, dealing with them. And grasping with natural disaster and their consequences imply being able to think long-term strategies. After the Jogun Era earthquake and the devastation of the coastal settlements, for a while populations reorganized, they are living at a good distance from the coast to eventually return closer to the ocean and, whoops, getting hit again. And this is a picture from 2012, 2013, I think, after the passage of the tidal wave. Climate change, if it does not impact on earthquakes, surely has an impact on the formation of hurricanes, typhoons, and makes the issue of anticipating disasters even more vital, we could say. Nuclear pollution or nuclear waste actually deepens the issue. Long-term here must be measured not in hundreds of years, but in thousands, even tens of thousands of years. And it causes a very, very deep problem in the matter of managing heritage. You can't access some sites right now because they are, for example, in the red zone, the so-called red zone near Fukushima Daiichi Plant. And you cannot observe, maintain good condition for some of the classified sites, archaeological sites you have in Fukushima. So the question really is, how do we build up a system that enables us to project in long-term, in a period in history when we have great technology, but when governments tend to cut their budget and corporations aims to maximize their short-term profits. So we sure have a great potential, but at the same time, very few stretching. I feel we have very few stretching ability towards the future. In the nuclear era, future means very, very distant future. And I think archaeologists are quite fit for this kind of job because we are used to deal with huge chunk of time, but we are not in charge. And now we stop. No?