YouTube Conference

Summer in the City is now in its sixth year - enabling fans to get closer to their favourite YouTubers and to liaise with YouTube senior staff and a host of fun sponsors. I'm a fan of many YouTube vloggers; not many days pass without me watching at least one vlog, and if it does I'll have a vlog binge at some point during the week. I saw Summer in the City advertised and thought I'd love to attend YouTuber Q&A's and panels, but I'm not a screaming thirteen year old, and no offence to screaming thirteen year olds, but that's what Summer in the City pretty much is - it looks like a big cramped One Direction-style concert of screamosity.  

So, I was over the moon to see that this year they were offering something new: a conference day just for creators of YouTube (and other platform) content, and it would be strictly for over 16's, with autograph-hunting and screaming not allowed. At only £20 a ticket, and with the chance to mingle with some top YouTubers, brands, and YouTube themself, I had to go and try this. Held in Alexandra Palace, this vast building was ready to host thousands of teen-screamers at the main event, but was nice and spacious for the couple of hundred people there on creator-day. 

Before the schedule of talks began we were given a free breakfast and had time to wander round the main hall and chat to sponsors. Very excitingly, we had the chance to try Google Glass and look like space-age nerds! The YouTube pod also had free sunglasses and pens for us. Served up by a cute mustachioed man.

Playstation were also on hand to get people trying their latest games, including Little Big Planet 3. Why can't all conferences be like this? 

My favourite sponsor stand by far had to be the Disney one! So much fun, but also - when Disney want to get involved in a YouTube conference, you can see just how influential YouTubers are. 

The stand for Just Eat had people doing challenges like eating jelly with chopsticks and firey spicy morsels of doom (not sure what they were, but people had very watery eyes as they chowed down). 

We had a choice of talks in two different rooms. Everything from using social media to understanding YouTube analytics. Everything was cleverly pitched for those just starting out with creating content, and those who had been doing it for a while. Plus, speakers didn't just assume everyone was a vlogger, they included all kinds of content genres from comedy to cooking and gaming. 

First up I went to a session on creative strategy for creating content. Jessica Elvidge from YouTube took us through the ten fundamentals of creating good quality and well-received content. These incude accessibility (how to hook viewers in, especially new ones), discoverability (how to get your videos found), and shareability (how you can make videos that people will want to share). Jessica used Rhett and Link as examples of amazingness, as well as several others that we can all learn from. 

I also went to interesting sessions on making effective YouTube channel trailers, and a panel made up of people from Viral Spiral, Big Frame, and Awesomeness TV giving advice on joining a network. I loved the session from Mike Cook of Simon's Cat, giving us some ideas on how to monetise a YouTube channel other than through YouTube ads. He had some prizes to throw out into the audience (I won a cute little football I'm going to give to my baby niece), and he invited two audience members on to the stage to have a meow-off to win the large toy cat (pictured below next to his mic). 

The highlight of the day for me was a giant panel of eight YouTubers and agency representitives giving advice on working with brands. Chaired by Nick Heywood, head of brand partnerships at YouTube, the panel included the awesome Tyler Oakley. I heart him! But don't worry, I held all my fangirl screams inside, and listened professionally to his advice, and everyone else's - which was also very useful for bloggers. 

Side note: PJ Liguori from Lick The PJ (second from right) was incredibly funny and really quite cute. That is all. Everyone on the panel had horror stories, mostly due to brands hiring them and thinking they could control their content, even asking them to re-film vlogs or handing them a script to follow. Much like the blogging world, brands in the UK don't really understand how they can collaborate with YouTubers, but everyone agreed that relationships are developing. The key thing to communicate to brands is that vlogs are not adverts, and that when a brand wants to work with you they are integrating into the brand of the YouTuber (or blogger) and have to accept the social media infuencer will want to promote in their own way. Because social media brand promotion and product placement are not regulated in any way (like they are in mainstream media) controversy surrounds the ethics of brand collaborations. I think that readers of blogs and watchers of YouTube content are more sophisticated than people give them credit for, they're used to seeing product placement and brand sponsorship in TV, film, music videos, and magazines, they're going to understand that YouTubers are not selling their souls to promote brands, they are making a living. Tyler said: "I feel no shame in brand deals... it allows me to live a life worth talking about in my videos. If I had a nine-to-five job it'd just be me coming home in the evening and saying 'hey, just watched Orange Is The New Black'... [brand sponsorship] supports a vision and a lifestyle to replace the nine-to-five salary... but I don't work with anyone who doesn't get what's going to be in my videos - they can give me talking points, but if they give me a script I say 'aww, you're cute'. Once I had a brand ask me to 'turn down the gay'. I don't know how to do that, nor would I."

After what can only be described as a fabulously eccentric talk from someone from The Sundance Festival on how to break into film, the day ended with a keynote from the European YouTube Head of Partnerships. Not only was this full of inspiration and motivation, but some new services from YouTube that will help those who make vlogs and other content were presented. These included the YouTube Creator Studio App that will give you customised push notifications for things like new comments and subscriber milestones. Whereas there is currently a two-day lag with view counts on YouTube videos, this app will give you viewing figures in real time. There's also YouTube's own version of crowdfunding that allows you to get donations from your fans to help monetise your channel, and a new function for allowing viewers to subtitle your videos into other languages to help you get your content seen further afield. This was a fantastic talk, leaving everyone feeling very pumped and ready to go forth and create! We were reminded of the power and appeal across the world of Britishness in YouTube videos, with several exampes such as Zoella and Russell Brand being given. 

For a first run this was a fantastic conference! My only criticisms would be that a more detailed schedule would have been nice (as you can see, I didn't get all the names of the speakers, and that would have been useful for my write-up), plus there were no scheduled breaks, so if you wanted to nip to the loo, eat lunch, or have a wander round the sponsor hall you had to miss a bit of a talk. There was also a hilariously unprofessional moment when one of the organisers realised this and anounced during a panel session he was chairing that he needed to go and eat some pasta, and he left! Haaaa! That aside, thanks for catering to those who aren't just fans, and I'm looking forward to next year!