A look back at Text Summit 2022: speakers, insights and words
The sessions are done, questions answered and apple martinis drunk. Text Summit 2022 is in the books and we hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did! We promised a day of interesting insights, fantastic speakers and a great post-event party and we think we delivered exactly that.
To help you relive a great day at Vinegar Yard, and to enlighten those of you who were unable to attend, we’ve encapsulated Text Summit both visually in our highlights video and through our favourite medium – text.
Hostage negotiator Suzanne Williams wows the crowd
Keynote speaker Suzanne Williams’s address headlined the event. Suzanne drew upon her years of experience dealing with terrorists, pirates and other criminals to inform the audience on the best ways of communicating and delivering messages.
Her talk explored all aspects of communication and the use of words, from understanding the culture and background of the people you’re negotiating with and the preparatory work you need to undertake for any negotiation, through to how to communicate in a way which ensures you achieve your overarching strategic objective.
Drawing upon her work in war zones and on the high seas, she highlighted the differences needed in words used across a variety of mediums, discussed the power of silence and noted how the repetition of messages really does help people to remember what you are saying.
Shining a light on gendered language in finance
Crypto Comparative Linguistics founder Tom Head and Relative Insight senior account director Alex Kibblewhite kickstarted the event by exploring the ways in which different finance firms communicate. The pair explored four aspects of words and phrases used across the sector to determine what impact this might have on gender imbalance in finance: pronouns, masculine and feminine words, website copy and Glassdoor reviews.
Their findings included how traditional finance firms discussed a brave new world and “utopian future” which wasn’t reflected in Glassdoor reviews, that companies with female CEOs were more likely to reference customers and communities in their website copy, and employee Glassdoor reviews more frequently referenced a good work/life balance if the CEO was a women. You can find all the insights gleaned from the research by downloading our report.
Exploring data visualization through time
Amy O’Baker, customer innovation director at Relative Insight, gave an entertaining talk which took her audience on a whistlestop tour of how people have visualized data over time.
From British abolitionist James Phillips using an infographic to highlight the inhumane conditions on ships transporting slaves through to charts showing the disparity between men and women’s dialogue in Hollywood films, Amy demonstrated how data visualization can help highlight what’s important, tell a story and lead people to take action.
Uncovering end-of-life wishes with global
Text Summit 2022 touched upon a range of subjects, including regional differences of what we want when we die. Global‘s head of commercial insight, Kate Rutter, and Zac Dhanoo, account coordinator at Relative Insight, explored work the two organizations did to inform a regional advertising campaign for Co-op Funeralcare.
The pair noted that regional comparisons of end-of-life wishes provided some fascinating differences, including people in the North East and North West preferring pubs and rugby clubs as wake venues, Scots choosing readings penned by Rudyard Kipling and Londoners’ selecting ‘Always look on the bright side of life‘ as their final song.
Starting an open conversation around diversity and inclusion
Text Summit’s Language Loft was filled to the brim with delegates eager to discuss diversity and inclusion with Relative Insight business development manager Jasmine Cheung. She presented the findings from Relative Insight’s recently published D&I report, which analysed survey open-ends to reveal what diversity and inclusion mean to different groups of people.
Jasmine’s talk encompassed a range of thoughts and feelings on D&I, from how different groups defined diversity through to the brands which people associate with being inclusive or not inclusive. This provided event attendees with food for thought, hopefully helping them to kickstart conversations on the subject.
Why sustainability is a local issue
Whilst concerns around climate change and achieving net-zero are much discussed national issues, what this means locally is typically less clear. It’s against this backdrop that Dr Adam Wright, head of public policy at the British Academy, and Yvette Stimson, account manager at Relative Insight, discussed the insights the pair found in a project comparing local conversations about sustainability.
With ‘place’ a key determining factor in people’s views on net-zero, it was fascinating to learn that people in the east Midlands focused on sustainable food production, those living in the south west discussed recycling, while residents of rural areas are concerned about deforestation.
Understanding the power of language models
The hyperbole and mystique around AI grows as rapidly as the development speed of this type of tech. Ryan Callihan, Relative Insight’s head of AI, sought to clarify this for our audience.
Focusing on large language models (LLMs), he explored what it is LLMs can do, what they can’t do, and some of their drawbacks. The computational power needed to harness some of these models also saw Ryan highlight their environmental impact – an aspect of tech innovation which isn’t widely discussed.
Paying homage to text analysis
Our event concluded with a lively agency panel discussion about all things text analysis. In the session, Relative Insight account manager Rauri Hadlington was joined by Quadrangle‘s managing director – qualitative, Russ Wilson, The&Partnership‘s head of client services, Hannah Slater, and Jordan Buck, senior consultant at Ogilvy’s Behavioural Science Practice.
The quartet discussed everything from their first encounter with analysing unstructured text data, the most interesting insights they’ve uncovered, and how they use text analysis to support clients.
Relaxing at the post-event party
The end of out sessions wasn’t a signal for our guests to head home. Instead, they sipped green apple martinis (of course!) and chatted the afternoon and early evening away to the backdrop of our DJ.
Text Summit 2022 – just the beginning
Text Summit 2022 was an event which marked just how far text analysis has come. From being a little-known technique only used by a few organizations, text analytics is now becoming a widespread way in which brands can derive insights accurately and rapidly from previously hard-to-analyze unstructured text data.
We developed Text Summit to be a celebration of this progress, where evangelists can share their stories and those new to text analysis can discover the power of this technique. Thanks to all those who signed up, attended and made the event a success, the event is set to be an annual showcase of all the sector can offer, as more and more companies take action based on insights gleaned from unstructured text data.
Everyone at Relative Insight hopes to see you at Text Summit 2023!