AI, VR, bots and BBQ, The Drum Upfronts and other news: Editor's Overview

I write this having spent the last four days in Austin, Texas where SXSW is taking place and it's proving to be an exceptional event once again with tech and marketing panels intersecting with the film, TV and music. Usually delegates are assigned a badge to follow one single stream (The Drum reporters were always designated the Interaction stream) but this year the organisers have decided to make a big and interesting change.

As an indication of how the world is being disrupted by technology, delegates are now allowed access to all of the streams, with each stream having been found to offer relevance across other sectors. And that's entirely correct in my view. Although we write about marketing and media, that now involves a lot of entertainment crossovers – for instance last week I wrote about the influencer marketing strategy adopted by Bacardi, which is working with music producer Swizz Beatz to help promote its artistic culture.

We are seeing a global convergence as a result of the growth of the importance of technology to brands, with a lot of talk around AI and robots, which was to be expected this year.

As I write this we have covered news that Tinder has helped create 250,000 LGBT matches since introducing a new feature in November, written about Gawker founder Nick Denton on life away from the publication and taken a look at how publishers are aiming to overcome the threat of ad blockers.

Here are a few pictures of interesting things I've seen so far this week.

Some pints and some insights

I've written about this recently, but next week during Advertising Week Europe, The Drum will be taking over a London pub, which will include an opportunity to hear from departments across the company, including what plans we have coming up later in the year, such as The Drum Upfronts. We'll also have several events taking place from Monday to Thursday, culminating in some drinks, where you will meet the team and talk about the week too.

As part of the week, we're running The Chip Shop Awards Chalkboard Challenge, where creative teams will be tasked with devising and creating adverts designed to save the British ale houses on one of our pub chalkboards. We'll then showcase those online and through our social media channels.

Check out the schedule of activities taking place and register you interest in attending here.

Elsewhere at The Drum

Entries for The Drum Digital Trading Awards US, taking place for the second year, will be open for acceptance later this week, with more details available on the DTA US website.

Also we are beginning to firm up the schedule for this year's Future of Marketing conference, with the keynote ready to be announced potentially this week or next, but I promise, it's an exciting name we're bringing to London to talk to the industry. More details on the event will start to roll out soon, but we are working hard to make this a special event that really examines fascinating developments across the marketing sector.

More details on events we are organising can be found here on the homepage.

There's lots of news and insights set to be delivered from The Drum as ever and I recommend the best way to keep up is to sign up for our regular newsletters.

Have a great week.

Stephen