Events: Cindy Gallop, storytelling and SXSW

In recent months we have hosted a few events at our London HQ. We've held a couple of show and tells, plus some panel chats and presentations on different technologies and ways of working. These have been fun: bright people sharing ideas with a very engaged audience usually makes for a good time. Also, each event offers an opportunity to meet new people, which is great.

At the end of this month we're hosting a talk by the hugely inspirational Cindy Gallop, and then in early October we're welcoming a panel of highly interesting characters for Storywarp 2. Read on for more info on these events, and how to RSVP.

Cindy Gallop is coming to town – get in!

In the spring I started up Girls' Club, a networking posse for women in the creative industry. A short time later it struck me that what we ALL need – men and women – is more opportunities to hear from people who are making our industry a more interesting and diverse place. So on Wednesday 31 August Made by Many will be hosting the first Girls' Club Presents event: Cindy Gallop speaking on The Future of Advertising.

Not familiar with Cindy Gallop? Buckle your seatbelt and read on…

Cindy's background is brandbuilding, marketing and advertising. She started up the US office of BBH in New York in 1998 and in 2003 was named Advertising Woman of the Year. She is the founder and CEO of www.IfWeRanTheWorld.com, a web meets world platform designed to turn good intentions into action one microaction at a time – it launched in beta with a demo at TED 2010. She's also the founder and CEO of www.makelovenotporn.com, which launched at TED in 2009. She acts as board advisor to a number of tech startups; she also consults, describing her consultancy approach as "I like to blow shit up. I am the Michael Bay of business".

This event is open to men and women – in fact, we're gunning for as balanced and diverse an audience as we can muster. So if you're not afraid of strong language and explosions, send an RSVP to itsagirlsclub [at] gmail [dot] com and we will look forward to seeing you there.

There's more Storywarp to come

A loopy lunchtime conversation between Leila and I about repetitive storytelling tropes and symbols led to the creation of Storywarp, a conferences on the ins and outs of Storytelling across all forms of media. We held the first Storywarp event on 28 July and invited a panel of impresarios from the worlds of advertising, journalism, games and television production to talk to us about storytelling.

Storywarp 1 unleashed a raft of questions around the narrator's role, brands and stories, characterisation, genres, and about a thousand other aspects of storytelling… which made us think another event was in order. So on Wednesday 5 October we're opening the doors of Diespeker Wharf for Storywarp 2: Characterisation. Speakers are still to be confirmed, but RSVPs are welcome: hello [at] storywarp [dot] com.

Storytelling goes SXSW

And now, the inaugural plug for a SXSW session… Leila and I are hoping to take Storywarp to the next frontier: Texas. We've got a proposal up on the SXSW panel picker, so please, if you think Storywarp would make a valuable contribution to next year's SXSW offering, throw us a vote.

We're open to suggestions

Finally, let us know if there's someone you want to hear speak, a subject you want to explore or an event you want to collaborate on. We haven't suddenly become a bunch of event planning agency, but we are keen to facilitate discussion and progress in our industry. There's no sense standing back and waiting for someone else to start things rolling! So if you've got ideas along those lines, drop us a comment below or hit us up on Twitter.