Five things Omobono learned at Advertising Week Europe

• What programmatic is. The automated selling and buying of advertising online. In real time. And a term that's now being applied to non online channels like TV.  Its arrival is one of the biggest and fastest growing challenges to agencies and clients as they shift to get their heads around a multichannel world.
• What the inside of Kensington Palace looks like, or at least the Orangery. The Tuesday night dinner at which HRH Prince Andrew spoke (well) about entrepreneurialism was a high point.
• How the creative industry is absolutely about talent and we don't much mind about where it comes from. The demographic of attendees was a typical bell curve in terms of age and ethnic minorities, true.  But the fact that it's a good industry for women was evidenced both by the audience make up (50/50 by my reckoning) and by the presence of so many senior women on stage. The energy of the talent in the room was palpable. Wish I could bottle it. 
• That panel discussions feel like an old fashioned format. If the point is to emphasise that everyone is being challenged by the same issues - how to create and monetise valuable content, how to ensure optimisation in  a multichannel world, is programmatic really the holy grail then panels are ok (just a bit dull). If it's to shake things up a bit, they don't really work (see below).
• That if you want a passionate, expert view then it's better to listen to one passionate expert speaker at a time - whether it's Brian Cox, the wonderful and irreverent Grayson Perry or indeed a not famous person like the explosive bundle of energy and conviction that was Jason Miller, Head of Content Campaigns for LinkedIn. 

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