This is our series of interviews with the speakers at the upcoming DigitalSport.co event: Innovation in Digital Sport. We talk presentations and the wider topic around the talks to whet the appetite for the event later this month.

The first Digital Sport event of 2017 is fast approaching. On 27th March, at Hotel Football in the shadow of Manchester United’s iconic Old Trafford stadium, the Innovation in Digital Sport conference will bring together some important voices from across the industry to talk about a subject that touches everyone within the sector.

The world of sport and digital is a rapidly changing place, and innovation is inevitable as technology advances quicker than many of us can keep up with. The ability to be innovative, creative, and ahead of the curve is key.

This event is about an exchange of ideas and a continuation of the conversation we have daily on DigitalSport.co and elsewhere, and at the end of it, we all hope to leave Hotel Football more enlightened than when we entered it. But before the event, we thought we’d hear a little bit from the speakers themselves; something to whet the appetite and preview a little bit of what’s in store later this month.

This is the first interview of our series in the build-up to the event taking a look at each speaker individually.

We start with Fiona Green, director and co-founder of WINNERS, an agency providing a range of services, and working to improve the relationship between businesses and customers within the sports industry.

She will give her insight on perhaps one of the most subjective topics in the digital sport landscape: data.

“I’m going to talk about the importance of data in our digital world,” she tells me, “but not just how it’s used: I’m going to talk about the challenges and issues most people who don’t think about data 24/7 (like us) will miss or forget.”

The problems surrounding data are numerous and varied in themselves, but actually gaining insight from the numbers themselves can be challenging, especially in a changing landscape that is never black and white.

“The issues in the talk will be business change, data standardization and the data protection act (specifically the forthcoming GDPR).”

Considering the fast-paced nature of the growth of digital, considering innovation in each of those areas will be key to most businesses within sport: how they deal with change, how they understand the data they collect, and how they work most efficiently within regulatory frameworks.

“In terms of business change, processes can’t just be changed overnight, they take a combination of training, buy-in and collaboration,” she says. It’s not so much about the innovation itself, but being open to – and aware of – the idea.

“On data standardization, there aren’t any standards laid down, different departments will be using different approaches, affecting the organisation’s ability to have a 360 degree view of all their fans / customers.

“And finally, data protection: in the new GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) the rules will have been amended to better protect the consumer with the maximum fine limit reset to 4% of turnover.”

This talk is likely to be an eye-opening look at data within the digital sport sector, something that is too often taken for granted or not fully understood, and with her years of experience in the field, as well as her ability to look deeply into the data to gain valuable insight, Fiona Green’s talk is one you don’t want to miss.

But the final word is about the event itself. So what does she like most about Digital Sport events?

“The relaxed environment – people are happy to share information for the benefit of mutual learning.”

So come along and pick the brains of some of the best in the business.