- Music
- 05 Nov 15
The football and rugby legends were speaking at Web Summit, with Pixar's Ed Catmull closing the day.
Rio Ferdinand and Brian O'Driscoll, both having left behind their sport and becoming ambassadors for BT, were in Dublin to talk about their life on social media.
"I paid quite a few fines for what I said on Twitter, because it's an impulsive thing', said Rio Ferdinand. "It is a way of connecting people to what they do, giving them a glimpse of their life and what it's really like. 'I was always interested in what my heroes were doing and now through social media I can do that."
Brian O'Driscoll was rather late to social media, but now he's tweeting away: "You can give people a real sense of who you are. Small things where people think one thing and you can show them the other."
Of course there were also the do's and don'ts of social media.
"Don't ever drink with a phone in your hand, don't drink and go on social media," Ferdinand laughed.
O'Driscoll agreed: "Everyone's made that mistake, waking up and deleting a tweet. I'd just say I've been hacked at four in the morning."
Social media is also good for business, said Ferdinand.
"A commercial business will check your following."
So get tweeting people...
On to the last guest of the last Web Summit in Dublin, Ed Catmull, manager of Pixar and Disney. The man responsible for a plethora of animated childhood heroes – Toy Story will be 20 years old next month, terrifyingly.
After a small clip of the new Pixar film, The Good Dinosaur, Ed Catmull discussed how he ended up in the business: "I didn't want to turn into an old fart."
Catmull also talked about managing the creative minds at the company.
"The problem isn't to get them to do their work, because they all want to do a great job. The problem is to get them to lighten up, and to let things happen without having them feel like they messed up."
This is easier said than done, as with every film something goes wrong and it is difficult to know when to pull the plug.
"We don't want to pull out the plug too soon, because we don't want to create fear among the other creators. We don't want to stop their creativity for fear of us pulling the plug."
When Pixar started working with Disney, they gradually brought new life into Disney's creative team. Focussing on technology stood in the way of creativity.
"We removed the blocks and barriers that forced their creativity in other directions.'
And with that, Web Summit came to an end, the last event in Dublin, but we'll remember Paddy Cosgraves words from earlier today:
"Dublin is our home. We're leaving, but we hope to come back."
So do we...