Panel discussion: Gabrielle Laine-Peters, Glenn Le Santo, James Moffat and Molly Flatt. 

Q. Why do you think what you do matters?

Glenn: I don’t. I’m just a journalist. I don’t save people’s lives. Live tweeting doesn’t change people’s lives. Maybe what we all do together matters.

Molly: My sister’s a forester – she works conserving and saving trees. I don’t think what I do matters – writing a novel is my attempt. It’s all about personal stuff – the only impact work has is on the personal connections you make. Any answer to this is going to sound like a string of clichés. It’s about the moments you have, the connections you make. The meaning of life is learning how to live it. It’s how you contribute.

Glenn: Is that not “what you do” but “how you do it”?

Molly: Yes.

Gabrielle: Too many people in this sphere just talk and don’t do anything.

James: Everything you do matters, every single day, because it all effects other people. If we turn up to work and we’ve been in traffic and we’re in a bad mood – how does that affect others?

Gabrielle: I did a little talk last year, and a counsellor in the States is using the video of it with her post-traumatic stress patients in the states. I never imagined that would happen.

Molly: It’s very Shakespearian: the power of words to shape the world. There’s a danger in flinging so much stuff out there. I want to do less but better – each one of those words can be a positive thing.

Glenn: One of the speakers this morning talked about the way you think about things. The way you talk about things effects you ability to do things. Adopting positive language can make you more effective in your life. Why can’t we just be nice? How much joy can we get if we were nice to each other? If road traffic collaborated like we do on water, in boats, what could it be like?

James: My wife’s a nurse. I come home and talk about the awesome work I did for a client. She held a patient’s heart as they tried to save them.

Molly: It’s an old-fashioned thing about character and moral values. Self-help literature used to be about developing a  good character, and that became the cult of personality. As a personal project, I’m going back to holding myself accountable to internal values about life.

Gabrielle: This waterfall deluge of information: how do we filter it? What blogs do we read? How much time do we spend retweeting? But you also have to filter what you push our, what you create. We’re privileged to have an audience, be that 10 or 2000 people.

Q. Because we’re all talking about social media, we’re all talking about what we’re doing mattering to everyone else. Shouldn’t we be focusing on what matters to us instead? 

Molly: This is hard, it could turn turn really smug. It’s really difficult, and I get it wrong 99% of the time. It’s hard to pay attention to what you’re saying, what you’re doing.

Answer from the audience: Isn’t it up to others to judge whether what you do matters?

Q. What projects that you have worked on have made the most impact?

Gabrielle: I got lucky – I got invited to a space shuttle launch. And from that I’ve got involved with a project to get kids involved in science, technology and maths, and turn around their interest. NASA are making a huge difference to the next generation by making geeky people cool.

James: We work with Plan UK – doing SEO and social.

Molly: When you’re working with one person in a big corporate, who starts losing the fear in their work, and gets excited by the possibilities and personal growth in getting more connected with their customers – that’s just as exciting.

Glenn: I take people out on my boat, and they relax.