Thinking Digital Conference

Virtual Earth - Silverlight Style

herb 13/06/08 06:26

Steve Clayton (@stevecla) of Microsoft said we should check this out. We did and wuz impressed!…

http://deepzoom.soulclients.com/VE/

Sky News covers Thinking Digital

lewis 26/05/08 02:55

Check it out at http://tinyurl.com/4abmw9

This year’s event may be over, but you can still re-live (or see them for the first time, if you didn’t get to come) some of the moments and ideas revealed at last week’s Thinking Digital… thanks to Sky News.

Their correspondent, Gerard Tubb, was at the event last week filming the likes of Microsoft’s Steve Clayton, Cisco’s Ian Kennedy and Videojuicer’s Eric Lindstrom for their weekly ‘Technofile’ show, which is seen by millions throughout the UK. (Or at least that’s what we’re told!)

If you didn’t get chance to come to this year’s event, sign up now to receive email alerts when we release videos of the best talks online… and to find out when we’ll be holding Thinking Digital 09.

P.S. I should take this opportunity to say thanks very much to Microsoft’s Steve Clayton for the kind words on his blog, Geek in Disguise. As Herb said in the conference programme, we were able to make the conference happen thanks to the vision and support of our sponsors… and Microsoft in particular. (They didn’t even complain about Fake Steve being in the line-up… how about that!)

mark 23/05/08 12:06

Declan Curry has been facilitating proceedings today, starting with the panel discussion around mobile 2.0. Those guys (Gerard Grech, Vikesh Patel, Mark Selby, Bradley de Souza) shared their thoughts on what Mobile 2.0 means, how the key challenges in the space are being addressed, and which issues assure success.

A unifying theme was the importance of recognising that a ‘web lite’ version of the internet was for phone was inappropriate: usage contexts are completely different, and the mobile web experience should reflect this.

There were some great questions from the audience which lead to some lively exchanges, particularly on the issue of open access to handsets so that developers can product third party applications. Interesting to hear from Mark that in a one survey across three markets, 22% of Nokia N95 users said their use of laptops had reduced markedly since getting their handset.

Declan then introduced Greg Dyke, in conversation with Andy Allan. Greg and Andy have known each other well for a long time, meeting frequently in their previous capacities as directors of ITV and BBC.

Greg and Andy chatted about some of the major changes in the broadcasting industry over recent years (such as BBC iPlayer). The discussion brought into sharp focus the relationship between politics and broadcasting, and the implications of that relationship. Greg also expressed his view on the future of the BBC license fee.

Once again some interesting questions - Ian Forrester was particularly interested to know who might replace Ashley Highfield when he steps down from his BBC role soon. Some people think it should be Ian!

Aubrey de Gray told us why believes humans will be able to live indefinitely: fascinating and mind-blowing stuff! Aubrey’s vision is based on repair of the cellular damage that causes pathologies, and hence ageing. By repairing cellular damage, people can become biologically younger as they get chronologically older. Aubrey has coined the phrase “longevity escape velocity” - how fast we need to keep buying time to allow scientific progress to address cellular damage. In Aubrey’s view, the first 1000 year old person is probably less than 20 years younger than the first 150 year old!

Carl Honore then took the stage and talked about the “slow revolution”. Carl’s message is that slowing down, in all forms of life, brings countless benefits. He has all sorts of evidence to show that by slowing down judicsiously you work better, play better and live better. In the workplace, many companies are introducing working practices to encourage ’slow working’, and seeing tangible benefits.

The morning was rounded off with a humorous talk from Dan Lyons . Dan recounted his motivation for the infamous “Fake Steve Jobs” blog, why he stayed anonymous, and why he chose Steve Jobs. More generally he reflected on why people blog, the power of blogging and what he’s learnt from his experience.

Another jam-packed morning full of thought provoking stuff - and lots more to come this afternoon!

Thinking Digital Thursday Report

herb 22/05/08 07:39

I’m obviously biased but this was an awesome day for the conference.

I’ll start at the end of the conference which ended with a 40 min talk from the tech visionary Ray Kurzweil.

Ray wasn’t actually in the room but joined us from his office in Boston via telepresence system called Teleportec.

Whenver you see a conference dare use a videolink you always hold your breath for the inevitable technical glitch but hats off to the Teleportec engineers who pulled it off without any problems. I guess technology really may be advancing exponentially as predicted by Dr. Kurzweil.

You could summarise Ray’s talk as “actually, technology IS highly predictable” as he showed us slide after slide from computing power to bioscience to nanoscience to economics that change is progressing not in a linear fasion but exponentially. The big change is that bioscience has gone from educated guessing to being a genuine information science. By combining these geometrically increasing forces, Ray predicts that computer intelligence will exceed human intelligence by 2029. It was a fairly academic talk especially for 6pm at the end of a very packed day but such was its quality that the audience was totally engaged.

Preceding the Singularity session was a slightly left of centre set of talks around the theme of Happiness. Helen Fisher is a highly regarded anthropologist and shed new light on the very old topic of love and romance. She focussed particularly around the impact of different neurotransmitters on the intense feelings associated with sexual attraction, love and attachment.

Caspar Berry took us on a very personal journey on his personal search for happiness as he went from TV star to film writer to professional poker player to entrepreneur to TV presenter and now a speaker on the links between happiness, uncertainty and risk-taking.

Jonathan Harris pretty much blew the audience away with his incredible combination of creativity, technical virtuosity, artistic innovation and insight.

After the lunch break, we heard from a man who has lived the dream of many of us out there. Leave your safe corporate job, startup a cutting-edge Internet company and sellout to Microsoft for untold millions. Sean Phelan was the man and Multimap.com (which I’m sure we’ve all used hundreds of times) was the company.

Appropriately following Sean was Steve Clayton of Microsoft. This was a real jaw-dropper of a talk as Steve whizzed around through a number of the amazing digital media innovations coming out of Redmond, Cambridge and other points in the Microsoft innovation network. Do yourself a favour and check out Photosynth, Seadragon, Silverlight and LiveMesh. You should also checkout Popfly. Steve’s Popfly demo failed but he did a game job of working around it.

Here’s Ian Forrester’s photo of Sean & Steve at work…

Sean Phelan & Steve Clayton at Thinking Digital

All in all a genuinely awesome day with superb feedback from everybody we’ve been speaking to. Only negative we’ve come across was that people were expecting the bottled water to be free. Sorry about that folks but we’ve got jugs of ice water now available free at every break.

You can see more of Ian Forrester’s great photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/cubicgarden/

Now we’re Thinking!

mark 22/05/08 12:57

Well, half-way through the first conference day and Thinking Digital has got off to a great start!

The first session has focused on the the future of media. Matt Locke has told us about the exciting work he’s doing at Channel 4 in engaging young audiences with educational content. Matt has told us about six ’spaces’ for communication and interaction, and told us about the challenges in working out the etiquettes for communication in these spaces.

Eric Lindstrom showed us some interesting ways video content is now being brought to market using new channels, and reported some great insight from very successful people.

Hot on Eric’s heels, Jeremy Silver focused on the music industry - a great presentation covering how this industry is evolving and the new opportunities in areas such as covering new talent, music consumption, music discovery and music reviewing. I liked the concept of “punter equity” - check it out!

In Session 2, “United we stand”, Darren Thwaites gave a great account of his newspaper’s award winning web sites. The Evening Gazette, has fully embraced “hyper local citizen journalism” with fantastic results: they have even started new print publications, based on content published to their web sites.

Next up, Ian Kennedy from Cisco showed us some of the ways Cisco is helping teams to collaborate in distributed global environments. This included an incredible video of ‘telepresence’: two people apparently on stage together, yet one of the speakers was actually thousands of miles away.

Tara Hunt rounded the session off with a high-energy and passionate account of the “Bar Camp” concept and other innovative collaborative working schemes. This series of global events has seen phenomenal growth over a very short time. Don’t forget the Newcastle Bar Camp event happens this weekend, and Tara’s presentation has sparked a lot of interest!

Some great audience questions and panel discussion have contributed to a fantastic first morning at Thinking Digital! Photographs and more reports to follow later…
�

herb 20/05/08 12:32

Hi All,

24 little hours before things get really interesting.

Our final programme can be found at…

http://www.thinkingdigital.co.uk/programme/

Registration & Logistics Info

herb 20/05/08 06:22

Hi All Conference Speakers, Sponsors, Partners & Thinkers,

Information about registration, directions, travel and accomodation is all available at the link below. Please check it out now…

http://www.thinkingdigital.co.uk/theconference/hints_and_tips.php

lewis 16/05/08 04:57

If you’re sticking around in Newcastle after next week’s conference (or, uh, if you live here), you might want to check out the North East’s first ever BarCamp on 24-25 May.

It’s all free, and there are still a few tickets left for people who want to attend. So get your bummin’ skates on.

The shindig is being organised by Gareth Rushgrove, a big friend of Codeworks (who are organising Thinking Digital – confused yet?), and is backed by BBC Backstage, Hedgehog Lab, Fon.com and ourselves, so please get yourself along.

If you’ve not heard of it before, BarCamp is, in Gareth’s words, “an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It’s an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants.”

Anyone attending the event has to give a demo or session – or at least help with one of them or otherwise contribute in some way to support the event. All presentations are scheduled the day they happen. The people present at the event will select the demos or presentations they want to see.

Visit the site at http://barcamp.org/BarCampNorthEast to find out what’s happening and who else is going.

If you want to register you can do it at http://barcampnortheast.eventwax.com/barcampnortheast/register

If you have questions about the event, or would like to get involved as a sponsor please contact Gareth at gareth@garethrushgrove.com

Shiny, happy people

lewis 14/05/08 05:30

Tara Hunt’s workshop on ‘Happiness as your business model’ is now full. But don’t fret – if you haven’t already booked your conference ticket there are still two workshops you can choose to attend.

A community marketing expert and co-founder of Citizen Agency, Tara trailed in the early registrations but she’s come roaring back to be the first of our pre-conference workshops to completely fill up.

Her workshop struck a chord with CEOs, execs and entrepreneurs looking to improve their products and services to make their customers happier – keeping ahead of the competition in a market of endless choice and competition.

Here’s a bit of blurb about the other workshops (full details here):

1. Poker, business and risk.
Caspar Berry, a successful businessman, as well as professional poker player (and uncredited advisor on the set of Casino Royale), knows how lucrative a flop can prove.
In this workshop he’ll show how businesses can get the most out of their people if they’re allowed to experiment, take risks and explore their world.

2. Entertainment meets the Geek.
Eric Lindstrom and Steve Jelley have spent decades between them working for the likes of Apple, IBM and EA.

In this workshop, the pair will look at how internet video technology is changing not just how video programming is being distributed, but how stories are being created, told and sold.

All workshops are being held at the very lovely BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art. After they finish, you’ll have a coupla hours of free time before the Welcome Party at the BALTIC Riverside Restaurant, so you’ll have ample opportunity to check out the works on display.

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