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The Thinking Digital Conference - 21st - 23rd May

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I've been meaning to blog about this conference for bloody ages, everytime I go to do it. I remember I'm still offline most of the time. Anyway hopefully this blog post will attract a few last minute choosers and attract more people to the several days of events.

So when I first heard about the thinking digital conference I was in a innovation lab in the north west. Herb Kim of codeworks was saying a bit about codeworks supporting BBC innovation labs and then at the end he did a sneaky pitch about the singularity and it all ended on a slide for a conference he was planning. When I spoke to Herb afterwards, he explained how he had gone to TED in the states last year and wanted to run something like TED in the UK. Those words I have heard else where but when he talked about some of the speakers he had at the time, I was much more convinced this could be closer that anything else I've been to before (i've never been to TED and I've only watched Pop!Tech streamed). So anyway I wanted to help make this a reality and part of that was telling people about the conference, recording it and sponsoring a couple of the events surrounding the event. So we came to conclusion which fit both parties.

So not only is there the conference which may seem quite high cost but actually isn't for the amazing array of speakers from across the world and ideaophere (yeah I just made that up) but its in Newcastle/Gateshead so the hotel prices are not stupidly priced and hell its good to get out of London sometimes people. Lets be honest, its only 3 hours on the train from Kings Cross and that train has plugs in every seat and free wireless unlike the bloody Virgin train which has 2 power sockets per table and no wireless at all. But another reason to go up to the conference is that on the Friday is there will be a geekdinner sponsored by Backstage.bbc.co.uk and then BarCampNorthEast on the Saturday and Sunday. The very first 2 day overnight stay barcamp in the North of England so far. This is a great chance to experience barcamp as it could/should be. I know quite a few Londonerners are traveling up for the whole thing, conference, geekdinner and barcamp, so thats great. But why haven't you signed up? Do you really have something better to do? Didn't think so.

There are still some tickets left over for the conference. Look at these great names.

• Greg Dyke , former Director General of the BBC.
  I came in when Greg decided to leave. It was a shame because I heard so much about him afterwards and I would have liked to have worked under him.
• Doug Richard , formerly of The Dragons' Den on BBC2 and founder of Library House
  I've spoken Doug before but not at length and I've not heard speak for a while now. So it would be good to see wheres he at now
• Ray Kurzweil, noted futurist & author of The Singularity is Near
  Do I need to say anything about Ray?
• The Fake Steve Jobs aka Dan Lyons, senior editor of Forbes Magazine & author of Options.
  I'm interested why a journalist would do this and whats been the outcome of this since. I also think this will be a session I would like Sarah over at reading the cluetrain to maybe hear.
• Steve Clayton, Microsoft Partner Group, UK CTO
  Self confessed geek in disguise, this guy is a good guy making waves in Microsoft.
• Tara Hunt, founder of Citizen Agency, San Francisco.
  Tara is simply awesome, every time I hear her talk she fill my mind with so many things that I had only briefly thought about. I also like to think of Tara as a friend so it will be good to catch up. I also know she'll be at the barcamp, which is great news.
Posted by ianforrester at Fri, 16 May 2008 02:29

Feedback (3) blogging it? digging it? googling it?

Computer science has an image problem

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John White, CEO and executive director of the computing trade group, says fewer students are studying computer science in college , and too many tech jobs are going unfilled, because young people don't have an accurate picture of the computer scientist.

Hummm, I wonder why? Could it be anything to do with stuff like this?

Geek Stereotypes

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I was reading wired on the plane to Dublin today and came across a rather amusing piece about different types of geeks. It had a range of geek stereotypes including the Fanboy (1), the gadget guy (4), the gamer (3) and the hacker (5). What was interesting was the other two, the music geek (2) and the otaku (6). These two are usually forgotten when it comes to geek types, and it was interesting to see Wired magazine made them women.

When I was Futuresonic over the weekend, I certainly met quite a few women who could be loosly termed as Otaku geeks. They even had the super coloured hair and well interesting clothing to go with it. But what I wonder is where is the Dj geek? Designer geek? Movie geek? Mobile phone geek? (which I would argue, isn't the same as gadget guy). Anyway, its all stereotypes and not real. We're all a combination and we all wear better clothes and don't look like we just left college. Embrace your geekness...

Sorry all, I'm mainly offline due to my move to Manchester

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If there wasn't so much unpacking to do, I'd be climbing the walls of the flat. I hope to be back online and blogging as usual by May. Also if you've sent me a email in the last few weeks, please be aware that I currently have 237 emails which are not spam or mailing lists type stuff. 1519 which are mailing lists and project updates. I will try and through them all, but its going to take some time - please bear with me.

Social games with Moby from O2

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I like the idea of 02's new competition/big summer party but why did they make it so damm complex? Wouldn't it be simpler to just have the winner and all his/her friends up to a maximum of 1000 or something? Anyway judge for yourself, rachel has the low down on the whole thing.

The prize is a little complicated. Despite claiming in the introductory copy that the party is for you and 1500 friends, you actually only win a party for 100 people in the VIP section, where you get fed and watered and get a chance to meet Moby. The winner has to choose those 100 people they want to invite. The runner up gets to invite 4 people. But everyone else on the winning guest list gets a chance to get a ticket. - everyone gets an ‘invite’ and the first 1500 who reply get in. (for those keeping count, we’re up to 1605 now). Although on a different page it says only 1400 - the copy is not consistent through out, so no idea exactly how many.

the week before... Over the Air

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Yep its only one week till Over the Air and the whole team is working all hours possible to nail everything down and make sure the event is top notch. Seriously the event is going to be great, but we're trying to make it even more special that great. We've over come some major barriers to make this event happen and I'm sure theres even more to come when you all start opening your laptops and trying to connect at the same time. Were confident the network (3g and Wifi) will be stable enough to take 400 people hitting it at the same time, but the space we have is going to be pretty tight. Hence we had to put a maximum limit on tickets and yes all the tickets are now gone.

This logestical nightmare of guiding people around the maze which is imperial college also requires added help, and we're still looking for runners to help with over the air. We're still also looking for people who have signed up and want to help, obviously helpers will het a little gift for there help and can choose the hours they want to work, while the runners will be paid to be there 12 hours at a time and have no real choice about jobs they get allocated to. Email me if helper or runner is something your interested in (please, only people on the list can be helpers now).

Theres a lot more to come from over the air including details about the competition, maps, etc. So please keep an eye on the site and expect a email to everyone who signed up really soon. Also don't forget to sign up to the backnetwork which you should have got an invite to if you signed up successfully. Also if you don't think you will make over the air, please for sake of everyone just ping us a email, so someone else can take your spot. We have quite a few people waiting in the reserved queue for dropouts. We do want in as many people as possible but safety first of course.

The world's 50 most powerful blogs - who cares?

[ Socially Offline ] | Tags: popularity  popular  rant  guardian  blogs  blogosphere 

I was talking to Sarah our friendly PR woman the other day about all this stuff to do with iPlayer, when I spotted a print out titled The world's 50 most powerful blogs. I launched into a rant about how full of crap these lists are. Just like the Technorati top 100, etc. the Blogosphere has finally grown up and dropped the need for such lists, but mainstream media still thrive on this type of stuff. I mean what the hell does powerful really mean anyway? Are we talking power in numbers of people, reach, hits, advertising revenue, influence or what? Its stupid and we're better off without these popularity contests. I mean how can you compare Engadget to Boingboing? There very different just like the huge long tail of the blogosphere (yes I hate the term too). Its all about personal preference and we're fools if we forget this. Subscribe to what you like, not whats popular. Rant over...

BarCampManchesterUK

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So I went to BarCampManchesterUK yesterday, it was good but very different from what I'd had expected. The venue (Manchester evening news?) was good except the cooling systems were broken so each room became hotter and hotter during the day. On the last session, I stuck in Werewolf because it was obvious we weren't going to play it otherwise and we found another space to play in just above reception because I knew the rooms were far too uncomfitable to play in. In total there were 4 actual rooms and a couple of spaces to sit and chat. This was good because, people started milling around and chatting later in the day, and there was a clear distance from the rooms.

The sessions were quite web developer/design led through-out the day, I started the day off at a talk about voice on the web which I wasn't totally sure of, my thoughts were confirmed when the presenters mac died twice while trying to make a call home using a google gadget. He did in the end get it working but even then it didn't work as expected. The next session I did about Data Portability which I was really suprised very few people had heard about (yep more work needed to spread the word it would seem). I used pretty much the same slides as Thursday. What was suprising was the talk after mine which was about the same subject but from a different persepective. The guy was trying to hack into facebook and social networking sites his own content from his own server. We had quite a discussion about the fact he was doing something in between the truly decentralised social networks and the data portability group aims of getting the main players to play nicely with users data. I might have come across quite negative that session but I did say he should maybe put his efforts into one or the other. Anyway we had a chat afterwards and everythings cool. The other noteworthy session was the northpack session. They seem to be a a group of three guys who are all about promoting the north of england. They had built a web application to pull in rss feeds and upcoming events and display them for all to see (I guess Feedjack or Planet could do the same). It was good and something we in London have been talking about for years but never actually done. So anyway I started asking them if they had thought about allowing the rest of the country to use their web application? But i think that got turned into a debate about the south north divide.

Anyway, I thought we got everything sorted till at the after party at this great place called Ra!n (very apt because its been raining since I got to Manchester) when a woman called Jennifer slightly drunk, tells me exactly what she thinks of the south and the BBCs move to Manchester. Unfortueally, I never got a real chance to respond because she slipped and fell (not my doing) and we called her a cab to go home.

So BarCampManchester was good and I met lots of good people and if the rooms were not so hot, it was run over 2 days and wifi actually worked it would have be great. I was however a little ruffled about the real strong tension about the south.

Technorati Tags: barcampmanchesteruk, barcamp, barcampmanchester, thenorth, northpack, manchester

Look out Manchester...

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...I'm coming your way this weekend.

Technorati Tags: manchester, city

If I had more time, I would play lost

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Yes Lost season 4 has started but I'm not talking about the great TV series with the same name. Instead lost.eu, is a game which requires the players to promote the game by recruiting more people into the game. This is very pyramid selling style but being the core part of the game makes this very cool. If I wasn't doing something in this area, I would be playing along. Maybe you should instead...

Technorati Tags: arg, unfiction, lost.eu, lost, game, play, viral

Whats happened to the London Geekdinners?

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Well the site went down a few months ago and it never came back up. Why? Well the geekdinner site was hosted by one person and the domain owned by someone else. This has always been a issue but I had never got round to moving the whole thing to my own server simply because of time and I blog using Blojsom not Wordpress. Anyway, it turns out that the server the wordpress install was sitting on was not owned by one person, instead it was owned by a 3rd person. I'm trying to get the archives from that person but its taking very long (if you knew who he was you'd know why).

In the meantime I've been very busy with many things and wanted to get some help running geekdinners. So Cristiano and Mel have offered and to their credit started planning events. This is great news because the dutch couple are really passionate about it and will inject some more life into it. This also means we can spend more time setting up a mailing list and other things which I had talked about in the past.

So what events?
Well the first one is Werewolf which hasn't been played since the Backstage Christmas party in 2007. If you've never played werewolf before, this is a great time to learn it. Its not a board game and its only slightly geeky. In actual fact its more about social engineering and trickery that anything else. The game can accomodate between 6-26 people, so feel free to bring your friends along, it costs nothing and it takes place in a pub anyway. So you have no excuses!

Pause for breath on Wednesday, then we have the 2nd geekdinner for 2008 on the Thursday. This time the guest is Dr. Richard Clayton from the University of Cambridge. He's going to talk about Evil ways to make money on the Internet. I'm saying no more, but it promises to be pretty awesome. This will cost 5 pounds for food which is a bargin for good food while enjoying the talk. Hope to see you all there.

Technorati Tags: geekdinners, londongeekdinners, hosting, geekdinner

Conferences and Festivals you should be aware of

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So there are a stupid amount of conferences and festivals in the UK this half of 2008. Usually conference season is not till the 3rd quarter but someone forgot to mention this to us brits. This is a quick run down and expect more details on certain events as and when they come up. I've stopped at June for now but theres more to come.

Technorati Tags: events, conferences, barcamp, festivals

London or Manchester? Wasn't this technology meant to make geography irrelevant?

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So I've been considering moving to Manchester (Salford) for a while. For those who don't know, the BBC is moving a good part of its workforce and operation to the Salford area. Most of it will be up and running by 2012 but my department is moving up earlier. So there's some serious benefits to moving up earlier including cheaper housing and more choice about where to live. The idea of MediaCity:UK hub is nice but these types of projects can go ether way. The new BBC Scotland offices at Pacific Quay is actually really nice, but some people I have spoke to don't like the location or building. Some people have already moved up to Manchester but the question that plagues me is, should I leave the amazing city of London for Manchester? What would you guys do?

Why does it matter where I work, when most of my job involves online presence? And would you believe it or not a future tense podcast got me thinking...

Why technology has not trumped geography

MP3

Economist Tim Harford argues against the notion that computers, the Internet, cell phones and other technology have made or will make geography any less relevant.

In his new book The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World, Harford argues that in some ways, where you work and live is more important than ever, thanks to the technology that was supposed to make the whole concept of place irrelevant.

I guess this is consistent with what Richard Florida and Paul Graham have been saying for years too. A long time ago I believed we could work remotlely and do meeting via im and video conferencing. I tried it and it didn't work, even for someone like myself. Hence social events are huge and there's little better that chatting to people face to face over a drink or a meal. Now I'm starting to rethink my thoughts about setting up hotspots of creativity in the middle of nowhere. Is setting up shop in the middle of Salford going to really pull the creative people? Or are we going to get a office of pension watchers? Who knows?

Technorati Tags: technology, futuretense, podcast, london, manchester, salford, bbc, place, location, geography

PlugLondon

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So PlugLondon a event run Christian of Yahoo's Developer Network, kicked off yesterday. It was a good event and I hope it will carry on through next year. I'm going to start calling it the Minibar for Developers, as its a simular format but more developer focused. I think throught-out the time we had about 10+ presentations and some time for chatter between. I did wish at some points people would be a little quieter but generally people would float off to the back of the great skype offices for a natter.

So to improve the event I would move the presentations to a set area maybe away from the entrance and kicthen. Then allow that area to be setup for adhoc networking or natterings. It might also be worth timing the presentations as some did go on for a while. I did love the idea of people saying who they were even near the end of the event. This meant even people who were really late could still feel part of the overall crowd. Having it on a Saturday was interesting but I don't know if thats a good or bad thing for people. I was thinking I could do some shopping then go the event. But it didn't happen, instead we ended up going to the Bricklayers Arms (I don't get why people love that pub but its so popular with developers) and after that going to a restaurant with Dave Sifry of Technorati. So in actual fact, the whole Saturday afternoon and evening was used up at the event and the stuff which followed. I did suggest to Chrisitan that it should be a Friday night instead. Chrisitan is talking about moving the event around different offices in the future, so that would be very cool, specially if it grows over time.

thoughts on BarCampLondon3

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So finally I got around to fixing the metadata on my Flickr photos which I've uploaded from BarCampLondon3. Please note I tried to take a picture of every single person during the introductions and 3 tags. This time I got a good selection of everyone.

Anyway how did things go? Well from my point of view - great! Without a douht it was the best BarCamp i've arranged or ever been to. Not only that but it was one of the best weekends I've ever had in my life. the whole event became a geek wonderland. After filling our skulls with ideas and inspiration it was on to a great dinner supplied fresh from the Google on site chef.

And lets just pause on that. Saturday morning a nice decent lunch. People were already impressed with the large fridges stocked with drinks and ice creams. Then for dinner a full thanksgiving meal complete with veg and vegan options, just perfect for the last weekend in November. Google's chef wanted to do a live BBQ on the tereace of the 5th floor office but it was a little cold for a real BBQ.

If things couldn't get any better they did. At midnight a chocolate fountain with marshmellows and strawberries plus freshly made crepes (pancakes). I mean check out the pictures of the hour of pure sugar.


Breakfast and lunch on Sunday were also great but how can you beat such a great midnight feast?

So the food and drinks were spot on. The Google offices are great lots of character and lots of well equipt rooms. For BarCampLondon we had a good selection of rooms and even some rooms without projectors. We thought we might try that out this time and I did see some sessions in them during the weekend.

One thing we should have done is added a couple more rooms, as that would have eased the conjestion in some rooms. However I didn't want to spread the people too thinly by opening to many rooms and it would have caused Google even more problems with security. Can I also say how brave Google were, having people wondering past working peoples desks. But wow you really got a feel of what it might be like to work in such a dynamic place.

What sessions did I go to? (thanks Jeremy keith again for doing the microformats transformed version).
Saturday

• Caja and OpenSocial.
• BBC programmes API: a first look.
• Messaging scales
• Build your lifestream with Yahoo Pipes
• Take your camera out of auto.
• Geeky Kids

• TV tubes - automating your TV downloads.
• Hacking people.
• 101 uses for Twitter.
• The desktop is not dead.
• Using puzzles, stories and ARGs in brand marketing and the perils therein.
• Talking about the future of BarCamps and the past of some volunteer-run events.
• Data portability.

more to come...

BarCampLondon3 this weekend

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So its the weekend of the 3rd London BarCamp. This one is going to be very special because its hosted by the do no evil Google and arranged as part of BBC Backstage. Its weird because I've hardly mentioned it but have been thinking about it alot. Partly because I said a long time ago I would stop arranging them and let others take over once other BarCamps started cropping up in the UK. So I've gone back on that and decided that once there are regular overnight stay barcamps in the UK such as BarCampBrighton (good work guys).

There's been a lot of talk about the BarCampLondon Tickets once again. So let me clear up what happened. We released the tickets in 4 waves over a 2 weeks period. I counted the time from when they were open till the last of that round of tickets was gone. And I can report back that the first round announced over twitter went in 9mins (28 tickets, glad Eventwax can handle load and concurrent connections correctly). The 2nd wave we sent a email out to the Google Open source jam crowd the day before and the next day the 25 tickets lasted 13hours! On the 3rd wave another email went out to the Girl Geekdinners list the day before and the next day the tickets lasted only 1 hour 3 mins. The 4th and last wave no one was told till I twittered when there were 5 tickets left. Those tickets lasted 9hours. So in total all the tickets went in less that 24 hours and thats with just a couple of twitters and emails. Almost 500 people follow me on twitter and I expect that will drop after this post, because if you want to get the tickets you need to do more that just follow me on twitter.

The Reserved list idea was my idea to stop people emailing me asking for spare tickets. And its partly done the trick. Unfortually theres been little drop out (a total of 6 so far believe it or not). I have had some good and bad emails including one which was threating (which I'm not sure was a joke or not, so I deleted it).The reserve list is serving its purpose because we're able to make changes to right up to the last few days.

So the 3rd BarCampLondon is going to be something special, Google really have a great office and they have stamped there unique personality over it. From the 4th Floor to the 6th Floor its as bright and colourful as you'd imagine Google would be. But whats extra impressive is the extras Google and the BBC have planned. That's all I'm going to say for now. Its going to be amazing and trust me the best so far.

See you lucky ticket holders this weekend, the rest of you I'll hopefully see you at the Christmas party?

Mike Butcher at the November Minibar

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Click To Play

One of the highlights of Minibar this time around was Mike Butcher's rant about the industry, startups and a bunch of other things. It contains a lot of swearing and to be honest Mike had already had a drink already. I also went out to dinner with Mike and others later which was great fun.

London Games Festival 2007

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If your in London, the next few weeks is blocked solid with events and exhibitions for the London Games Festival. Just a quick scan down the schedule is enough to start marking down your calendar. What I love is the mix of Fringe and official events, there's stuff for everyone. From Parties like the GLAM Academy Party (Games, Life, and Media) to the Women in Games Mixer social. Looking at my own Calendar, there is something of interest every single day for the next 10 days, including next week Monday (29th Oct) a great event involving live large screen wii gaming from Geekdinner.co.uk, certainly one not be missed I would say (but I would say that). I think this video gives people the idea of what fun it can be...