imran*

Category: Conference

  • Think and a Drink

    Thinkandadrink
    Last Thursday I was invited by Gareth Rushgrove to speak on a panel at Codeworks’ Think and a Drink event in Newcastle.

    Each month Codeworks orients the evening around a theme of interest for the (paying) audience…this month, the focus was on Web 2.0 & Business with a pair of talks from Gareth Rushgrove and BT’s Chief Web Services Architect, Paul Downey. Both talks largely focussed on Web 2.0 in general, rather than a particular focus on business or enterprise – that’s OK, maybe I misunderstood the brief 🙂

    The panel session – which also included Hedgehog Lab‘s Sarat Pediredla – was much more broad ranging, exploring disruptive innovation, startup culture, routes to investment, consumer technology’s impact on the enterprise and the positive impact of that on productivity.

    Some highlights included…

    • Meeting Codeworks’ CEO, Herb Kim for coffee just before the event – Herb has a really interesting background and seems to be making quite an impact with Codeworks’ role as a publicly-funded shepherd of the industry. I’m not sure how Codeworks compares to the MDDA or CSY, but they certainly put bmedi@ and Leeds Media to shame.
    • A cute demo of mojo from Paul Downey.
    • Meeting Sunderland-based Dutch entrepreneur, Dirk Kok of IsMyMusic.com as well as Codeworks’ PR & Comms Manager Lewis Harrison and Aoife Ross.
    • A couple of guys who wanted me to explain how money could be made from social networks and open-source; I explained that I didn’t feel Facebook had longevity and that companies like Amazon, eBay, Google and countless startups are minting money from the utilisation of open source to create new value 🙂

    My general impression is that the North East seems to be where Leeds and Manchester were perhaps in late 2006 and where Sheffield and Liverpool are right now. There’s a lotta energy and optimism but Newcastle’s tech+creative+digital communities are just starting to get a feel for how to find each other and collaborate; I’m pretty sure meetups like Refresh Newcastle, Think & A Drink and the upcoming Thinking Digital conference are only gonna make this a whole lot easier.

    —

    It’s easy to forget that the four other cities of the North are all handily arranged along the M62 and M1, less than an hour’s drive from each other. The North East is maybe physically more distant, but that could help avoid an echo chamber effect and lead to some distinctive digital culture for Newcastle and its neighbours.

    If the M62 corridor can evolve into the North’s Silicon Valley, perhaps the North East will be its Seattle or Portland 🙂

  • Going Solo

    Goingsolobadge150pxsquareStephanie Booth was the first person I met exclusively through Twitter. Steph met my friend Ian at a conference last year, she mentioned her grandmother was from Leeds and Ian suggested we meet next time she came to visit her family from Switzerland.

    As a prolific blogger, and someone with an emotional bond with Leeds, Steph’s someone I’ve tried to stay involved with the city’s burgeoning geek culture. When she told me she had a new venture in mind, I couldn’t help be curious.

    When she explained she was getting into the conference game I offered to help with a little advice and experience from my work on Design+, ETel, eComm and BarCamp Leeds.

    I’m really stoked to see Steph announcing her first conference Going Solo – a one day symposium on freelancing – in Lausanne this coming May. It’s gonna be an insightful and fun day set in a beautiful location with a lotta good advice. Yay Steph! Please bring Going Solo to the UK sometime soon too 🙂

    UPDATE: Steph is speaking at LIFT08 this week.

  • Leeds City Centre Vision Conference 2008

    VisionconfLast Thursday I braved the howling winds and driving rain to attend
    the 2008 edition of the Leeds City Centre Vision Conference, at the invitation of the city’s Chief Economic Services Officer, Paul Stephens.

    Upon entering the main hall, I felt immediately out of place as the only person not wearing a suit – though I found later that the gallery above was full of students exiled from the main floor 🙂

    Badge

    The 300+ delegates were largely made up of the great and the good of the property development sector, local/regional government and large employers…ranging from Harvey Nichols, the BBC, Arup and Balfour Beatty to KPMG, to the universities and a handful of media outlets.

    It’s a shame that the conference was invitation-only – this in a single stroke excluded a diversity of talents and perspectives, leaving the city’s future concentrated in the hands of BigCorp with no representation from grassroots groups, citizens, indeed even elected officials!

    There was perhaps a great opportunity here to unlock the schedule with a parallel unconference, opening the agenda to broader commentary and input as well as surfacing important ideas in an environment that seemed to lack bold thinking.

    Though the roster of speakers included the city’s chief executive, it’s civic architect and also the director of city development, by far the most engaging and thought provoking were those with an internationalist perspective, able to comment on Leeds’ place in the world and its emerging regional and international rivals; the city’s made great progress, but its unguided and lacking vision. Each speaker held great hope for the city but warned of short-termism in planning the built environment…some notable quotes included…

    • ‘look to define outcomes not projects’
    • ‘to date, Leeds has been practicing Urban Dentistry’
    • ‘we need a city park!’
    • ‘we need a tall place to see the city from – like a space needle’
    • ‘more tree-lined streets’
    • ‘be able to rent a bicycle when I arrive at the train station’
    • ‘the city’s full of full-stops, gates, blocked paths’

    Perhaps the most notable discussion was from Wayne Hemingway who (rightly) acknowledged the city’s transformation, but argued that it lacked ambition, vision, an attention to detail (iconic pavements, not towers!) and the guidance of the city’s creative class, noting the absence of an organisation such as the South Coast Design Forum. Hemingway’s talk raised some eyebrows, but I felt it carried the necessary boldness to shake the delegates up a little…

    WaynehemingwayI wasn’t able to stick around for the workshops in the afternoon, but I’ve a feeling they weren’t particularly inspiring or productive. Prior to the event I offered to articulate a vision of Leeds as part of a Silicon Valley style hub of startups, coworking and creative+tech culture…just one possible vision to encourage debate; not a solution, just a scenario. I didn’t get a single response.

    I hope some of the day’s material will be shared online – particularly speaker presentations, delegate profiles and (if they exist) videos of the day’s talks. It’s too important a discussion to remain behind closed doors.

    One very encouraging sign was a brief chat with Paul Stephens – he felt the initial event had to cater to large organisations but was very keen to move onto a broader base of representation; my suggestions of an unconference track, discussions on municipal broadband and helping some of the Civic Architect – John Thorpe – work find a way online as a kind of ‘digital civic map room’ enabling citizens to direct the city’s futures.

    All in, my expectations were low, but the conference was thought provoking and holds some promise to start some interesting discussions 🙂

  • ETel & eComm 2008

    Etel2008We first started talking about an O’Reilly telephony-themed conference around the time of Foo Camp 2005. A few months later we successfully pulled off ETel 2006, one of the most critically well received tech conferences in the O’Reilly portfolio, followed just over a year later by ETel 2007.

    Each edition created a space for communities that would ordinarily never encounter each other; the big telcos and network players of the telco sector and the hackers and entrepreneurs at the bleeding edge of human communication. Both communities found that they had some common purpose and mechanisms for working together.

    I learned a lot from being part of the advisory board for both editions of ETel and it was an immense honour to be listed as an O’Reilly writer, at the ETel blog, joining some of my industry heroes 🙂

    Personally, I made some lifelong friends following the first ETel – Aaron, Rich, Sheldon –  people with whom I have a lot in common, who’ve inspired me to think bigger and just plain some of the smartest people I know. Coupled with the usual cohort of FT+Orange+Wanadoo people – Norman, Ian, Ian, Sunil, Surj, and Jon, each edition was pleasure to work on 🙂

    The 2008 edition was due to be co-hosted with ETech, in San Diego, giving us the opportunity to reach a bigger audience and potentially infect ETech with some of the enthusiasm of ETech delegates. Sadly, O’Reilly were unable to continue supporting the ETel community and the conference was canceled.

    Ecomm2008

    Many of us felt the unique conversation between these two key communities needed to continue and also move beyond telephony into ‘communication’ in all its forms – social media, telephony, ethnographics, TV and mobility. Thanks to Lee Dryburgh, probably the most energetic of ETel’s programme advisors, ETel will be reborn as EComm, Emerging Communications 2008, next Spring in Mountain View at the Computer History Museum.

    Several days ago I accepted Lee’s invitation to join the advisory board for eComm. Over the next few months I’ll be helping round up speakers and contributors on the themes of human connectedness, open hardware, the future of TV and a bunch of interesting, random developments…

     

     

  • We Made A BarCamp!

    Barcampleeds
    Wow. We did it. We made a BarCamp!

    We’ve been pinching ourselves that we pulled it off in just 28 days – sponsors, ticketing, food and venues. But that’s only half the story, in the end it was you guys – the BarCampers – that made everything work.

    We wondered if people would show, if people would present. You didn’t disappoint. The board filled up within minutes; one-third presenters, two-thirds audience. We had a couple technical hitches and the drinks never came, but no one complained, everyone ignored the hiccups and just had a great time.

    So in the afterglow of Leeds’ first unconference, we thought we’d share a few interesting facts from the day…

    Barmaps
    They’re not just numbers, but the metrics and the datapoints that show that the North is a place for technology and creativity. We had people from as far as Dundee and Brighton, but the greatest concentration came from Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield and the North East; right along the M62 corridor, home to 15m Brits, a quarter of our country. Could we make this Supercity the next Highway 101…the Pennine Parallel?

    Interestingly, the maps to the right show that visitors to the BarCamp Leeds site, were concentrated in London and the M62 corridor, but the attendees map clearly shows that no one from London bothered to show up…the lazy bastards.

    We think we can, and the next few months will see more of OpenCoffee, GeekUp, BarCamps and Geek Dinners. You can follow news of the North’s digital culture on the forthcoming .north. Hopefully those of you that were disappointed on the waiting list will be able to grab tickets next timearound. In the meantime, here’s a little of what people have been saying about this weekend…

    Everyone’s blogging…

    What happens next?
    We’re already thinking about BarCamp Leeds {2008}, perhaps in the Spring, but we want to make sure you all can be a part of it again, so we need your help, your ideas, your suggestions and </coughs> your money!

    • Can we keep your email details to keep you informed about future events?         
    • What do you think went well? What should we make sure we keep doing at the next BarCamp? How would you like to see the format, venue, networking, side events and sessions work?
    • What could we do better next time? (apart from making sure the after party drinks arrive at the right time!).
    • If you’re one of the few people who got a ticket but didn’t attend – why not? What put you off at the last minute?

    You guys made BarCamp Leeds {2007} work, so we’re counting on your help, your ideas and your guidance to put together an even better BarCamp for 2008!

    Lastly, we’d like to put a shout out to people like Linda Broughton of nti and Leeds Met, Katherine & Johnathan of Kooji Creative, Richard Hamer of Blue Sky PR, Mohsin Ali‘s 300+ photos, Yuuguu’s Phil Hemstead, Rockstar Games, Stewart Townsend from Sun, Ian Green at Green Communications, Plusnet‘s Dean Sadler, Stickyeyes, Apple and Adobe for all contributing their time and resources to make BarCamp possible for the rest of us. And of course, to all of you.

    See you all in the Spring.

    Deb, Dom, Imran & Tom 🙂

    UPDATE:

    • In the iPhone prize draw, we found some irregularities in voting for best presentation…though we rectified this by running a live query on screen for the BarCampers, the husband of one of the organisers won! So much for transparency…
    • I only made it to several full sessions – Ben Dalton’s Paleo-futures, Mark Sailes’ TV3, Valerie de Leonibus’ Civic Regeneration and Ian Green’s co-creation…however, sessions are just a means to meet people and I had a blast hanging around the corridors and spaces just chatting 🙂
    • I got to meet Keith Mcmahon of Telebusilis and Telco2, Ikechukwu Nzeribe and his Doodol concept, Vagueware’s Paul Robinson, Paul Bacchus from the University of Leeds and Ross Brown, with whom I had a great chat about the flailing regeneration projects in Bradford 🙁
    • My old friend Ian Hay re-ran a new version of our Web2Expo Berlin talk.
    • For anyone interested, you can download the Google Analytics report on barcampleeds.com here.
    • Some of the staff asked us to polaroid BarCampers as they checked in – this turned into a cute networking wall throughout the course of the day.
    • Though the linkup with BarCamp Ottowa didn’t go to plan, Peter Childs and i started talking about organising some stand alone DemoCamp events for early 2008.

  • From Cellphone To Computer

    Two broken teeth, a missing passport, a closed airline route, two delayed flights, several sleepless nights and a set of wonky video-chat tests later, our Web 2.0 Expo Berlin talk – From Cellphone To Computer – finally made it to the stage on Wednesday afternoon; here’s the final presentation…

    Rather than speaking about a singularly staggering new insight into mobility, we chose to take the audience on a whistlestop tour of all the things we’re finding interesting in the mobile space right now…from ethnography and UI innovations, to open platforms and open source hardware…essentially a playlist of the stuff we’d lined up for ETel 2008!

    Ian tells me the session went well, with 30-40 people attending and handful of questions (including one from a Nokian). We also picked up some votes on the official feedback page and quite a few downloads from the presentation’s Slideshare post.

    Coincidentally, Tim O’Reilly mentioned yesterday that he thought one of the most significant trends he’s observing is the evolution of cellphones into computers. Well done Ian 🙂

  • BarCamp Leeds {2007}

    Leeds_colours
    It’s ON! After month’s of speculation, logo contests, false starts and calendar battleship across Upcoming and the official wiki – BarCamp Leeds is set for Saturday 17th November!

    With only 24 days before the event we decided to go for a single day BarCamp this time around…if things go well, we’re planning a full weekend BarCamp in Spring 2008.

    Already, we have 56 confirmed attendees and a couple sponsors, including Leeds Met and nti Leeds, who’ll be providing the fantastic, newly refurbished Old Broadcasting House as our venue; OBH is an incredible facility, bridging it’s BBC past with it’s current role as a hub for innovation in the region. Very soon, they’ll be launching the UK’s largest coworking facility.

    Public_space
    Some of the proposed sessions include a workshop on 3D printing (yes, we’ll have one there), augmented reality UIs, mobile technology trends, Drupal, games design, co-creation, PR in the digital age, an SEO clinic, entrepreneurial talks from  the founders of BT Bizbox, Plusnet and eDocr.

    Barcamp_ottawa_homepage
    We’re also planning to run podcasts, a prize draw and link up live with BarCamp Ottowa for some shared sessions and will likely have pair of sign language interpreters thanks to a pair of hard-of-hearing attendees efforts 🙂

    We’ll shortly be launching a sponsors pack to help cover the costs of lunch, snacks, schwag and prizes, so if you’d like to help out financially and gain some publicity for your startup, blog or other organisation, please drop me an email.

    To find out more…

    Please feel free to contact my fellow organisers – Tom Scott, Dom Hodgson, GeekUp’s Deb Bassett and myself – with any ideas, queries and sponsor inquiries you have.

    Spread the word and see you on 17th!

  • Web 2.0 Expo Berlin

    Web2expo_2
    Ian Hay and I have been invited by  O’Reilly’s Brady Forrest to run a session on mobile trends at Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin next month. Strangely, neither one of us can remember writing this abstract…

    —

    From a Mobile Telephone to a Computer – a Reality Dysfunction

    The
    mobile phone is becoming more advanced, but should it? This talk is
    going to take a look at the reality of carrying a personal computer in
    your pocket. Some of the trends that will be examined:

    • Smart vs
      simple       – the buzz of iPhone/N95 vs. huge sales of low end handsets,
      perhaps it has to with cameras hitting 10MP with flash, auto focus,
      etc., storage hitting 8GB, GPS, UMTS/GPRS/HSUPA/Wifi and a net result
      of no battery life
    • HMI (human mobile interaction) – as these
      devices become mobile personal computers the UI is (still) hugely
      flawed. Sure it can do anything, but only if you have time to click
      thirteen dialog boxes
    • Development Platforms – there is a lot of
      work going on to provide abstraction layers from the device hardware
      (DirectX for phones) to allow easier development, at the same time
      operators are looking to bundle up apps into containers to simplify
      certification process.

    Still, sounds pretty good dontchya think? Maybe we’ll jsut stick with it! Problem is my passport has vanished and I’m not sure I can get a replacement in time to book a cheap flight and rooms for 7th Nov…that and I don’t wanna get my brown ass renditioned to Guantanamo ‘cos I’m ‘traveling freely in the EU‘.

    So tomorrow we’re gonna figure out if it’ll be possible for me to iChat/Skype into the session; unfortunately, iChat always makes me look like I just woke up!

    UPDATE: Turns out I dropped my passport somewhere on the campus at Sheffield Hallam an someone kindly mailed it back this morning….unfortunately, as I reported the loss already, I still have to apply for a new passport 🙁

  • Towards a Social Science of Web 2.0

    Web2conf
    The emergence of web culture continues in the North of England with next week’s inaugural Towards a Social Science of Web 2.0 conference, hosted by the University of York and focusing largely on the emerging culture around social media and its implications for the social sciences.

    MIT’s Web Science Research Initiative,
    augmented by the participation of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, is also seeking
    to stake out a number of new disciplines in this emerging field, so
    it’s great to see some alternatives to the WSRI already springing up.

    The 2-day event has been organised by a cross section of the
    university’s social informatics, sociology and communications
    departments. The conference programme includes the controversial Andrew Keen (author of The Cult of the Amateur) and BBC Backstage’s Ian Forrester.

    Curiously, sessions on Flickr, Facebook etc. don’t include
    representatives of those services. this may provide a useful
    alternative perspective to the proceedings…alternatively, perhaps the
    University simply couldn’t attract the necessary heavyweights or wished
    to keep an academic focus to the event.

    Nevertheless, I’m looking
    forward to seeing where the conference may lead and welcome its
    emergence right here in the UK 🙂 You can find out more at the conference blog and on the conference’s Upcoming listing.

    { reproduced from O’Reilly GMT }

  • Future Of Web Apps Expo

    Fowabadge
    Wow – it’s come around quicker than I expected. Ryan Carson’s Future of Web Apps returns to London in October, along with a brand-new expo event.

    Carson’s VP of Sales, Andrew Calvo has told me he’s offering startups a discount on the basic exhibit package, reducing the
    standard rate of £ 2195 + VAT to under £ 1000…this gets you a 3m x 3m booth with connectivity and power. Andrew also has a limited number of free booths, so be quick – I’m talking to you Northern startups {afeeda, meecard, kodefoo, Expectnation, Pipe Ten, T3D, Yuuguu}. Get down there and grab those free spots!

    By all accounts, everyone I know who attended the inaugural FOWA earlier this year, came away impressed…I’m still disappointed there’s a definite US-bias to the speaker line up, but it’s a pretty good one nonetheless.

    We’d love to be previewing Believr and mee:view at FOWA…but the world will have to wait a little longer 😉

    UPDATE: I had a bit of a grouse about the lack of a Northern UK stop for the FOWA Road Trip, but I just got a surprise Facebook invitation for a newly added Manchester stop…well done Ryan! 🙂