Next week sees the opening of the second edition of eComm, taking place in Burlingame, just outside San Francisco.
Like the 2008 edition – and its two predecessor conferences of the O'Reilly ETel franchise – I've been part of the advisory board, roping in interesting speakers and contributors working at the intersection of telecoms and social media – in design, human factors, hardware hacking and mobile.
Sadly, this year I won't be attending (I'll be on vacation in New York), but I've gifted my own pass to PhoneFromHere's Tim Panton and gave away complimentary pass to local geek Jonathan Powell, to raise money at the recent Leeds Twestival.
There'll certainly be a 2010 edition – and I'm hoping next year I'll be able to add to the platform again 🙂
I've had a great, warm relationship with O'Reilly Media over the last half decade or so, hanging out at various ETech and Foo Camp events, striking up friendships with their people, helping plan both ETel conferences and contributing to Web2Expo Europe. Tim O'Reilly and I recently spoke about his background and it turns out his mother is from my hometown of Bradford, a place of which he has a lotta fond childhood memories. Indeed, Tim recorded a special message for us back in November…
With that in mind, it's a total pleasure to bring my favourite tech/media luminaries to my adopted hometown of Leeds for their first Ignite evening in the UK, a rapid-fire succession of lightning talks, pioneered by Brady Forrest in Seattle. Ignite organiser Craig Smith, of O'Reilly UK, was keen to hold the first O'Reilly-sponsored Ignite in the North of England, bringing together people from around the M62 corridor and the North East. Craig's originally from Huddersfield and along with Tim's heritage, has helped to locate the event in the heritage of O'Reilly's own people as well as celebrating the region's emerging grassroots tech scene.
We're expecting around a hundred attendees – from London, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield and Newcastle – and have scheduled eighteen talks in two blocks throughout the evening. We're really proud of the quality of speakers and their submissions – it really wouldn't be possible without their efforts. We have speakers from local startups, international charities, venture capital firms, national broadcasters, academia and healthcare. Wow…and wow!
As well as a great mix of cultural, creative and technological sessions, there'll be opportunities to hang out, socialise and also appreciate the work of some local artists (just before we open up)…here's the schedule for the evening:
19:00 Katie Lips: Bringing Social to Coffee on iPhone
19:05 Jeff Allen : IT in Africa 19:10 Tim Panton: Don't forget voice! Telephony hacks for web 2.0 hackers 19:15 Michael Sparks: Embracing concurrency for fun, utility & simpler code 19:20 Dean Vipond: Perfection in design
19:25 Alexandra Dechamps-Sonsino: Could hardware hacking save us? 19:30 Ian Pringle: No News Is Good News 19:35 Dominic Hodgson: The Future of search 19:40 Ed French: Funding for technology startups
19:45 Break & refreshments
20:05 Tom Scott: My Life In Twenty Graphs 20:10 Stuart Childs, Richard Garside, Dave Lynch: FriiSpray Digital Grafitti with IR tracking 20:15 Katie Brown: Recovery 2.0 – Digital Inclusion & developing social models of recovery in practice
20:20 Arturo Servin: Practical Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning 20:25 Glen Smith: Mass customisation and the one-to-one future 20:30 Guy Dickinson: The Future Of Reading 20:35 Philip Hemsted: Psycho teams and theory of mind
20:40 James Boardwell: James Boardwell: From patterns to patterns! 20:45 Ian Forrester: Tweethookup
20:50 Wrap Up 21:00 Close
Ignite will also be a great example of where Leeds' coworking community is flourishing, particularly the residents of our venue at Old Broadcasting House. Kensei Media will be providing a live HD webcast of the event with True Media filming each presentation for later publication online. So if you can't make it on Thursday, we'll have everything available online within a few days 🙂
