middledigit.net | jonathan hopkins

Wow. That’s the way to do it. How to be at a conference but not be at a conference - live broadcasting of 2gether08. More of this please!

Last Saturday in London saw lots of people (including me) head down to Interesting 2008, a truly unique conference (I think just in its second year) ran by Russell Davies.

People like Ged, Roo and Annie Mole have already done some good write-up of the event so as something slightly different, I’ve given each (well nearly, I actually missed loads in my excitement) presentation down to a single word, added a few sneaky ones and ran that through Wordle to create a visual summary of Interesting 2008.

Here are the words, with links to their respective creators or co-creators - Lego. Horses. Authenticity. Generalism. Geography. Music. WOW. Coins. Food. Insomnia. Ukulele. Meditation. Toilets. Alcohol. Hoovers. Animation. Future. Hiraeth. Community. Brains. WW2. Final Countdown. Recorders. Cakes. Tea. Biscuits. Books. Arthur. Um and I forgot Masks, Words, Winston Churchill and Informatics and probably more - it’s all too interesting! Well done everyone for pulling off such a great day packed full of lots of INTERESTING presentations.

A few thoughts I took away from the day.

1 - It all just felt right. Everyone was nice. Nothing was nasty. It was great to have some kids there. Some rough edges. All very real.
2 - Lloyd can really sing. I even saw him run past with a freshly boiled kettle (no lid mind!).
3 - People are up for getting involved in things. People leapt at the chance to play the recorder on stage. At the end everyone packed up rubbish into bin liners, put all the chairs and tables away. Co-created content and all that.
4 - Most conferences are shit. The last one I went to was Internet World. There’s so much that needs to be changed with the old-school conference format.
5 - It was nice not to hear the words “social media’ mentioned all day. The only appearance of Twitter was on someone’s screen as they were setting up. I didn’t Tweet once during the day. (OK I did, before and after, but you know what I mean).
6 - Meeting people offline (or achieving “fleshpoint” as Ian refers to it as) is just the best, especially when you’ve known them for a while online.
7 - Russell Davies is very funny. He tickled me by ending an announcement with ‘now go back to your business’.
8 - Music pretty much rules the whole Earth. It is GLUE.
9 - There’s so much interesting, genuine stuff out there, so why on Earth do some brands insist on creating their own synthetic stuff instead of getting involved with genuinely interesting things that come from somewhere a lot better than a brainstorm.
10 - It’s a bit rubbish when you’re sat at a conference (or in a meeting for that matter) and everyone’s just on their laptops doing something else. There was a noticeable lack of laptops there and instead much more scribbling in notebooks, analogue style.

“To Thine Own Self Be True”

That’s what was written above the stage at the Conway Hall venue and I think that said it all for me. Interesting was basically a coming-out session for geeks and interesting people. That’s why it’s so frickin’ cool and every single person did such a great job. Quite a number of people introduced themselves as geeks and thoughout the day there was a mixture of both proudness and shyness when it came to people opening up and revealing their inner-geekiness. But I think everyone had that in common - be it food, hoovers, music and graphic design, lego or toilets - sharing something you’re so passionate about is always interesting and the best way of connecting with hundreds of other human beings in a room

And finally - here’s an image which I think captures the whole day nicely.

Why? Because someone sitting near me offered me a pack which I though was a really, really nice touch. The whole day was about sharing stuff and it felt so apt that it should be an old school box of Sunmaid Raisins. Something so familiar and nice. Amazing packaging. Free from crap. An icon. Something that evoked so many memories of school lunch boxes and being a kid. Something that I hadn’t had for ages but still love. So thank you Sunmaid Raisin provider. Your little gesture of kindness left me feeling satisfied that Interesting 2008 really was all I hoped it would be and a little bit more.

[Photo Credit ]

Bonus video: Just for the fun of it. Here’s 30 odd people trying to playing recorders (thanks to the Guardian), including Ben who I spent the day with too along with Ged, Will and lots of other people. (captured by Ged on a Flip video recorder thingy)