Russell Davies

more interesting follow-up

(picture: georgeoux)

It seems like ages ago doesn't it? Things to mention: there's now a Flickr pool. Daniel Wier's done a round-up. Toby's put his talk on slideshare and Tuur's are here. Anab's talk about Superpowers she grew up with is here. (More importantly her Power of 8 show is now on - you've got to go). Robert/Dizzy talks about his RJDJ demo here, and links to Paul's recording of the RJDJ demo, recorded with RJDJ.

I think that's it for Interesting talk follow-up for now. I think.

But I also wanted to say thanks to the businesses that helped us out. We're lucky enough that we don't really need sponsors to make interesting happen, so I don't have to do all that scrounging around that most conferences require. Which is nice for me. But, every year someone decides they'd like to get involved anyway, which is brilliant of them. Imagination have been hugely kind in the past.

And this year INQ (probably with some nudging from Charly) volunteered some money for anything we might need. They didn't ask for anything particular in return, a mention on the stage and on here, which is more than fair.

I asked Charly, and she said this is what they'd like you to know about them:

They're the social mobile company.
They sell phones which make it easier to stay in touch with people on the move, Facebook, Twitter and Skype are all embedded right at the heart of the phone's development.
They make phones which are cheap and fantastic.
The new phone, chat has just launched in Singapore, and here's what one lovely lady said about them.

And I'd add that any business that sees the value in supporting something as vague and ill-defined as Interesting has to be worth further investigation. So thanks to INQ.

And, similar appreciative noises go to Henry Goode for supplying the licorice. Lovely.

interesting running order

Let's face it, I've probably missed someone off the list again. But hopefully not. Anyway, here's a rough running list. I think I've accommodated everyone's desire to talk at the same time as everyone else. But if you feel you're in the wrong place please let me know.

interesting / south / do

We have a Do winner! Natasja Giezen will be going along to the Do Lectures as the winner of the Interesting ticket.

And, in other Interesting news, Interesting South is on again, on the 20th. I was going to big them up to promote tickets, but I think they're all sold out.

Hurrah and congratulations all round.

an incomplete list of interesting speakers

NB: Picture shows a list of speakers from a previous year. Do not confuse this with the list of speakers from this year.

I thought I should tell you who's actually speaking at Interesting, since that's the point of the thing. So here's an incomplete list.

It's incomplete because there are a few people still to be confirmed. And, because I have this nagging feeling that I've asked some people to speak and then forgotten about them. Argh. So if I've asked you to talk and not emailed you recently, please will you get in touch and remind me.

I'm particularly excited because I've not actually ever met many of these people, so it'll be a voyage of discovery for us all.

Anyway, here, in no particular order are who we're got coming so far:

Tom Loosemore will be talking about "the race to be the first craft to sail faster than 50 knots. I will cover brilliant British boffins, chippy-but-dogged Aussies & fat cheating Frenchmen.  There will be science." (I hope he meant me to quote that.)

Cait Hurley is going to talk about Stan Laurel's Dad. Simple as that. Brilliant.

Toby Barnes has not decided what he's going to talk about, but I've told him it can't be about games. Or about Playful.

Naomi Alderman tells us that she will "probably talk about 'how to make cheese', but possibly something else so you can leave me vague if you like."

Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino is going to do "5 minutes of paper." Elliptical yet fascinating.

I've asked Richard Reynolds to talk every year so far, and finally he's able to come. He'll do "a slide show on the growing world of guerrilla gardening."

Andy Huntington : "It's probably going to be the design of musical instruments and more likely than that is going to be a brief history of the piano."

Tim Duckett has thoughtfully written up his essay plan here. Basically, he's going to teach us all how to do Morse Code.

Katy Lindemann is going to talk about robots. You cannot argue with that.

I think Jess Greenwood is going to talk about sport. Perhaps "what's interesting about certain sports if you hate the actual game play."

Robert Brook is going to do "Honourable Gentlemen: practices and roles in history and today. What a gentleman was, what being a gentleman might be today, rules of gentlemanly conduct and so on."

Emma Marsland's talk will be entitled "Ponies I Have Loved; Both Real and Imagined." Genius.

Alice Taylor has said she's up for talking. Don't know what about yet. It'll be good though. And I think she might be the third member of her WoW guild to talk at Interesting. (UPDATE: Alice is, in fact, the fifth member of said guild. I don't know why that pleases me, but it does.)

Claire Margetts is going to hot foot to us from the Do lectures, and she will talk about them and how it all went.

Matt Ward said this: "I'm thinking about calling it "August was an Interesting Month", it'll chart my journey towards the event and the production and discovery of interesting things - an odyssey of interestingness. It'll help me define what i think is interesting, but it'll also force me to do new things, trying new things out, search for meaning. What do you think?"  I quote it all because I think that sounds excellent.

Denise Wilton also hasn't decided what to do yet. But it's bound to be good.

Jessica Bigarel's talk is going to be called "Meta meta data data."

Craig Smith is going to talk about his Dad: "He's an interesting bloke. He renovates waterwheels. He's Vice-president of Huddersfield Rucksack Club. He Scottish Dances."

Meg Pickard's going to do something about "the social rituals of drinking".

Alby Reid's talk will be called "Everything You Know About Nuclear Power is Wrong". And he knows what he's talking about because he's a physics teacher.

Dominic Tinley says he's going to talk "about colour, the exact topics and contents to be worked out over the next few week." I like the way he's nailed that down. Bound to be good though isn't it? You can't go wrong with colour.

Tom Fishburne's going to do "Everything I needed to know about innovation, I learned by drawing cartoons."

Jon Gisby's going to "teach people how to conduct a symphony orchestra. I'll also try and cram in a complete history of classical music into the same time slot."

Dan Germain says "Don’t know what I’ll talk about yet, but it will not reference the world of delicious fruit drinks in any way."

Hopefully Tuur Van Balen is going to do some bio-hacking of some sort. Precisely what will depend on the limits of science and responsibility.

MIke Migurski has not revealed what he's going to talk about yet, but it better not be maps. (I'm joking, I'm joking.)

Asi Sharabi's talk is going to be called Interesting Children. Intriguing.

David Smith is going to talk about teaching; what it's like to teach teenagers these days. I'm looking forward to that.

Matthew Curtis has not thought of what he's going to talk about yet.

Paul Hammond has said he might do something about Personal Metrics, but he might not. Fair enough.

Josie Fraser will give us "1970s UK girls comics, particularly the hilarious role psychological violence played in the genre."

That all seems good doesn't it? Many thanks to everyone for agreeing to talk. I hope you like the sound of it. I hadn't looked at all these names in one place before, I think it's rather exciting.

More names and topics to follow.

Do / Interesting Pt 2

I mentioned back here the idea of selling an extra 50 tickets for Interesting in order to support the Do lectures. And we've done that. But I then realised that there's no way of doing a proper raffle-type draw and making it exciting via the medium of enbloggenication. So I've been putting it off.

But then it's also dawned on me that I should do it soon because Do is less than a month away and the lucky winner might need to prepare themselves.

So, here's the plan.

I will devise a fair way of selecting the winner - probably using Arthur to shout 'now' at some random point as I scroll though all the order confirmation emails from eventbrite. It seems pointlessly wasteful to print them all out and put them in a hat or something. You'll just have to trust be that I'm being fair.

I'll email the lucky winner and make sure they can go / want to go etc. It's a pretty special prize, but it's also not for everyone, so if you win but don't get the sense you'd enjoy it perhaps you'd be good enough to let me know and we'll move to the next person.

When we have a confirmed winner, and if they're happy for their name to be announced, we'll announce it.

Hope that makes sense. We'll do the draw this evening. Watch your inbox!

(See, that's just not exciting is it? Ah well)

interesting beverage protocols

We don't provide a lot of fanciness at Interesting. No lunch. No small food on sticks. But we do have a tea urn and some tea, milk etc. And, in the past, kind sponsors have been kind enough to provide paper cups for us. However, by the end of the day, we always end up with a soggy pile of dirty and decaying paper cups, which is bad for a number of reasons. This year, therefore, could we suggest, if you'd like a cuppa while you're there, you bring your own mug along. Or perhaps a flask and cocktail glasses.

If you don't have a mug you can acquire excellent ones (as above) here.

interesting ticketing protocols

Dear Everyone Who Was Kind Enough to Buy an Interesting Ticket

You will have had an email from eventbrite with the above text in it. It's quite near the bottom, not in large letters, so you can be forgiven for not noticing it. But please take a moment and notice it. You will not be receiving any form of printed ticket from me. Just the print out, that's all you need. Bring that along to the event entrance.

Bless you for your cooperation in this matter.

Just so you know.

last lot

The Final 50 Interesting tickets will be on sale at 11am on Friday the 17th of July.

third100

Right, let's have the third lot of Interesting tickets on sale in the evening. It'll give people without internet access at work a chance. So 100 more tickets will be on sale at 9pm (BST) on Wednesday the 8th of July. After that there'll just be another 50 to go. I'm sorry they're selling out so quickly but I can't think of a better way to manage it.

tickets etc

This is reminder that the first tickets for Interesting 2009 will go on sale on Wednesday 17th. Watch here, and/or follow the @interesting twitter account for news and details. And don't forget about the unpicnic. Or do forget. It's your choice obviously.

Also, dConstruct tickets go on sale on June 22nd and will probably go quickly. So, well, you know.