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.