Russell Davies

interesting craft

James 'Lemons' Boardwell is one of the most interesting people I've had the privilege to meet in the last year. He's one of those strategy people who's not content with thinking, he seems to be constantly doing. And one of the things he's doing is creating folksy. You should sign up, I think it's going to be rather special. And you're going to hear more about folksy at Interesting2007.

But, the reason for me telling you all of this is that James is going to be taking charge of a craft stall at Interesting, selling all sorts of marvelous and miscellaneous stuff. And if you're going to come, you can sell your stuff there too. As long as it's stuff you've made yourself and not something you got off the back of a lorry. Anyway, James is in charge so get in touch with him if you've got something you'd like to offer on the craft stall. His email is get at folksy.co.uk.

twitter question (technical)

Since we're going wifi-free for interesting I thought I'd create a twitter account for the thing so we can have some digital back channel for those that want it. (Though we're also working on some less digital back channels which might be more fun.)

Anyway, I can see how we can all add interesting as a friend and get updates that way, but how do we do that thing they did at macworld where anyone could precede their tweet with 'macworld' and everyone subscribed would get that? Is that something twitter need to set up or am I just being dense? That's more than possible. I just spent an hour installing new printer drivers when the damn thing just wasn't plugged in.

interesting miscellania

It's less than a month to go now and some realities are beginning to dawn on us. Logistical and economic. So here are some things you might want to know.

We're not going to have wifi at the conference. It was going to end up costing almost £2k for the day and didn't seem worth it. I also did a quick twoll last night and not many people seemed bothered. There's a Starbucks round the corner if anyone desperately needs to get online.

I do have to say though, huge thanks to Steve and Roy at Policy Unplugged who put a lot of effort into investigating wifi possibilities, who sorted out all sorts of technical stuff and came with us to talk to the venue about it. Very, very decent of them.

Second, if you want an official Interesting2007 t-shirt you're going to have to send one to Ben and The Design Conspiracy.  We were looking into getting some that you can buy  (and Howies generously offered some of theirs) but it's going to be too much hassle organising it all. Plus, I like the purity and exclusivity of only doing them the Design Conspiracy way. As of now, they've only had 4 t-shirts sent to them, so they might end up being very exclusive indeed.

Third, people are starting to write about what they're going to talk about, which is getting very intriguing. If you can be arsed, could you tag those things interesting2007? that way we can chop everything into a lovely content soup one day and do something clever with it. (Same if you're taking any pictures)

Fourth, various people have emailed me to ask why they haven't received tickets yet. You won't be getting any physical tickets from us. You should have had an email from eventbrite telling you that. You just need to print out that email and bring it along. If you're really sure you've not had that email (and you've checked twice) let me know and we'll see what's gone wrong.

Finally (for now), we're not going to be providing lunch for everyone. I presume you weren't expecting lunch for £20. We'll have tea and coffee etc, and a little surprise in the afternoon but no big lunch. There's a splendid cafe in Red Lion Square you could go to, there's pubs all around and of course, you could bring your own. We might have a prize for the best flask and hamper set.

interesting sounds

Here's a chance for all of you to start getting involved with Interesting2007, due to the generosity of Simon and Curtis James. Simon and Curtis run a couple of really interesting sound-related companies - audemos and simonsound. (They do fantastic stuff but my absolute favourite thing is the Sleeping Steam Machines project which you can find if you go here).

They're going to be recording stuff at the conference, not just all the talks but talking to people, collecting ambient sound, all sorts of stuff and they're going to make a sound montage of the event afterwards which I'm really looking forward to. More details on all of that later, but this is the bit where you come in:

Simon and Curtis are also going to make an audio identity for the conference, something we can use on the podcasts and video and stuff, and maybe play at the beginning of the conference. But in the spirit of what The Design Conspiracy have done with the visual identity they don't just want to create something new, they want to build it out of stuff you send in.

So we want you to send us sounds. You can email them to me as digital files, or you can call this skypein number and leave them on the voicemail there - +44 (0)20 7871 1267. You can send anything you like. Anything you think is interesting. You can just say 'interesting' into the voicemail, you can  tell us what you think is interesting, you can record yourself practising the tuba. But the more interesting you make it, the more interesting it'll be.

Does that make sense? I hope so. Please get your contributions in.

interesting speakers

This is quite a daunting moment for me. This is where I find out whether my definition of interesting matches with yours. I think some people were expecting a conference about digital marketing or something. But as you'll see, Interesting2007 is not going to be that. If anyone wants a refund just let me know, and that's fine, I believe Eventbrite is fully able to cope. And I hope someone will take your place.

I should also point out that this is not a definitive list of speakers. Partly because I've not finished rounding up speakers yet, partly because not everyone's got back to me with a rough idea of title and partly because I'm convinced that I've asked some people to speak and then forgotten to email them again. So if you think I've asked you to speak and then not followed-up then a) please let me know and b) I'm sorry.

Anyway, here, in alphabetical order are the speakers thus far lined up and confirmed for the conference.

And could I say that I'm massively grateful to everyone that's agreed to speak at this thing. I think it's going to completely bloody fascinating. And, hopefully, after you see the list of stuff you'll agree.

These are the people doing the shorter things - 3-5 minutes. (And in some cases verging on 10). A high level of technical difficulty but often the most rewarding bits.

Adrian Gunn Wilson will talk about how to split a log with an axe. (He warns us that this will include gory pictures.)

Andrew Hovells - will give us a talk entitled - 'Doing something well (or I'm useless at football so I swim)'.

Diego Rodriguez is going to talk about Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness. (I can't quite believe he's coming all the way over for this, but he says he is, so I'm very chuffed about that.)

Emma Holloway - will talk about 'Ideal Homes? Designing the British Mobile Home'.

Matthew d'Ancona will talk about 'something like: From Citizen Kane to YouTube.'

Phil Gyford will talk about 'something to do with acting'.

Seb Palmer is going to talk about how the world looks to a skateboarder.

Sophie Dollar - will talk about a haphephobic French fruit painter. With a couple of slides.

Tim Milne - is going to talk about the magic of printing.

Tom Lewis Reynier will talk about knots.

Tommi Brem will give a 3 minute talk currently entitled: 'People have no trouble imagining infinity. They have trouble imagining finiteness.' Though he promises a shorter title in due course.

These are the people doing the longer things; 15-20 minutes, so a bit of room for them to stretch out but you're still comfortable in the knowledge that if they're not doing it for you, you're never more than 20 minutes away from something else.

Anne Ward will talk about something like 'how the web is reclaiming niceness.'

Chris Heathcote will be speaking and cooking about EBCB for the 21st century, and probably launching forkbot.

Dave Funkypancake will show photos and talk about something probably including various bollards.

Deborah Khan will give us 'why do we listen?'

Fiona Romeo will talk about the museum visitor as performer, based on her experiences putting together The Science Of Spying at the Science Museum.

Grant McCracken hasn't decided what to talk about yet, but I'm hoping to persuade him to tell us of his experiences going on Oprah.

Jack Schulze is planning to talk about comics and pictures that know they're being looked at.

Jennifer Lyon Bell will talk about 'what makes a sex film sexy' using her own experience as an erotic director. She may be accompanied by Jeffre Jackson.

Matt Jones will be talking about 'The Vernacular of the Spectacular': a wünderkammerkaze ride round the (possible) future(s) of bits, cities, rocks, robots and shoes.

Rebecca Northam is going to talk about Ibsen or The Muppets, or possibly both.

Richard Wilson is going to talk about how TV gets made, and show us a rather splendid personal project. But since he's got the first show of a new programme going out the next day, he might not make it.

Tom Armitage is going to talk about pipes and tubes. He might use this to talk about the joy of infrastructure at large. He is finding it hard to resist calling this talk "A Series of Tubes", but he's just about holding up.

And that's the list so far. As you'll see it's a lot to pack in, and I might have to delicate conversations with a few people about shaving off some minutes, but I think we can make it all work.

I have more people to prevail upon, to persuade them to contribute. We will also have musical and video guests. And some small-scale fun surprises. More announcements on all that to come.

(I'm going to add this list to the wiki and will update it as people get added, come up with a better title or decide to chicken out. And I'll post significant updates here. Check out the attendees page, by the way, there are going to be some dead interesting people in the audience too. If you're coming, why not add yourself to the list?)

I'm staggered and delighted that 300 of you bought tickets without the first clue about who's going to speak at this thing. So I really hope this list excites you. It excites me and I'm going to love listening to all these people. I hope you feel the same.

ticket news

UPDATE: I'm sorry, we're sold out again.

100 extra tickets are on sale now. Still £20. These tickets are known as Die-Hards. Speaker details will be this time next week. Sorry if that seems to be the wrong order. Refunds will be available if you don't like the line-up but I'm sure you will. Sponsors are being incredibly generous and I'll have more details on that soon too.

I've also put a wiki at interesting2007.pbwiki.com. The password is interesting. There's not much there yet but this will be the central repository for everything you'll need to know about things like Lunch (bring your own) and Name Badges (there'll be no name badges). All the useful details will be there. But, in the meantime, if you're coming and you'd like to add yourself to the attendee list it might be a good way to let others know you'll be there, arrange meeting-up, lifts etc.

Ben and TDC are also doing more things I don't understand with the logo.

conference and coffee news

We went to have a proper look at the Conway Hall this morning. Some students from St Martin's were in there and had the place looking rather village hall-y, which is exactly the vibe I think we'll be aiming for.

 

I particularly like the bunting. Does anyone have any bunting?

We also decided that we could make room for another 100 people, so we'll be putting more tickets on sale. BUT NOT YET. To try and make it fairer we'll let that news sink in for a bit and post an announcement about the extra tickets on Monday. That OK?

In other conference news Lloyd has been wondering whether we'd print the Interesting2007 logo on an adult romper suit and the answer is a resounding yes. So we're all looking forward to seeing Lloyd on the day. So far The Design Conspiracy has only got one t-shirt for printing (so they're going to make it rather deluxe), don't forget to send your own if you want one.

We were also wondering if some of you know yourselves well enough to know that you won't be arsed to send a t-shirt in and would like us to order some and make them for you. Comment below if you'd be willing to pay for a specially manufactured Interesting2007 t-shirt. Not sure how much yet.

More conference news next week; ticket sales, some confirmed speakers and exciting sponsorship achievements and opportunities.

In Coffee Morning news - there is one at The Breakfast Club on Friday. I won't be able to stay very long because I have to go and earn a living, but it doesn't really need me any more anyway. Maybe see you there.

uke?

I have a quick question to ask Interesting2007 attendees. But once I've asked it I want you all to forget about it, because it'll spoil the surprise.

Does anyone play the ukulele?

If so please comment below, or email me. (russell at russelldavies.com). Now, everyone, forget I ever mentioned it. Just carry on. Nothing to see here.

interesting identity

Ben and the folks at The Design Conspiracy have done some lovely thinking about the identity for Interesting2007. That, up there, is the logotype they've done. It's splendid, but that's probably the least interesting thing about it all. It's what they're talking about doing with it that I like.

They've got all kinds of ingenious solutions for getting event t-shirts done, and goodie bags and all sorts. And a way for everyone to participate in making the thing come to life. All the details are on Ben's blog. If you want a t-shirt, you have to go to Ben's blog and see how it's going to work. It's rather clever.

(SLIGHT UPDATE: Mark's raised a very good point. You don't have to be coming to the conference to get a t-shirt, if you want one just follow the instructions on Ben's blog and you can have one.)

There will also be other ways for other people who want to do design and stuff to get involved but I'll put the details about that up when I get back from hols week after next.

Many thanks to The Design Conspiracy, Official Platinum Design Partners of Interesting2007. (I haven't told them I'm making up a Sponsorship structure with Platinum at the bottom, I'm thinking it'll go Platinum, Grande, XR3i, Leet.)

By the way, if, perchance, you want to write about the conference, if you tag it interesting2007 we can start the work of hoovering everything up into one great stream of stuff.

act now to avoid needing to act later

We had a little meeting about Interesting2007 today (I'll explain about the 'we' in a subsequent post) and decided that we should limit attendance to 200. That means the room will feel full but not crowded and I'd rather do something good for 200 than average for 300.

And, as of 11pm on Thursday March 29th we've sold 182 tickets, so, if you want to come, you might need to get a move on.

UPDATE: Really sorry. We're sold out for now. We'll look at how we can add tickets. Email me or comment below and I'll let you know if/how/when we do that. (russell at russelldavies.com)

The thing we're worrying about now is finding some really good AV folk and someone who's a projector/laptop/DVD/mac/windows/where's-your-dongle magician. We're going to be juggling lots of presentation formats (including, I hope, nothing, and some people with actual likely-to-be-amusingly-upside-down slides) and we're going to be getting people on and off really quickly. So I need to find someone really good.

We're planning to avoid all that fakery you usually get with some big conference logo screen serenely masking the changing laptops behind the scenes. I figure we might as well throw it all up there, and make 'detect displays' part of the show. We'll be breaking the fourth conference wall. It'll be epic presenting.

Anyway. Anyone got any suggestions of great AV folk? And get your tickets now, while stocks last.