Russell Davies

Interesting 2025: The Society for Hopeful Technologists

Interesting is only a few weeks away and tickets are almost sold out. So I should probably tell you who the speakers are.

(By the way, can I say how incredible and delightful it is that so many of you bought tickets without knowing anything about who's going to be speaking?)

I'm going to do them one day at a time to maximise the excitement.

So, in no particular order, speaker one is the amazing Rachel Coldicutt. Rachel's topic will be "The Society for Hopeful Technologists" and the talk will be supplemented by a table/stall where Rachel can tell people more. (And this is probably related)

Late style

I keep seeing ads for this thing about Edward Said's On Late Style. It's too clever/literary for me but I like the phrase 'late style'. I like how it creates/frames the opportunity to see the work* of your later years as more than just decaying, irrelevant versions of what you did before.

I've decided to embrace my late style. Not in anything important or significant, obviously, but in what I stick on here and, I dunno, clothes and music choice etc.

*work - meaning 'work'. That nebulous cloud of work and work-like stuff I do that people aren't ever sure about. Is it my job? Does it make money? Why else would you do it? Is it a hobby? Why would that be a hobby? 

Email digest

I've entered the email age. You can now get this blog by email. A weekly compilation of all the posts on here. You have been warned. There's a also a link up in the header.

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Walking football back to happiness

Back in the beforetimes I tried to get some Walking Football going. I absolutely love it.

My version is less about tacking-social-isolation-in-older-men (though, obviously, I am one) and more about playing a gentle version of football with friends of all ages and genders. We used to play on a little 5-a-side pitch in Fitzrovia. Hence the name. Mark did some brilliant designs for me and we built a website though it seems to have disappeared.

Anyway. The spring is coming, it feels like time to try again. And it occurs to me that we could do it even less formally - up the park, as we used to say.

I'm thinking of a basic, informal kick-around. Walking Football rules. (ie no running, no sliding tackles, be careful with other people's knees), Regent's Park, probably, on a Saturday or Sunday morning. I think we need a core of, say, 8 people to get going, so please email me (or DM me, or whatever) and let me know if you're up for it. russell at russelldavies.com

 

 

Bits and bobs relating to presenting on screens

“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.”
― Charlie Chaplin

 

 

The Astronauts Almanac

Richard is a brilliant musician and a thoughtful, imaginative designer of things for media and the web. And now he's combined them in a subscription service which sends you his music in the nicest possible way. Like being in a private correspondence fan club, insights and tunes in your inbox in a lovely way.

WIP WIP

Still speaking of podcasts. Me and Flora are doing one; talking, loosely, about advertising.

It's a minimum viable quality production, powered by the AI editing of Riverside. We're just going to bang out 20 episodes before we look at any stats or worry about anything like having a proper title or introducing ourselves. We're going to learn what we're doing by doing it.

There's a regular podcast feed.

We're also on YouTube:

And Spotify:

We probably need to do something about Apple etc. Ah well, eventually.

The Lilt, my God, the Lilt

Speaking of podcasts, there's a new episode of 4764 out. Have a listen. Only 4 minutes of your life.

The Lost Food of Soho

I was lucky enough to be a talking mouth in this podcast about the Lost Food of Soho. It's an absolutely lovely thing. What a listen. I talk about the New Piccadilly quite a lot and evince sympathies for clearly evil landlords.

Chesham and Argyle

When you read these facts about Chesham, you, clearly, immediately think about the second most famous facts about Plymouth Argyle.

We need some Easterly equivalents to complete the square.