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ClimateNE & Climate Change Schools Project support the move to a low-carbon, resilient economy and help businesses avoid risk and realise commercial opportunities. Posts by Jen Atkinson, Krista McKinzey and Harriet Thew » The Gateshead Digital Summer kicked off last week with Thinking Digital at The Sage.
500 delegates gathered to hear some of the world's greatest thinkers and innovators speak on topics ranging from social journalism to the next generation of the internet and from how the body responds to sounds to ways to saving energy.
Thinking Digital isn't so much a conference about technology, but is a thought proving event that draws together a community in the North East to explore how technology can be used to improve society.
The eclectic event is the brainchild of Codework's CEO Herb Kim and is now in its third year. Expect the fourth event for 2011 to be announced any day soon.
Here are my highlights from the two-day event.
Next generation web
David Siegel, author of the Power of Pull, reckons that the computer generation has digitised more than 500 Exabytes (500 followed by 20 zeros) of data.
"In five years time we'll have generated more than 20 years that amount. We're building bigger and bigger electronic filing cabinets. We're spending trillions of dollars replicating old systems," said Siegel.
He described how in the next 30 years we'll make a considerable leap in productivity on the internet as a result of the semantic web. Information on the web will be organised so that computers can understand its context and meaning.
Visual story telling
Jer Thorph, software artist and contributing editor to Wired UK described how data could be represented in a visual format. That's the premise behind his Just Landed project.
The application scans the social network Twitter for mentions of "I just landed" or "I just arrived" and adds Longitude and Latitude data.
The Just Landed application uses these data point to plot the flights taken by Twitter users over the course of several hours in highly visual format.
Rethinking green issues
Andy Hobsbawm, founder of Online Magic, the UK's first Internet agency, now part of Agency.com, has a new eco-project called Green Thing.
The Green Thing team is using creative communications to reframe environmental issues for consumers in a bid to bring about behavioural change.
Hobsbawm advocates that communication lies at the core of reframing the issue.
"So often the environment al change is pitched as a form of abstinence. We need to move people from they ought to do, to what they want to do, and inspire them to do the green thing," he said.
Social journalism
Christian Payne is a former freelance photographer turned mobile media maker. He originally turned to social media as an outlet for images from Iraq that he couldn't break into the mainstream media.
"The more experiences I share the more connections I make," he said.
Payne is a prolific content producer and says that his participation in social networks has enabled him to promote his trade, showcase his work and generate interesting work.
Enabling Internet collaboration
Joichi Ito, venture capitalist and CEO, Creative Commons (CC), told the Thinking Digital audience that the next significant challenge for technologists lies in collaboration.
His contention is that it's wrong that legal and licensing costs are now the most significant barrier between third parties seeking to collaborate and reckons CC is the answer.
Ito cited the example of Nine Inch Nails. When it released Ghosts under a CC license it drove amateur remixes and hype that resulted in it becoming the number one paid MP3 download on Amazon in 2008.
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