Member Article

Digital thinkers light up North East

Some of the sharpest minds from the worlds of technology, media, mobile, culture and science were on hand to impress an audience of 400 delegates in the North East recently.

The Thinking Digital conference, which took place at the Sage Gateshead on 21-23 May, featured a line-up of speakers which included a biologist who believes we can actually cure the ageing process, and one of the world’s leading inventors.

Highlights of the event, which was organised by digital innovation centre, Codeworks, included the first UK demo of Microsoft’s Live Mesh technology, leading digital artist Jonathan Harris, and Dan Lyons, a satirical blogger known as the ‘Fake Steve Jobs’.

Ray Kurzweil, described as ‘the ultimate thinking machine’ by Forbes magazine, spoke about the technological advances expected over the next few years, including massive increases in human lifespan. Ray spoke at the conference from his office in the US via a state-of-the-art ‘Teleportec’ teleconferencing system.

Herb Kim, CEO of organisers Codeworks, said: “We’re delighted that the conference proved such a huge success. For the past week we’ve had dozens of emails and phone calls coming in from delegates and speakers saying how much they enjoyed the event.

“Things look very promising already for next year’s event. We firmly believe Thinking Digital is an event that could put North East England well and truly on the map.”

Anyone who missed the event can catch the highlights on a special edition of Sky News’s ‘Technofile’ technology programme. Check it out at http://tinyurl.com/4abmw9.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .