I’m writing this from the comfort of my train as I hurtle south through the English countryside following a memorable and very enjoyable conference, back in my home town of Newcastle Upon Tyne. I’m ashamed to say this was my first attendance at an event that is now celebrating it’s 10th anniversary. I will be sure to return next year!
The content was varied, thought-provoking, informative, very well presented and frequently amusing and inspiring. Think of it as a mini WIRED or TED event and indeed the organiser, Herb, does also run TEDx Newcastle.
The Startup Competition – write-up to follow, honest…
The Main Event (full schedule)
Session 1
Mark Mullen (Atom Bank)
Laetitia Cailleteau (Accenture) – applications for AI
Dan Biddle (Twitter/BBC)
Darren Jobling (ZeroLight) – has branched out from gaming to visualisation for Audi.
Session 2
Sophie Bostock (health)
Dr Anita Sengupta (rocket scientist)
Di Mainstone (art/music)
Tom Scott (future)
Session 3
John Kershaw (beards)
Adrian Westaway (design) – talk about tech not being the end game, the importance of UX etc
Simon Singh (maths)
Session 4
Richard Wiseman (magic and design)
Dr Justin Sanchez (darpa, brains/neural)
Imogen Heap (music)
Jeremy Silver
Chris Turner (rap)
Applications for Finance?
Given that my employer kindly agreed to fund this trip I should make some observations in the context of Financial Services. We heard from Atom Bank. With direct applications for my particular area of banking (Equity Research), we saw a pitch from City Falcon, an interesting disruptor in the FinTech space looking to simplify access to market data (or commentary) and present using intuitive interfaces, such as Amazon Alexa.
More details to follow, I promise…
#TDC17 @ThinkingDigital
16th & 17th May
