Quick Peeks

Lisa Devaney

There’s a lovely sound here at 2gether08 at the Rochelle School in Shoreditch, it kind of hums along as if a flock of chirping birds just brushed by you, or a swarm of bees hovered by your ear for a bit and whispered gentle secrets that somehow changed your train of thought into a new direction.

This is the sound of ideas, lot's and lot's of buzzing and humming ideas. 

This is a multi-layered gathering, with more than the usual passive absorption of information that inherently happens with a business gathering. I’m calling it the ‘un-conference’ conference and the organizers say it is more like a Festival of Ideas.

Here's PROOF:

oOOo  Thinking about what one day in the life of 2058 would be like

-Upstairs on the rooftop is a workshop that is building London of the year 2058. Creative ideas are flying about with in the London United workshop, and plenty of the thoughts are getting slapped up as post-it notes on a board, added to a free-flowing chart of the brainstorm, in which participants come, go, and come back again to check on progress. Popping in for a quick peek I found:

-That future London would be inhabited by ‘digital natives’ as all people would at that point be fully immersed and comfortable with technology being entwined with their daily lives.

-That professions and careers would be driven more-so by the types of problems existing in the immediate community, and how an individual could solve the issues, by contributing their natural skills. As one participant described it would be that “jobs reflect needs and re driven by solutions.”

-The concept of work-life continued, with painting a picture that job’s would be very focused on re-using materials, skills and re-visiting sustainable concepts from ancient societies. The term use was that people would have re-jobs, and these tasks would be mainly focused on re-building and re-shaping or designing the community around them, rather than tearing things down, and destroying (like raiding the earth’s resources) existing structures and environments.

The beginning of this workshop to define what One Day In The Life of 2058 would be like, offered two paths to choose from --- a Blade Runner-esque, 1984 type of future city, or a utopian vision.

I’m glad that the participants who began the workshop before me picked utopia.

oOOo A Journey into the English Mind 

Philosopher Jullian Baggini offered laser-like insight to the English mind, with insights that the British are:

-Conservative communitarians,

-pattern seekers

-hefted holiday makers…

-And have a binge, purge mentality that is very very deep

My favourite is his analogy that the British are “piled high with all the trimmings! £9.95!” as spotted in a pub’s window.

He also offered this tip for getting into the youthful British mindset, if you can understand heavy slang – by visiting:

Knowhere.co.uk

oOOo Most amusing quick peek of today at 2gether08?

Facebook’s Blake Chandlee, cheekily said to The Guardian’s Jemima Kiss “you’re a digitas” during an interview.

What’s a digitas?

It is curtain up time here at 2gether08, with Mint Digital about to debut their Web 2.0 Musical.

Hoping there is a sing-a-long,

-Lisa