Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

Ten years of techlun.ch

February 21, 2017

Astonishingly, today marks the tenth anniversary of this blog. I don’t post very often these days, partly as I only work part-time and also, perhaps, a sign of the times as so many of us are paying more attention to Facebook and Twitter. But, back in the day, there was a post a week, covering all sorts of technical stuff whipped in with some jokey items on the state of the ‘business lunch’ in modern times.

Looking back through the blog it is remarkable not only to see what sorts of technical debates were in the air, but also what a record there is of what I was up to in the years when I was running Intelligent Content Ltd and handling futurology for JISC. As I read through the old posts, events I had all but forgotten came back to me: Leeds University’s computer jubilee event (with free, hexadecimal beer), interviewing Richard Stallman, Oxford’s Open Source and XML workshops, Nottingham’s Festival of Words, and the EU’s ICT event in Lyon (there’ll be no more of that I guess for us Brits).

On the technical front, ten years ago it was Second Life (Reuters were advertising for a journalist to report from inside the virtual world that everyone was talking about), the sustainability of open source software, Microsoft launching a coffee table with a screen, XML, and 3-D web searching.

And of course Web 2.0. This is was being discussed everywhere in early 2007. Time magazine had just put a mirror on its front page and announced that their Person of the Year was ‘You’, the reader, acting together through the new forms of social media.

One of the first posts concerned the formal launch of a report I wrote for JISC on the subject. This proved to be a spectacular success, and to date has had over 100,000 downloads and 1,900 citations. It also led on to me being commissioned to write a book, “Web 2.0 and Beyond” – still available from all good bookshops as they say.

What will be the big techie story in ten years’ time? The increasing impact of AI and robotics on work I suspect, but who can say, ten years is a very, very long time in technology.

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Social Media for authors

March 9, 2016

I spent the afternoon at the University of Nottingham’s Horizon centre helping a researcher on the CREATe project explore how authors use social media.

This was a fascinating workshop with lots of discussion of the pitfalls and problems of using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the rest when you are writer trying to reach an audience. Issues up for debate included privacy, keeping work and social stuff separated, dealing with unwanted comments and postings, how to stream different types of updates and coping with the perpetual beta.

Oh, and how to get any writing done when there is social media available.

And, fans of this blog will be pleased to know, there was a decent lunch. It’s been a long time since I had a free lunch.

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Nottingham Festival of Words

September 16, 2014

FestivalLogoNottingham’s Festival of Words, which I spoke at last year, returns to the city in October. Full details of the line-up, which includes Will Self and Jon McGregor, and tickets can be found at: http://www.nottwords.org.uk/