Author Archives: david coxon

Thinking Digital 2009 videos now available.

I think we all know by now, what a great job the Codeworks team do with the Thinking Digital Conference, bringing some of the greatest speakers in the field of technology to Newcasle|Gateshead once a year . The conference continues to grow as one of the leading conference of its kind and getting an out standing reputation both locally and globally. Unfortunately not everyone can manage to get to the conference, either because they simply can’t aford it, or because of other commitments, but Codeworks believe that this content is just too good to miss, so they have made the talks freely available online, not quite the same as attending in person, but unmissable all the same… Continue reading

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Another milestone for Supermondays

This month’s Supermondays was a bit special, not only because it was in one of the beautiful old University buildings, or because it marked the 1st birthday, but because Supermondays founders Ross and Alex, announced that Supermondays is to become a CIC (Community Interest Company). What this means is that they will be able to apply for funding to make events bigger and better and to help ensure its survival. Continue reading

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TEDxNorth

TEDxNorth was the latest in a growing number of high quality events to come to the region., and one man more than any other has been behind this trend, but how would Herb Kim’s latest project measure up to the reputation of the mighty TED. I booked my ticket on the strength of that reputation alone, and i for one was not disappointed.
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A bit of a Microsoft thing

I’m not sure if this is something that I should be saying out loud (or if any of my design friends will ever talk to be again if i do), but i really quite like windows 7, so much in fact I went along to a Vbug (at Newcastle Uni) last week to meet the Microsoft team and learn a bit talk about desktop optimization and windows 7.
Jonathon Noble told me about Vbug a while ago, but i this was the first time i’d managed to get along to one, and i have to say i had a great night… Continue reading

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Friday fun.

This isn’t particularly relevant to the blog, but its kind of fun and it is a friday, so I thought i’d share it anyway.

I just love the simplicity of this little flash app, its not really much use for anything constructive, but I like the way that the different colours represent different sounds and the way that you can layer the sounds on top of each other. Continue reading

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Presenting at tuesday’s Supermonday

Its official Supermonday has been going for a year now, and i’ve been fortunate enough to get along to many of those events, where i’ve met some really interesting people and learned loads of cool stuff.

I was especially pleased to get the opportunity to mark the event, by filling one of the speaker slots at last months at the event at the Side Gallery.

I have presented in a while, so i have to admit that i while i was a little nervous at first, altough that soon passed and I thouroughly enjoyed doing a talk on project managing the development of the BALTIC online shop. Continue reading

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Not only is it not on a monday, it’s not even in August!

Not satisfied with a change of day, August’s Supermonday isn’t even in August, and to top it all there’s a venue change as well.

Over the past few months, I’ve been really impressed with Supermondays. We’ve seen some great speakers, talking very knowledgeably about fascinating subjects, engaging audience in gripping debates and demonstrating remarkable technology.

So inspired infact, that i’ve put my name down as a speaker for this months event. Continue reading

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Digital North East Stratergy

Last week James Burke, put a post entitled “Digital North East – a regional #digitalbritain strategy for the digital sector” on his blog. The post concerned a draft copy of a development strategy, laying out plans for expanding the North East digital sector and stimulate the regions economy through digital technologies.
While I applaud the idea of a digital strategy, and believe it to be a great start, it is very basic and need a great deal of work to reach its full potential. I also think that it need far greater input from the digital and business communities. Continue reading

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Interactive video

There have been a view interesting interactive video projects kicking around recently, including some pretty cools stuff from quicktv and clickthrough, but to me the technology from Yellow Bird is by far the most interesting thing I’ve seen for a while. Continue reading

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Kicking around the concept of sharding

I was really enjoyed tonight’s (27th july) Supermonday session, the session was split into just one speaker session, followed by a group discussion.

The speaker was John Colquhaun, a research assistant and graduate of computer science from newcastle uni that has been working on a some software to help doctors communicate risk to patients with cardio-vascular problems. This involved fistly calculating risks based on some existing equaltions, integrating this into patient records, then expressing the result in smiley faces.
The second half of the evening was the bit that i actually enjoyed the most, a group discussion, based the question “Do we need to encrypt our data or should we just shard it and scatter it to the four corners of the world? ” Continue reading

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