McFilter

Interesting 2009

I've been trying to do far too much this summer, and so when the tickets for Interesting 2009 were selling out, repeatedly, I was too busy worrying about more pressing matters and so resigned myself to missing yet another of Russell's famed conferences.

In the week running up to the conference I was lamenting the fact that I wasn't going to Tim D as he tweeted his preparations for trying to teach all the attendees morse code. It turns out he had a spare ticket, my schedule was freeing up (slightly), and there was a Nokia/Tinker.it launch event I'd been invited to in London on the Sunday too... at the last minute, I'd snagged the opportunity to attend.

I am so glad I made it down.

The Interesting conferences are run on a simple premise: talk about something interesting, but it can't be what you do for a living. Which results in all sorts of quirky, informative and delightful presentations. Each slot is only five or ten minutes, and there are almost too many to cram in, which gives the event an energy and sense of purpose. The bunting strung across the hall and introductory audience participatory singing of "The Final Countdown" helped too.

Bubblino came along with me, and so I ended up on stage briefly at one point to introduce him and explain what he did. As ever, he seems to have won a new clutch of fans.

During the talk about Sir Francis Galton, I tweeted:

"New life goal: become interesting enough for someone to give a talk about me at @interesting 2109"

because I realised that having someone give a talk about your life or work at Interesting is the perfect level of achievement: you're not encumbered with the trappings of being a celebrity, but you've obviously done enough interesting things, or led an interseting enough life that you are remembered.

However, John was quick to bring me back to earth with this tweet of what's more likely to happen:

"@amcewen "While Bubblino was very famous in the 21st century very little is known of his creator, ... " ;-)"

Anyway, at the risk of generating too much competition for me to get a ticket next year, you MUST go to the next Interesting conference.

Russell has some links here, Roo Reynolds has a full list of the talks, there's a slightly more detailed run-down from Daniel Weir and there's some Bubblino love from Anjali.

Tags: interesting2009 bubblino