Thinking Digital

Wednesday 21 May (afternoon only)

Workshop sessions on 'Community Marketing', 'Poker, Business and Risk', and 'The Economics of Media'. Click for more details

Thursday 22 May

Session 1: The Future of Media
One of the things people keep forecasting is how new media technologies will kill old or traditional mediums. Even if new media technologies do not entirely kill the old mediums, they usually have an impact. How is the broadband wired and wireless internet going to impact the old guard? Are we nearly at a "strategic inflection point"?

Session 2: United We Stand
Connection. Co-existence. Company. Corporation. Cooperation. Collaboration. Co-optition. Collective Effort. Community. Communism. The 'network effect' has been with us since the birth of electronic communication. How are people exploiting it today? Are we in danger of being exploited by it tomorrow?

Session 3: Happiness: All in the Mind?
Happiness is actually a very modern obsession. For the vast majority of human history, we’ve been obsessed with mundane things like survival, security, status and acquisition. As more and more of us achieve more than enough success in providing these things for ourselves, our family and friends, we’re finding that this often leads us to a feeling of emptiness. For all that we have and have achieved, shouldn’t we be happier?

Session 4: The Singularity
Noted futurist Ray Kurzweil forecasts that in 2029 we will achieve a point where computer-based intelligence will exceed human intelligence in all its forms. The implications are incredible. Could we see software-based humans within our lifetimes? In a world where changes are being fuelled at a exponential rate by technological advances, we will use this session to peer into a radically different future.

Friday 23 May

Session 5: The Globalised, Flat World - A Challenging Environment?
A discussion on globalisation, global politics and green issues. The last ten years have been pretty interesting. We’ve seen the shift from Thatcherism to New Labour. The 2000 US Presidential Election. 9/11. The Iraq War. The recent shift from Blair to Brown. And the growing awareness of an impending “climate crisis”. Underlying all this, technology has enabled significant structural change to our global economy and environmental education and solutions. Can anyone see where we are heading next in terms of the global economy, politics and the environment?

Session 6: Mobile 2.0
Are we nearly at a “strategic inflection point” where mobile handsets, networks and content are combining to make our phones smarter and our networks a lot more useful? 

Session 7: Unconventional Wisdom
A new breed of writers is helping to challenge traditional ways of viewing the world. Their counterintuitive thinking, new applications of academic theory to the real world and often simple muckraking are changing our interpretations of trends, current events and history.

Session 8: Management & Leadership
Technology, offshoring, an aging workforce, globalisation, increased competition for talent are but a small sample of forces making life ever more difficult for those leading and managing businesses and teams. What enduring insights can be offered on how to deal with these challenges and achieve greatness?

Sign up for conference updates