TEDxLeeds

Leeds Digital Festival was a series of events aimed at showcasing some of the most interesting digital talents and projects in the city. There were 'pillar' events like TEDxLeeds, The Business of Digital and The DADI Awards, and many more events such as Leeds Hack, The Musicians Social Media Surgery and The Web Changes Everything. 

The first event I attended was TEDxLeeds. This is an independently organised TED event. One of the main organisers of this is a good friend of mine: Imran Ali (more to come on Imran next week!) The event was well attended (almost 200 people I think) and featured a range of speakers. The aim of a TED event is to share interesting ideas and this event certainly delivered on that front. 

We heard about a number of different 'mapping' projects and ideas. Megan Smith spoke about her journey from Canada to Leeds and the things she mapped along the way. The points of relevance during her youth on a map of Ottawa was really interesting to see and made me think about how my own personal map may look. Megan also spoke about her project in Leeds: Our City, Our Music, which started as a way for her to get to know the city better. 

Following on from this Julian Tait from Future Everything spoke about 'emotional mapping' technology. This could be something really interesting for the future. It reminded me of the Wayne Hemingway speech in which he spoke about the journey from Leeds train station and the sights and sounds that greet someone for the first time in the city. Where would our high emotional points be?

Susan Williamson from Temple Works spoke next and was very entertaining. Some of her anecdotes were excellent. I had met Susan before when planning the 'Leeds in Barcelona' project and she definitely knows how to make the right connections to animate spaces. When she spoke about not using typical 'ABC' measurements, I was nodding in agreement. Far too many measurement and targeting tools employed by brands and governments are completely out of date. Susan spoke about a number of projects where the owner / developer thought they understood what the people wanted only to find out they were wrong. Malls in the Middle East, James Bond gadgets and shopping centres in the UK were cited as examples of the market wanting something very different in their city. I feel there is a lot of this in Leeds at the moment: too many new buildings and too many old ones left to ruin when they are actually way more interesting.

Usman Haque spoke about his company Pachube (Patch-Bay) and although technically some of this went over my head I could see the ideas and principles behind his presentation. His ideas about responsible energy were brilliant. I can imagine someone like Usman as a leader of the future when cities begin to think about their long term sustainability planning. 

Stuart Childs spoke about the 60 seconds project. He spoke very highly of AudioBoo. This is an app that allows you to record audio and instantly upload and geo-tag the file. This is an excellent example of the good work done by 4ip and it is a real shame to see that scheme come to an end. I think mapping audio is a great way to look back through history. Stuart spoke asked how Leeds might have sounded 50 years ago, would it be different? I would imagine it would be very different and wouldn't it be great to 'listen back' as well as look back at our history?

Matt Edgar spoke on 'The Makers of Leeds' His presentation was fantastic as usual and I always learn something new about my home city when listening to Matt. There is some amazing history in Leeds and it is perhaps something we should shout about a little louder. I will not attempt to cover all the info he provided, but click here to see more of his presentation.

Finally we heard from Rashik Parmar from IBM. Rashik spoke about 'Smarter Cities'. He used a number of examples to illustrate the un-sustainability of the current systems we have in place such as the example of how 76% of every apple in our supermarkets has travelled 3700 miles to be there... that is crazy! As Rashik spoke I could not help but think of the 'What if Leeds' project and how this talk could apply to that. It would be amazing if Leeds as a city could think more long term and plan now for a different, more sustainable future. His talk also reminded me of the 'Creative Cities' presentation I heard at the Leeds City Centre Vision Conference: The world is not about countries any more, it is about cities and Leeds needs to be thinking along those lines and listening to people with knowledge of the wider world rather then some of the current insular (verging on arrogant) thinking that is currently going on.

Overall I really enjoyed the event and a massive 'well done' goes to Imran and Emma from Screen Yorkshire on what was a successful event. I imagine most people at the event, like me, left the building with lots of questions about how these ideas can relate to Leeds. There was a nice mixture of people in the room and I can imagine some people enjoyed some of the presentations more then others but that is exactly the sort of event we need to bring different people of different backgrounds together to share thoughts and ideas. As Rashik said it is not up to Tom Riordan or some other 'knight in shining armour' to make our city great, it is up to all of us and I think TEDxLeeds could have planted some very interesting seeds for the future.