So I started this week calling out for those digital futurologists to raise their hands and heads again and then started writing in a bid to draw out those brilliant but busy people who may have an opinion on subjects that were becoming critical to the world of Open. (One reality is that there are so many “Open” things: data, standards, pub standards, sub-pub standards, platforms etc etc etc)!
I can only write daily if I am amplifying what has taken up my time or headspace during the day, and today it has been working out how to best serve Stephen Fry’s Big Digital Day.
The idea is that we (Rewired State) are going to run a hack room backstage with 20 of the country’s most exciting developers working on data provided by a selection of SMEs in the audience. The aim is to see how many ‘businesses’ (applications, websites, widgets etc) we can make in a day, to show how rapid the digital business world is. How essential it is not to get too hung up on your one big idea; that in fact if you collaborate and take a few risky steps by sharing your data with other businesses, the outcomes could be spun into gold.
The digital day is being run with the following intention:
We recognise that over the last two years in particular, an incredible amount of passion and determination has been put into new products, online businesses and brands. The Big Digital Day is a clarion call to bring the industry together for a single day of inspiring exchange.
My instinct is to do as I have laid out above, show the potential through practical and fast programming by the best geeks I know. However, should any of you who have been gazing into the future of relationships between developers and businesses – whether with devs as the business owners or brought into a business – have any bigger and better ideas for how we might use the hack room, 20 devs and lots of business data, please could you share?
This event will also be interesting to see who Stephen and Andrew can draw out of the woodwork in terms of speakers and those with their finger on the digital pulse of the UK. The speaker list has not been published yet – I look forward to hopefully discovering/rediscovering some big thinkers.
I shall keep you posted and welcome your input.
We do have a few tickets to the event, and if you want to share your expertise here then we may be able to squeeze you in on the Rewired State guest list 🙂
Emma Mulqueeny 
how about an app which matched a product or service with relevant Stephen Fry quotations ? for those businesses which would welcome Stephen Fry endorsement