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Speakers and Presentations

STOP PRESS! Fancy a more "intimate" discussion with some of the speakers (or just want to see the EFF's Cory Doctorow in two places at the same time)? Then we firmly advise you to Take It Outside.

11am-11.50am: Attention Deficit Cinema
- take a seat and make yourself (un)comfortable with these all-too-brief screenings and snippets presented by TV's Ben Moor.

11.55am-noon: Keynote
- "Sex Dummy": a startling view of how the future used to look, presented by 1980s electropop icon Gary Le Strange.

12noon-12.50pm: Salute to 20 Years Of The ZX Spectrum, featuring:

  • Nigel Alderton, author of the original "Chuckie Egg"*

  • John Hollis, author of "Meteor Storm" and "Time Gate"

  • Sandy White, author of "3D Ant Attack"

  • Paul Holmes, author of the Spectrum versions of "Wild West Hero", "Bomb Jack", "Robotron" and "Machine Code Made Easy, Volume Two"

  • plus Building Your Own From Readily Available Parts and Yoz Grahame on adopting and importing an Eastern European clone

    • Hosted by: ZDNet raconteur (and Spectrum 128 ROM programmer) Rupert Goodwins.

    1pm-1.20pm: Circuit Bending with John "Meteor Storm" Hollis
    Mr Hollis remains on stage for an introduction to the art of getting amazing new sounds from battery-powered electronic musical instruments, also known as "Circuit bending". Learn to tell the difference between a simple R/C timer and a ceramic resonator clock, among other useful skills. Features live demonstrations and voided warranties galore.

    1.30pm-1.50pm: Paul Granjon, Z Lab
    Just to prove we're not completely obsessed with the Spectrum, BBC Micro-using artifical life artist Paul Granjon describes just some of his astonishing creations, hopefully including "The cybernetic parrot sausage", "The fluffy tamagotchi", plus robotHead and dog robot Toutou.

    2pm-3pm: When Science Fiction Becomes Science Fact - And Then Becomes Science Fiction Again
    - top authors discuss the interface between real-world research and popular sci-fi, featuring Tom Standage on the 18th century chess-playing "automaton" which inspired Charles Babbage to build a real computer, and George and Freeman Dyson on the top-secret 1950s project to find a peaceful use for US nuclear weapons - propelling a 40-man spacecraft to the moons of Saturn.
    Introduced by: cyberpunk author Pat Cadigan.

    3pm-3.30pm: Break and "lightning presentations"

    3.30pm: Cyber-raffle draw

    3.35pm-4.20pm: In Defence of Weblogs - grassroots content management systems of the future, or just a load of self-obsessed secret diaries of Adrian Mole?
    Featuring:

  • Neil McIntosh, Deputy Editor, Guardian Online

  • Ben Hammersley, the Gbloogle [sic] search engine

  • Tom Coates, winner, Best European Weblog 2002

    • 4.30pm-5.20pm: The Gagpipe Debate: "The greater the money, the less the funny?"
    - is it possible to make money out of online comedy sites, and are there any pitfalls of doing so? Charlie Brooker of TV Go Home, Paul Carr of The Friday Thing, and Lester and Kieren of The Rockall Times discuss their experiences in the field, with "contributions" of some kind from Idiotica.co.uk, TV Cream, Henry Raddick, Disappointment.com, Herd Of Sheep, NoiseMonkey and Tachyon TV.
    Chaired (somewhat inappropriately) by: Drew Cullen, The Register.

    5.30pm-6pm: Break and "lightning presentations"

    6pm-7pm: "A little less conversation, a little more action: Practical ways you can help preserve fair-use rights in digital media"
    The DMCA. The EUCD. The CBDTPA. Why they are bad and what you can do about them. Featuring:

  • Cory Doctorow, EFF
  • The Campaign for Digital Rights
  • The Dorkbot London 12v orchestra

    • Hosted by Dave Green and Dan O'Brien, NTK.

    Obviously these won't take up the full 8-hour duration of the event - other speakers will be confirmed closer to the time, and the gaps will be filled by Perl-conference-style "lightning presentations" from anyone who wants to do a few minutes on any relevant subject (eg: people who've got stalls explaining what they're doing, for a start).

    NB: Final programme may be subject to alteration, cybernetic or otherwise.

    * According to the Easter 2002 edition of the famously authoritative "Edge" magazine, A&F; Software's Doug Anderson says, "It was actually an external guy called Nigel Alderton who came to us with a Spectrum game he'd done called Eggy Kong [...] It developed from there because I was really a BBC programmer at the time. I thought, I'll take his idea and work around it and he actually ended up writing the Spectrum one anyway. We worked on it as a team and there were a few people chipping in ideas". So don't write in, OK? [back to top]