A Digit Expo In My Home City

A Digit Expo In My Home City

I am so lucky to live and work in a great city. I made Edinburgh my home many years ago, and I have never regretted living and working here for one microsecond. And so I can pop onto a bus, and within 10 minutes I’m at a venue with thousands of tech people, and who have great ideas and who want to build new things. I adore my city, because it has education and knowledge exchange at its heart; it is achingly beautiful and cultured; and it welcomes the world.

And so this week, I think I attended one of the most inspiring and best organised conference events I have ever attended: Digit Expo. So rather than getting on planes and staying in generic hotel rooms, it was the 44 bus from my home, and a 10 minute bus trip into my home city. And on the bus, I took my Raspberry PI (RPI), my Ubertooths (Bluetooth scanners), my Polar H10 heart rate monitor, and so many other things:

For many other events, I just could take all these things with me, but I was presenting in my home city so it gave me a chance to actually show real risks.

For some events, you tell the organisor that you are using Keynote and HDMI, and going to give a live demo, and the reply is: “Oh dear, I will have to see about that”, but in this case it was: “Great, looking forward it. It’ll all be setup for you”. And you really felt at home with the event, and where every little part of the event mattered to them … “And, can I come in a bit early and get things organised?”, “Yes, of course, see you then’”. Having attended conferences all over the world, I just felt at home in so many ways. And, I was just a small part of so many things, but everything just felt right:

And it was a smiley-faced greeting from all the organising team, and they could not be more helpful. While they had so many other things to do, nothing was too much trouble for them. For a presentor, you have that worry before a presentation about making sure your slides are okay, and that your fonts will show up okay.

As I went up on the amazing stage, I knew that this was a great venue when I faced with an Apple computer, and where I heard one organisors saying, “It’s a Keynote file that the presenter sent, so that’s no problem at all”:

In the event there were so many great talks, and about things that were truly state-of-the-art — and not companies who were just selling their products. The people on the stage seemed to matter a great deal, and had been picked because they had a passion for their work, and who had innovation in their heart. One of my favouriates was from Ocado, and who few expected to the successful, but they have just gone and took on a whole industry and won:

They have won, because they innovated and they refined, and they knew exactly the problems they were solving. It really gives me faith in our world that companies like Ocado can take on the might of companies many times their size, and win. In David v Goliath, I’m in David’s camp every single time!

I kept pinching myself, and saying to myself that this wasn’t London, Berlin or Paris, this was my home city. I wasn’t in the souless space of the ExCeL conference centre in London, but in my home city, and which was full of people doing great things and with great ideas. But I cannot even imagine the planning and organising that went into this event, but everything went like clockwork:

For my own talk, I had a 12pm slot on Keynote stage, and thought I’d be lucky to get a one-third full audience, and where you often have to tell them to bunch up a little bit, “Can you come up front a little more?”. But it was full, and they were ready to listen to my picture of a world of flawed protocols and flawed devices:

And, I came armed with my old Macbook, a RPI, and a few gadgets:

But it was everything about the event that I loved. The way the presenters were treated is something that I have never felt before. And the way everything happened was just wonderful to see. The social media side also kept you up to date with everything that was happening, and it was all so positive. I suppose in Scotland, as a small country, people generally get on with each other and collaboration often thrives.

And as a teacher, one of my proudest moments is when an ex-student comes up to me after it, and says “Remember me, you taught be XYZ all those years ago”. Education leaves casts a long shadow, and changes every single person, and to remember our teachers — and to be a teacher to others — is something that should never leave us. Everything we are, we have learn from others.

I have watched the organisers (Digit.fyi) — especially driven by the greatness of Ray Bugg and Pete Swift — grow from humble roots, and I respect them so much. They are not a faceless conference organisation; they have a real passion for what they do.

Who knows which amazing new companies that were formed at the event this week? Only time will tell, but one thing I do know is that this is a scary technological world we are creating, but it could be an amazing world if we do it right. There are so many opportunities, so don’t sit back, go and change the world!