Categories: Creative Events

From Interesting to Inspiration

Amazing day yesterday at Interesting2007. It did exactly what it said on the tin: over 20 speakers on a hot stuffy day, yet I don’t recall being bored at any stage. Several talks in I realised why – we were basically being treated to a line-up of people enthusing about their passions and obsessions, and it’s hard not to find that interesting, whatever the subject – enthusiasm is contagious, after all.

Then it struck me that it’s a short step from interesting to inspiration. If you’re interested in something, you want to know more about it, or do more of it. And hearing so many people talk about what they find interesting, you start to feel inspired to go out and do stuff yourself – not necessarily the same as them, but more of the things you find interesting. So if we can persuade Russell to do it next year maybe he should call it Inspiring2008.

I’ll probably blog some of the more (ahem) interesting bits later on, but in the meanwhile here are some of the things I learned yesterday:

In the 1930’s Superman was accompanied by a flying dog called Krypto
Lady Patricia was the world’s first beertanker
Cities are slow computers
Knots were invented in the 19th century by witches
Bagpuss was originally pitched to the BBC as ‘a stuffed cat in an antique shop’
If you want to make a really good erotic film, you need to serve a hot meal
You can change the world for a fiver
Kermit the frog began his career as a killer
Short is hard
For children, learning styles are less important than ‘playability’
Geography is the next big thing
Top class swimmers are like albatrosses – ungainly on the land, but in their element elsewhere

A big thank you to Russell and all the speakers for treating us to such a delightful smorgasbord. My brain is now officially full.

There are already 489 photos on Flickr tagged Interesting2007. This page on the wiki has links to video as well. Here’s the Interesting2007 tag on Technorati so you can follow what other bloggers made of it.

Technorati Tags: interesting2007