Who loves technology? Future Everything tickets up for grabs.

Rohan Gunatillake
Rohan Gunatillake

Here at the Culture Vulture we believe in spoiling our readers because without you there would be no conversation. From irate ranting and angry letting off of steam to some of your more gushing praise, we love all of the comments so we’re giving you a present.

And by ‘you’, we mean the person who wins our fantastic competition with those lovely folk over at Future Everything, who are offering a pair of two-day passes to the 2012 conference at Museum of Science & Industry in Manchester. All very exciting isn’t it? But what exactly is Future Everything and why should you be frantically searching your mind for answers to our competition question?

An ideas festival, recently seen rubbing shoulders with the likes of the TED series of events in the Guardian’s top 10 Ideas Festivals, Future Everything is a mash up of art, music, networking, talks, ideas and technology. Profiling what they term as ‘future thinkers’ the festival aims to showcase some of the newest emerging talent in these fields touching on changes to culture, society, information and the world at our disposal.

As many of us are all too aware, the digital world changes rapidly impacting on other areas of our lives from social to healthcare, culture and business. This conference is an opportunity to debate these changes and hear from a stellar line up of global speakers including Birgitta Jónsdóttir the Icelandic activist MP and internet pioneer, Bilal Randaree social media and online producer for Al Jazeera and Rohan Gunatillake founder of the world’s first meditation app, to name but a few.

The two day conference will be a mix of keynote speakers, panel discussions, live gigs, exhibitions and networking covering topics as diverse as world politics, football and maybe a little hip-hop – y’know just to lighten the mood. These sought after tickets usually retail at £240pp but because we love you, we’re giving you the chance to win a pair.

Sound good to you? Here’s what you need to do:

1. Be available 17th & 18th May.

2. Be able to get yourself to and from Manchester on the above dates.

3. Send us your nomination for ‘Best Use of Technology’ in the comments box below. It doesn’t have to be something you’ve actually done yourself, it can be simply be a piece of awesomeness that you found on the internet and thought was worth sharing, or a shameless plug for you or a friend. Either way we want to know what technology inspires and excites you.

4. Be willing to blog about the conference on this fine website.

Did we mention you have just one week to get your suggestions in to us? Our smashing competition celebrating technology, creativity and all things digital will close Thursday 3rd May and the winners will be announced Friday 4th May.

The editorial team will convene at an unspecified location, probably close to booze, to pore over the entries and make a democratic decision, giving the lucky duo a rather nice start to the bank holiday.

So who’s going first?

16 comments

  1. Think the Ubi-Camera is winning my thoughts this month. Just. (The Zombie Apocalypse map comes second, followed by still amazed at uptake of Kindles.)

  2. The best use of technology is for this, http://vimeo.com/34845280

    Its a physical app that connects the studio to their Twitter followers, alerting the team to each time they get a new follower. A cuckoo clock that dispenses sweets for their team to eat, each time they get a new follower on Twitter.

    Genius!

  3. I’d like to rather shamelessly nominate my project http://leedsartmap.co.uk.
    It’s an interactive map enabling the public to access the things they like and find convenient. It provides a platform for indie arts institutions to reach a wider audience. The idea is based simply on consolidating and visualising otherwise hard-to-find and hard to compare data.

    We’re also working with other cities to help the idea catch on and to encourage others to provide such an independent service for their community.

  4. Now then, now then. For the ‘Entertainment’ category…
    Howzabout a nomination for: http://youtubedoubler.com

    Why watch just one video when you can watch two?
    With this ‘mashup helper’ for playing two YouTube videos simultaneously.

    Like: http://youtubedoubler.com/5I
    My own Tequila Mix: http://youtubedoubler.com/4t
    Or the Classic: http://youtubedoubler.com/1n

    Ideal for dream hand, rainbow, and cat videos.
    Accessible to all with ‘nets. Endless fun. Simples.

    http://youtubedoubler.com ~ ‘Because you have better things to do than work’

  5. It’s this.

    A new mind for an old species.

    “…humans began animating inert objects with tiny slivers of intelligence, connecting them into a global field, and linking their own minds into a single thing. This will be recognized as the largest, most complex, and most surprising event on the planet. Weaving nerves out of glass and radio waves, our species began wiring up all regions, all processes, all facts and notions into a grand network. From this embryonic neural net was born a collaborative interface for our civilization, a sensing, cognitive device with power that exceeded any previous invention. The Machine provided a new way of thinking (perfect search, total recall) and a new mind for an old species. It was the Beginning.”

    http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/tech_pr.html

  6. My favourite isn’t something particularly new but it shows off technology at its best, a way to share and access information in a truly democratic way.

    For me, Ushahidi (http://ushahidi.com/) represents lots of brilliant things about technology. The volunteer nature of the organisation itself, it’s open-source, the way it started in response the Kenyan outbreaks of violence in 2008 as a means to share and disseminate information via mobile phones which everyone has.

    Ushahidi made a huge difference in 2008 and continues to do so all over the world – I love the fact that it’s come from the ground up not imposed on the world by a government doing good, I love the fact that it continues to exist through the good will of a community of developers and I love the fact that it started with a really basic technology, SMS, which is available to virtually everyone.

  7. Hi,

    Jeez, I hope I am not too late! Just found out about this, have wanted to go to the festival ALL YEAR – yeah, I know its only May BUT… – but couldn’t afford it… Shameless begging, sorry about that but I had a little wee when I heard about your competition! Ahem, sorry :/

    Ok so, I don’t know this guy – hoping to meet him at an event at Templeworks next week – BUT his work is amazing, Dave Lynch. He has helped to develop this thing called TechYut, which is technically not a piece of technology but a helping hand to enable people to use technology, so it has the potential to be AMAZING!

    Here is a bit about it I pulled from his website: “TechYurt uses open source technologies to create an online and offline environment in which innovative and creative thinking can thrive. The facilitated space encourages the development of new applications for existing and emerging technologies, allowing participants to solve some of the world’s most pressing challenges.

    By fusing facilitation methodologies like appreciative enquiry and COSTAR with interactive projection and real time video, audio and text documentation, Tech Yurt roundtables are designed to generate solutions that are worth sharing with the world.”

    I will repeat, AMAZING!

    http://www.blog.davelynch.net/techyurt/

  8. Hello. My favourite technology is Facebook because I can keep in contact with all my friends.

  9. Hi,

    I did just put mine up but it has vanished, I hope I am not too late. I would love to go to this festival. I just couldn’t afford the ticket…

    My favourite new idea is called TechYurt, it is best explained by the actual collaborators: “TechYurt uses open source technologies to create an online and offline environment in which innovative and creative thinking can thrive. The facilitated space encourages the development of new applications for existing and emerging technologies, allowing participants to solve some of the world’s most pressing challenges.”

    I hope this counts!

  10. Tough one!

    I’m going to go with IBM’s ‘Watson’ (http://www-03.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/index.html). Some believe the defining achievement of the last century was the development of technologies that allow us to collect and process data on an unprecedented scale. The challenge for this century is to make sense of it all; draw conclusions and generate new insights. Watson encapsulates and communicates this very nicely.

  11. So the competition has closed and we’ve got ourselves a bank holiday winner, not to mention several new tech crushes.

    The winner is Mr Steve Swann with his nomination of Liverpool based agency Uniform who created an avalanche of sweets in the office every time they get a new follower on twitter. The new follower receives a video clip of said avalanche and a warm feeling that comes with spreading joy (and a sugar rush).

    Here’s why we picked it:
    a) It harnesses online digital technology and makes something physically happen offline as a result. It’s not just digital marketing.

    b) But it also includes and element of digital marketing. It’s clever and quirky and is a great way to show off and get yourself out there that isn’t the usual creds pitch and ego battle.

    c) Uniform are a branding communications agency based in Liverpool and we like to support our home grown talent in the North!

    d) We loved the handmade course in the video. Any office that endorses cutting, sticking and glitter pens is alright by us!

    As ever thanks for all your suggestions and for getting involved and if you’re not Steve then, better luck next time!

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