The 10 Most Popular Thinking Digital Talks
Celebrating the Tenth Anniversary of the Thinking Digital Conference
As we lead up to our 10th Anniversary in May 2017 we’re looking back at some of the highlights and inside stories along the journey of Thinking Digital.
Looking back to when we launched Thinking Digital in 2007, it’s amazing to think about how different the world was back then…
- nobody owned an iPhone and Nokia dominated the phone market
- the Google Chrome browser didn’t exist
- Microsoft Vista was busy irritating PC users
- Snapchat wasn’t even an idea yet
- Obama was a young Senator largely unknown around the world
To start our retrospective, we wanted to highlight 10 of the most popular talks ever delivered at Thinking Digital. Off the top of our heads we came up with a list of 40 talks that had been huge hits so whittling the list down to 10 was hard work. Here they are in chronological order..
- Ray Kurzweil (2008) — inventor of OCR as well as flatbed scanning, he also has a great record predicting tech trends. He’s written 7 books and in his bestselling book The Singularity is Near, he predicted we’ll be able to buy a computer with the power of a human brain “by around 2020”. So not long to go then. Ray is currently Google’s Director of Engineering working on AI. As you would expect from a futurist, Ray joined Thinking Digital from Boston via a 3D holographic videoconferencing system where he expanded on his ideas about the near future..
2. Professor Hans Rosling (2009) — may he RIP, many of you will known Hans for his various TED talks that shot him to fame. We built our own system in cooperation with Hans to livestream him from Stockholm to Gateshead. And despite the limitations of a livestream, Professor Rosling’s compelling presentation earned him the top rating for 2009 and even got a writeup in the Guardian. Here’s his talk from #TDC09..
3. Rory Sutherland (2016, 2010 intro’d by @laurenlaverne) — Rory Sutherland is one of the funniest, most insightful speakers we’ve ever had at Thinking Digital. He’s a proponent of behavioural economics and while that might sound a little dull he has a way of making that topic very understandable and engaging. He’s an an ad man with a gift for understanding how people tick in real life. You won’t regret spending some time with him..
4. Luis von Ahn (2010) — all of us will have authenticated ourselves to a website by using ReCaptcha. Its founder tells the story of its creation here in this insightful and entertaining talk. ReCaptcha really is amazing in its innovation and creativity. Amazingly, after Google acquired ReCaptcha, Luis then went onto found DuoLingo which has had massive success in helping people learn new languages. Luis has gotten so big he recently had a featured slot on Tim Ferris’ blockbuster podcast. Be sure to check out his talk at..
5. Nancy Duarte (2011) — if you ever do public presentations then you need to watch this talk! At a conference renowned for amazing presentations, we were so honoured to have the founder of Duarte Design fly out from Silicon Valley to join us. Nancy is the presentation communications guru of the Valley and has advised 25 of the world’s top 50 global brands. She even advised Al Gore on creating the slides that were at the heart of the hit documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Listen, watch and learn at..
6. Heather Knight (2011) — I was recommended to invite Heather by a friend who wrote “she’s brilliant; she’s funny; she has her own robot! What’s not to love?” And indeed Heather and her robot Data were indeed brilliant and funny and one of the most liked talks of 2011..
7. Professor Sugata Mitra (2013, 2011) — we were thrilled for @sugatam when he won the first $1 million TED Prize in 2013. Based at Newcastle University Sugata is a fabulous presenter and tells us about his efforts at #TDC13 to develop “minimally invasive education” for kids around the world..
8. Aral Balkan (2014, 2013) — Aral’s #TDC13 talk is the longest talk we’ve ever hosted but also the most downloaded talk of all time! It is a hugely entertaining and insightful talk about how design can uplift us or weigh us down. If you’re interested in design or not you’ll get a wonderful perspective on the world from Aral’s eagle eyes..
9. Blaise Aguera y Arcas (2014) — Blaise’s #TDC14 talk is one of the most provocative and mindblowing talks ever. In this talk Blaise really got the audience going as he discussed 2 big trends being fuelled by technology. Firstly, that he believed AI would take over many jobs and that we should support a future based on a basic minimum income for all. Even more explosive though was his contention — supported by data naturally — that we were seeing an undeniable balancing of power between the sexes. He argues that we will be facing a future where women dominate leadership of our institutions and organisations. Watch and see if you agree?..
10. Amber Case (2016) — Amber rose to fame with her TEDWomen 2010 talk We Are All Cyborgs Now. We’ve been trying to recruit her ever since then and finally convinced her to come over for Thinking Digital Manchester in 2016. She gives a terrific talk making the case for “calm technology” in which our devices serve humans and not vice versa as the case often seems to be today. I had the honour of having dinner with her the night before her appearance and this is a seriously and serially smart person!..
