Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff

I met up with Remy a few months back to try to help him finalise the line-up for this year’s Full Frontal conference. Remy puts a lot of thought into crafting a really solid line-up. He was in a good position too: the conference was already sold out so he didn’t have to worry about having a big-name speaker to put bums on seats—he could concentrate entirely on finding just the right speaker for the final talk.

He described the kind of “big picture” talk he was looking for, and I started naming some names and giving him some ideas of people to contact.

Imagine my surprise then, when—while we were both in New York for Brooklyn Beta—I received a lengthy email from Remy (pecked out on his phone), saying that he had decided who wanted to do the closing talk at Full Frontal. He wanted me to do it.

Now, this was just a couple of weeks ago so my first thought was “No way! I don’t have enough time to prepare a talk.” It takes me quite a while to prepare a new presentation.

But then he described—in quite some detail—what he wanted me to talk about …and it’s exactly the kind of stuff that I really enjoy geeking out about: long-term thinking, digital preservation, and all that jazz. So I said yes.

That’s why I’ve spent the last couple of weeks quietly freaking out, attempting to marshall my thoughts and squeeze them into Keynote. The title of my talk is Time. Pretentious? Moi?

I’m trying to pack a lot into this presentation. I’ve already had to kill some of my darlings and drop some of the more esoteric stuff, but damn it, it’s hard to still squeeze everything in.

The trouble with researching this @FullFrontalConf talk is that I keep going down rabbit holes of Cherenkov radiation and Harrington events.

— Jeremy Keith (@adactio) October 30, 2013

I’ve been immersed in research and link-making, reading and huffduffing all things time-related. In the course of my hypertravels, I discovered that there’s an entire event devoted to “the origins, evolution, and future of public time.” It’s called Time For Everyone and it’s taking place in California …at exactly the same time as Full Frontal.

Here’s the funny thing: the description for the event is exactly the same as the description I gave Remy for my talk:

This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.

If you’re coming along to Full Frontal next Friday, I hope you’ll be in a receptive mood. I also hope that Remy won’t mind that what I’m going to present isn’t exactly what he asked for …but I think it’s interesting stuff.

I just wish I had more time.

Anchoring insights: Key learnings from Research by the Sea | Clearleft

This was a day of big conversations, but also one of connection, curiosity, and optimism.

Seeing it all laid out like this really drives home just how much was packed into Research By The Sea.

Throughout the day, speakers shared personal reflections, bold ideas, and practical insights, touching on themes of community, resilience, ethics, and the evolving role of technology.

Some talks brought hard truths about the impact of AI, the complexity of organisational change, and the ethical dilemmas researchers face. Others offered hope and direction, reminding us of the power of community, the importance of accessibility, and the need to listen to nature, to each other, and to the wider world.

The Sunshine by the Sea: S20E08 - Harsh Browns

Research by the Sea was one of the best conferences I’ve been to in yeeeeeears. So many good, useful, inspiring, thoughtful, provocative talks. Much more about ethics and power and possibility than I’d expected. None of the ‘utopian bullshit’ you usually get at a product or digital conference, to quote one of the speakers!

You’re on mute: the art of presenting in a Zoom era. | by Hana Stevenson | Feb, 2021 | Medium

Hana recounts the preparation she did for an online presentation, including some advice from me. I’m right in the middle of preparing my own online presentation right now, and I should really heed that advice. But I fear what I told Hana was “do as I say, not as I do.”

Brendan Dawes - Forming my talk for New Adventures

Same.

Outline Your Talk with Presenter Notes — Ladies in Tech

Continuing the topic of public speaking, Jenn has a really good technique for figuring out how to arrange the pieces of your talk without getting bogged down in designing slides.