Wow… Day Two of the Thinking Digital conference yesterday when the conference proper began – we learnt about everything from the start of the universe to what makes a good perfume. Here are my highlights…

We kicked of with Paul Miller from SchoolOfEverything.com. Paul referenced last year’s opening speaker Ray Kurzwell, who many will know as an advocate of the Singularity concept – the idea that one day we will become one with technology. Paul is less inclined to this line of thought, leaning more towards the ideas of using technology to organise and change the world. He used Social Innovation Camp as an example, which collects ideas for social websites, picks the best and then gathers programmers together to build the winning idea. It’s definitely worth checking out and they’ve got a call-out for ideas at the moment if you’re feeling creative.

Mike Southon provided another fascinating talk focusing on what it takes for entrepreneurs to succeed in businesses, this time illustrated via the analogy of the Beatles(!) He used the phrase “embrace and enhance” (borrowed from Microsoft) to allude to the idea of taking other peoples idea and improving them to use as a saleable product or service. He also closed on the Beatles’ lyric “The love you take is equal to the love you take” – a tip for all start-up businesses.

I was especially impressed with the talk from Alex Hunt from Virgin, entitled “Brand 2.0″. He outlined a couple of key points, including the personification of brands and the benefits of having real people connect with a brand’s customers and how to leverage social media throughout an entire organisation to benefit marketing and brand.

Part of the pleasure of Thinking Digital has been the variation in speakers and performers. We were lucky yesterday to hear from Tara Hunt from CERN giving an overview of the LHC and what they hope to find and also a performance from The Sancho Plan, who mix audio and visual components to make for a fascinating show – well worth checking out.

Johnny Chung Lee (who found fame through his Wii remote modifications) gave an illuminating presentation on some of the technologies that Microsoft has up its sleave. I was especially impressed with the augmented workspace idea that allows users to drag objects off their screen and onto their desk. He also outlined some clever ideas for collaborative working and touch output – or “Haptics.”

Adrian Hon, from Six to Start, gave a great talk on “We Tell Stories” – a digital storytelling project by Penguin Books through which six authors told six stories over six weeks. Quite aside from providing some great reading, the project demonstrates an excellent use of online media and interactivity.

Apparently the most popular speaker from last year’s conference was Dan Lyons, the infamous author of “The Secret Diary of Steve jobs” and currently a journalist at Newsweek. I was pleased to see him back this year and he focused on how the news industry will survive its sea-change in revenue. He suggested that online revenue relies on top-end content (providing subscriptions) gutter content (providing advertising revenue) and cited the Economist as a good example of the subscription model.

There was plenty more going on yesterday, including talks from Dr Michael Shermer (founding publisher of The Skeptic) and an impassioned discussion about the artform of scent and perfume-making from Chandler Burke (New York Times Perfume Critic) but in the interests of avoiding prolixity I’ll wrap it up here. Look out for my final day’s review tomorrow and also my guest blog for the Thinking Digital guys…

via Thinking Digital: Day 2 | the[FACT]blog.