I am very late with my review of Thinking Digital 2010.  So late in fact that I don’t think I have much to add to the many great reviews already out there.

Instead of writing another glowing review (which is what Thinking Digital deserves) I thought it might be good to share some of my favourite talks from the conference.

So in no particular order here are a few of my highlights from Thinking Digital 2010.

Luis von Ahn

Carnegie Mellon University

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~biglou/

Luis von Ahn invented the Captcha, those distorted letters at the bottom of web forms that check that a real human is filling the form in.

On average 200 million of these are solved by form fillers every day.  At an average of 10 seconds per Captcha that equals 150,000 hours of wasted effort.   Luis decided to turn all this effort into something that both benefits humanity and makes Captchas a little more bearable.

In a hugely entertaining and endearing talk Luis explains how reCaptcha forms are now being used to digitize ancient books and texts.   To quote Stu from @FACTLiverpool   ‘I’m literally in awe of Recaptcha forms..!’

Louis von Ahn  Harnesses Brainpower (Poptech 2010)

Julian Treasure

The Sound Agency

http://juliantreasure.blogspot.com/

Julian argues that sound is an undiscovered country for business.   In a talk packed with both stats and user participation he explained that sound affects people more deeply than we realise and when used properly can improve everything from retail sales to staff lateness and absenteeism.

Unfortunately most sound we encounter is accidental, unpleasant and inappropriate so Julian is on a mission to encourage us to devote the same amount of design thought to sounds as we do to almost every other element of our lives.

Julian Treasure: The 4 Ways Sound Affects Us (TED 2009)

Jer Thorp

Artist, educator and contributing editor to Wired UK

http://www.blprnt.com/

Jer creates stunning infoporn.  Jer’s talk centred on the premise that there is so much data available to us now that we need new devices and mechanisms to help us see what is really going on.  Jer argues that artists are the ideal candidates to create new types of visualisations that can help us make sense of this ocean of data.

Jer gave many stunning examples of his visualisations.   For me it was his work showing how many minutes of the film Avatar that could be paid for from aid money given in response to the Haiti earthquake that really brought home his message.  It is simultaneously both beautiful and very depressing.

Haiti Earthquake Aid in Avatar Minutes

More visualisations and commentary:

http://blog.blprnt.com/blog/blprnt/finding-perspective-haiti-earthquake-aid-in-avatar-minutes

Tom Wujec

Fellow at Autodesk

http://www.tomwujec.com/

Tom spoke about innovation and creativity and how our backgrounds and education impact on our ability to collaborate.

Tom talked us through the Marshmallow Challenge an 18-minute experiment where teams are tasked with building the tallest structure they can using spaghetti, masking tape and string.  The who thing must be able to support a marshmallow on top – hence ‘marshmallow challenge’.

Tom Wujec: Build a Tower, Build a Team (Ted 2010)

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Tom Scott

Geek Comedian

Tom Scott gave us a dark but very funny look at where social media might be taking us.

Tom Scott: A Near-Future Science Fiction Story (Ignite London 2010)

Codeworks

Finally, no post about Thinking Digital would be complete without a huge thank you to Herb Kim, Marissa and all the Codeworkers.

I had the pleasure of working alongside Herb and Marissa when we hosted  TEDx Liverpool last year. I know how hard they work and I know how much they put into their events.   It is their enthusiasm and passion that makes Thinking Digital so special.

Tickets for TDC11 are on sale now.  http://www.thinkingdigital.co.uk/2011/.  Book early and see you there next year.