Turing Festival 2013 review

2013 - Calum Shepherd

I was lucky enough to attend the Turing Festival in Edinburgh on 24–25 August 2013, right at the tail end of the Edinburgh Festival (dead-link) - so the city was still buzzing. The talks were diverse and genuinely engaging, with speakers using technology as a foundation rather than the whole subject, which made the event feel far more dynamic than your typical conference.

What talks did I attend?

• Five Startups Go Mad in Edinburgh
• Future of Money
• Digital Distribution
• Digital Marketing & Growth Hacking
• Festival Keynote by Neal Stephenson
• Future of Music

Future of money highlights

• Sandra Alzetta from Visa gave a grounded talk on mobile payments and contactless cards, arguing the future of payments is both mobile and plastic, each playing an essential role in Visa’s vision.
• Mike Hearn (Bitcoin, previously Google) delivered one of the festival’s real highlights - a wide-ranging talk covering everything from Google’s driverless cars to the future of work, painting a picture of autonomous agents running their own businesses in a future “TradeNet” system. Bitcoin came up too, but was almost overshadowed by the bigger ideas around it.

“Social reviews don’t make that much sense,” says Mike Hearn of Google. Lots of spam and strangers #turingfest - Andrew Girdwood, 23 August 2013

The future of money by Visa Europe. Trust. Completely agree. Money doesn’t do public betas #turingfest - Calum Shepherd, 23 August 2013

Visa Europe forecast 50% of their transactions by 2020 will be mobile #turingfest - Calum Shepherd, 23 August 2013

Digital distribution highlights

The standout session came from DJ Powers of Valve, who gave insight into the Steam ecosystem and its recent community-contribution developments. Team Fortress 2 was a stand-out success story - a full marketplace built around digital products and community-driven updates, launched to the entire player base. One highlight: a hat seller (for in-game characters) who made six figures from his creations.

Team Fortress Community Update biggest grossing hour for them after launch. Awesome #turingfest - Calum Shepherd, 23 August 2013

Digital marketing and growth hacking

Brian Doll from GitHub opened the session with a simple, effective philosophy:

“Build Something, Tell People”

It sparked some debate - particularly how well it scales inside large organisations - but it’s an ideal worth aspiring to regardless, and Brian’s use of an animated GIF throughout his talk was a real crowd-pleaser.

JP Rangaswami from Salesforce also gave an inspiring talk. I didn’t take notes, but his storytelling as he guided the audience through the shifting technology landscape was genuinely impressive.

“Living infographics.” Steven Drost from Stipso explains how text can become more than a sum of its parts #turingfest - Calum Shepherd, 24 August 2013

Focus on tribes. Focus on communities that already exist - Brian Doll from @github - Calum Shepherd, 24 August 2013

Full details on the event are available on the Turing Festival website.