Here are the opening sessions on July 2, which started with  Steve Moore explaining the ideas and experience behind 2gether08, and paying tribute to those who contributed to its very rapid development over eight weeks. Steve said that he wanted the event to be substantially self organising, and developed through creative volunteering. This resulted in about the half the 400  people registered for the event contributing in some way.

Jon Gisby, director of New Media and Technology at Channel 4, welcomed everyone on behalf of the main sponsor. He said Channel 4 were attracted by the scale and ambition of the event, its innovative format, and the way it could contribute to exploration of how we can use technology to make the world a better place.

In the Opening Exchanges Bill Thompson chairs contributions on what are the biggest challenges facing us at the start of the 21st century? with contributions from Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA, Umair Haque, Director of Havas Media Lab, and John Naish, author of Enough.

We’ll be posting more videos from 2gether08 over the next week or two.

The use of mobile or ubiquitous technologies to enable transformational improvements in learning and teaching practice has become something of a phenomenon where everyday devices from mobile phones to game consoles and mp3 players, social and media sharing networks and much more have created a rich and diverse learning landscape that exists beyond the school or university gates. Schools need no longer be “buildings”.

London is host to an annual event that has become the worlds largest conference to focus on these issues where over 800 innovators, early adopters, thought leaders, education professionals and policy makers come to discuss and explore the impact that these ubiquitous, affordable technologies are having on learning and what this means for the future of our educational institutions. The event is called Handheld Learning 2008 and will be held at The Brewery, Chiswell Street, EC1 during Oct 13th - 15th.

Lead speakers include author, Steven Johnson. social media scientist, danah boyd, Professor Stephen Heppell, Futurelab Research Director, Keri Facer, MIT Media Lab Chief Learning Architect, David Cavallo, former Sony Computer Entertainment Chairman and President, Chris Deering and many others.

Steve Moore will be hosting a 2gether morning of surprises (naturally) to engage a panel of speakers and the audience in a debate over how the technologies that learners already use outside of the school can be embraced for learning rather than being banned which is often the current position. Confirmed speakers in Steve session include Matt Locke, Channel 4, David Langridge, Microsoft and Richard Warmsley, T-Mobile with other to be announced shortly. There’s an Awards Party on the evening of the 13th, also at The Brewery.

Early bird registration is available until 31st July and includes a FREE Nintendo DS with game as well as entry to the Party. The DS is yours to keep but we ask that you bring it to the conference for a fully interactive experience during the 3 days. Those who attended 2gether08 receive a further 5% reduction on registration by using the code “2gether”.

Please join us and help keep these events connected and the ideas and actions continuing.

Register here

Here are photos from Flickr tagged 2gether08 - thanks everyone.  You can find them here. I used Flickr Slideshow Generator which seems to work OK, but other suggestions for displaying photos tagged by many different people would be welcome. Oh, and if there’s still some on your camera or phone, please upload and just tag 2gether08.

Technology writer Bill Thompson, a judge in the New Statesman New Media Awards 2008,  has been involved since the awards started 10 years ago. He is well-placed to applaud both the consistent support of  NS publisher Spencer Neal, and that of competitors committed to turning ideas into action.

On this occasion Bill was standing in for Cabinet Office Minister Tom Watson, who was called to a Commons vote. Earlier Tom - see interview here - had launched a competition called Show Us a Better Way offering £20,000 in prizes for projects to use government-collected data more innovatively for public services.

Bill said he thought that Tom would ask those assembled to be patient but persistent, recognising that government has habits that are hard to change.

He would also ask people to keep up the pressure on him and his team to open up services, to take more risks and to break down unnecessary barriers.

I think he would ask you to prove him right by building great services and tools on top of what is already out there, by stretching the limits of the possible and even the permissible

To give him ideas and allow him to demonstrate what could be done with existing services, and what more could be done if more data feeds and data sources were opened up.

Then he would ask you all to come back next year and win this competition.

Full recording here of the awards ceremony.

Bill suggests in this interview at 2gether08 that you should be embarrassed if you don’t make the effort to understand new media.

One of the highlights of the first day of 2gether08 was a debated host by Matthew D’Ancona, editor of The Spectator, with guest panellists: political blogger Mick Fealty who writes as Brassneck and Slugger O’Toole; Sunny Hundal, Liberal Conspiracy; Rory Sutherland, Vice Chair Ogilvy Group; and Tom Steinberg, founder of MySociety.

There’s another 20 hours or so of video recorded at 2gether08, and we’ll bring you more soon.

Rob Hinchcliffe of Qype.com and Lea Simpson of unchainedguide.com are passionate about promoting excellent local businesses, and believe this can be done by using digital media to influence people’s consumer habits.

At 2gether08 they carried out a mini social experiment by setting up ice cream stalls at the event. One sold very well known brands, at a reasonable price in a very prominent position. The other sold an independent make of very high quality, organic ice cream but in a slightly out-of-the-way location and at a more expensive price: on the roof.

In the interview and on the Indy England page they set out the experiment in more detail - explaining how using Twitter, word of mouth, and others ways to communicate boosted sales of Paul A. Young’s organic ice-cream at the expense of well-known brands.

Previously:

• Amazing ice-cream on the roof
• Supporting small, local and really excellent - online

The best 2.0 event i have been to. And i’ve been to a diverse managerie of ideas, get togethers, mash-ups and conferences.

2Gether managed entertaining, high octane quality. And that can be a rare thing as far as Andrew Keen’s ‘cult of the amateur’ goes.

I cannot thank everyone involved with setting this up enough for letting me be part of it. And i look forward to future debates, discussions and diversions

Christian Heilmann blogs his reflections on 2gether08  - a geek meets people who want to change the world for good -  with a splendid photo of event curator Steve Moore determined to give us a rousing send off despite a final downpour. He says:

The main social issue I subscribed to solving at the event and the nearer future is try to make the gap between the geeks and the people with great ideas a little smaller. Geekyoto earlier this year had a similar agenda as 2gether08 - on a more technical level. The 2gether08 people went to this event, too and started merging the groups of skilled and concerned geeks and more “wider picture” thinkers. There is much power in this merger, so let’s make that happen.

Steve tried an address from the balcony (well, the fire escape), but as you can see had to give up and come down to ground.

Steve in the rain from David Wilcox on Vimeo.

I later pulled Steve off into a marquee for some drier words and found he was already thinking about another event, and how to foster a 2gether08 community.

Steve Moore from David Wilcox on Vimeo.

Earlier I took a look at the Theatre where the production team were clearing away the great quantity of equipment they used to give us really excellent video feeds from main sessions into other rooms. We’ll be editing those for the web, but with other content created by Richard Jolly from the Gym it totals 20 hours, so bear with us. You can also see here that a few beers were going down in the marquee.

See Categories on the right to get all items on this site, or just the videos. Keep in touch with further developments by following Twitter @2gether08 or the feed on Summize. It’s not over yet!

At 2gether08 I met up with my friend Richard Wilson, who runs the excellent participation think tank Involve. They are definitely thinking big in using new media to scale up the scope for citizen engagement. I shot this brief interview, and then asked Richard to send me some further thoughts.

He came back with this ambitious and inviting vision:

We at Involve are looking for partners to help us develop new 360 degree (online, broadcast and face-to-face) processes which engage millions of people to solve problems. We have spent the last year traveling the world identifying and understanding the best processes we can find.

Inspired by the 2gether08 festival and some of our own work - Critical mass: broadening the reach of public engagement across society - we are hosting two small workshops to develop ideas suitable for the Channel 4 4IP fund on the 10th and 23rd of July at our offices in Holborn, London. We’ve come up with a couple of initial ideas to start the conversation (click to download):

• Next Gen Britain: Your Chance to make a Change
• Last chance Britain: Your chance to make a change

These are just a starting place. If you’re interested in partnering Involve in developing these proposals, please get in touch with me letting me know which date you’re free, which proposal you like and how you could improve it.

In particular we’re really aware that us policy people can be incredibly worthy and dull. Whatever we do must be the opposite, exciting and fun; and talking to many of you over the last couple of days that’s what you do best.

I’m definitely signing up. Hope to see you there.

First Simon ran a session to explain how, by starting a Facebook group, he was able with the help of the BBC iPM programme to get a face-to-face meeting with Coca Cola and explore with them what could be done. As the graph shows, it that was achieved very quickly.

Here’s the full presentation.

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Then Simon got a call from iPM’s Jennifer Tracey with a request for a further interview, which he has posted here. Jennifer was happy that I took some video of the interview ….

Simon Berry interviewed by BBC iPM from David Wilcox on Vimeo.

… and I then recorded a shorter update interview.

Simon Berry from David Wilcox on Vimeo.

You can see all Simon’s posts about the campaign here on his blog, with more on the Facebook group. He is urging more people to sign up to the group to help him show support in the next phase of pursuading an international NGO like Oxfam or WaterAid to join in.

In the meantime Simon has linked up with one of Coca Cola’s reseachers, Adrian Ristow, who will be reporting from Ethiopia and Tanzanian on investigations into ways that Coca Cola may be able to use distribution channels for humanitarian purposes.

Want to help? Join the Facebook group and encourages others to do so, and offer any other ideas and expertise you may have. As Simon says, he’s become an accident campaign leader, and can do with all the help he can get.

The best place to hang out during 2gether08 was the marquee (aka Common Room), where Ed Mitchell and Dan Dixon added a little networking zest with a Live Tag Surfing wall on the first day, and an invitation to muse on what’s the next big challenge on the second.

As it turned out people didn’t need much facilitation, but did stop by for a chat in that corner … allowing Dan to create some great time lapse videos.

Day 2 - part 1

Day 2 - part 1 (in the marquee) from Dan Dixon on Vimeo.

Day 2 - part 2: a different angle

2gether08 - Day 2 part 2 from Dan Dixon on Vimeo.