Last week on the 20th Sept, Codeworks for some reason temporarily lost control of their collective sanity and asked me to chair one of their most important events for 2007, the Digital Film 2.0 conference at the Sage building in Newcastle. I ended up travelling across the country from Southampton in less than 4 hours and walked in half the way through. It turned out to be one hell of a day which finished with a philosophical walk on the quayside after hysterical laughter in an indian restaurant at 3am.

What was more bizarre was that it also marked a watershed for me in terms of public speaking as i ripped up my notes and spoke from the heart. What came out was deeply political and as i stood there talking, i realised i was taking on a much deeper purpose in what i was doing. The last 10mins (in the video below) were greeted with absolute concentration and silence as i spoke. The feedback afterwards was extraordinary. Judge for yourself.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=4969222325083633907&hl=en-GB" height="400" width="500" /]
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=4969222325083633907&hl=en-GB

But amusingly before that, they let me loose in the audience with a microphone, which was a bad idea. I started deliberately asking for stupid questions, and the room enthusiastically obliged. Why does Tom Cruise look taller in the video game than in real life? Is he gay? What’s that video game where you get to play David Koresh? Oh yes, sheer professionalism.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-5379455920946994086&hl=en-GB" height="400" width="500" /]
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-5379455920946994086&hl=en-GB