Northern Lights Conference 2014

I finally made it to [Northern Lights Conference](http://northernlightsconf.co.uk “Northern Lights Conference Homepage”) this year! The event was last Friday 17th October. It was my first ever attendance at this conference, which was now in its fourth year. In a nutshell (as stated on their website):

Northern Lights is always a little different, this year is no exception. We have an exciting programme of speakers, open space sessions, and a couple of new surprises planned.

I really wasn’t sure what to expect from the day, but I was pleasantly surprised. I unfortunately didn’t manage to get a photo of the first speaker, Greg, but I’ve got a random selection of photos from the day posted just above. The speakers were:

• Greg Hoyna Kozakiewicz, Head of Design and User Research at The Scottish Government (not pictured above)
• Dave Hibberd, 57 North Hackspace
• Laura Walker, IFB Wearable Tech
• Rory McCune, Ethical Hacker
• Kate Ho, Project Ginsberg

After lunch, Northern Lights Conf shifts its focus from presentations to Open Space Sessions. I really enjoyed these – there were 3 sessions I attended, each lasting around 30 minutes. The sessions were open for anyone to suggest a topic, and a time-slot/room matrix was filled with suggestions from about 15 people. All were great, but I ended up going to try out Google Glass and Oculus Rift, discussing the pros and cons of reinventing the wheel (i.e. when to take off-the-shelf libraries and when to write your own), talking about Hacklabs and Maker Fairs, and also talking about balloons and radio equipment. It’s really great to get such like-minded people together every once in a while and the discussions and talks were really great.

I can’t wait for next year – I’ll definitely be coming along again!