North's creative crews embrace Digital Minds

Oct 29 2009 By The Journal

SOME of the region's most creative business minds have flown to Sweden this week with their sights set on forging new links with Scandinavia.

The North East has been well represented at this week’s ‘Digital Minds: The Nordic Light’ conference in Gävle, two hours north of Stockholm.

Speakers at the event have included Herb Kim, CEO of North East digital industry body Codeworks, James TerKeurst from the University of Teesside’s Institute of Digital Innovation, and Steve Blanks of Newcastle-based Fat Frog Media.

An additional number of representatives from the region’s digital creative businesses have also made the trip in the hope of encountering new ideas and global business contacts.

Georgia Rakusen, of digital arts production company Haus Projects and who is also in Sweden for the conference, said: "I was at the Thinking Digital conference in Gateshead earlier this year, so I know what a huge impact this sort of cross-genre event can have.

"I’m very excited to see what new opportunities we can develop collaboratively with our Swedish digital counterparts."

Other digital creative entrepreneurs attending the conference include Rob Colling of Gateshead-based internetsubtitling.com, which produces subtitles and captions for web video and Frances Calvey of Middlesbrough-based video production firm Kirkwood Media. Mr Colling said: "In difficult times like these, there’s more reason than ever to establish relationships outside the UK, with an eye to trading globally rather than just regionally or nationally.

"The region’s business community is going to be very well represented in Gävle, and it’s great to see that North Eastern firms and organisations are so far ahead of the game when it comes to thinking internationally."