All things digital are going on in Gateshead

Mar 4 2010 by Karen Dent, The Journal

A major digital extravaganza is coming to the North East this summer in the form of a six-week international festival celebrating the best in innovation. Karen Dent reports.

DIGITAL industry experts from across the UK and Europe will be heading for Gateshead between May and July for the town’s first Digital Summer spectacular, which is aiming to further consolidate the region’s position in the global digital order.

The festival, which runs from May 24 to July 10, will provide a mixture of events ranging from films to international guest speakers to the key gaming developments happening here in the North East.

Sunderland-based Codeworks has teamed up with Gateshead Council to organise the showcase, which is aiming to demonstrate to local people as well as businesses what is going on in the region’s digital sector.

Coun Mick Henry, leader of Gateshead Council, said: “Gateshead Digital Summer is a major innovation for Gateshead, and it promises to be an event of national and international importance.

“As well as being a public celebration of the digital age which everyone can get involved in, it will also be a hugely important event for the region’s growing digital business community, who will have the chance to take part, showcase their own products and innovation and hear what the rest of the digital world has to say.

“This industry sector is a crucial part of Gateshead’s plans for the future and although this will be the event’s inaugural year, we are confident that this will become an important event in the borough’s – and the country’s – conference calendar.”

Codeworks, the regional centre for digital innovation, has a history of working with the council to stage events and support businesses in the creative sector.

Codeworks chief executive Herb Kim said: “We worked together last year on the Thinking Digital: The Next Generation conference, which takes place again on March 17 this year.

“It went really well and we thought how can we leverage that experience? As we were having Thinking Digital and GameHorizon too, there was a discussion about doing something more.”