Lumen at MAD Fest

This year’s MADFest is taking place on 13th and 14th November at the Truman Brewery in Shoreditch. It promises to be an amazing affair, with speakers such as Olympian Denise Lewis, Shamil Thakrar, co-founder of Dishoom, and Ogilvy’s Rory Sutherland.

And, of course, there will be little old us, talking about how eye tracking can help you get an unfair share of attention, with some help from our friends at Unruly. We’re on at 10.45 on Thursday 14th: don’t be late.

Looking at the agenda for the conference as a whole, a couple of themes stand out already. The first is a sense of entrepreneurial pragmatism. The world is full of people with good ideas. MADFest seems to have collected a bunch of people who have actually acted on them – and are willing to talk about the process, warts and all. It’s ironic – in a good way – that one of the themes of a conference with a lot of talks is that talk is cheap.

The second theme, related to the first, is about seeing the world as it really is rather than how we would like it to be. Too often at these conferences there’s a load of platitudinous chat about the possibilities of technology. This often fails to arrive – VR headsets, anyone? – or comes with unforeseen problems (as with the grotty economic, social, and legal side effects of online ad targeting).

This year’s MADFest seems to have a lot of emphasis on the reality of technology, and how it fits into the reality of our lives. Given that Lumen is all about the reality of attention, it looks like we are in good company.

The conference is pretty much sold out, but we still have a couple of complimentary tickets left, so if you haven’t got a ticket, get in touch and we will see what we can do.