BORING NEWS

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BORING THANKS

A massive thank you to all of the speakers and to everyone who came along on Saturday. People seem to have enjoyed it and I think there’s enough demand for me to consider doing it again next year.

The speakers were all fantastic, thank you all so much.

Mark Hadfield
Geoff Lloyd
Jake Eliot
Ed Ross
Lee Rourke
Lewis Dryburgh
Naomi Alderman
Owen Billinghurst
William Barrett
Holly Gramazio
Greg Stekelman
Dave Joyner
Rhodri Marsden
Peter Fletcher
Robin Ince
Aris Tzontos
Charlotte Young
Joe Moran
Dave Green
Martin White

BORING DETAILS

Oh my, there’s not long to go now. It’s THIS SATURDAY. I’m getting nervous. It’ll be a disaster. No, it will be fine. Fine. A triumph even. Let’s not go that far. “Fine” will do. OK, even. As long as no-one dies, I’ll be happy. I don’t think anyone will die. It’ll be OK. If not, then I apologise in advance.

Here are some details about the day.

DOORS OPEN AT 10.30am and the conference itself will start at 11am. Try to be on time, please. There’s a lot to get through.

PLEASE PRINT OUT YOUR CONFIRMATION EMAIL AND BRING IT WITH YOU ON SATURDAY. That way, we can tick you off on the big list of attendees I’ll probably forget to print out.

There will be three sessions; 11am – 1pm, 2pm – 3.30pm and 4pm – 5.30pm.

There will be a break for lunch between 1pm and 2pm. You could go to the new Pret a Manger which has just opened on New Oxford Street, or maybe to the Burger King just across the road. Or anywhere. It’s up to you. There’s a pub nearby which sells something called a “Breakfast Pie”, which is a full English breakfast in a pie. I’ve never eaten it. The thought fills me with fear.

There will also be a break at 3.30pm for half an hour. This will be a chance to stretch your legs and maybe get a coffee from Starbucks or Costa or somewhere like that.

We should hopefully finish at about 5.30pm, although it will probably be closer to 6pm. You can do what you want after that. Just get on with your own lives. You’re not my responsibility now. I’ll be going to a pub for a pint, probably the Royal George on Charing Cross Road, but I’m not sure yet. You can come with me if you want. That’ll be nice.

TICKET UPDATE UPDATE

The tickets for Boring are almost sold out, but there are still a few left: http://boring2010.eventbrite.com/

TICKETS UPDATE

Blimey.

The first batch of twenty-five tickets sold out in five minutes. I wasn’t expecting that.

Just to be clear, that was just the first batch of the Early Bird tickets. There’s still another twenty-five early bird tickets which will go on sale at 3pm on Sunday 21 November.

After that, full price tickets (£15) will go on sale at 1.30pm on Monday 22nd November.

TICKETS

The first batch of tickets for Boring 2010 go on sale TODAY at 1pm.

The tickets will be released in batches, because obviously there is so much excitement about the conference that it is important that everyone gets the opportunity to buy a ticket. I imagine it will be similar to when Take That announced ticket sales for their new tour.

Some information about the tickets

• The first fifty tickets will be £10 each, tickets will be £15 thereafter. So if you delay, it’s your own fault.
• If you are talking at Boring, you don’t need to buy a ticket (obviously).
• Also, people talking at Boring get a free +1.

Tickets go on sale here:  http://boring2010.eventbrite.com

BORING VENUE REVEALED

It’s taken me a while, but I have finally confirmed a booking with the venue I had in mind for Boring 2010. I actually viewed quite a few places to try to find somewhere, some were community centres, some were hotels, some were dedicated conference centres, but finally I made my decision and have booked the Dominion Theatre:

OK, it’s actually the studio theatre at the Dominion rather than the main auditorium (the auditorium holds 2,163 people. I am not expecting to sell that many tickets).

I quite like the idea of having a Boring conference directly above We Will Rock You, a satirical musical written by Ben Elton and based on the music of Queen. According to Wikipedia, We Will Rock You is set in a dystopian future “where originality and individualism are shunned”. Over four and a half million tickets have been sold during the show’s London run, around six hundred thousand every year. And yet, we will be upstairs; a handful of people talking about dust and sneezes and how to arrange a collection of ties. Who is the more original and individual now, Ben Elton? Where is your satire now?

We are better than Ben Elton. Although he is richer and more successful, so it is a hollow victory.

Here are some things people have said about We Will Rock You but won’t be saying about Boring 2010:

It’s a perfect location and incredibly easy to find. Just come out of Tottenham Court Road tube station and look for the giant golden statue of Freddie Mercury. Actually, I might ask if on the day of Boring, they could swap the giant golden statue of Freddie Mercury for a giant golden statue of me. It’s about time someone built a giant golden statue of me, and if I have to be the person to do it, then so be it.

BORING 2010
The Studio at the Dominion Theatre
268-269 Tottenham Court Road
London
W1T 7AQ

Saturday 11th December 2010.

Tickets on sale soon.

EAT NATURAL

The lovely people at Eat Natural have kindly offered to supply us with lots of Eat Natural bars for Boring 2010.

If you would like to supply us with anything else to eat or drink, email me here.

BORING LOGO

Introducing to the world, the Boring 2010 logo (designed by Greg Stekelman):

There was a nice piece about Boring 2010 in the Independent yesterday (look, that’s my face!) John Humpreys even mentioned it (the conference, not my face) on the Today programme on Radio 4 yesterday (skip to 1hr 44mins). Apparently Nick Ferrari also mentioned it (again, the conference, not my face) on LBC, but you have to subscribe to download the podcast and I’m not paying four pounds to hear Nick Ferrari laughing at me. I can get that for free at home. That joke doesn’t really make sense, as I don’t live with Nick Ferrari. He does look a bit like my boss though. I don’t live with my boss either.

BORING UPDATE

Since first announcing my plans to hold a Boring conference, I have been quite busy sorting out all of the details. Things have developed since I first suggested the idea, and while I originally thought I’d try to find a venue which could hold about fifty people, this has grown a bit into something bigger. I’ll be announcing the venue details shortly.

In the meantime, I thought I’d give a bit of an update. The conference will take place on Saturday December 11th 2010, probably from about 11am-ish until about 5.30pm, or something like that. There will be lots of speakers, talking for either five, ten or twenty minutes, although the format could change.

Here is a list of just some of the people who will be speaking:

Rhodri Marsden
Rhodri writes about technology for the Independent, and writes about other stuff too for other people. He also appears on 6Music to talk about web stuff. He’s written two books, FWD This Link about the internet, and The Next Big Thing about things which seemed like a good idea at the time. He is a very nice man.

Greg Stekelman
Greg Stekelman is part-human, part-Twitter. He barely exists in the real world, and when he does venture outside, it is normally just to get a bus to take him to a room somewhere. He has written a book called A Year In The Life Of Themanwhofellasleep and is also some sort of an illustrator. In fact, he has designed a logo for Boring 2010 which shall be unveiled soon. I have no idea what he is going to talk about.

Naomi Alderman
Naomi Alderman is the author of Disobedience and The Lessons and has won all sorts of awards. She also writes about gaming for The Guardian and other stuff as well. I think she is going to talk about growing up in an household where the Orthodox Jewish Sabbath is strictly observed and you’re basically not allowed to do anything fun.

Peter Fletcher
Since Thursday the 12th of July 2007, Peter Fletcher has kept a record of every single time he has sneezed. He has logged, not just the time and date of each sneeze, but also where he was, what he was doing and how powerful the sneeze was. He recently spoke about the first one thousand sneezes at Ignite London but has something much bigger planned for his sneeze data. He won’t be talking about sneezes at Boring though, he’ll be talking about something else.

Leila Johnston
Leila is one half of the Shift Run Stop podcast which has previously featured both Naomi and Peter as guests, but I definitely didn’t just rummage through the Shift Run Stop archives looking for ideas. She has written two books, Enemy Of Chaos which I have read and enjoyed, and How to Worry Friends and Inconvenience People which I haven’t read but is probably very good.

Lewis Dryburgh
Lewis is a sort of genius experimenting in the field of loveliness. He is currently leaving little messages around Aberdeen for strangers to find. He also posts his mobile phone number on Twitter and invites strangers to call him for a little chat. I think he’s going to talk about car park roofs, as he often goes to eat his lunch on them and recently shared his lunch with a falcon. I think it was a falcon. It might have been a hawk.

Geoff Lloyd
Geoff presents the Hometime show on Absolute Radio and is misguided enough to have invited me on the show twice. The first time was on the night of the election and I got drunk and told a very long, rambling anecdote about nail bombers, the second time was after this incident. I’m not sure what Geoff will be talking about. Possibly drunk men who tell long, rambling anecdotes about nail bombers.

Lee Rourke
Part One of Lee Rourke’s critically acclaimed novel The Canal is headed “Boredom”, so he seemed like a fairly obvious choice for Boring 2010. He has also written a collection of short stories called Everyday. He writes for The Guardian and the Independent and is the contributing editor at 3:AM Magazine.

Joe Moran
Joe Moran is a writer and academic, who teaches at Liverpool John Moores University. He has written several books, including Queuing For Beginners and On Roads, and regularly writes for the Guardian and the Financial Times. Joe’s particular interest as a cultural historian is in the everyday. He will be talking about motorways.

That sounds quite good, doesn’t it?