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East London Tech City Prepares for 2013 Event

I recall when I first met Kam Star at the SXSW 2012 Festival, he shared his aspiration to make the Digital Shoreditch Festival as successful as the now infamous annual vent in Austin, Texas.

After I attended the UK event that his team organized in 2012, I offered some suggestions for his consideration. I still believe that the creative culture in London is different -- and that's a good thing.

London's creative digital talent strengths tend to be focused on the fashion, architecture and design sectors. The financial services sector also has a renewed focus on technology-enabled innovations.

Digital Shoreditch Festival 2013 is expected to double in size, bringing together a community of 15,000 digital creatives to showcase and debate the latest advances in digital and technological innovation.

The event held in East London last year attracted over 6,000 delegates with support from more than 40 sponsors and partners.

This year the event is even bigger -- reflecting London’s ambition to become one of Europe’s technology capitals, and has already attracted many key stakeholders from the digital and technology fields.


Now in its third year, Digital Shoreditch provides a unique opportunity for attendees to hear from 400 speakers on the latest social and technological changes that are disrupting the digital space, the challenges and opportunities in advertising and consumer engagement -- as well as how a superior user experience can influence behavior.

Once again, festival content has been crowdsourced from London’s digital and technology community, which voted for the majority of speakers featured at the event that's held during the last two weeks in May.

This year’s festival starts on May 20 at Shoreditch Town Hall with a day entitled What Tech City?

It will bring together the companies and organizations from London’s technology cluster and s intended to explore the growing global engagement with the digital economy and society in the twenty-first century.

"Digital Shoreditch attracts people from around the vast digital community in London. A rare opportunity where representatives from universities, government, start-ups and big business can all get involved and work together," said Kam Star, founder of Digital Shoreditch.

More details are available at the Digital Shoreditch 2013 website. You can follow the online conversation at @DigiShoreditch and the hashtag #DS13. I'm planning to attend the event this year, and will continue to share my observations about the evolution of the emerging tech cluster scene in London, England.

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