I feel so insignificant now after Thinking Digital 2013

Another great day at Thinking Digital getting to hear speaker after speaker who is involved in or has done unbelievable things, things that make your hair curl, things that you find it difficult to get your head around and things that make you feel as if what you have managed to get through in your life is nothing in the grand scheme of things.  Thursday’s speakers have made me feel insignificant.  Here’s why:

First up were a couple of people involved in Google, one taking photos for Street View (Alex Bell) and the second for Google Maps (Ed Parsons).  I never knew that Street View allowed you to see inside buildings, such as the White House or the Radio 1 studios, or that you can go to the Antarctic or under the sea where there no streets as far as I know.  I also never knew that every Google map is individual to you with your own preferences and locations highlighted and that 1 billion are produced every month or that one complete view of Google Earth takes 40TB of data.

Next up was Graham Hughes, a guy who managed to visit every country in the world without getting into an airplane, so only across land and sea.  He was the first person ever to do this and I imagine he still is.  It took him nearly four years and he had to go back to South Sudan as that had become a new country during the time he was away.  He made a film about it for National Geographic.

Then there was Sue Black who saved Bletchley Park for all of us, who was motivated by finding out that over five thousand women used to work there and started out without any idea how she was going to achieve such a feat but kept going and going until she got there.

I’m afraid I had to step out at this point but when I got back Rob Bernard told us about how he was helping to restore old steam trains and to bring back engineering to the United Kingdom using laser scanning and 3D printing, creating scale models you can hold in your hand as well as full size restorations.

Matt Ridley raised the concept that we were less than ten years away from being able to make animals un-extinct.  Yes, you read that right, using DNA sequencing and splicing the genetic code of existing and closely related animals to make those that have disappeared for ever come back to life, to be un-dead as a Dodo.

Then Rachel Armstrong brought us up to speed on how she was working to create a space station that will take a hundred year to create its own ecosystem like a Project Genesis from Star Trek II – The Wrath of Khan.

And finally came  fifteen year old Jack Andraka who, following his father’s untimely death, managed to develop a test for pancreatic cancer that could spot the disease at a very early stage, was highly accurate and cost a couple of pence a go using research on Google and Wikipedia to develop his idea.

I now feel like a total failure.  What have I done with my life that could compete or live up to such a high benchmark?   All of these people had one thing in common though and that was an unshakable belief that they were setting out to change the world a bit at a time.  Well I try to make a difference and I guess I do even if it was in a small way.  I’ve done some stuff, made some changes, chipped away at the obstacles in front of me and set things on a journey of improvement.  On the way I hope that I have touched some people’s lives and perhaps I’m not that insignificant after all.

You can find out about these people and their amazing achievements on the web site or by searching #TDC13 on Twitter.