Following the success of the UK eScience All Hands Meetings, last year Horizon held its first inaugural All Hands Meeting devoted to the Digital Economy. The Digital Economy involves the novel design or use of information and communication technologies to help transform the lives of individuals, society or business. This is a fundamentally multi-disciplinary challenge, requiring input from areas including, but not limited to, the arts and humanities, economic and social scientists, medical sciences, in addition to computing, engineering and physical sciences, with the potential to have radical impact on many sectors (for example, transport, healthcare and the creative industries) and societal concerns (for example, quality of life, social and digital inclusion and sustainability). The UK, through Research Councils UK, has invested significantly in this area over the last year with the creation of a number of Digital Economy Research Hubs, Doctoral Training Centres, community projects and other research grants, with a total investment of around £120m http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/digitaleconomy.
A key goal of the programme was to create a community in the UK that is capable of world class, leading research in the Digital Economy and one that produces trained researchers with the necessary cross-disciplinary skills to have real impact in this area. This Digital Futures conference was a key event designed to encourage the development of this community. The emphasis of the event was on community building and discussion within the overall theme of digital futures.
This two-day event included Keynote speakers, talks from selected submissions, and posters. The agenda consisted of a day of workshops followed by the main conference.