Last night Richard Hudson was voted onto Manchester Digital council for the fourth year running.

Over the last few years Richard has been actively involved in developing the MD events programme and preparing for the rebuild of the MD website into an open, comprehensive and widely used resource connecting with all parts of our community.

Of his re-election Richard said, “It’s always an honour to be selected by members of the local digital community to represent them on the Manchester Digital council, and there are exciting times ahead.

However, there are many challenges facing the digital industry and we need to work together to raise the profile of our sector to put it more firmly under the spotlight. Last night’s AGM confirmed there is much willingness for people to get more involved in driving Manchester Digital forward, which is fantastic, as there is much work to be done. Being volunteer driven at the moment, we need as many people as possible to contribute to Manchester Digital to drive it to the next stage. With the BBC move North, continuing issues with standards/rogue traders and the skills shortage our industry faces, mainly caused by the lack of suitably qualified staff coming out of our colleges and universities, we can really make a difference by working together as one.”

Recently Richard was voted onto the board by other members of the council. The board is for people who are able to contribute more time to the running and direction of MD.

Manchester Digital is the independent trade association for the digital sector in the North West of England. Their vision is simple, ‘that by working together we can make Manchester and the North West an even better place for Digital Business’.

Their events programme brings members together to learn, network and share best practice. Manchester Digital’s annual Big Chip Awards celebrates the best digital companies and projects in the region.

Membership starts from just £25 per year for individuals and £50 for small businesses and is completely free for students learning to join the digital sector.

For more information visit www.manchesterdigital.com.

We’re closing next week for the Christmas holiday. The office will close on Wednesday 23 December and we will re-open on 4 January 2010. Should you need to contact us urgently during that time please telephone the office on 0161 282 4525 and leave a message. All non-urgent messages will be dealt with when the office re-opens in January.

We would like to take this opportunity to wish you a happy and peaceful Christmas and a prosperous 2010.

Jenny, Richard, Turhan, Nicola and Joe

This was my first year at the Social Technologies Summit. I’m not quite sure what I expected. Robots and brain scanners? Maybe - a little. The future? Certainly. My interest is threefold. Firstly, from a work point of view I’m looking for new technologies, ideas and different approaches. As a blogger I’m looking for new ways of distributing and accessing information online. And from a personal point of I’m looking for - well, something different. Something inspirational and exciting. Isn’t that why we’re working in this sector? Apart from the robots and brain scanners the conference delivered. I came away feeling that I’d been part of a discussion and that, as Sir Tim Berners-Lee was quoted as saying, ‘. . . the original web of documents was just the tip of the iceberg’. There are so many innovative and exciting developments that are already underway.

For me, by far the most interesting discussions were around the Semantic Web or ‘Linked Web’ or ‘Web of Data’ as it is sometimes known. Tom Llube led a thorough and informative discussion on Redefining Identity in a Semantic World. He spoke about a quiet but powerful revolution and the profound effect that this new web would have, both from a cultural and society point of view.

In summary, we’re moving away from the original ‘web of documents’. The way we access data is changing. This new framework will allow data to be shared across numerous different applications and not just on a static page. For example, you may wish to sell products online. Imagine being able to sell them across various sites and applications and not being restricted to an online shop and an Etsy store. You could upload your products once and they would automatically become available across the web. And your customers wouldn’t be restricted to paying on your website.

Another example, from Simon Cross and Ben Smith of the BBC, is that search is going to become so sophisticated that soon we won’t be searching for details of a particular programme or film by typing its name into a search box. Nope. We’ll be asking for all the programmes our friends have watched over the last week that we haven’t seen yet. And yes, that information will be delivered to us.

Pages and walls are out. Links and relationships are in. The impact on traditional web pages and search is going to be significant.

Of course, as with any new technologies there are questions to be asked. The main one being around the subject of privacy and ownership of data. This is something that needs to be discussed further and we need much more awareness around this subject. And as Helen Aspell pointed out, we need to look very carefully at accessibility, both in terms of connectivity to the web and in terms of ensuring that everyone is able to access these new technologies.

As I said, it’s all very exciting and I’m looking forward to next year’s summit. To continue the discussion follow #futr09.