This Week, and this Year…

It’s struck me, as we come to the end of March, how Manchester’s digital community is busier than ever, recession or not. This week, as an example, I attended the launch of the Next Generation Broadband pilot at Kro. A video of the event is now available online at the MDDA website. This previous post on the Mancunian Way is also helpful. Attending the event, there were a few useful questions from the audience. The tender for the work is going out in the next couple of weeks, with the aim to appoint and start work by the summer, and with the first tangible parts of the network to be live by the end of 2009, with the remainder of the project completed in 2010. Notably, everyone introducing the event talked not of this being a “pilot” but as a “first phase.”
Tomorrow, the latest Eurocities Knowledge Society Forum, looking particularly at environmental issues and ICT, takes place at Manchester Town Hall, and delegates from across Europe have been arriving all day. Just two little events in the big city.
Like many people I was excited by the line-up announced last week for Manchester International Festival, and I’m particularly looking forward to Kraftwerk, with Bang on A Can playing Steve Reich as support. I only hope that if New York new music ensemble Bang on a Can are in the country, there will be more than one opportunity to see them. The news that Philip Glass is playing solo at the RNCM as part of Futuresonic, feels just as important.
This week in Manchester, a microcosm of this exciting year.