I had a great time in Istanbul. I was talking at the Digitalage conference which was good. I think it all went OK, as much as you can ever tell when you’re standing out front and faced with a room full of people…

Here’s some things I saw when I was there…

Yet another Fatboy Slim ‘Right Here Right Now’ pumped-up-isn’t-the-world-changing-rapidly conference sequence. Isn’t it about time someone found a new soundtrack for that kind of thing?

A couple of lovely lo-fi flashing neon chalkboards outside bars (these might be common everywhere in the world, but in my sheltered life I’d not seen them before).

We got taken to an amazing music venue that was hidden away behind a the kind of door where you wouldn’t expect anything good to be going on. I witnessed some awesome laptop music action. It was kind of like an ongoing techno karaoke session where people seemed to swap in and out of the lineup.

My favourite bit was this beats and trumpets section which was really very very good indeed (sorry for the bad sound and picture quality).

Then we went to another amazing venue called The Hall which was also great.

I have to thank Alemsah and Refik for their superb and generous hospitality. Without them we’d have found none of the good stuff and ended up in the Turkish Leicester Square staring at Burger King.

Thanks for everything Istanbul.