If you fancy making a weekend of it (and why not – you’re not going to be short of things to do in Sheffield on the Sunday!), we’ve got a special deal with Jurys Inn. They’re a short walk away from Cutlers’ Hall, and handy for the city centre and the bright lights.

Give them a ring on 0114 291 2222, quote TIMD121110 to them, and they’ll do you bed and breakfast in a double room for the really-quite-reasonable rate of £65.

However, it’s not all bad news.  That £20 you’d put aside in your sock drawer for Interesting London?  You can use it to buy a ticket to Interesting North instead…

They’ll look something like this (only white), we hope:

Now if that’s not worth getting out of bed for on Saturday 13th November, what is?

They’re all the same person: Marcus Brown.

Marcus is currently doing the most interesting stuff online right now, creating the finest ‘transmedia’ stories and social media satire you are ever likely to come across.

From a liver and Prokofiev-loving twitter-stalker teling dark tales across London, to his journey Around The World In 80 Toilets and real bots, Marcus is gorging on and satirising our willingness to expose every little detail about ourselves.

Marcus will be speaking at Interesting North about something very personal to him. It is guaranteed to memorable, inimitable and bloody marvellous.

You’d be a terrible fool to miss out. Here’s a link to book a ticket, I advise you do.

Robert Shearman works as a writer for tv, radio and the stage. He’s just finished a ten episode treasure hunt novella – with each globetrotting chapter providing a riddle that leads the heroes to another destination, and the readers to the next instalment the following week. Fun, mayhem, and sword swallowing ensues!

But he’s probably best known for reintroducing the Daleks in the Hugo-nominated and BAFTA-winning Doctor Who episode starring Christopher Ecclestone…

Tom Armitage writes, designs and develops for the web, and thinks quite hard about many things best described as “new media”.   He’s enjoying talking/thinking about rules and mechanics and why it’s these things that make things gamelike, and not scoreboards…

Mike Wallis thinks that cake is far more interesting than just a tasty comestible; the structure, how all the different elements interact, and the history of how cake came to be are all interesting topics.

You just thought it was something tasty to eat with a cuppa, but when you think about it cake can illustrate religion, psychology, molecular biochemistry and engineering, as well as being something tasty to eat with a cuppa.

Eliot Fineberg is a freelance doer-of-internety-stuff at Friday (yes, that really is a company. In that London, can’t you tell?) He’s going to talk about Wikiality & Journeys Into The Surreal…

James Boardwell does design and research at Rattle, and being run over by a taxi hasn’t put him off bikes and riding. He’s going to talk about push bikes, single speed, fixies and fads…

There’ll be more speakers announced in the weeks to come – and if you’ve got something that you’re passionate about, there’s still slots going.  Sign up with our magic I-want-to-talk-at-Interesting-North internetomatic form thingy…

Things we’re still looking for at the moment are:

• sponsors – if you want your name in lights (well, alright, maybe not actual lights, but you’ll certainly get thanked profusely) we’d love to hear from you.  Offers of cold, hard cash are always welcome, but so is sponsorship-in-kind – particularly if you’ve got schwag you could offer. T-shirts, mugs, irritating furry bobbly things with eyes – all would help to make the schwag bags fun.  Come to think of it, if anyone wants to offer bags for the schwag we’d love to hear from you…
• speakers – there’s at least 15-20 speaking slots to fill, and there’ll be a mix of 10 and 20 minute talks.   Subjects so far range from cake, to Lego, to why ladies shouldn’t gallop – so if there is a theme, it’s interesting.
• AV – Cutlers’ Hall is a big venue, so we’re going to need decent projection and PA facilities – and it would also be great if it could be filmed for posterity as well.  Professional AV is a little on the spendy side, so this is a shameless plea for help with kit and expertise.

In the next couple of weeks there’ll be a snazzy new design for this site, and more details of speakers will start to appear – so check back soon…