What do We-Think? @ Tramway and The Lighthouse, Glasgow, 11-12 Sep

To say that the internet revolutionised our world may be the understatement of the millenium (although you'd have to Google it to double check). It has changed practices in every arena of life; knowledge is power and we now have a wealth of information literally at our fingertips.

Many businesses have been smart to these benefits for a while, but now engage Scotland - a support and education network for those working in the visual arts, with members Scotland wide - are looking at “how 'open source' and 'mass-collaboration' trends... could be applied to the cultural sector.” I'm not sure how necessary the speech marks are there, but the concept is still an absorbing one.

Take, for example, Charles Leadbeater (the keynote speaker of the upcoming conference, who was interviewed in the April issue of The Skinny), whose latest book, We-Think, was published in March 2008. Eighteen months previously, Leadbeater uploaded the first eleven chapters on to his website, specifically for the purpose of receiving constructive criticism. It was “downloaded thousands of times“ and “received hundreds of comments from people, most of them very helpful and some that changed the way the book was written".

Needless to say then, the conference is aimed at a wide range of people, from policy makers through to students, and will involve many members of engage Scotland. The fee is a whopping £150, but the reason we think the event's worth mentioning at all is that they have a back door cost of a rather more manageable £25 for artists, freelancers and students, available for the effort of telling them how attending could benefit you and your work. See engage.org for more information.