The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.

"The main difference between Belfast and London is that London values young people, Belfast doesn't..."

The above was said to me recently by a good mate who's lived in London for a few years and was a stated reason as to why he isn't ever going to return home. It was one of those statements that immediately had resonance. It might not be entirely true, but there's a lot of truth to it and in my own experience I can see why he thinks that.

Perhaps it's part of our national mentality but one thing we don't do well is praise (outside of a church anyway) while we're masters of the critical assault for the most part, as various message boards and social networks based here will stand as testament.

With more young people than ever before now staying at home in Northern Ireland since the ceasefires and the subsequent semi-normalisation of the place this is something that we need to change. If we want to retain the obvious talent that is all around us and not break the spirit of those with outlandish and weighty ideas we're maybe going to have to learn to think differently.

We liberally sponsored and went to UnConvention Belfast a couple of weekends ago in the Black Box in Belfast. It was a music based event where people got together to discuss the way forward in the music industry in Northern Ireland and beyond in a room full of their peers and industry folk. It was certainly more relaxed and slightly edgier than other events of this type and got quite lively at times.

It also managed to attract quite a few high profile guests from the UK and further afield. It paid for itself and allowed the public in for free. On its own modest terms it was a success. And the lessons from this year will be carried on to Manchester and other places where more UnConventions are being planned, before it returns to Belfast at some point a more fully realised entity with ideas and concepts from elsewhere appropriated and recycled as people see fit. Its strength is the truly free exchange of ideas, innovations and contacts across a wide range of people and territories. The very idea is made to be copied and reappropriated. There's no trademark or copyright on this, in fact at its core it opposes such ideas. This is its beauty.

And similarly in digital media there's OpenCoffee where people meet up freely to chat about what they've got going on that's now got spinoffs in Newry and Lisburn. BarCamp, a more evolved version of OpenCoffee with speakers and such will return on the 25th April 2009 at the Black Box, Belfast while there will no doubt be another CreativeCamp, there's a Linux Users Group, an XCake meetup and all manner of super techie stuff too. Most of this stuff can be found at the Digital Circle website and at other sites such as NI Creatives. The recent Belfast Twestival managed to raise £500 for charity:water in a single night.

Between all of these events and the others that we either don't know about or have omitted from this list hundreds of people are meeting on a weekly basis to share thoughts, problems, ideas, work and ultimately their lives with each other. Friends are being made. Mad ideas are spawned and forgotten while some are followed through. And the entry criteria is simply showing up.

There's no owner as such, no board of directors or need to know basis. It's as open as some of the titles say. Although much credit should go to people like Andy McMillan, Phil O Kane, Matt Johnston and the many other creative folk behind these happenings. They're not asking for praise, how very Northern Irish of them, but they deserve it in droves for working so hard and for being so infallible in their spirit.

This is also true of people like Lee Munroe and Paddy Donnelly whom you might have heard of as founders of the well publicised Big Word Project, that was such a success that it was mercilessly ripped off and plagiarised, the greatest form of flattery. Lee's been finishing his Masters while working for a bunch of clients and his latest creation is www.lookaly.com, a website that allows people to review and rate places, businesses and more in Northern Ireland. It's wonderfully executed as all of Lee's work is. The fella's an inspiration in terms of following through with the big ideas, long may he continue to keep churning out such great work.

And so I'm not too sure that my friend in London is right with his appraisal of where Belfast is. He might be right in saying that those with a few shlocks of grey on their temples are suspicious and unsupportive of the young in this city but that will hardly matter as long as the young people are supporting each other.

And the Big Word Project we mentioned above?

Seemed appropriate to buy

Creative Camp Belfast

Sometimes it's easy to get bogged down in the politics, minefields, subterfuge, sabotage and sheer difficulty of trying to achieve creative goals. This is especially true when everyone (or at very least a lot of people) are chasing the same £5 note around the block, such is the scarce nature of work(or other means of income) in what's been dubbed the Creative Industries in NI.

Additionally, those who have achieved some level of livable income are sometimes prone to a bunker mentality. This is ours and we're not sharing. Fuck off and find your own niche. I worked hard for this.

Or the worst of all; the ill-informed judgement call that decides your not 'worthy' of attention (this one usually comes from burnt out, middle aged men who have no spark left but can't divorce themselves from the gargantuan egos they've spent a quarter of a century building.) That can be the killer, especially to someone young and full of energy. It should be written into the Bill of Rights that everyone, at least once, deserves to have the right to succeed or fail without the interference or patronage of some vampiric uncle figure.

For those of us a little bit older, it's easy to get jaded. Especially when you've taken a few right hooks over the years that instilled the deja-vu-ometer that goes off in your brain when someone mentions something like 'Digital Circle' or Invest NI's Digital Content Strategy (on a side note, I've yet to meet anyone who actually contributed to that. Answers on a postcard please...)

At Creative Camp Belfast on Saturday I met Matt Johnston (newly installed staffer of Digital Circle) and he seemed like a nice fella. He was open and chatty and seemed genuinely interested in talking to people about what he wants to achieve with the organisation, and the fact that he's very new and just finding his feet. Now for those who remember NIIMA a sharp intake of breath is allowed, actually it's wise. Digital Circle looks a bit like a sector lead body either now or in the making. Especially when you dig deeper and find that Invest NI hold the lead on this new hybrid puppy.

If you're thinking 'Man the Barricades' I understand, it's experience talking. But if we're really to progress then maybe it's time for a few who have been around the digital media scene for a while to feedback some thoughts.

Yes NIIMA was a shambles and should have been preserved as an example of exactly not how to set up a lead body for a sector (or anything else for that matter.) Yes a lot of people (me included) wasted time, effort and hope on said shambles. Yes it looked from the outside like a select few did very well from NIIMA and then threw out the baby with the bathwater. All of that is true and given, it was grim at a time when the digital media scene in NI needed a boost.

Consequently you could be forgiven for not placing too much hope in Digital Circle, or at least waiting around in the shadows until you're sure that they're not drinking virgin's blood or sacrificing goats twice a month. That's up to you.

For my own part I've learned a lot in the last couple of years. When I first came across the website of Digital Circle I filled out the enquiry form. After two weeks I'd had no reply. Typical I thought. I'm a member of Momentum and still don't get told anything about an organisation that could soon be directly affecting my business and everyday life. Once bitten etc...

And then I went to Creative Camp. And met loads of younger and older, talented, fired up, wise, entrepreneurial, savvy, cultured and progressive people giving speeches, sharing secrets of their trades, giving very impassioned manifestos and ideas freely and without prejudice to the people around them. I couldn't help but think that if half of the people in that room on Saturday had been involved with NIIMA it could have been a roaring success.

So when it comes to Digital Circle, the trick is to make sure that happens, to get a wide school of people and viewpoints on board and to make sure that it is representative and accountable to the sector, companies and folk it will be representing and that voices from across the wide digital media spectrum get heard.

"The Creative Industries in NI are now bigger than agriculture," as I was told by a smug Invest NI bloke a while back in a back corridor where a lot of the real deals are done. He was taking a lot of credit for that fact too.

It's about time that the credit went where it is due and Digital Circle can perhaps help in bridging the gap between great underground events in Blick Studios on a Saturday afternoon and the level of support the sector has earned and deserves from government and beyond. It's there, let's get on board and use it.

And on the subject of credit cheers to Andy McMillan and everyone else who organised Creative Camp, truly brilliant and a tonic for those of us who are nursing bruises in the name of progress.