Last night, creative industry workers packed into the overheated basement of The Shoreditch for free beers and to hear some of the big brains in digital innovation share their collected wisdom. To keep things interesting, each speech was in Ignite format, which consist of presentations that are 5 minutes in length and 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds.

Our Lead Planner, Kate Miltner, was among the speakers. She blazed through her allotted slides, deftly explaining how our online memes reflect back on our broader culture - and let us vent our fears, anxieties and frustrations in a fun, safe manner.

Her explaination of the "anthropomorphic distancing" at play in LOLcat photos - and how this allows us all to laugh at our failings through projecting them onto cute cats - got some serious LOLs from the crowd.

Her comparison of ancient cave drawings to Instagram photos - images that take very little skill to create but tell us so much about everyday life in a culture - got some nods of approval.

The point in all of this? That's it's easy and tempting to dismiss something new - like a meme - as superficial or frivolous. However, just because it looks silly doesn't mean that it's not important - and that it won't have a profound effect on our broader culture.

Check out pictures from the event on Flickr.

Other speakers included:

Matt Ballantine – Microsoft – Why the creative industries need to become innovative

Sergio Falletti – Future Platforms - What it takes to be agile

Max Tatton-Brown – Wildfire – I'm in love with your wife. Cognitive poetics and the understanding of language

James Clarke – Thin Martian – Typography, who cares?

Ollie Wells – Sequence – How to learn to love a hump

Jenny Evgenia Grinblo - Future Workshops - Mind the Gap

Sam Brookes – 33 Digital – Why it’s OK to be a coffee snob