Last night saw the gathering of the ICT clans and related industries to celebrate the achievements of our best young Software Developers at the ScotSoft 2008 Gala Dinner.

Prior to sitting down to our first course, or even taking a sip of Oracle’s finely sponsored champagne, we were tested and teased by the 10Big Things Forum which explored some of the year’s latest developments and thinking.

David Mitchell of the Ovum led the way through a series of highly entertaining talks and videos starting with:

1) Martin Sadler of HP Labs, whose top ‘thing’ was a delicious vision-in-pink PDA/mobile device/mini-pc handbag lookalike, guaranteed to have multiple compartments for every aspect of your life, securely zipped against the massed forces of organsied cybercriminals (but is there room for lipstick and a mirror, I ask).

2 & 3) Charles Armstrong from Trampoline Systems took us back in time to explain the evolution of civilization, holding coffee bars (and probably expresso in particular looking at his trousers) primarily responsible for his vision of ‘Emergent Democracy’ and, secondly, explored how we should be thinking of valuing our ‘Social Capital’ in order to add it to our balance sheets next decade.

4) Duncan Mactear, from 4Projects, gave us a whirlwind powerpoint presentation of the explosion of SaaS (software as a service) in response to the key drivers of a “turbulent economy, fragile ecology and high cost of energy”. The only irritant he acknowledged, in this modus operandi is that we end up living in a Beta world. I heard a rallying cry of ‘carry on clicking!’ to be the maxim when it all goes adrift…

5) Mark Taylor, of Evangelism Microsoft, revealed his captivation with rich media and showed us his latest toy, the MS Surface, a modern version of Pong, but where it truly pays to have had proper piano lessons before you start.

6) Greg Papdopulous, from Sun Microsystems, revealed the the core concepts in ‘Cloud Computing’ with some brilliant brush strokes on his white board.

7) Stuart Cosgrove, of Channel 4, declared that everything must be portable to suit a peripatetic generation.

And, well I’ve lost track… But if you care to join in the research check out Photosynth, MS Surface, and Silverlight.

With many thanks to the team at ScotlandIS, particularly Polly Purvis and Karen Meechan who made it a night worth recording.