On the 27th of January the IEEE held a whole day event "From Baird to the Digital Age" at the Royal Institution.  The previous day, the 26th, they had unveiled a plaque outside 22 Frith Street to commemorate John Logie Baird's first public demonstration of his television system there on the 26th of January 1926.  The session on the 27th comprised a number of talks, preceded by introductions by Ali Hessami the Chair of the UK and Ireland Section and Karen Bartleson the current President of the IEEE.  The talks started with Donald McLean discussing Baird's achievements, followed by Iain Logie Baird (JLB's grandson) who talked about Baird the person, and the morning session was completed by a short video showing the plaque unveiling the previous day.  In the afternoon there were four talks.  The first was a really fascinating talk by Cyril Hilsum on the UK route to Liquid Crystal Television.  This was followed by Nick Wells covering the revolution in TV broadcasting, moving from analogue to digital and the standards related to present day broadcasting.  Next Chris Johns took us on a tour of where TV may be going in the future, and finally the day was brought to a close by Bill Hayes (President of the IEEE's Broadcast Technology Society) with a talk on where television developments are taking us, not only at the consumption end of the chain but also for the broadcaster.  This was a fascinating day with a really great set of talks and the chance for worthwhile discussions and networking during the breaks.  About 150 people attended the event, and the only real disappointment for me was to see that only about 4% of those were women - we need to do something about this, in engineering in general and in broadcast technology in particular.