Books I’ve read in 2016

I’ve read 32 books, which is four short of my goal and also four less than the pre­vi­ous year. It’s still not a bad score though and qual­i­ty wise the list below con­tains many gems.

I resolved to read most­ly books by women and minor­i­ty authors. This lead to quite a few sur­pris­ing expe­ri­ences which I am cer­tain­ly grate­ful for. I think I’ll con­tin­ue to push myself to seek out such books in the year to come.

There are only a few comics in the list. I sort of fell off the comics band­wag­on this year main­ly because I just can’t seem to find a good place to dis­cov­er things to read.

Any­way, here’s the list, with links to my reviews on Goodreads. A * denotes a par­tic­u­lar favourite.

Favourite music albums of 2016

I guess this year final­ly marked the end of my album lis­ten­ing behav­iour. Spo­ti­fy’s Dis­cov­er and Dai­ly Mix fea­tures were the one-two punch that knocked it out. In addi­tion I some­how stopped scrob­bling to Last.fm in March. It’s switched back on now but the dam­age is done.

So the data I do have is incom­plete. I did still delib­er­ate­ly put on a num­ber of albums this year. But I won’t post them in order of lis­tens like I did last year. This is sub­jec­tive, unsort­ed and hand-picked. I will even sneak in a few albums that were pub­lished towards the end of 2015.

My sources includ­ed Pitch­fork’s list of best new albums which used to be how I dis­cov­ered new music and still wields some influ­ence. I cross-ref­er­enced with Spo­ti­fy’s top songs of 2016.

So first Spo­ti­fy tells me what to lis­ten to and then it gives me a list of things I actu­al­ly lis­tened to. This is get­ting weird…

Any­way, here they are. A * marks a par­tic­u­lar favourite.

  • A Tribe Called Quest – We Got It From Here… *
  • Solange – A Seat At the Table
  • Hamil­ton Lei­thauser + Ros­tam – I Had A Dream That You Were Mine
  • The Avalanch­es – Wildflower *
  • Blood Orange – Free­town Sound
  • Whit­ney – Light Upon the Lake
  • Car Seat Head­rest – Teens Of Denial *
  • Chance The Rap­per – Col­or­ing Book *
  • ANOHNIHOPELESSNESS
  • Moody­mann – DJ-Kicks *
  • Grimes – Art Angels * 
  • Float­ing Points – Elaenia
  • The Range – Potential *
  • Sepal­cure – Fold­ing Time
  • Jami­la Woods – HEAVN

Here’s a playlist which includes a cou­ple of more albums if you want to have a listen.

A year of two crashes

A year ago today I was in Bali. 

We spent the bet­ter part of Decem­ber 2015 there. It was­n’t real­ly a hol­i­day, but we weren’t real­ly work­ing either. I was wrap­ping up a few final Hub­bub things back then. But for the most part life was qui­et. Very qui­et. We would get up real­ly ear­ly. We would buy some veg­eta­bles and things from a lady who would dri­ve into town every morn­ing with a load from the market. 

I’d swim, exer­cise, med­i­tate, have break­fast and do some work. Writ­ing and read­ing most­ly. By the end of the morn­ing we would cook lunch. The major meal of the day. In the after­noon we would­n’t do much of any­thing because of the heat. Decem­ber is rainy sea­son in Bali and it gets incred­i­bly hot and humid. Towards dusk we would often take a walk. We would have an ear­ly light din­ner and enter­tain our­selves with the antics of tokay geck­os. We would turn in early.

Now I am writ­ing this back in our home in Utrecht. In many ways my life has returned to the way it was before that month in Bali. But in oth­er ways it has changed. I used to run a small agency and would be in the stu­dio almost every day. Now I am free­lanc­ing and I split my time between work­ing on site at clients, work­ing from home and meet­ing up with peo­ple in town. I enjoy the variety.

I used to be in the busi­ness of design­ing games and play­things for learn­ing and oth­er pur­pos­es. Now I am back to my old voca­tion of inter­ac­tion design and in the­o­ry I can and work on anything. 

Towards the end of Hub­bub’s run I felt boxed in. Now I feel like I can pur­sue what­ev­er inter­ests me.

Right now, under the ban­ner of Eend I am help­ing the Dutch vic­tim sup­port foun­da­tion devel­op new dig­i­tal ser­vices. I spend about three days a week work­ing on site as part of cross-dis­ci­pli­nary agile team made up of a mix of inter­nal and exter­nal peo­ple. It’s good, impor­tant work and I can con­tribute a lot.

The time that remains I divide between the usu­al free­lancer things like admin, net­work­ing and so on, and devel­op­ing a plan for a PhD. 

I’ve been blog­ging on and off about intel­li­gent design tools this year and that is no coin­ci­dence. I am con­sid­er­ing going into research full­time to work in that space. It is still ear­ly days but I am hav­ing fun read­ing up on the sub­ject, writ­ing, mak­ing plans, and talk­ing to peo­ple in acad­e­mia about it.

In between this ‘new nor­mal’ and those qui­et days in Bali was a year of two crash­es. I basi­cal­ly start­ed from scratch in many ways twice this year and I feel like it has helped me get reori­ent­ed.

Crash one.

In Jan­u­ary we moved to Sin­ga­pore. We would end up spend­ing sev­en months there. In that time I joined a start­up called ARTO. I helped build a team, devel­op a design and devel­op­ment process and act­ed as prod­uct man­ag­er and prod­uct design­er. We launched a first ver­sion of the prod­uct in that peri­od and we pushed out a cou­ple of new fea­tures as well. The last thing I did was find a replace­ment for myself.

In between work­ing on ARTO I taught a two-part engage­ment design work­shop with Michael and helped Edo and his team build ArtHit. I got into run­ning and ate my way through the abun­dance of amaz­ing food Sin­ga­pore has to offer.

Of all the things I enjoyed about Sin­ga­pore, its cos­mopoli­tanism has to be the absolute high­light. I worked with peo­ple from Myan­mar, Malaysia, Viet­nam and India. I made friends with peo­ple from many more places. Dis­cov­er­ing the things we have in com­mon and the things that set us apart was a con­tin­u­ous source of enjoyment. 

And like that, just when we were get­ting set­tled and had got­ten into a rou­tine of sorts and start­ed to feel at home it was time to go back to the Nether­lands. (But not before spend­ing a cou­ple of weeks explor­ing Viet­nam and Cam­bo­dia. More great food and gor­geous sights.)

Crash two.

It is weird to have cul­ture shock in a town you’ve spent most of your life in but that was what it felt like for about the first month back in Utrecht. Sep­tem­ber felt very sim­i­lar to Jan­u­ary. I had no work and was net­work­ing like a mad­man and just play­ing the num­bers game. Hop­ing I would bump into some­thing. And of course, as it always does even­tu­al­ly, things worked out.

I con­sid­er myself blessed to be able to take these risks and more or less trust things will turn out okay. I know that if they don’t there are always peo­ple around me who will sup­port me if worse comes to worse.

2017 looks to be a year of more sta­bil­i­ty although one can nev­er be sure. World events as well as occur­rences in my per­son­al cir­cles this year have shown me once again there are no guar­an­tees in life. 

But I plan to build on what I’ve start­ed these past few months and see where it takes me. It is time to shift from ori­ent­ing to decid­ing and act­ing. And for the fore­see­able future I plan to keep the cur­rent ‘sys­tem’ running. 

So no more crash­es for the time being. Although I am sure there will come a time when the need for it aris­es again.

My plans for 2016

Long sto­ry short: my plan is to make plans.

Hub­bub has gone into hiber­na­tion. After more than six years of lead­ing a bou­tique play­ful design agency I am return­ing to free­lance life. At least for the short term.

I will use the flex­i­bil­i­ty afford­ed by this free­ing up of time to take stock of where I have come from and where I am head­ed. ‘Ori­en­ta­tion is the Schw­er­punkt,’ as Boyd says. I have def­i­nite­ly cycled back through my meta-OODA-loop and am firm­ly back in the sec­ond O.

To make things more inter­est­ing I have exchanged the Nether­lands for Sin­ga­pore. I will be here until August. It is going to be fun to explore the things this city has to offer. I am curi­ous what the tech­nol­o­gy and design scene is like when seen up close. So I hope to do some work locally.

I will take on short com­mit­ments. Let’s say no longer than two to three months. Any­thing goes real­ly, but I am par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in work relat­ed to cre­ativ­i­ty and learn­ing. I am also keen on get­ting back into teaching.

So if you are in Sin­ga­pore, work in tech­nol­o­gy or design and want to have a cup of cof­fee. Drop me a line.

Hap­py 2016!