Tag: events

Reboot 8.0 questions

Here’s some ques­tions to ask dur­ing Reboot 8.0 (heard after Michael Thom­sen’s talk on renaissance?):

What’s the point of it all? Is it actu­al­ly going to hap­pen? Re-renais­sance? What’s the impact of cur­rent way of writ­ing on our think­ing? What hap­pens to pri­va­cy when we’re inter­con­nect­ed? What will be the next phase of democ­ra­cy? Are we doing every­thing we can with cur­rent tech? How do we work togeth­er on larg­er scale to improve the world (e.g. Amnesty)? How can we be more hon­est with users of our tech? What is the next step? Where are the lifeboats on our titan­ic? What will not change? What will our chil­dren think of all this? How can we mon­i­tor this change and make it account­able? If all this stops what trade will you do tomor­row? Is this the end of nation states and will we live in 2nd Life? How can we be smarter togeth­er? Are we on thee verge of let­ting mas­sive avail­abil­i­ty kill the idea of greatness? 

Preboot

I’m sit­ting in the main room of Kedel­hallen watch­ing Thomas fid­dle with his lap­top. We’re ready to start reboot­ing. Yes­ter­day we arrived in the evening, quick­ly checked into the hotel and went into town for a bite. After a bur­ri­to at a dodgy latin tourist trap, we went over to a styl­ish cof­fee bar for some espres­so and sweets. 

Aso, I’ve giv­en my new IXUS 60 a spin yes­ter­day, and am very pleased with it’s per­for­mance. Lat­er I’ll start upload­ing some stuff to Flickr.

Pre­boot is done, let’s get reboot­ing. (Yay!)

Signals from the Leapfrog offices

Or in oth­er words, what I’ve been up to, besides keep­ing myself busy over at Info.nl.

  1. Reboot 8 is shap­ing up to be anoth­er great con­fer­ence. I’m already look­ing for­ward to see­ing Matt Webb and Chris Heath­cote speak, among oth­ers. I’m also still think­ing about doing some­thing myself, the ques­tion is: what? 
  2. While we’re on the top­ic of con­fer­ences, make sure you don’t miss The Web and Beyond — the 10th annu­al SIGCHI.NL event. I’ve been help­ing with the organ­i­sa­tion and must say it’s promis­ing to be an inter­est­ing look at the web 2.0 phe­nom­e­non from an inter­ac­tion design perspective. 
  3. I have a heap of arti­cles and posts lying around wait­ing to be fed to my del.icio.us account (I actu­al­ly read all that stuff before both­er­ing you with it). Now to just find the time to tag them all – to think this stuff is sup­posed to have a low cog­ni­tive load! 
  4. Right after vis­it­ing Reboot 8 I’ll be off to beau­ti­ful Italy for some much need­ed R&R. Be sure to keep an eye on my Flickr pho­to­stream for slight­ly crap­py cam­er­a­phone shots of Napels, Rome, Flo­rence and Venice. Look­ing for­ward to that! 
  5. Final­ly, you may have won­dered about the “mar­tial arts enthu­si­ast” bit in this blog’s intro­duc­tion. Between all of the above I’m get­ting myself ready for some exam­i­na­tions in Take­da Ryu this sum­mer. When I get back from Vien­na, I hope to be a cer­ti­fied teacher’s assis­tant and sec­ond dan in Aiki­do. Wish me luck.
Now back to our reg­u­lar pro­gram­ming – death­ly silence while I get some more client work out the door.

Reboot 8 announced

Mark Wubben’s Flickr pho­to­stream has a shot of his iCal with Reboot 8 in it. Last year’s Reboot 7 was a blast – excel­lent speak­ers, low entry fee, nice loca­tion and above all a very relaxed atmos­phere. Jesse James Gar­rett and Bruce Ster­ling are con­firmed speak­ers, worth the admis­sion alone methinks. I’m already look­ing for­ward to attend­ing this year’s “Roskilde of the inter­net” will you join me?

Amsterdam IA Cocktail Hour 15 feb 2006

IJ Kantine

A few shots tak­en at last night’s Ams­ter­dam IA Cock­tail Hour are up at Flickr. We had a nice “Bat­tle of the Inter­faces” — Sco­pus and Aquabrows­er fac­ing off to see what’s best — search or browse? The results were… incon­clu­sive. But good fun was had by all. 

Far more bet­ter look­ing shots are over at Guido’s.

Euro IA Summit 2005 report

While my notes are col­lect­ing dust on my hard dri­ve, some­one else final­ly got around to writ­ing up a report of last year’s Euro­pean IA Sum­mit. As James Kalbach writes in his arti­cle on Box­es and Arrows: 

“We should be intense­ly inter­est­ed in doc­u­ment­ing these sum­mits… Does IA real­ly want to deliv­er a wheel­bar­row of Pow­er­Point slides in ten years as the body of its work?” 
A good overview of a mem­o­rable event then. I’m already look­ing for­ward to the next one.

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Keynote Speech – Andrew Dillon — Euro IA Summit 2005

Here’s my notes from Andrew Dil­lon’s keynote at the Euro IA Summit:

Big IA has a future; lit­tle IA does not. Geen IA vs. UX – niet jezelf definiëren aan de hand van wat je niet bent. Data is stored, infor­ma­tion is expe­ri­enced. Design to lever­age nat­ur­al ten­den­cies. Din­gen hoeven niet direct bruik­baar te zijn. Web 2.0: van iets wat gemaakt is, naar iets wat je zelf maakt… User: from recip­i­ent to par­tic­i­pant, co-own­er and co-design­er. User Human. UX design – niet: this is how I like it. Weg bewe­gen van craft-based werk, geen con­sis­tente kwaliteit, geen sys­tem­atiek in werk, weinig vooruit­gang, bedreigd door snelle veran­derin­gen in omgev­ing. Ambi­gu­i­ty has it’s mer­its. You don’t have to strict­ly define it (IA). No more heroes, some peo­ple may even think Jakob Nielsen’s a lia­bil­i­ty… Organ­i­sa­tion, cura­tion and inter­ac­tion of infor­ma­tion. Cura­tion is a prob­lem. The archi­tec­tures are our the­o­ries. Find­abil­i­ty is the new usabil­i­ty – but where’s the archi­tec­ture in that? Beyond nav­i­ga­tion: pat­tern­ing, wrap­ping, anchor­ing, emer­gent struc­ture. ‘Virus of the mind’; infor­ma­tion breeds. Cohill, 1991, infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture & the design project – IA as a new kind of project man­ag­er. Real design: respect expe­ri­ence – aug­ment life. Usabil­i­ty is a design val­ue, like accessibility.

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Off to Euro IA Summit

Today, I’m off to Brus­sels for the first Euro­pean IA Sum­mit. The pro­gram looks inter­est­ing, and there’s plen­ty of Dutch IA’s going, so it should be fun. I’m also pre­sent­ing a poster and am very curi­ous about how peo­ple will react to it!

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