We received news that 3rd place doesnt get us any money or medals.
There would be free glory in the form of free beers, but both Lena and I are a bit tied up with work so wont be attending.
On a more reflective note: I think the occassion begs a discussion on what we’re hoping to do more/less of with the blog.
I do believe that recent posts and discussions by Mikko, Camille, Roberto are exactly the kinds of voices we need to be through the blog.
Personally I’d hope to see more personal projects, ideas, reflections (rants of course!) and discussions materialize through the blog.
The conference has passed but there’s some really interesting conversations going on around Social Media. It takes place simultaneously in multiple cities around the world. The aim of each event is to advance the use and understanding of social media in the corporate, public and non-profit sectors.
March is a time when spring is dawning and we (at least those of us in colder climates) can’t wait to bust out of our cabins and break the fever of breathing our own exhaust all winter long. Spring offers newfound possibilities for making things, for being creative. Combine the desire to get out and circulate, with the itch to create, the fact that it’s also the month of the Academy Awards and the world focusing its attention on movie making, and… well… we thought it was as good a time as any to launch DIY Movie Making Month here at MAKE.
a) It is hugely inspiring. To quote 4 key learnings by Chochinov (during his course at the SVA, New York) in the closing parts of his presentation -
Raise the Stakes: Make it Personal, Make it Urgent
Intervene: Design your products as if they were props in an intervention.
Dont Play Fair: Act like a design thinker, but think like a design activist.
Facilitate: Its not what you design, its not what you make – its what you facilitate.
b) The work shown in the presentation is yet another indicator toward ‘Design Fiction’ explorations which we currently need more of perhaps at Umea. (sorry, US keyboard!)
—
Less problem solving by design alone, and more of design-intentions explicit through fiction. For want of a better word – storytelling. (…puke)
“We call you – designers, technologists and artists – to translate current nanotech trends into visionary speculative products that stimulate discussion and debate on our nanotech future. We are seeking for well thought out and designed proposals that take technological, economical, political as well as societal trends in consideration – science faction, rather than science fiction. Product proposals will be judged by an international jury of nanotech experts and design experts.
We welcome anything between a thought provoking sketch and fully–executed products about the hit the shelves. A selection of the proposals will be displayed in the NANO Supermarket. The best proposal is awarded € 2500.
Your submission consists of:
Product pitch and description of your model (any media is allowed).
Visual presentation of the product (preferably a magazine-style advertisement).
Reflection on technical feasibility: Which nanotech principles allow the product to function, how can the product be produced, in what year do you expect it can be produced?
Reflection on social-cultural implications: What are the promises and fears of the underlying nanotechnology and how can it change our everyday life?
All products will be judged upon originality, design quality, visual presentation, technological feasibility, social-cultural implications, and the extent which your design stimulates debate.
We have a great Interaction Workshop with tons of items, devices, gadgets, tools and such. Since we started the workshop 3 years ago, it’s been a struggle to keep track of the stuff, what we have in stock and what students/staff are borrowing. Last year, we started using paper lists, but it’s really far from a good solution: the lists become really messy and pens don’t write that well on vertical sheets!
I had this Booking System in mind for over 2 years now, and I’m quite happy to release it to the world today. It aims at solving a few needs we have in the Interaction Workshop:
Have a master list of what we have and its value. For insurance and administration purposes.
Keep track of what students/staff take out of the workshop. A booking system that allows people to see our list of equipment/devices and what is currently available for borrowing.
Show what similar items are available if the selected one is not available.
Provide information, support, links or other data for how to use a particular piece of equipment.
Manage bookings (create/edit/return) fast and efficiently with RFID tags on items and users’ access card. Swipe-Swipe-Click-Click => You are done (or something like this)!
So the first public version is now online at http://www2.dh.umu.se/iworkshop. As you will notice, I didn’t spend much time on the visuals. My goal was to first have a functional system out and ready for use. This project has been under my TODO list for so long, I had to get it out in whatever form. In my opinion, it is missing a few key functions/things like images of the items, and a few other nifty things, but this will have to wait for a later version. I’m not in Umeå this Spring and integrating a webcam functionality from abroad is not trivial. Also, I want to see how people use it and adapt it to what people need or want.
The system is web-based using the CakePHP framework, and it uses AJAX and Javascript extensively. The dedicated station in the Interaction Workshop has a RFID reader hooked to it, and tag values are sent to the browser via a Processing + AppleScript + Javascript bridge.
At the moment, guests and students can not create and return bookings. This has to be done by staff (anyways most of the stuff is locked). We’ll see how it goes like this and adapt along the way.
Send all your feedback to me. And let me know how enjoyable or painful it is to use.
Interesting system developed by a MIT PHD student that lets people enter data into a tablet computer simply by drawing diagrams on the screen could lead to interactive whiteboards.
A PhD colleague recently sent me this great link UbuWeb. It is a really nice site full of high-quality content. It is described as follow:
UbuWeb was founded in November of 1996, initially as a repository for visual, concrete and, later, sound poetry. Over the years, UbuWeb has embraced all forms of the avant-garde and beyond. Its parameters continue to expand in all directions.
March 2010 | Instead of our usual text-based Trend Briefings, we bring you a
light-hearted yet insight-heavy video edition this month, featuring consumers
from all over the world speaking their minds on a variety of trend topics.
After all, one consumer video sometimes says more than a 20-page
Trend Briefing ;-) Enjoy!
On January 1st, we announced that we’re working towards Arduino 1.0 (for details, see this post). Our goal is to stabilize the platform so that it’s supportable and a good foundation for future developments.
We’ve been getting good feedback from experienced developers through ourdevelopers list; from many users individually, both in person and in email; and in the Arduino forums. We want to make sure we get input from the whole Arduino community. This means we want to hear from users, teachers, designers, developers, tinkerers, distributors, and anyone else who uses Arduino.
Please fill out the the Arduino Uno Punto Zero survey to let us know what you think of the current features of Arduino. It takes about five minutes. Even if you have nothing else to add, this will help give us a broad picture of Arduino use. Please share this widely with your friends, students, and anyone else you know who uses Arduino. The broader the picture, the better 1.0 can be.
