2015 is shaping up to be a very interesting year indeed. Based just on the projects already confirmed, I will be digging into a pretty wide range of areas – most of which are defined as vertical + connectivity, or what happens if you connect _________?_ Or framed differently still, How does connectivity change products & manufacturing, cities & governance, cars, interaction design, agriculture?
- A research report for use by the German government will focus on connected cities: Implications, governance, data, responsiveness.
- A longer-term research project about IoT in agriculture, which also happens to allow me to work with Alex/Designswarm, which is always a pleasure.
- And of course ThingsCon, our conference about how to build connected services and products. Kind of a big collective meta take on the theme of connectedness, of plugging the internet into ______.
All of these topics will naturally also play a role at NEXT conference, which will take place in Hamburg in the fall this year, and to some degree at another project that is still under wraps.
Then there are three content-based products I’m co-developing:
- Connected, a (somewhat irregularly published, cough cough!) print magazine about IoT.
- A travel/souvenir centered thing (as briefly mentioned here).
- And a super-condensed monthly briefing on emerging technologies for executives, called The Imaginary Unit, this with Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino and Patrick Tanguay.
There’s a pattern in all these projects, by the way. One I’m more and more explicitly working towards: These are all things that I don’t tackle working by myself, but always with one or several partners. It’s become more and more clear to me how important it is to me to work within teams; this is a way to make that happen.
