These monthnotes are going to be a little shorter than usual as I’m only just about to come back from a longer vacation. But there a a couple of things I couldn’t not share, chief among which is that we just launched a magazine. Yes, that’s right, Dearsouvenir is live. Also, the Interaction 16 program more or less stands, Bosch ConnectedExperience is go, ThingsCon Amsterdam was a rousing success (I’m told), some work on African innovation networks, and a new project with Google.
In self-directed stuff…
The biggest news for me this month: We launched a magazine – Dearsouvenir, a tablet-first travel magazine that explores destinations through the stories behind souvenirs. With almost 300 pages for each of the two language versions (English and German), issue #1 is quite the whopper. It’s available for free on iOS and Android tablets – just look for Dearsouvenir Magazine. Additionally, iOS users will notice a second complementary Dearsouvenir app for when you’re on the go: It’s a very nice, simple tool to help you find the best souvenirs near you. So happy and exhilarated. Yay!
Interaction16: We did a last round of polishing, internal discussions and polling on all the hundreds of submissions to the call for proposals and our various short lists. (Thanks for all the fantastic proposals, and your patience.) In early November, we sent out confirmations to the first round of speakers, and lots of follow-ups since. With this, the speaker line-up pretty much stands (and will be online soon).
At Mozfest, we (Designswarm & The Waving Cat) we ran a space full of talks and workshops. (I was mostly wearing the ThingsCon hat). There, we also launched a new project, The Good Home: People’s needs and expectations of their homes are changing in the face of increasing house prices, social changes brought on by the sharing economy, changing work conditions, climate change and increased connectivity at an object level (the internet of things). We want to move beyond past visions and use design to create a vision for our future now. A vision to inspire new ways of defining, living, building and interacting with our homes now and in the future. It’s an ambitious project, and we set ourselves an ambitious deadline: We want to present first findings in time for Salone (Milan Furniture Fair), in spring 2016.
In client work…
Bosch ConnectedExperience: Working towards more exchange and collaboration between the different parts of the #iot ecosystem, BCX16 will be an event that focuses on different parts of the IoT ecosystem. With talks by thought leaders in the world of product design, Bosch’s open tools for developers, and advice from across the business through clinics, it aims to be a major event for anyone interested in building connected products at scale. This is in collaboration with Designswarm – always a pleasure.
African innovation systems: The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is looking into how to foster knowledge and technology transfer, and we’re supporting our office neighbors Syspons in an analysis of innovation systems and networks in Africa.
Google: Kicking off a small project with Google’s public policy team over in the US this month. More on that soon.
Shout outs
ThingsCon Amsterdam happened a few days ago, and even though I alas had to miss it due to being at the other end of the world, it looked amazing judging by the tweets flying by. Can’t wait to catch up on the talks and stories.
