Design for privacy at the Annual Internet of Things Europe 2011
I attended the Annual Internet of Things Europe conference in Brussels last week. The conference gives an overview of the current state of the development towards an Internet of Things where not only computers and mobile phones are connected to the world wide network, but also all kinds of other objects become part. And just like computers make the Internet by being the hubs, this will happen in the Internet of Things where object are hubs in the network. This generates lots of new challenges and opportunities. The conference discussed both societal as technical consequences with an important role for standards and enabling technologies. I was invited to a panel and talk on the way this developments influence the design of online services ecosystems as we make them within Info.nl.
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Master your freedom at This happened #11
Last Monday This happened #11 took place at Theater Kikker again. Another great event in the series. It was also a bit special because we at Info.nl did support the event together with Springtime. But that of course does not influence the event, the fine ensemble of speakers did the trick again.
First of was Roy Gilsing, the designer and iniator of Grabbit. A handgrip for the iPad. It do free your movements with your tablet, as Ianus shared from his own practice.
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How Apple boosts the real Internet of Things
We are entering a new phase in the Internet of Things. It is a promise for years, but it seems that we are heading to a tipping point. And Apple’s new iOS5 could be a accelerator. Tomorrow the new version of the mobile operation system for the iPhone will be introduced, and one of the most interesting speculations on the news is the integration of Twitter deeply in the OS, together with the introduction of iCloud. The real difference of a Twitter integration comes not with the sharing your pictures directly from the tools, but will be the way Twitter will evolve in a notification platform for smart objects via your phone. How does this could work?
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The Algo Rhythm of FutureEverything
This year I attended the conference FutureEverything for the first time. The event is in a way more a festival than a conference, with a combination of music, art and ideas. FutureEverything had a nice exhibition on data visualisation and some art installations in town, and a extensive music program in the evening, my primary reason to visit was the conference, I heard some good recommendations from a.o. Bruce Sterling at SxSW.
The conference did deliver its expectations with some good presentations and inspiration. Main conclusion after this conference, it is clear again that 2011 is the year of the algorithm context. FutureEverything touched different aspects, from bots to the way to play this new context.
My first time at SxSW
This year I attended togehter with colleague Joris for the first time the conference South by SouthWest Interactive (SxSW or South by in short) in Austin Texas. It was quite a experience, a huge number of attendants (about 20.000 they say) and more than 1000 sessions to choose from. It felt more of a festival than a conference sometimes, which certainly add to the experience.
The conclusion from the sessions I saw and heard about from others is that the big trends are still on track. The things I preach for some time were confirmed: moving from web-experience to ecosystem of apps, big data (science, visualization), and above all: gamification, which can be seen as the buzz word of this edition. Location and context are still big, just like social media dynamics. Group services apps turned out very popular.
The focus in the conference seems to be a bit more on one app wonders than building a complete service experience, so let see if that will get more focus the coming year. The mixing up of digital and real world is just touched a little. It will be a good check if these trends will have landed next year.
This happened celebrates 10 times inspiring storytelling
Thursday March 17 there was a special edition of This happened. The initiators Kars, Ianus and Alexander celebrated the 10th edition of the successful series of evenings on the stories behind interaction design. This special edition was connected to the Tweetakt festival and three of the four speakers show their installations on this festival. Kars curated the lovely choice of the installations.
Just like the other nine editions This happened did a terrific job to let us experience what choices designers and artists make to let their work fly. This time all the works are an interactive art piece, where the user of the art is also an unmissable part of the piece.
Future of services
Last Thursday Club of Amsterdam organized the Future of Services evening seminar. Info.nl did partner in the event. Robert Hewin, Pieter Jan Stappers and Lorna Goulden gave great talks sharing their view on the future of services from different angles. I shared our vision on the future of online services, or as the full title was: A future of impulse driven and hyper personalized services. Below you find my slides and a kind of executive summary of the talk.
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Lift your life to the near future
From February 2 till 4 the Lift Conference took place in Geneva. A conference “about current and emerging usage of digital technologies such as online communities, social media and casual games. Participants come to better understand the challenges and opportunities presented by digital technologies, and meet the people who drive these innovations.”
A mouth full, but the conference turned out to be one of the top conferences for the quality of the speakers and talks. Together with 999 others I had a great time with lots of inspiration. I will try to share some of my impressions. To give a full report is too much to do. However, I did rather extended tweets (if the talk was interesting of course), so I listed here per session the link to a keepstream page and give some highlights, with the use of the visual notes made by Alchemy.
