December... Feeling Disconnected

December comes, and almost goes, as does 2009 and the Decade... So I'm going to spend the next few days reflecting on the year that was, and what is to come.

December is a very strange month, the end of the year, and in one perspective, is very busy in terms of finishing off things, indeed with regard to commercial web development work, that has been the case, a lot of finishing off web designing and coding. It has also been a time to head down to London and work on various things with WeFab project, then heading back and collaborating over Skype. On the other though, it has still shown the difficulty in travelling, having to disappoint a few people by not being in London at the right time, and missing out on a lot of the Social activities, the final meet ups with London friends who have really made my year.

Its a shame that I seem to miss out on a lot of things then. I really would have liked to go to the Space Makers party, not only to meet London friends to wrap up an amazing year, but also to help in the Promotions and various projects that will happen in the Brixton Space with the project Im working on.. A conversation I had with Ed over skype this evening, just about various Drupal fixes brought up the question about where I am from, which resulted in a google map highlighting the farm on the edge of Birmingham to cries of, "thats where travel to London from?" This is part of the problem, similar to the time at the RCA where I had no home and was commuting down, it leaves one disconnected from the people I have been connected to, and much harder to establish new connections on my own from the village, even travelling into the centre of Birmingham to establish myself there has proven difficult at times, though that is because I'm still focused on getting back to London and my work connections there.

Perhaps though the Birmingham thing can happen in the new year, to be honest, I have been distracted with other things too often to pursue it, though I am convinced that my fortunes (or otherwise) belong in London, that is where my main contacts are, and that is where the work and friends are too. It's difficult to but it into words, but I was able to get out and talk to people while I was in London, and it's not the same on the farm, and being here, rather than being the quiet sanctuary to work on developing more interesting projects, has instead become a place where I feel I have to retreat in taking on commercial work to show that I am doing something, but that is a topic for another time.

In the mean while, I need to make decisions about my own future, and how I want to feel reconnected, and doing so is urgent as it is the key to getting back to developing (and actually implementing) many of my ideas for more interesting projects, and I really feel that means I have to get back to London... so time to indulge in my favourite past-time post new year?

Bar Camp Africa and Other November Events

November draws to a close, and so another month of fun and business. I'm still working on several, mostly web based projects on a freelance basis right now, but I have had time to settle in to other events too.

Barcamp Africa UK was held back on 7th November at Vodaphones HQ. I had signed up to see what Vinay and Mameding where up to, which was a great talk on the Ending Poverty with open hardware, that sent some great debate around the room (video link - 700mb). I spent most of the day helping out Pam with Dadamac Day, an online celebration of the Dadamac Learners / Teachers Talking component of Dadamac, a UK Africa Connections Organsation I have been working with to assit in there online visiability. It was fun, and quite interesting to have a connection to real rural Nigeria in the event, even if it seemed overshadowed by the more pronounced talks and sessions going on (it was a fringe event to an unconference!) but it did look like those who did take the time to join in the online chat (worknets transcript, chat was also via skype) got a lot out of it, and it emphasised what I like about Dadamac, that it is more about encouraging a dialouge between Africa (particully rural Nigeria, and Fanstuam foundation where John, the other part of Dadamac is based) and the UK / the west via the internet. It also helped in terms of talking to others about what they where doing I felt too, with someone commenting what all this was about my home country, and finding out that it wasn't just a bunch of westerners trying to dump some next big idea on Africa, but actually facilitating that conversation... what can we learn from each other. Elsewhere at Barcamp Africa, I managed to get some time in the session talking about the XO laptop, and the Sugar Interface, which was interesting in terms of looking at the software development model in place. More photos from my Flickr.

During that week I was also involved in a few other things, I went along to Know how Now, to meet some of the usual crowd, and Mammeding giving an interesting talk about Wikireaders. I pitched the idea of maybe taking the SD card database, and writing something for mobiles to be able to read the database, that way the wiki (either Wikipedia or Appropedia) could be distributed via sneakernets to a wider user base. I'm not sure how much take up might happen on Wikireaders, but they seem a fascinating device.

I was also helping Dougald with the Spacemakers site (yeah, I built that!) for the spacemakers Agency. I'm going to talk more later about that, I'm intrigued by the ideas of the concept of space... It was a lot of staying up late finishing the site. On the tuesday evening there was an event at the Brixton Village / Granville Market to launch a project of the Spacemakers Agency to fill all the emtpy units, with lots of talks and discussions on the re-use of the space and differing peoples ideas, I'm looking forward to seeing what comes out of it.

And the rest of Novemeber? Working... Several web coding work, plus coding away on a drupal install for WeFab, about to go into testing now, something I have to get back too.

September, October

Dear Blog

Sorry I have missed writing to you for so long, there are so many things to catch up on...

Ok, so forgive the cliche entry to the always at the end of the month blog writing, but it has been a while and so many things with promise seem to have gone on that it is worth making note here from both September and October of the highlights.

TedxTuttle

Back in September, I was able to attend a special gathering of the Tuttle Club independently organised Ted talks, organised by the guys at Broadsight. The full program was a mix of video Ted talks and live talks, including former Tomorrows World presenter Maggie Phillbin, how our perceptions of tech and visions of the future have changes, and some of the tech first shown on TW, clips included. The highlight though was Rachel Armstrong talking about synthetic Biology and architecture (literally, living buildings), a very DI subject, and was nice to hear someone talk so positively about it, sometimes to much dark side when it comes to biotech projects. Really fascinated about her Venice repair project.. Some fascinating discussions all round on the subject, and others... See the web for the full program, and hopefully soon the videos will be online (thanks to Alan and the Broadsight team for organising too).

WeFab and Design London Boot Camp

I have been part of a new venture by RCA IDE graduate Ed Muffit, WeFab is a social enterprise around sustainable textile manufacture, encouraging textile (for the moment) designers to submit patterns that 'makers' can offer to make, and as the buyer you choose who the maker is to buy from. Currently I'm working with Ed to get the website in a fit and ready state for testing. I attended the last two days of the Design London Incubator Boot Camp (Ed was there for the whole week) which was a crash course in business by Imperials business school. At the end of the week there where pitches from various projects, looking forward to seeing what happens to LooWatt (since I might know some organisations who would be interested). It was great to meet a lot of people and go through part of the experience of Design London, and so many IDE grads from my year where participating pitching projects. We're hard at work on WeFab, so I won't say much more now, but will post after launch, in the mean time, please sign up as interested if the concpet interests you.

Hacking Design and Fashion Hacktivism

(or Home Sewing is Killing Fashion). Fascinating talk by Otto van Busch on hacking fashion, and other products in general. I'm really fascinated by the other artist he mentioned who is doing counterfeit crochet Guci bags (not that I want one or anything) but the idea of re purposing the design and style. There was a lot of talk about hacking allows you to take true ownership of something, also the aesthetic of hacked design, that the product doesn't looked as polished, because the finished product is that it works.. lots of parallels there with my 'design style' then. There was lots of discussion about the re-use of clothing, and of the relationship between the designer and the maker, interesting crossovers with WeFab (and I managed to get Ed to come along) and as always, really fascinating discussion afterward.

Hello Digital

Last week in Birmingham, there was the second Hello Digital conference / festival. I say conference, as this year seemed very conference, very different to last year. It was a strange experience. I preferred last years openess, and the talks by Heather Flickr and the like, about the things they have done. Still there was some fascinating discussions, future business models and the like, still very businessy though. End keynote by David Rowan from Wired UK was great, lots of interesting (and again, positive) futures, plus we bagged a years free sub to Wired. Nice. The after party felt a bit awkward, I still feel slightly out of place in Birmingham for some reason (home is not really Birmingham but countryside, so difficult to get in and just meet people) something I want to change... Also highlights I'm not much for networking parties..

Well thats this months posting... Usual updates (as always more regularly) on my twitter...

Homeward Bound

I'm at home now, trying to put a few things together and my future plans into perspective over September. Trying to decide where I go next in terms of work, career, and life.

Strangely, I seem to have been spending more time back in London than at home, relativity speaking, and at some point I do need to re-connect with my midland based networks. I'm still keeping good connections in London, there's still a lot of activities going on that I still want to be part of, and looking on how I can keep being involved with.

Major things include TedxTuttle, a mix of a Ted videos / talks and live banter, and some very interesting conversations and Spacemakers Relaunch with Dougald, and the opportunities for the re-use of empty space (another set of items to add to the to blog about list). There have been minor things too, lots of events and little things, but it is difficult to travel, and I'm conscious that I do have to find ways of not been cut of. Social Media tools help, but I find there the most useful for emphasising real events and relationships, so I want to look more locally too.

Mean while, work life continues, I took a bit of a slow down in September, but I still do web code and design. There's been some interesting talk about whether to separate out the web dev side of my site and establish different persona's. I still want to pursue the interesting stuff, but right now, financially I can make the web side pay, if I but serious efforts into it. What I really want is quiet time to work on my own projects to make new work that has for a long time been 'in the pipeline' that I talk about so much but never find the time to finish off, so that is what October will mostly be.

For decisions on where to go career wise, that's a more reflective look. Part of this is a persona's issue, just who do I identify myself as and in what context. I look at fellow RCA people and see them doing wonderful things, we are all on very different paths, but I can't help feeling that some people are more adapted at being a professional than I am. This time last year, I was still chasing job, interview, internship. Now, not so much, want to focus more on developing interesting work and experiences, and this has a lot to do with the experiences I've had and the people I've met over the last year. But this is a dramatic shift in terms of my own development workwise, and I'm having to learn to re-tool myself for that kind of world... The story continues into October.

Summer Experiences

I'm back from London, taking a break after a hectic, but fun summer. The idea was to spend September working on my own projects rather than concentrating on pushing more commercial work, but that seems to have gone out the window, so still chasing and working away on several projects, must find space to work on my own at some point.

Summer though has lead to several interesting experiences, and it's experience that I see myself moving towards in terms of work, but the most satisfying experiences have been though work related projects but personal experiences that I wanted to be part of, just to be part of them.



The big one of course, was The Treehouse Gallery Project. I've talked about this before, so I'm not going to go back over the details. I got involved through Dougald, and after spending more than a few days there quickly became embedded. I even got to stay behind after hours, and spent a few days helping with de-construction. It was great to live communally and experience that lifestyle, and have the opportunity do be involved in such an extensive project, and use it to branch off into doing workshops and projects from it. I think what was different from previous times I've got involved with groups, in that I was actually there to be part of the experience, and for my own interest, I wasn't studying them, or trying to ask questions for 'research' purposes, which usually just makes me nervous and appear as an obvious outsider. It was great, I actually got to be involved, seeing very different sides to the project than just a normal visitor. being involved and experiencing new ways of doing, working, and living. It was also great, as it meant working tangibly, not digitally (though I did sort of become the unofficial documenter given the size of my flickr set). It was great being part of (and accepted) into the sharing community, I wish good luck to the guys on the next adventure (and look forward into how I might be able to be involved).



As for the two projects I was involved with ('How to Travel the World for Free' and 'Collaborative Scroll') , they went off great. I'm going to conduct a post project review of them both in a later post (hopefully), though I think there are definitely learning experiences from them to draw out, again it was the experience of doing them that mattered more in the end than the end results, though lots of interesting things came out of them too. Running a workshop in an ad-hoc organised and improvised way actually worked really well, and some great insights from the two guest speakers I found (Sarah Haq and Vinay Gupta). I have some great audio that I recorded that I need to edit and is on my to do list. Collaborative Scroll came out well too, think the reading bit could be planned better, but again it was an improvised experience, and a learning curve. I think I'm going to try and catch up with Dougald about improvisation, i think there are definitely some useful discussions that we have had before over it, and how that might have helped the scroll project (and be useful for next time). In the mean time, this is what Dougald has to say about impov in conversation with Lloyd.



Away from the Treehouse Gallery, the other major experience was early August. I went along to The Sandpit Hide and Seek Fest. I've become intrigued by the idea of play, and gaming in general. Again, rather than being someone there to study it, I was going to be part of it, and to have fun. I played a good few games, really enjoyed 'Property of a Traitor' which involved a group of us trying to decode a dead spies belongings to diffuse a bomb, and the other games where all fun too, being able to be part of a different realty set for a while, and develop new stories and ways of looking at scenarios. The only real issue I had here is that I did seem to spend a lot of the time photographing, and the time I really enjoyed myself, and got the most out of the experience was in getting down to it and playing. I think that is another post to add to the list, the importance of play and storytelling in my work, something that has been there for a while, but I never quite realised it was there.

Well, I'm back away from London, and my plan is to go in and out for a while. There are a few events I want to be part of still, I also want to try and spend some time connecting to the Birmingham based networks as well, now that they are close by. I still have to decide where I want to be based, the idea of having this (sort of) break is a chance to reflect on the past year post RCA and the different things I have been doing, both commercially and otherwise, and just how commercial I want to take my self, or how many other experiences I want to pursue.

Discussions and Performances at the Treehouses

Sort of following on from the previous posts, I'm going to be facilitating two events at the Treehouse Gallery this week with Anna again.

First off on Tuesday evening from 5:30pm,
'How to Get Around the World for Free...?' is an open discussion on the possibilities (no matter how bizarre) on how to travel the world on as little or no money as possible. Although we will be bringing our own ideas, it's really going to be open format, and we're looking for your ideas. Currently on the table are:- working on a boat for ride across the ocean, the merits of hitchhiking, and can you still bag a free flight as an air courier by giving up your baggage allowance. The hope is that you, the audience, will be active participants in the discussions, and suggest new ideas as together we explore the possibilities of is it really possible to travel the world for free? What are the best methods to blag free transport? How far can people travel with little or no money? We're also interested in finding people with experience of either those suggested topics, or couchsurfing, wwoofing, or free / super budget travel.

The Second event is still being finalised, but hopefully Sunday 6th we will be having a live reading and improvisation performances of the collaborative scroll. We're looking for people to perform as we read through the crazy narrative and improvise creative interpretations to the action.

If either of these interests you, or you think you can help in any way, please get in touch at via e-mail or just turn up and surprise is with your suggestions.

Fun in the Treehouses

Very interesting adventures this summer, mostly focusing around the Treehouse Gallery in Regents park. A group of artists have constructed two treehouses, and a set of other structures for art and workshops over the summer. I know some of the group through Dougald, and have been spending a lot of time there learning various new things, doing workshops from poetry on human rights to printing, Feast of strangers has got to have been the most interesting. I find it great to have a collaborative space in London that isn't so businessey, unlike various other events. I'm creating an ever bulging flickr set of all the goings on there (settling into my self appointed role as documentor in general). (Also, one quick mention of Parliament of Fowls performance by Warhourse Theatre Works and The Beekeepers, also excellent, and where also the guys behind Pirate Day).

Its also seemed to turn into a central point with a lot of people I know. Dougald especially seems to be involved in organising a thing ever week. Fascinating talks from De-schooling society (which influenced my poem, the right to learn), Dark-Mountain (which videos still are not uploading correctly :-( ), Pirate day which where fun adventures tracing the River Fleet (and lots of chasing about, but great acting), and Spacemakers network. All of these events are interesting in their own right and so I'll talk more in detail as I get the media uploaded for each of these, but each one of these talks has been fascinating in their own way and has been a great learning experience.

It was also good to bring these discussions to a wider audience, there was definitely a feel of lots of new people coming to these events, and particularly with 'Feast of Strangers' where several hundred strangers turned up and we had very heavy discussions on radicalism. It was a nice format too, very much like the philosophy restaurant scene in Monty Pythons Meaning of Life. Find someone you never met, and pick conversations from the menu. I had a fascinating discussion with a parole officer of a nature of rebellion, and our different perspectives on have we rebelled in the past, and how is that changing now. This brought up a section 44 stop and search that I had to go through in the last year, which while I have moaned about it, though not much of it, it was a random search I thought, little did I know that it was recorded and is now (apparently) on record. Theres an obvious sense that we are becoming less passive and more assertive in enforcing our rights now, where as before there was trust.



Onto what I have been working on, I will post more when it is done, but along with artist Anna Cole, we are using an old typewriter to write a collaborative scroll, a story of absurdity, and have been inviting participants to write part of it. It has been an interesting experiment. I sometimes feel a bit awkard about asking people to participate in projects, sometimes I get protective, but there is something about the treehouse space that makes that disappear, at least from my perspective. It has been a real learning journey on how to get other collaborators, with most of the kids just wanting to type their name, or asking, 'what's a typewriter?' The early days people where nervous, but we hit our stride on day 3, and over the weekend we had a lot of people writing various bits in. I think it is interesting that want to just add new plotlines, and not carry on the story too much, while Anna and I weave the narrative back together, and again, had a very interesting talk with Dougald about the ins and outs of improvisation. We're almost wrapped up, and now we need to think about the reading, which should be the most fun part...

Portfolio Evening at Thinkpublic

Last Wednesday I was invited along with 10 other young designers at various stages of there career, from recent grads, one year out people (like myself) to current students. It was a chance to present our work to each other, and also to Thinkpublic's design team (Alice Osborne and Ella Britton) and get each others insights into each of our projects and out design processes. It was interesting as it was also varied, with a healthy mix of graphic designers, fine arts, product and finally a couple of interaction designers, one of which is about to embark on a masters in Copenhagen.

The afternoon itself was organised first as a round table Pecha Kucha presentation. We where given the template the Friday before to fill out, 12 slides (not 20!) to present our work. I was trying hard to think what I would present, and in the end went through my final year RCA projects, though it is perhaps the last time I will present them all in isolation (trying to get new work up to showingness readiness). The event was a bit chaotic as they did not leave a gap between presenters so it was guessing when your work would be shown and running around the table (which in truth added to the fun!).

After which we broke into smaller groups to discuss our projects amongst ourselves and with a couple of the ThinkPublic designers. It was interesting discussing my Data Relationships projects (and slightly later and in less detail, Blog Bot Platform, and its expansion as City Sense/Perceptive Cities). I think though that even though it is a very heavy conceptual project, I still came of as 'its too complicated' and I need to focus first of all on explaining the core functions before moving on to the conceptual layers (both the time device and the satellite scanner suffer from this, there workings are simple, establish your micro-local time zone and listen into satellites data streams. The larger concept is linking this to the abstract forms of data and the links between the data enthusiast and data lost). Interesting too was discussing possible expansions, resurrecting the knowledge engine to allow the rest of us access to the enthusiasts secret knowledge, although I was told to keep a laymans point of view. Maybe this is something to discuss with Helen Hamylen Centre in future as before in developing the original project.

Other interesting projects too (too many to mention, just a few struck as interesting to me). Stephanie Andrews Book for dyslexia, which highlights interesting design patterns within the book to make the reader feel dyslexic. This includes altered coloured text and ripped words, making the reader think. Also liked Bio Clinical, felt a (almost) DI project, it involved selling tape worms complete in chic style packaging as a sliming aid. There was also a nice project regarding use of mobile and appropriate technology in Ghana, felt relevant to other projects and clients i'm working with. We spent a good afternoon discussing design with each other and exchanging ideas of where to go next and who to contact. Also a nice debate and discussion in the bar afterwards with Kate, Mayo and Trond. Very good evening all round and look forward to keeping in touch with all the designers I met.

Links to those who participated (to be added as I find them):-
Kate Burn
Mayo Nissen
Trond Andreas Klevgaard (he talked about snow).

Thank you to Thinkpublic for hosting and inviting us all.