In Portland for a few weeks; ThingsCon is over; Open world game events
Hi!
After a long-ish absence, a few quick updates.
In Portland for a few weeks
Every now and then, time permitting, I like to head to a different place to hang out, meet people, work remotely for a bit. It helps clear my head, change perspectives and get some fresh input. In the past, this brought me to places like New York City, Buenos Aires, San Francisco.
This time around, I’ve set up my temporary home base for a few weeks in Portland, Oregon. I’ve been hearing so many good things for years, I figured it’s time to check it out in person and spend some time, meet the locals, and visit friends.
Luckily, M could also join in, so we’re both in an Airbnb in NE Portland, exploring the city. The mornings are filled with calls and work on European time, which means the afternoons are likely to be flexible or even occasionally free – especially since jetlag has so far driven me out of bed so early that I got to start work around 5am or 6am local time and by the time I take a breakfast break my to do list has already been diminished considerably.
So long story short, I’m in Portland for a while, and if you are, too, why don’t you say hi so we can try to meet up for coffee? I’m curious to learn more about the local tech & UX community, and of course about the city itself.
Say hi!
ThingsCon is a wrap
ThingsCon is over, and after working up to an event intensely for months it always feels a little strange when - all of a sudden - it's over. The whole team enjoyed it a lot (I know I did!). Presentations and videos and photos and write-ups are still being collected (this way please), I wrote a few sentences on my blog, too. One thing I'd like to point out - because I enjoyed it and think it's highly relevant and there are not many other places this is likely to happen other than the community gathered in Berlin for ThingsCon - is the IOT Manifesto, a (work in progress) stab at ethical guidelines for connected services and products. Seeing this emerge also reminded me of the OpenIOT Assembly that I was marginally involved in thanks to Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino's work a few years back, always worth revisiting.
So, thanks for this fun gig, everyone!
Can Open World games principles give us a hint for more engaging events?
At the risk of turning this newsletter into some kind of manual RSS feed, I'm going to point to this blog post I wrote the other day, because it's something I've been wondering about and haven't fully managed to wrap my head around: Can the design principles of open world games help us build more engaging conferences? Can there be a central plotline (or several), but still be a wide range of activities that allow for self-directed learning/engagement? Something to break up the linear structure of traditional conferences without just flipping it around into an unconference?
My current draft and state of thought is that there might be two guidelines to design with:
Open world events…
1. … allow participants to develop their own journey and interactions.
2. … are designed as a nonlinear, open experience with many paths to explore the event.
It's all just drafts for now, and I'm not 100% sure where this might go (or if it goes anywhere at all), but it's been coming up over and over, and so if you have any thoughts on this, or ideas, pointers, links, I really appreciate it.
And that's it for today. Talk soon!
After a long-ish absence, a few quick updates.
In Portland for a few weeks
Every now and then, time permitting, I like to head to a different place to hang out, meet people, work remotely for a bit. It helps clear my head, change perspectives and get some fresh input. In the past, this brought me to places like New York City, Buenos Aires, San Francisco.
This time around, I’ve set up my temporary home base for a few weeks in Portland, Oregon. I’ve been hearing so many good things for years, I figured it’s time to check it out in person and spend some time, meet the locals, and visit friends.
Luckily, M could also join in, so we’re both in an Airbnb in NE Portland, exploring the city. The mornings are filled with calls and work on European time, which means the afternoons are likely to be flexible or even occasionally free – especially since jetlag has so far driven me out of bed so early that I got to start work around 5am or 6am local time and by the time I take a breakfast break my to do list has already been diminished considerably.
So long story short, I’m in Portland for a while, and if you are, too, why don’t you say hi so we can try to meet up for coffee? I’m curious to learn more about the local tech & UX community, and of course about the city itself.
Say hi!
ThingsCon is a wrap
ThingsCon is over, and after working up to an event intensely for months it always feels a little strange when - all of a sudden - it's over. The whole team enjoyed it a lot (I know I did!). Presentations and videos and photos and write-ups are still being collected (this way please), I wrote a few sentences on my blog, too. One thing I'd like to point out - because I enjoyed it and think it's highly relevant and there are not many other places this is likely to happen other than the community gathered in Berlin for ThingsCon - is the IOT Manifesto, a (work in progress) stab at ethical guidelines for connected services and products. Seeing this emerge also reminded me of the OpenIOT Assembly that I was marginally involved in thanks to Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino's work a few years back, always worth revisiting.
So, thanks for this fun gig, everyone!
Can Open World games principles give us a hint for more engaging events?
At the risk of turning this newsletter into some kind of manual RSS feed, I'm going to point to this blog post I wrote the other day, because it's something I've been wondering about and haven't fully managed to wrap my head around: Can the design principles of open world games help us build more engaging conferences? Can there be a central plotline (or several), but still be a wide range of activities that allow for self-directed learning/engagement? Something to break up the linear structure of traditional conferences without just flipping it around into an unconference?
My current draft and state of thought is that there might be two guidelines to design with:
Open world events…
1. … allow participants to develop their own journey and interactions.
2. … are designed as a nonlinear, open experience with many paths to explore the event.
It's all just drafts for now, and I'm not 100% sure where this might go (or if it goes anywhere at all), but it's been coming up over and over, and so if you have any thoughts on this, or ideas, pointers, links, I really appreciate it.
And that's it for today. Talk soon!
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