The Node #07
Hello all of you,
As we're all headed into the summer break quickly (or in many cases, have long since entered it), just a few brief updates and shout-outs.
Connected
As you may know, Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino (of Designswarm and Good Night Lamp fame) and I launched a small print publication about the implications of the Internet of Things a few months back. Now we are taking it to the next level. More content, more people, more focus. We have a new website (www.makeitconnected.com), a new team member (more on the website) and we're working on an upcoming issue about wearable technology for this fall. (Please let me know if you have work in this area that should be included.)
We're also complementing the print issue with a more frequent free email newsletter: The most important news and articles we encounter, relevant event updates, news about incubator programs, etc., will all be featured in a quick-to-skim format. You can sign up at www.makeitconnected.com/newsletter
The Indie Conference Organizer Handbook
Regular collaborator Max Krüger and I teamed up to write a handbook for indie conference organizers. In fact, that's the name of the book: "The Indie Conference Organizer Handbook - A practical guide to running your very own indie conference." We're making it available for free under a Creative Commons (by-nc-sa) licenseas a PDF here (http://bit.ly/ticoh), and are going to put it up in the Kindle store in a more e-reader friendly format for a small fee (aka The Support Us Financially Version) in a bit.
Connect with Bosch
For quite a while it's been a wish of mine to foster the exchange between the startup scene - particularly in the hardware/Internet of Things space - and larger technology and manufacturing companies. This October one of the collaborations I've initiated is coming to fruition: We - that is, the ThingsCon team - will gather a group of IoT startup founders, tinkerers and researchers down to South Germany for two full days of workshops, talks and factory visits at Bosch, one of the leaders in the industrial IoT space. This is exciting, and hopefully will lead to more of these types of exchange.
Oh yes - if this happens to be interesting for you, please get in touch quickly. We'll pretty quickly finalize the participants list.
What else?
Shoplocket's new magazine The Blueprint very kindly ran interviewed me about the Internet of Things, conferences, my work and questionable life choices. The layout makes it look much better than my answers deserve, but it was good fun giving this interview while at SF and jetlagged out of my mind.
If you happen to be in London on Friday, July 25 (yes, that's next week), why not swing by the Victoria & Albert Museum? Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino and Ana Bradley invited me to run a workshop with them as part of the V&A Late series. We'll have attendees build paper prototypes of wearable tech. (See what we're doing there re: our upcoming issue of Connected? Sneaky, no?) Also, one day after a very lovely-looking exhibition will kick off at the V&A: Disobedient Objects.
Also, the briefest of all Save The Dates: It looks like we have found a date for ThingsCon 2015. If everything goes well, it'll happen on May 8/9 or May 9/10.
That is it for me just now. Next update in a few weeks. Enjoy the summer!