TED really is everywhere these days, so maybe it is a bit over-exposed. Inevitably there’d be those happy to challenge, reinvent and zag the TED events. Paul Carr reports on one such ‘pretender’: PopTech.
On first glance, it might appear the event is held in Camden, London. It surely isn’t as it’s unlikely anyone would ever say “Oh, you’re heading to Camden? It’s lovely this time of year” as you boarded the Northernish Line at Balham…
The mind works in weird ways sometimes, and a discussion of HTML5 and the <Canvas> tag took the @ubelly team (@andspo and @saraallison) in this direction: a Tweet-spewing highspeed canvas printing idea that they unveiled at FOWA. Excellent.
That’s right acronym fans – Rachel on the MSDN blog (you do subscribe right?) is inviting you all to spend some time on Microsoft Campus here in Reading whilst we stream the PDC in glorious HD Smooth Streaming.
An evening with the evangelists? Good grief, I thought, is it not enough to spend my whole day with them in the first place… On the other hand I imagine there’ll be pizza and all that sort of stuff.
You can come along for Day 1 and/or Day 2. Details below, and I hope you can make it.
Day 1 4.30PM – 12.00AM, 28th October 2010 – Reading Campus, Microsoft UK
Day 2 4.30PM – 8.00PM, 29th October 2010 – Reading Campus, Microsoft UK
Phil Cross also mentioned that if you can’t make it to Reading, then we’re also going to be streaming at some University venues (open to everyone – not just students):
It's been a mad couple of weeks for me personally, but the team too and my diary for the coming week is also what is commonly known as "something of a goat rodeo". But I got to spend a little time near home today wandering about in the autumnal hues of Westonbirt Aboretum.
Of course, just as soon as you think you've escaped technology for a few hours, it pulls you back in and pretty much the first person I walked past on the path was Paul Cross - ex-Softie and now at Koodibook (which makes digital and physical photo albums). Have a look at it - it's cool.
Then I get to the Cafe to stop and refuel self and kids and it turns out that the name of the foundation for Westonbirt is called FOWA.org.uk (Friends of Westonbirt Aboretum of course).
So there's no way out and my mind wanders back to high-speed canvas printers and Sara's video on that other FOWA - Future of Web Apps. Enjoy.
Westonbirt Aboretum is excellent by the way and deserves everyone's support. Meantime I'm going to figure out how to sort out 3000 unread blog posts, a "Content" folder of around 50 outstanding items and cope with what is likely to be a fairly big day tomorrow…
Oh, the other FOWA referred to in the post title is the Florida Outdoor Writers Association.
There was a bunch of interesting stuff at Picnic10 but this was probably my favourite toy (a serious toy in this case). Essentially it's a small friendly PC under the hood that looks like an old electronic battleship game and uses objects with RFID tags to enable 3D educational experiences. It's cool, and I know my daughter would love it.
I also know that it could be hacked for all sorts of fun uses which is the whole point of toys isn't it? Great stuff. Video here (in Dutch but you can get he idea).
I didn't see last year's Microsoft stand but I heard it was very cool. This year it's made of cardboard and Tom and Jan Willem (the doodlers - not sure that's their official title) are spending time doodling on it over the event. They explain more here:
Cardboard and #picnic 10 from Marc Holmes on Vimeo.
And here is some of their work:
My favourite person so far is this guy who I chatted to for a while about online video. Nice portable rig! (Though I'm loving the video and audio on my own NEX-5).
Thanks to @katzy I'm ensconced at #picnic10 in Amsterdam billed as a conference about redesigning the world/life/media/journalism and so on asking the question "What are you bringing?".
I was intrigued to come out here as I'd heard the festival/exhibition bit was great fun and really well done. As the main exhibition is inside an old gas storage container (the site is an old gasworks) then it's a bit like being inside a post-apocalyptic version of the Royal Albert Hall. It's a great space, and there are a bunch of interesting stands and exhibits. I've captured a few other pictures here too.
Talking of conference videos, @markjo posted about Sittingo which keeps an index of speakers and conferences to keep all of your favourite videos to hand. Nice find.
D’oh, completely forgot to post the link to the videos from the excellent Thinking Digital event (sorry @herbkim).
Definitely worth watching pretty much all of these videos, and you can have a look at my posts for original reactions to the content.
Great event. Make sure you book up for next year.
