December 1, 2009
I held off writing up the Ignite London talks until now because I wanted to link to some of the great videos of the event now live on Vimeo.
It must always be a tough challenge to get the balance right, all the more so for our capital’s inaugural Ignite. I reckon the programme was spot on: the right mix of the challenging ideas and characteristic irreverence. None of TED’s West Coast cultishness here, just short talks fuelled by beer and chips.
If you have a few five minuteses to spare, you could do worse than watch these, my favourites…
… and finally my own meandering around 1794 – So Much To Answer For, of which more here and here.
Thanks to Amy, Dan, Andy, Richard and all the sponsors for making it happen.
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introspection | Tagged: ignite, london, talks | 
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Posted by mattedgar
November 5, 2009
Wow, I’m privileged to have been invited to appear alongside some amazing speakers at London’s first Ignite event on the evening of November 18.
If you were at the first ever British Ignite in Leeds in January, or any of the others around the world, you’ll know the deal: 20 slides advancing automatically every 15 seconds for five minutes – multiplied by dozens of speakers talking about technology, science, the arts and everything in-between.
The full London line-up includes:
- Ben Hammersley, The Sex Lives of the Great Renaissance Masters: How the Old Masters and their Mistresses Changed Art
- Craig Smith, The Upsides and Downsides of Standards (web, language and otherwise)
- Katy Lindemann, What We Can All Learn from Children
- John V Willshire, If Advertising is a Firework, Social Media is a Bonfire
- Ashley Benigo, Italy as a Country Not Found
… and many others.
My own talk is “1794 – so much to answer for” wherein I shall tell the stories of as many of my personal 18th Century heroes as possible, based on the strange coincidence that all of them encountered life-changing (some life-ending) events in that single world-changing year.
Eagle-eyed readers of this blog may recall that I scribbled a map of this name some time ago. I’ve taken it off the blog for now. You can probably still find it somewhere in Google’s cache, but No Spoilers!
[Also, I don't normally post directly about my dayjob on this, my personal, blog but am making an exception to mention that I'll be on a panel at Informa's Mobile User Experience conference, also in London on November 17 and 18 before I go over to Hammersmith for Ignite. If mobile user experience is your thing, this also has some very interesting speakers.]
3 Comments | introspection | Tagged: events, ignite, london, speaking | Permalink
Posted by mattedgar
September 22, 2009
This is a photo of the screen of a computer, displaying a webcam that’s trained on a plinth. Not just any plinth, The Plinth.
On the webcam is a whiteboard that carries a message, a message that’s saying hello to my sons. They were very impressed.
Lorinda (who I’ve never met) wrote the message. Lorinda wrote messages she got on her phone, via a service called Thumbprint. Thumbprint is a dead simple way to say stuff about places and topics by text.
I texted the Plinth after seeing a tweet from Andrew at Blink who made Thumbprint with my friends at Common.
It was all over in a few totally unexpected minutes of a Saturday afternoon, so let’s play that again, in slow motion…
- Tweet…
- Text…
- Thumbprint…
- Text…
- Plinth…
- Pen…
- Whiteboard…
- Webcam…
- Amazement.
Well done to all involved.
889QMSXPFVZ6
Leave a Comment » | design, experience, introspection, media, mobile, phones, social | Tagged: arts, london, messaging, mobile, plinth, text | Permalink
Posted by mattedgar
February 10, 2008
Love it or loathe it, Richard Rogers’ Dome was the architectural icon of of Britain’s new millennium. The hubristic creation of Michael Heseltine and Peter Mandelson, it was meant to symbolise our country’s post-Thatcher renaissance, all Britpop and Cool Britannia. It didn’t work out quite like that.
Along with millions of other Britons, we didn’t make it to the Dome in its inaugural year. We were too busy with our new arrival, our own Millennium baby. He just turned eight and for his birthday treat we took him and his friends to see the Tutankhamum exhibition at the Dome now renamed The O2.
Disclosure: I work for a competitor to O2, but my problem is not with their sponsorship. O2’s own branded interventions – a nightclub, ice rink and inflatable chill-out zones – have their own integrity and fit with the aesthetic of the Dome itself. The naming rights have been seen through with Orwellian ruthlessness: no mention of Millennia, or even of Domes, it’s The O2, plain and simple.
Yet our impression as we walked along the narrow shopping mall that skirts the perimeter of The O2 was a distinctly underwhelming “is this it?”
From the outside the space is huge, but the way the new arena, cinema, exhibition space and leisure facilities have been fitted in manages to totally obscure this once inside. Worse, the partitions that carve up the space are treated as clumsily cut out faux art deco stage setting with no acknowledgement of the structure itself.
Suburban shopping mall, airport terminal, Las Vegas casino, Dubai resort – this could be anywhere. Only it’s not just anywhere. It’s one of our landmarks, a tarnished one but a landmark all the same. Had the hype curve for the Dome dipped so low that we’d settle for this? Britain Deserves Better.
Leave a Comment » | architecture | Tagged: architecture, dome, london, millennium, O2, places, uk | Permalink
Posted by mattedgar
December 17, 2007
Today’s Manchester Guardian gives an unchallenged outing to metropolitan whinger Germaine Greer on the subject of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, near the heart of our 15-million-strong Supercity.
Complaining, apparently erroneously, about the amount of the nation’s collection of sculpture kept outside London, she sneers:
If you can manage to get yourself to West Bretton near Wakefield, you may see some of them dotted round the 500 acres of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park; others may be displayed in four indoor galleries. The park is seven miles from the nearest railway station and a taxi will cost you a tenner, which Londoners have to add on to the £112.50 – the least the day return will cost a single adult.
So Londoners, take note:
- This is only the price that we have to pay to visit the vast majority of the national collections that are housed in, er, London. The train runs both ways, you know.
- You don’t have to take a taxi. We have buses. And the driver may even respond to a cheery wave. Try that on the Tube and you’ll be arrested.
- Thanks to the YSP, my seven-year-old can bore for Yorkshire on the life and works of Andy Goldsworthy.
- It’s not just the sculptures. We’ve got your weapons too, and we’re not giving them back.
1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: arts, london, north, sculpture, scupture, whinging | Permalink
Posted by mattedgar
November 6, 2006
The Enlightenment philosopher David Hume proposed that identity is nothing but the bundle of our past experiences.
Don’t test me on this, because I just read it on Wikipedia, but it seems like a good place to start this piece of introspection on the need for a unified identity.
It goes like this.
Context: I work in two offices with different contactless card entry systems. I also have an Oyster card for travel in London. Several times I found myself absent-mindedly trying to get into the office by touching in with my Oyster card. (It doesn’t work.) Then I tried swiping my door card to get onto the Tube. (That doesn’t work either, but it annoys the person behind you in the queue.)
Problem: How to gain access to multiple offices and transport networks without thinking, thus freeing up vital seconds for scanning free newspaper headlines, checking answerphone messages and generally daydreaming.
Solution: I observed that many people now put all their entry cards, along with other stuff like tickets and house keys, into the handy plastic wallet that comes with an Oyster card.
I tried this DIY aggregation of authentication and payment: it works. Now the world’s my marine molusc (subject to the access restrictions imposed by Transport For London, my employer, and other competent authorities.)
At least it will be until I lose the whole lot of it in one go.
1 Comment | design, introspection | Tagged: design, identity, london | Permalink
Posted by mattedgar
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