I've been away on two European trips in as many weeks. The first of which was to Amsterdam, and the 2nd was to the European ICT conference in Brussels. I'll come back to the Brussels trip, but for now i'll attempt a brief rundown of my jaunt to Holland.
The primary reason for this trip was my involvement with a project called Creative Metropoles, a project that presents a shared vision of 11 European cities on creative industries and creative economy. We heard from some seemingly very intelligent and afluent people running some interesting projects within the Amsterdam creative industries. One particular project that drew my attention was the Bureau Broedplaatsen, a project that subsidises and helps manage the development of creative spaces, http://bureaubroedplaatsen.amsterdam.nl/en/.
The added bonus of this trip was that I was able to attend the Amsterdam Picnic event, http://www.picnicnetwork.org/.
PICNIC is about innovative ideas for business and society. It is an annual three-day festival that blurs the lines between creativity, science, technology and business to explore new solutions in the spirit of co-creation. Curious minds eager to exchange their knowledge, ideas and skills gather at PICNIC, making it the place to create the future – together.
I attended some really engaging panels, which were extremely closely related to some of the work we've been doing here at Substrakt. In fact, one of the lab sessions took the same title as a project that we've been working on, Urban Lens (more to come on this soon). This particular session gave great input to our thinking on this project and explored how a city could be explored.
How do you experience the city surrounding you? As a series of buildings and streets, or a collection of data and connected objects? During the Urban Lenses Panel, a collection of experts will explore the city as they see it – combining services, sensors, objects and data.
The chaps from Tellart, who doing some pretty cool work, are especially worthy of note, http://www.tellart.com/
We design products, services, and environments that address human need and shape human experience. We work between worlds–analogue and digital, visual and physical, yesterday and today and tomorrow–because that is where most people live.
Urban Lenses Lab:
http://www.picnicnetwork.org/program/sessions/urban-lenses-lab.html
The Beyond Tourism session was highly relevant to some of our projects too, and explored the future direction of cultural content on mobile devices, http://www.picnicnetwork.org/program/sessions/beyond-tourism-future-directions-for-mobile-cultural-content.html
It would also be a crime not to mention the amazingly energetic and entertaining Pips Lab, presenting Diespace http://www.pipslab.nl/onlinepromo/diespace_subs.php
If you can get to this event then I would highly recommend it. I only managed to get to day 2 but the content throughout the days seemed to be of very high standard.
I certainly came away buzzing with ideas and inspiration.