A week late but still here

Currently in Edinburgh, but still around.   I'll be sporadically posting about the last week and things still to come.

As I look back upon this week, it feels more like a lifetime than a week.  I would have to say the punctuation of the week was that of reflection, of both the 6 years that have past but also of a life lived here.  Everyday was completely filled up and now I just hope I can remember enough of it.

I will start with Day 2 – and as I headed to the V&A the first moment I could, I hopped on the tube and headed over there, and I meandered around as always as it is but a place of dreams.  It was very busy, and I enjoyed looking at the new and old displays and found myself flooded with inattention as there as so much to see and comprehend. Looking for the textile study room, I discovered that it has moved to another space further up the road – and is only open on Tuesdays and Fridays by appointment only.  So instead I looked for something to pay attention to specifically, and decided on green glass, for no apparent reason other than it was a collection I could feasibly gather and when surveying the space was neither the most or least common.  So I have made a very long series of images from my mini colour study on green glass in the V&A, pay particular attention to the cow creamer – he is hilarious.  I don’t know if I would have noticed this grouping of objects otherwise, as glass is not where I usually place my attention.

Last Day in SanFrancisco

Well another long and fruitful day of insight and inspiration - this time we took the show on the road.  The day started out with an attempt to find the d.school at Stanford, to no avail, and we made our way to the Google Campus, where we met with Victor's old friend and colleague Jorge, we had a lovely lunch and tour of the campus.  

 After lunch at Google - we were off to the d.school to see the space - it is pretty raw space with some really nice furniture.  There was a nice mixture of both open and private space, and there was space for the students to 'live' there (aka storage and project space)  The model looked quite similar to IDEO, but that would make quite a bit of since they are intrinsically linked.

In other news, one of the people we met the other day at the 'Pop-up Shop' sent me an email with a link to their Kickstarter project - fascinating stuff!

PS - sorry for the terrible formatting - I'm at the airport, and just wanted to get this up and going before I head out on the next leg of the trip.

Day 4 - Retail Innovation

Today the most interesting and innovative thing I saw was at the Converse.  They had direct to garment printing set up for the customization of shoes.  I asked the technician a lot of questions, and to see the mass customization in action was very interesting - and reminded me of the early 90s when you could get a card printed at the grocery store with something more akin to a plotter than a printer as we know it.  I took a little video of the process, I'm certain they have a better one on their website, but that wouldn't be nearly as authentic would it.  WARNING: I have not edited this video at all and so it is probably very terrible.

Day 3

Fantastic day of the conference focusing on the future of this space and difficult questions that arise at the edges of the development of a new field. What stood out to me the most is idea of algorithm based decision making technologies that are ubiquitous and invisible, and the possible implications of this as we move forward. I would like to take pause and really think about what this really could mean, and how we all must make the decision of if it is the way we want our society to move forward or do we even have a choice?

The concept of the "exobrain" was touched upon, which I thought was a really interesting method to describe our reliance on technology for certain memory and computation skills, and the provocation that digitization could become another sense.

I was so sad to see Valerie Lamontagne (of Montreal and 3lectromode)go, as her surprise appearance was absolutely fantastic, and brought some more deep reflection on what a year can bring (as she was the last coffee I had in Montreal before I got on the train last May).

As the conference ended just before lunch we hopped over to IDEO (a lovely 10 minute walk away along the water), and we had a lovely conversation with an IDEOer from Vancouver, Matthew Chow.  We toured their space, and had the opportunity to have a great conversation about the current state of the Design Practice in their client space and the ways they are seeing growth of design in a broader sense (ask Iryna who moved her out of the way in the hallway while we were touring the space).


After a quick rest and reflection (with ice cream of course), we happened upon the AutoDesk museum - which was amazing! Fantastic models, and tools for prototyping were on display, and we rushed through before our next stop.

We then went to the Future Now Pop-up shop Opening party with our colleagues from the conference, it was part of SanFrancisco Cyber Fashion week. It was like a fashion party for only really smart people, it was fantastic, everyone I spoke to was so interesting and had such a wonderfully unique view on the role of technology in the world of fashion.

All I can say, this post couldn't capture the day it was - it was everything all at once.

Day 2 at Smart Fabrics

Day 2 was lovely, filled with all sorts of ideas and considerations about what this space looks like from multiple perspectives.  Today was a much more hopeful day for the future of the technology- but still has me asking the same questions about meaning.

One of the most fascinating talks was by Amanda Boxtel of Bridging Bionics and Scott Summit of 3DS.  This talk was about the idea of exoskeletons, and Amanda had something so lovely and poignant to ask about design in this space.

"How can we design beauty into robotics rather than mechanization into humanity?" I believe that this is the crux of all of this type of work - making it not only possible, but also desirable, and to ensure that there is meaning in the development instead of just another gadget.  The video below I stole from Victor, is Amanda demonstrating the exoskeleton.

We also heard from Dr Christian Holz of Yahoo labs, who is looking into the possibilities surrounding implanting technology - and the surprising outcomes of some very interesting ethnographic research around public perception of the new behaviours that may result from implanting technology - the surprising outcome was that no one noticed or even cared.  Now there are still many technical difficulties in the development of this technology which he of course touched on including the input possibilities, output possibilities, the communication structures needed, how do we power these devices, and of course the medical implications of this type of new technology.

Day 1 at Smart Fabrics

Well, it was a day.  A great deal of information, but most of all some really great people who are in this 'space' and doing the making in what Wearable will be in the future.  It still seems to be focused on the connection to the 'hard' (watch or phone), with very little discussion about the connection to humanity that is necessary for meaning. (I've placed a page of my questioning notes below if anyone is interested)

We also made some Wearable Tech with the lovely assistance of Margarita Benitez and Markus Vogel of Kent State University and University of Akron respectively.  We hacked the 'TinyScreen' and of course I loved it when the screen would glitch when pulling out the memory card, which is the photo I've added (for scale the image of the screen is about 1 - 1 1/2" on each side).  I did successfully place a video on my screen and play with a little bit of code, but in the same manner I always do - superficially.

Lovely day topped on the Bay with new and old friends chatting about the things that matter in our lives, and to share that connection that is so possible at a place like this.