PICNIC news & weblog
Latest news about PICNIC
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The Hackers Camp at PICNIC and the launch of Open-CI
Interview with Willem Velthoven of Mediamatic
Mediamatic is organising one of the most exciting labs that PICNIC hosts this year. In the days immediately preceding this years' PICNIC, the Hackers Camp will explore various recent technologies, interaction design and social processes, and aims to realize a bunch of engaging interactive installations, wearables and spaces, for the visitors of PICNIC to play with. The results are promised to be "amazing, subversive, beautiful and unheard of". Of course we want to know more!
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Picture Rebecca Gomperts
Mediamatic has built the PICNIC website you are visiting, and the PICNIC Network that is such an important part of it. The network is a lot more than an easy way to round up 10.000 creative types and spread the buzz for PICNIC, as you will discover when you visit the event.
Last year, the PICNIC delegates took 1500 pictures in the connected picture booth, shared stories over an interactive tea cup, and not least of all got free beer from the PICNIC drink station. We met up with Mediamatic Director Willem Velthoven to discuss the plans for PICNIC'08.
First of all, who/what is Mediamatic?
"Mediamatic is a cultural organisation and new media agency that is dedicated to the innovation of cultural practice and social networks. We run our own public programme and we develop project for clients."Last year Mediamatic offers PICNIC delegates some fun and intriguing services. An RFID-tag was added to the PICNIC badges, and linked to the delegates profile on the PICNIC network. A team of top notch hackers, developers and dreamers got involved and came up with cute, fun and relevant new services. Remind us!.
"Last year we had the first version of the hackers camp where we built some ...
03.09.08, Monique van Dusseldorp Read more
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The Democratization of Business Creation
Interview with Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon
Werner Vogels is the Vice President & Chief Technology Officer at Amazon.com where he is responsible for driving the company’s technology vision. Amazon is a company that in the last few years has developed a range of services for businesses worldwide. Vogels will address the PICNIC Conference on 26 September in the afternoon, talking about a new era of business creation. We met up with this Dutch hero at the Amazon headquarters to hear his view.
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Werner Vogels, CTO Amazon
"We are delighted you will join PICNIC. Not that long ago you were a Dutch academic, and now you lead one of the world’s biggest online companies, setting up a whole new lines of services. First of all, what studies did you do, what kind of research and where did you work?**
"I received my PhD in computer science from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. In the early 90’s the nascent Dutch IT world was still very conservative and I didn’t find much appreciation for my innovative ideas so I decided leave for Portugal to join one of Europe’s largest industrial research institutes. After having worked there for 3 years on the reliability of very large scale computer systems I was approached by Cornell University in to join their computer science faculty as research scientist and I moved to the US.
Fortunately the position at Cornell also allowed me to exercise my entrepreneurial skills, as I worked with companies that transferred technology from academia to industry. I worked at Cornell for 10 years on developing radical new technologies for building very large computer systems before leaving to join Amazon.com in 2004."
Do you miss academia? Do you still do a lot of research in your present role, or are you more of a manager now?
"There are certainly sides to academia that I miss; working at one of the top universities in the world gives you the ability to interact with very ...
01.09.08, Monique van Dusseldorp Read more
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Doom, Pirates of the Caribbean and The 7th Guest: The Creative Process and Matt Costello
"My fantasy life has actually been my life"
Matt Costello’s best-selling and award-winning work across all media has meshed game play, technology and story. He is the writer and creator of groundbreaking TV, novels, nonfiction books, and games in both U.S. and U.K. Costello will talk about the creative process on 26 September, keynoting the PICNIC conference's Friday morning programme dedicated to creativity. We caught up with him and asked him about his work, his life and the source of his inspiration.
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Matt Costello and Doom
Matt, you are the man behind many award winning games, novels, television programmes and now, virtual worlds. We’d like to know more of the secrets of your trade, but first of all: how did you get here?
"I think I might be a poster boy for the idea that you don’t pick your path….it picks you. I majored in Asian Philosophy, with graduate work in directing, but I lived inside my imagination most of the time. From the moment I was a little kid in Brooklyn tuning out the noise of an intensely dysfunctional family, my fantasy life - a life of story, characters, of play, of ideas- has actually been my life.
How that has led to everything I have done, is probably a longer answer. Except that one thing, writing a novel…naturally led to another: scripting games….to another: developing television formats…to another…building virtual reality worlds. I don't like to be bored. In fact, it is simply not permitted. And I am unabashed lover of those things that carried me away when young: horror, comics, great science fiction, the lure of ‘what if’, the pull of a great story. I'm trying to create that experience".
What did you want to be when you were young?
"When I was young I always wanted to be a writer. The good nuns did their best to discourage this idea. I persisted anyway."
What games, books or movies fascinated you?...
30.08.08, Monique van Dusseldorp Read more
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Meet the Hot100
Passionate and promising Dutch media talent at PICNIC
Interested in the most talented, passionate and promising media professionals from the Netherlands? Virtueel Platform has worked with over 20 Dutch media schools and talent platforms to select the 100 most interesting and creative new media professionals today.
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Help launch a career, get inspired or simply come listen to their stories: on 25 September, you can meet the young stars at a special breakfast, held in PICNIC’s Creative Business Lounge. The Business Lounge, offered by the Amsterdam Chamber of Commerce, is located in the central Gashouder, PICNIC's hub for all networking activites.
After the breakfast,the Hot100 have their own interactive programme at PICNIC, hosted bij Virtueel Platform; PICNIC delegates may join for a pitching session as well as for the finale of their debating contest on 25 September in the afternoon. Always a good idea to see the Hot100 in action! After all, these are the 100 top talents creative companies are after....
But right here and right now, you can already meet the young heroes online. Together with Virtueel Platform, we are pleased to present the first three episodes in a series of special video portraits of the Hot100 today: Meet the founders of Lable, Sarah van Hecken and Ernst-Jan Pfauth.
Michiel Wijgmans, Riekus van Montfort, Martin Kuipers and Jurriaan Mous...
29.08.08, Monique van Dusseldorp Read more
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BLØF shares creative process with fans
Keyboard player Bas Kennis presents 'Pickering Player' at PICNIC
A new online service launched by one of the Netherlands most popular bands aims to engage dedicated fans and make them witnesses to the creative process. BLØF's keyboard player Bas Kennis will showcase the project on Thursday 25 September, during the PICNIC conference, and will also contribute to the 'Music and More' special organised by the Netherlands Music Centre. We interviewed Bas Kennis about the new release, the band's relationship with fans and the exciting new world of collaborative creative processes.
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Dutch band BLØF (Picture EMI). Bas Kennis on the far right.
BLØF was ‘most played’ artist on Dutch radio three times in the last 4 years, and your concert tours are fully booked. Can you give an idea what role internet has played in your popularity?
"We started the band in 1992, and I think we’ve had a website up and running since 1995. In the beginning it just contained a biography, a discography, some news-facts, some pictures and a guestbook. It had this impossible URL with a lot of slashes and even a ‘~’ in the name. A friend of ours built it and kept it running. Internet wasn’t such a big deal those days, but it was a new way for fans to approach a band. For us it was a way to get to know these people who call themselves ‘fans’ and how they thought about us, mainly through the guestbook."
When did you start to consider your online presence as a serious project?
"When we had our break-through in 1998 we changed the website URL to BLOF.nl and with every new album we face-lifted the website, using the new album’s artwork. The amount of hits increased steadily over the following years, with huge peaks around special events like album-releases or big concerts.
We had merchandisingdirect.com open a webshop on our site and we started selling tickets as well. Nowadays we’re also on Youtube and Hyves, though we see that our fans don’t find their way to those new phenomena as quickly...
28.08.08, Monique van Dusseldorp Read more
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Cities Are All About Difficulty
PICNIC speaker Adam Greenfield on urban savoir faire and the loss of solitude
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Adam Greenfield, picture CHI Nederland, Creative Commons Licensed
Adam Greenfield is an internationally-recognized writer, user experience consultant and critical futurist, who writes and thinks about information architectures and cities. He was happily living in New York with his wife, artist Nurri Kim, working on his new book about cities and information systems, until an unexpected invitation from Finland arrived. We caught up with Adam in mid-summer Helsinki, where the evening skies are mesmerising and all the shops are closed.
So, moving from New York to Helsinki!! That's a big step..
"Oddly enough, I've taken a job with Nokia - I am their new Head of Design Direction. Anyone who knows me, of course, knows that I've been having a ball these last few years writing and teaching and giving talks. I had virtually no intention of "getting a job" to begin with, and none whatsoever with an organization as large as Nokia.
Nevertheless, when an opportunity of this nature comes along, I think you'd have to be crazy not to at least check it out - it's something on the order of Kurt Vonnegut's proverbial dancing lessons from God."
How is Helsinki in August? What aspect of daily life so far has surprised you most?
"It's a fairly placid town to begin with, but Helsinki at the beginning of August is something like Paris at its end. Everyone is on vacation somewhere else - most likely up...
22.08.08, Monique van Dusseldorp Read more
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Green Graffiti
Jim Bowes on a green idea for a blue planet
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Green Graffiti is being created in the streets of Amsterdam. Picture: Green Graffiti.
Jim Bowes of GreenGraffiti is delighted to partner with PICNIC.
What is GreenGraffiti?"Clean is Green!! No ink, no paper and nothing to be thrown away at the end of a campaign. GreenGraffiti is a sustainable alternative to traditional outdoor media. Using only a template, clean water and a spraying system, GreenGraffiti washes a communication message out of the dirt on surfaces in cities throughout the world while giving back to the local community."
Who are your clients?
"GreenGraffiti meets the needs of companies that have embraced sustainability as a core business strategy and are committed to using sustainable alternatives to market their products and services to a fast growing market of values based consumers. We have already done campaigns for women's magazine Elle, Universal Music, Smart and Telfort."
Why work with PICNIC?
"We are proud to be participants in Picnic'08 which will raise awareness of the important role the communication industry and on-line media in particular plays in the quest to combat climate change. I really hope that the ideas generated during Picnic'08 will result in innovative solutions for companies needing to fill the missing link in their chains of custody- a link presently difficult to fill.
Traditional media is not bad but it is time for us to move it...
22.08.08, Monique van Dusseldorp Read more
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Preview: Creating artistic games
New award to stimulate new game experiences
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Screenshot from Mijn naam is Haas, a new Dutch kid's game (in development).
Movies range from low-brow to high-brow, from snackfood to haute cuisine so to speak, and slowly but surely games are covering this whole range as well.
Game technology falls in the hands of artists. The audience desires new experiences. Sectors collide. In fact, the German Association of Game Developers GAME has just recently become a member of the German Arts Council, the national federation of cultural associations. (press release in German)
And in the Netherlands three leading cultural organizations, the Visual Arts Fund, the Dutch Cultural Broadcasting Fund as well as Virtueel Platform have decided to join forces and stimulate artistic game development. Innovative concepts by game developers with partners from the arts sector can receive up to 50.000 Euro in funding. Deadline for entry is 15 September – and the winners will be announced at PICNIC’08, on 26 September!
22.08.08, Monique van Dusseldorp Read more
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News from the PICNIC Network
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PICNIC Partners. Picture Thomas Schlijper.
More than 10.000 PICNIC Network members!
On 21 August in the afternoon, cheers abound at the PICNIC office. Someone out there in the wild wide world signed up for the PICNIC network, and that someone was number 10.000. We checked our database, who could it be? Justinas Beinorias who is blogging in Lithuania? Ayman Abdel Nour of the All4Syria online bulletin? Dr. Wolf-Dieter Ernst who researches performance and mobile networks from Munich? A warm welcome to all 10.000 of you!Now, everyone out there, if you all invite ONE additional person to sign up this week, we'll have 20.000 in no time. Let's try. And if we succeed, the first drink at Picnic is on us, promise. So, who will you mail today about PICNIC'08?
Google PICNIC and Be Surprised
Did you try and find a nice picnic spot recently, a place to spend a leisurely summer afternoon with a basket full of cold meats, tossed salads and bubbly wine? Ha! You ended up at the PICNIC’08 website, did you not? Indeed, the PICNIC network is now the number ONE search result for ‘PICNIC’ in almost every European country, and we have our web site development partner MediaMatic and search partner ClearSense to thank for that. Read the press relea...22.08.08, Monique van Dusseldorp Read more
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What to read? Guides to the Future of Society
We Here Comes Think Everybody...
What books should you read before heading out to PICNIC? Who has analysed our age of social media, mass collaboration and new networks better than anyone?
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Clay Shirky and Charles Leadbeater at TED Global, Picture by Kitten's Toe, Creative Commons License
www.flickr.com/photos/kittenstoe/25903444/
We would personally suggest to pack the following two tomes for your next trans-atlantic flight or day on the beach. You will be well prepared for two of the PICNIC keynotes - even better, you will be better prepared for our future.
Charles Leadbeater: We Think
We Think explores how the web is changing our world, creating a culture in which more people than ever can participate, share and collaborate, ideas and information. Ideas take life when they are shared. That is why the web is such a potent platform for creativity and innovation.Clay Shirky: Here Comes Everybody
Here Comes Everybody is a book about what happens when people are given the tools to do things together, without needing traditional organizational structures. In story after story, Clay makes the connections as to why business, society and our lives continue to be transformed by a world of net- enabled social tools.So, that’s it. The two most important books you need to read this year. Of course, you can also digest new ideas the 21st Century way… read their writers’ blogs….follow their twitters… do a Youtube search….
But after all those blog items and e-mails you consume each day, there is something wonderfully soothing in reading on and on and on. List...
17.08.08, Monique van Dusseldorp Read more
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