Yes, this blogpost is longer than normal but I wanted to create one holistic view. If you are not a big reader just scan the nice bits or go to the end

The Lift

The past week I was in Geneva, the city where HTTP/HTML or in other words the internet was invented. I visited Lift 08, a three day event to explore the social impact of new technologies. Together with Martin Kuipers I just let everything around me flood into my brain.

Lift 07 was a special event for us. Although I was not there, Martin’s enthusiasm triggered a whole process towards Lable. The ideas he brought back gave us the tools to finally knit together some thoughts of the past years. I had to go and see this Lift where foresighters came together.

Lift 08

This year was a 3 day event with 700 visitors from all over the world. The first day was full of community driven workshops at Geneva University with a Venture Night at the end. The second two days where full with talks on different subjects. Both days had also nice closures in the form of a cheese fondue and a nice party in the center of town.

There were many interesting people and I felt great having met some. Although looking around the conference room I felt many were addicted to being connected.

I chose to only open a dummy book and set myself in information absorb mode and tried to see a larger pattern. With everything around me you could smell the future, you just needed to look below the surface.

Online Environments

A big topic which was present in almost all talks where the online environments that are part of the latest technological hype. What are the implications of these environments and how could you make them succeed? How you could use them to teach people, and how to use them to change them?

We got for example an insight into the South Korean world of Cyworld. On how Koreans organized themselves online and how they depend on their mobile phone. Attention was the main currency and self branding the key. How almost-sync was the latest development towards real time intimacy. How Twitter was the western equivalent. South Korea is just miles ahead of these social communities. 98% of the 20s are on CyWorld.

The most interesting talk on this subject was by Pierre Belanger, owner of SkyRock. Although SkyRock is just another social network he described a future of social messengers. Where the social network became the new digital id of the future. He described a netamorphosis towards a net not centered around bandwidth but around code. A net that is not centered around one site but a multiform platform that could run on phones, instant messengers etc. E-mail is dead.

I immediately connected it to some other movements of people talking about Jabber as the next http. And he basically described the new backbone of the internet as a Social Operating System. Everything will center on chat. Two-way instead of one-way communication.

Connecting tech with people

There were also great talks about open social by Kevin Marks of Google and Grid Computing by François Grey of CERN. They both have methods of connecting the people and computers with information.

Open social is the glue for anything social centering around people/friends, activities and events and seems to also be the glue for the next generation of people.

The grid computing talk had some great insights on how to use people and their computers for science. How normal people became an important part by letting them be involved. This by being transparant and fun. A whole @home platform was born out of it that has much bigger cimputing power than any supercomputer in the world.

In everything you could feel online environments are on the verge of change. The current form is just a carriage without horses and we still need to evolve to the definite form.

Mobile phones

Most people in developing countries don’t have computers but they do have mobile phones. They share them, they connect with them. In China for example there are 4 people born per second, but 20 new subscribers of mobile providers per second.

The mobile is the most important connected device and it was interesting how Younghee Jung went out to those countries to let the people design the best mobile phone for themselves. It was very interesting to see the specific specific solutions for problems they live with. Like multi-simcard support, multiple address books, heart shaped phones, ultimate everything phone etc.

We also heard some insights on the future of the phone. How it would evolve to a simpler gateway to the world and that the phone contained the answer to future payment. How the iphone revolutionizes and by someone of Nokia how the iPhone is not the ultimate answer.

User Experience & Stories

A lot of talk was also about what story the technology is telling and the user relates towards it. The perception of a user completely relies on the story as they create context.

The most interesting was by Rafi Haladjian, one of the inventors of the wifi Rabbit Nabaztag. He told about setting up a platform called Violet built with ambient technology. A plarform with which you are informed non intrusively.

Why the rabbit:

If you can connect a rabbit you can connect anything.

He showed some great stuff like a future product of RFID stamps that a rabbit(or some other object) can sniff and after the object will react with something relevant. He saw only 2 or 3 objects connected to the rest of the world and saw a future we will connect the rest of the stuff in our homes.

It was also nice to have visited the discussion on the failures of ubiquitous computing the previous day. It seems that we are on the verge of creating smart houses, we only should make them start out dumb and grow their smartness for a more satisfying experience. It is all about making a growing emotional connection by growing an evolving story.

New ways of working

The Zentrale Intelligenze Agentur was a wow presentation for me and Martin. They described the way of working we as Lable were philosophizing about for the last year. I really feel that we are on the beginning of a new hierarchy less way of working. That people begin to see that hierarchy kills passion and creative/innovation efficiency. And now we were confirmed it is a global feeling.

Games are fun.

The game track was really fun. You should just see the entertaining Paul Barnett video if you have the time. He describes we shouldn’t build games anymore Vegas style by reproducing successes bigger, better, faster & stronger. Online games are just beginning and we don’t know yet what the rules are for them. We learn along the way and creating experience on how to set out a great story.

There was also a lot of talk about casual and more accessible games. People want more and more micro-sized content for quick experiences. How Facebook is also a game as it has a repeat until reward structure. Games should be a balance of Mechanics (rules of play), Dynamics (human interaction with rules) en Aesthetics (feel, design, emotion). Those last three just connected too good with our Lable vision of creating balance between Technology (structure), Human and Feeling. Those should be the main design rules of the future!

New view on location

Paul Dourish had some nice insights from aboriginals. How they looked very different to locations, territory, objects. Everything was defined by stories and their influence zones. This kind of thinking could make us very differently to navigation and location based information. He wanted to propose a new vocabulary for this tech: Nomad, pilgrimage, home, colony, asylum, diaspora, migrator etc.

Clash of Nature and Technology

Kevin Warwick, the human cyborg, was a show stealer. He described how he connected a ultra sound sensor to his arm neural system and how he gained a 6th sense of distance. That a human could just learn a sensor so fast. He also connected his neural system to his wive to create the first two brains in one neural system. How they shared the sense of moving hands. His brain was even connected to the internet to control a simple robotic arm thousands of miles away… Cyborgs are getting real… And it sounded like a real enhancement that did not sound scary anymore… But what about the spam you will get

We heard from Mieke Gerritzen how we should accept tech and how we should make it a part of nature. How everything is set to intertwine. How manipulating nature will become the next nature. I did not entirely agree because I think there is still lots to learn from current nature before we declare a next one. We should accept the golden ratio as the main ratio for growth and design.

Sustainability

We can’t continue to consume the way we are. A whole separate track was focused on the environment with key speaker Nobel Prize winner Andy Reisinger. The most head shifting tech featured was a space based solar array with power beaming to the earth as a way to solve future power problems. Also features were technologies to convert people to more sustainable ways of working by peer pressured social networks.

Foresight

We ended with some views on how to see the road ahead but where also warned to look at a higher level to see what other roads will cross this road. William Cockayne and Scott Smith took us on a ride on what a foresighter, like the main audience of Lift, should do to make good foresights.

A foresighter:

• Should be aware
• Scan Collect and Organize Patterns and deep currents and roles
  • Get out on the street
• Have a view but not ideologize
• Stay Grounded
  • Leave behind artefacts

These talks made me aware I am such foresighter. Not focusing on the now but the future by talking around and collecting information and feelings.

The Future

Scott left us with a quote of William Gibson:

The future has already arrived. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.

I think Lift changed that and created a place of were foresights are made visible. Foresights of a future where humans will live in balance with technology and feelings. A future where they would connect with each other and everything around them to create a more sustainable and efficient balance. We just need to digest everything around us to see how it should be done.

I recognized many pieces of my past journey and was confirmed I am on the right road. It is just about meeting the right people and making it possible.

Yes, it is all just about people.

Visit Lift site for more information. All talks can be viewed on tsr site.

Photo by mrtnk who was sitting besides me while taking photo. It shows the shoes of Lift organizer Laurent Haug opening Lift 08.

A passion seems to grow stronger in me the last few months. 2007 was a year of finding purpose and combining all the puzzle pieces. Most while sharing thoughts with people and doing so I learned to appreciate a lot of valuable things more and more. Things that did not even seem to be new but most of the time old and forgotten.

It is all about People

Yeah really! We almost forget that everything we do is because of people. That everything is about meeting and connecting to those people. The real good connections are the ones who are loved.

Passion

The real engine for everything is passion. Without passion you need hierarchy or money to force actions. How to trigger the passion is the real question.

There are all kinds of means to get quick satisfaction but not for passion. We have studied satisfaction enough. What about real studies to what creates real passion?

The coach is too undervalued these days where knowledge, money, property, value are often regarded above passion.

Values

Passion can be misused and misinterpreted. People are able to have passion for the wrong values. But what are the right values?

I really believe in the holistic approach: the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts. All values that contribute to a bigger whole are the right values and any value that creates separate wholes are wrong.

Balance

We need to be able to sustain what we are doing indefinitely and get more out of ourselves along the road. The only way to do this is to create balance. This means we have to do everything in proportion to the rest and it is critical to look at everything: environment, money, people, goods, eating, loving, communication etc. If one thing is totally over/under-powered/used/connected/valued/flavored/loved something is lost.
That what is lost will be forever lost for the bigger holistic whole.

So we don’t need more of what we do not have. We need to get more out of what we do have. We even need to try to have less so the remains can contribute to other parts.
The more you give away to have less, the more you gain. But only if you give it away wisely. So it is still a growth economy of everything, but by spending less in it’s total. Efficiency by sharing.

Imbalance

For a real good balance, imbalance is always needed. We need chaos to find new better balances. We need storms to see if we are built on the right foundations. We can’t stand still, a balance is a time to find a new better holistic approach. To have a bigger more robust whole with less parts.

Open

Passion needs a safe and open environment totally driven by passion. If one person is powered by hierarchy (s)he can grind the whole process down. Passion needs to be able to make errors, passion cannot be broken by safe consensuses. Passion needs trust, and if you look around trust is the main thing that is missing. Because there is no trust there are hierarchies and little passion.

Leaders

People need leaders. Leaders who have the vision. Who see the whole. Leaders who are not above the ones they lead. Leaders that are also followers, because no one can see the whole whole. We need to look at leadership in a more dynamic approach. Trust leadership to the whole of the community. Like in swarms of birds.

Information

All the above depends on information. You can only create a larger whole if all the parts are aware of the whole. Reliable and honest information gets much more important.
The better the information flows,
the better we find optimal balances,
the less we need structured channels like hierarchies,
the more we are aware of each other,
the less we need to depend on one.

Connect

My mission is to connect. To connect ideas, inspiration, information and people to grow passion to grow a larger whole.
Whoever wants to join on this quest is welcome. 2008 is only the beginning of the real ride now the pieces fit. And many seem to even have found these roads earlier.
Ah well, it is all about people and thus connecting them to one us

Beautifull Passion flower by Davideg, Creative Commons.

What I wrote earlier on these subjects:

• Us religion

Well I am still here online and blogging. There were some quieter times but there are still topics I want to share. Putting your thoughts into concrete text really helps to evolve new ideas.

It is really weird to look at statistics. How just a thought could travel all over the world. My statistics show 700 visits per day on average (well I think a lot of those are search and spam bots) But the most mind boggling image seems the one provided by google analytics at the top. It shows the location of the visitors to this site in the past month. It is strange to see people visit from places I have never been to. To see that you share your thoughts with people from whole different environments and upbringings.

Well I will continue to blog my stories and am as always full of ideas. The us-religion is really something that sticks with me. It seems that everything in our society is on the brink of a fundamental change… I will continue to share my point of view on this change.

Where are you on the map?

Related:

• A new weblog
  
• Reflecting on 6 months of regular blogging

Sorry for the lack of updates. It is still getting used to my new roles. I am running multiple projects like for example setting up wikis and weblogs as new communications structures and a creative event platform for multimedia for my old study and current job. I am also blogging on the future of Fryslân on the subjects of culture and education (The provence I live in). I am also busy with securing an office and first project for our company. Of course I also need to have a private life so this blog was a bit quiet.

But my main task with which I fill my day is laying connections and communicating enthousiasm to people. I see possibilities when I hear ideas of people. I like to connect visions to make them happen. It is what makes me happy.

This was not always so. When I was younger I was a shy boy. I didn’t like to talk to unknown people and lived in my own world. But at one time I did a youth theater school which really changed my perspective. I began to show what my thoughts were and began to see what other people were experiencing.

The End

Well at the moment this post comes online I will be in the middle of my graduation project presentation which marks the end as student of Communication & Multimedia Design (CMD). It was a journey that searched for the essentials behind media, design and information. It began as a search for ultimate serious games and ended in a vision. This weblog was part of the log of the journey. My vision can be read between the lines of the posts and I will begin to work on a clearer presentable version.

A new beginning

My student life is over. Now begins a new time with my company and my new part time job as ‘intercommunity manager’ at the study Communication & Multimedia Design. I will be setting up new structures to make learning easier. CMD is an andragogy based study: so it is not based on teachers that decide what you learn. No, you yourself have to decide what you want to learn by doing projects and you are guided by consultants and coaches. The learning is based on communities with shared interests and sharing information and ideas. It is about structures where the ideas are bundled and events can be organized where people can share and inspire. I will manage the information, visions and inspiration flow.

In the rest of the time I will be searching for structures to built my vision that comes out of the posts you have read here. The weblog will evolve with this new learning process of finding practical systems to built on this vision.

Update: sorry, this post was private and I didn’t notice it because I was logged in… It is online now with a slight delay…

I forgot to celebrate the 6 month celebration of this blog. 6 months of regular blogging…
This blog really evolved my thinking and made my search for information more specific. My ideas on some areas really got some space to evolve.

At the moment I have found two three main topics to blog on: Design, the us ‘religion’ and the new learning. They seem to define some of the main topics behind my thinking. Design is something that is at the core of what I do. I design and manage multimedia products and have learned that media is broader than I originally envisioned. Design and media is universal in our human world.

On the other front I have a vision on how the world should look like. This vision formed into something concrete on this blog but is widely influenced by the new learning of my current education and its focus on the student community. The vision became the us religion and it is named from this post on the us movement. (more on that soon)

I forgot one of the other main topics in the first version of this post… The new learning based on andragogy. It really keeps me busy with the serious games we build with our company. The interest is also spawn out of the experience with the new kind of learning at my study. My ideas on it will certainly evolve on this subject on this blog. Especially since I have some andragogy related projects on my agenda.

I begin to find a style of writing that I like. I begin to like my small experiments on making my points more visual and I am experimenting a bit with subheaders. While english is not my native language, I already get more fluently writing it. It is still not where I want it to be but it evolves in the right direction compared to where I was with my previous reflection.

The traffic on this blog trippled to 300 average per day the past 3 months since my last reflection. Mostly thanks to my blogs addition to the 9Rules network and the traffic is still growing. I don’t get much comments but I do get some nice e-mails and some good disscussions with friends out of it. I hear that people take my posts mainly as something to think about. Well I am not here to force commenting. It will happen or not. Although I invite you to discuss the posts, it helps me evolve my ideas

What is next? I am already working out some thoughts on two fronts. On the design front I am thinking of defining the emotional space better. On the us movement front I will do some more searching on what it really is and what it’s place should be. Also expect some new fronts since I am on the edge of a transition in my life: going from student to the working class.

Now on to the next 6 months of blogging!

Oh, and what do you think of the blog?

Update: added third main topic which I somehow forgot…

The openess really surprised me. I really began to understand the openess came out of the violent past. What tearing down a wall can do with a society, inspiration and creativity….

Some random photos:

I love to dance. I love to lose myself in the music. It just happens with a good rythm.

A good DJ can guide you through an experience where you forget about the world and reality. Where you are in the flow and where your personal tastes and problems don’t matter anymore. It is just about immersing yourself in the experience that is created on that moment.

Dance!

(photos by Daan Pool)

Well, it is a bit quieter on the blog. I have been busy again modelling and texturing stuff for a certain user conference in the near future. (besides all the other stuff that comes on my path) Somehow I was in the flow again of producing content quickly. Losing track of time etc. Well it begins to show and I think we are building something cool for this demo.

In the mean time I seem to be booked for a lecture at a local multimedia festival about serious games and my experience in them. (I think I have some nice topics to talk about) Well I see it as a nice platform to improve on my presenting skills. It is nice to entertain an audience and to create a 2 way discussion so both parties can learn. We will see what it will bring.

As normal with busy times my social stuff seems to suffer. I sometimes feel a bit disconnected from the world around me as I continue in the flow. In the past some big projects were slowly destroying myself, mostly because I had no control and had the urge to help everybody. With the lessons learned I now try to find a balance. Trying to see such marches in advance and I will try to find some personal time.

Sometimes it is needed to commit yourself to a project and try to create the best of it. Well it is soon over so I can live with it and good project endings give such a good feeling. Sometime you have to give yourself a bit to reach a higher level.

You have to deal with how people are perceiving you daily. Every culture has rules on what is the best perception and which is less attractive. The way you are observed is your image. It is the base on which people judge you and categorize you. The more people know you the less they form your image by your looks and the more they form it on your character. A part of your image is under your control but large parts are not.

I got aware of my image around 10 years ago when I attended a Youth Theater School. I was in the beginning of my second year when I got an evaluation that I should drop my cuteness factor and dare to show more of myself, I seemed to do unique things but the teachers there wanted to see were it came from. I was still a small boy with glasses and I was very shy; a cute little boy that was not easily reached. That evaluation forced me to think about how I was perceived, it came as a small shock to myself but did set a big change in motion.

At first I was building my awareness of my image. I figured that people saw me as cute but did not take me seriously. I was still little and my glasses did not help to create an approachable person. I saw that by focussing on my own inner world I was a bit late in my development. I did not go through this changing process very consciously but bit by bit I changed small bits. First I decided to lose my glasses, my eyesight was not very good so those glasses made my eyes look small. With lenses my puppy eyes were uncovered and I noticed people began to see me differently. Next were clothes and such. Well all the steps you get through with puberty to find yourself. One advantage by being late was that I observed others going through the same process earlier so I made some better choices and all went a bit more fluently. For example I began later with alcohol than most and I used it with more moderation and had it more under control. (There were of course exceptions)

The next step came when I chose for an academic study Computer Science which I tried for some months. At first it seemed to be what I wanted, because I created websites and related stuff as an after school job and I liked the flexibility of the computer. (Ok, affirming my nerd image) But after a talk with a close friend who also decided to stop I discovered this was not what I wanted and chose to search for a place where I could be more creative and deal more with people.

At the study Communication and Multimedia Design, based on self learning, I really discovered who I was. I saw I had some pre-knowledge on multimedia and I could help a lot of students with my experience. I learned to use my cuteness factor to direct people and projects in good directions. I got my self confidence there and learned how to use it. My theater experience fueled a new passion of presenting and because I liked it they even asked me to do presentations even for bigger projects for high profile visitors of the study. When I first avoided people I did really discover myself there and loved to open myself up. I discovered I had a kind of charm that worked with people. The cuteness of the little boy had evolved.

Another dominant factor is that I am a bit chaotic. I have sometimes trouble to explain what I think and am often a bit distracted with my thoughts so I get a little confused. It often leads to strange conversations in stores out of miscommunication or a bit of clunky behaviour with stuff. It adds again a bit to my cuteness factor or is maybe the main cause of it.

But besides my new found openness I still keep a kind of distance in some situations. I am most of the times a bit reserved in a group where I do not know some or all of the people. Well I can get out of the closedness if I get into a role but it is not always easy to open yourself as yourself. I see that I am a bit different than most people and have discovered I am at my best with more abstract thinking or more creative people.

My intellectual side also creates some distance. I like to read up a lot on some specialized topics on multimedia design, experience, philosophy, 3d technology etc. and I tend to lose myself in theories and thoughts that can not be shared with most friends. I tend to talk about some of the stories I read about but the friends around me are mostly not into that kind of stuff. (It is maybe the main reason of this weblog) Well it is good to ground myself with friends to have real fun but it is still a struggle with my inner world and outer world.

I still discover strange things about myself that I still have to learn to deal with. It is fun to see myself still evolving and also learn to be more myself. For example It is strange to discover what love does with a person and what it is to share myself with somebody else. Well there is no end goal, the only goal is to have fun and to discover beautifull things. It is a fun road.