INTERNET WEEK EUROPE / CONTAGIOUS PICKS
14 November 2011
Digital and physical creations, 3D printing and collaboration were some of the key points of dicussion at Internet Week Europe
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BERG / Tomorrow's World
Design consultancy BERG hosted an inspiring event exploring the near future of toys, design, citizen science, aesthetics, the environment and invention. Alice Taylor of MakieLab covered The Near-Future of Toys which she see as to do with craft and bespoke making. She showed an intricate laser cut doll's house available at online crafts network Etsy, shown above, and the detailed 3D printed models designed by train geeks available on 3D printing company Shapeways.
For Karsten Schmidt, considering the Near-Future of Design 'tomorrow's design is software'. He quoted computing academic Bertrand Meyer: 'Real systems have no top', meaning that society's current problem is that we have a very small number of coders, and a large number of users of computers - which essentially puts the coders at the top of the system. With software coming to define our lives more and more, we need to address this imbalance by improving wider tech literacy via education.
James Bridle's quickfire talk on the Near-Future New Aesthetic focused on aesthetic trends in photography, all linked by a sense of 'the flattening of time'. Examples included how Google's Streetview has turned into an unintended historical record, with many people using the images for 'before and after' comparisons in the wake of the London riots, for example. Instagram has risen to popularity in the past year, leading to an increasing trend of filtering the present (and the recent) through vintage filters and the square polaroid aesthetic. What is the significance of this new nostalgia, adding these types of filters to images of the London riots or modern warfare? And things get really 'meta' when you run old photographs through modern instagram filters, as on Mastergram.
Jamais Cascio's presentation on The Near Future of Redesigning the Planet was backed by a single slide, Spirit Rover's photograph of Earth from Mars. There's an amazing duality here: how amazing humanity is to put something on Mars and take a picture of the Earth, yet the result shows just how small and insignificant we really are. His message for redesigning the planet is to evolve rather than design: '"Design" implies an end state, "evolve" recognises that it is an ongoing process.'
Russell Davies ended the event with a discussion of 'the geocities of things' (a quote from his colleague Andy Huntingdon, riffing on the infamous 'internet of things'). He suggested that the popular web hosting service of the late 90s, full of ugly - yet highly individual - creativity, illustrates the fact that people take greater pleasure in creating something of moderate quality themselves, than in using something of higher quality built by someone else. An example of this might be turning your Christmas lights into a musical triumph, building your own Boris bike mapping hardware, or making a plastic parrot that keeps you abreast of Transport for London's latest travel advice. Whilst not everyone will want to tinker with gadgets, Davies hopes that the 'geocities of things' will become as popular as fishing (the UK's most popular pastime).
TED / Salon
On Thursday, Contagious editorial director Paul Kemp-Robertson gave a talk entitled 'Marketing to People, Not Robots (Less Killer App, More Killer Experience)' at an Executive Briefing session hosted by the highly esteemed TED organization near London's Tower Bridge. The event was held to announce the new format of TED's Ads Worth Spreading initiative, of which Paul is an advisory council member.
Stream / Vice / WPP
WPP and Vice's night at the Old Blue Last pub in Shoreditch saw founder of Fray, Simon Waterfall, discussing how to get attention and be appropriate. Waterfall identified the massive amount of noise that consumers are subject to, and the importance of power, speed, and simplicity. He believes that brands need to encourage making: 'We have given amazing creative tools to people, as brands we need to encourage that creation. If the currency of the internet is new, the best way to guarantee 'new' is to make it.'
Joel Lewis of Hellicar and Lewis spoke of his belief that 'if you can't predict what will happen it's interesting', in terms of the work he develops. He explained his repulsion to instruction manuals, instead explaining: 'There shouldn't be anything wrong in interactivity'. He also sees 'The Luxury of Location' as a developing trend, as more and more virtual experiences are avaliable to us, 'the real world is always going to be the killer app'.
Wrapping up the presentations was consultant and ex music producer Adam Kidron (Beyond Oblivion) who explained his vision in a world of abundant digital distribution: 'All your models have to become about giving everybody everything.' He sees a shift taking place in media discovery from aggregated results to relevant personalised expert offerings.
Yahoo Provoke Summit /
The Yahoo Provoke Summit promised to tell us the best about digital storytelling, and its importance. With a packed audience gathered at the Hospital Club, Andrew Cracknell, author of The Real Mad Men, gave a wonderful introduction about the importance of great stories. He illustrated how many of the advertising campaigns created fifty years ago were still remembered and celebrated today, as outstanding work of creativity.
Andrew's keynote was followed by Contagious Magazine's Paul Kemp-Robertson introducing the panel, made up of Krane Jeffery, head of Yahoo! Studio, Richard Morris, deputy managing director, Carat and Anrick Bregman, interactive director at unit9. Sadly, what could have been a showcase of the most exciting examples of recent digital work questioned its potential longevity.
What's more, even the panellists seemed to doubt that their work was going to be remembered fifty years from now. One could argue that the short-lived nature of the internet is less likely to make way for grand stories. Yet with the digital specialists sat on stage, it would have been nice to hear more outcome-focussed suggestions as to how to tell compelling stories.
Yahoo!'s Ad tech team lured curious members of the Provoke audience to an informal event staged in a mysterious building tucked just behind its Shaftesbury Avenue HQ. The extraordinary space of the Elms Lester Painting Rooms - a little-known gallery traditionally used to paint the huge backdrops for Theatreland productions - was used to showcase a selection of very different work, with screens set up to demonstrate Yahoo!'s extraordinary range of homepage takeovers for brands from Chanel to the Harry Potter franchise... A great chance to meet the team charged with bringing the Yahoo! Science, Art and Scale positioning to life in our favourite venue of the week.
Golden Stilettos /
The Golden Stilettos are the female-only award that runs annually as part of She Says, who run events where top females in the industry share their thoughts and experience. Its award aims to champion great creative work conceived by female creatives, and to enable networking amongst women in the digital industries. Fuelled by good food and wine, guests (female to male ration of circa 20:1) gathered at the Getty Gallery to celebrate the best work of the last year.
The best idea was awarded to Otilia Dobrea, currently a student at Miami Ad school, for her conceptual Virgin Book by weather travel service, shown above. The main award was awarded to Eva-Lotta Lamm for her Sketchnotes work.
What were your top events of the week? Share them in the comments section below...
http://internetweekeurope.com
Design consultancy BERG hosted an inspiring event exploring the near future of toys, design, citizen science, aesthetics, the environment and invention. Alice Taylor of MakieLab covered The Near-Future of Toys which she see as to do with craft and bespoke making. She showed an intricate laser cut doll's house available at online crafts network Etsy, shown above, and the detailed 3D printed models designed by train geeks available on 3D printing company Shapeways.
For Karsten Schmidt, considering the Near-Future of Design 'tomorrow's design is software'. He quoted computing academic Bertrand Meyer: 'Real systems have no top', meaning that society's current problem is that we have a very small number of coders, and a large number of users of computers - which essentially puts the coders at the top of the system. With software coming to define our lives more and more, we need to address this imbalance by improving wider tech literacy via education.
James Bridle's quickfire talk on the Near-Future New Aesthetic focused on aesthetic trends in photography, all linked by a sense of 'the flattening of time'. Examples included how Google's Streetview has turned into an unintended historical record, with many people using the images for 'before and after' comparisons in the wake of the London riots, for example. Instagram has risen to popularity in the past year, leading to an increasing trend of filtering the present (and the recent) through vintage filters and the square polaroid aesthetic. What is the significance of this new nostalgia, adding these types of filters to images of the London riots or modern warfare? And things get really 'meta' when you run old photographs through modern instagram filters, as on Mastergram.
Jamais Cascio's presentation on The Near Future of Redesigning the Planet was backed by a single slide, Spirit Rover's photograph of Earth from Mars. There's an amazing duality here: how amazing humanity is to put something on Mars and take a picture of the Earth, yet the result shows just how small and insignificant we really are. His message for redesigning the planet is to evolve rather than design: '"Design" implies an end state, "evolve" recognises that it is an ongoing process.'
Russell Davies ended the event with a discussion of 'the geocities of things' (a quote from his colleague Andy Huntingdon, riffing on the infamous 'internet of things'). He suggested that the popular web hosting service of the late 90s, full of ugly - yet highly individual - creativity, illustrates the fact that people take greater pleasure in creating something of moderate quality themselves, than in using something of higher quality built by someone else. An example of this might be turning your Christmas lights into a musical triumph, building your own Boris bike mapping hardware, or making a plastic parrot that keeps you abreast of Transport for London's latest travel advice. Whilst not everyone will want to tinker with gadgets, Davies hopes that the 'geocities of things' will become as popular as fishing (the UK's most popular pastime).
TED / Salon
On Thursday, Contagious editorial director Paul Kemp-Robertson gave a talk entitled 'Marketing to People, Not Robots (Less Killer App, More Killer Experience)' at an Executive Briefing session hosted by the highly esteemed TED organization near London's Tower Bridge. The event was held to announce the new format of TED's Ads Worth Spreading initiative, of which Paul is an advisory council member.
Stream / Vice / WPP
WPP and Vice's night at the Old Blue Last pub in Shoreditch saw founder of Fray, Simon Waterfall, discussing how to get attention and be appropriate. Waterfall identified the massive amount of noise that consumers are subject to, and the importance of power, speed, and simplicity. He believes that brands need to encourage making: 'We have given amazing creative tools to people, as brands we need to encourage that creation. If the currency of the internet is new, the best way to guarantee 'new' is to make it.'
Joel Lewis of Hellicar and Lewis spoke of his belief that 'if you can't predict what will happen it's interesting', in terms of the work he develops. He explained his repulsion to instruction manuals, instead explaining: 'There shouldn't be anything wrong in interactivity'. He also sees 'The Luxury of Location' as a developing trend, as more and more virtual experiences are avaliable to us, 'the real world is always going to be the killer app'.
Wrapping up the presentations was consultant and ex music producer Adam Kidron (Beyond Oblivion) who explained his vision in a world of abundant digital distribution: 'All your models have to become about giving everybody everything.' He sees a shift taking place in media discovery from aggregated results to relevant personalised expert offerings.
Yahoo Provoke Summit /
The Yahoo Provoke Summit promised to tell us the best about digital storytelling, and its importance. With a packed audience gathered at the Hospital Club, Andrew Cracknell, author of The Real Mad Men, gave a wonderful introduction about the importance of great stories. He illustrated how many of the advertising campaigns created fifty years ago were still remembered and celebrated today, as outstanding work of creativity.
Andrew's keynote was followed by Contagious Magazine's Paul Kemp-Robertson introducing the panel, made up of Krane Jeffery, head of Yahoo! Studio, Richard Morris, deputy managing director, Carat and Anrick Bregman, interactive director at unit9. Sadly, what could have been a showcase of the most exciting examples of recent digital work questioned its potential longevity.
What's more, even the panellists seemed to doubt that their work was going to be remembered fifty years from now. One could argue that the short-lived nature of the internet is less likely to make way for grand stories. Yet with the digital specialists sat on stage, it would have been nice to hear more outcome-focussed suggestions as to how to tell compelling stories.
Yahoo!'s Ad tech team lured curious members of the Provoke audience to an informal event staged in a mysterious building tucked just behind its Shaftesbury Avenue HQ. The extraordinary space of the Elms Lester Painting Rooms - a little-known gallery traditionally used to paint the huge backdrops for Theatreland productions - was used to showcase a selection of very different work, with screens set up to demonstrate Yahoo!'s extraordinary range of homepage takeovers for brands from Chanel to the Harry Potter franchise... A great chance to meet the team charged with bringing the Yahoo! Science, Art and Scale positioning to life in our favourite venue of the week.
Golden Stilettos /
The Golden Stilettos are the female-only award that runs annually as part of She Says, who run events where top females in the industry share their thoughts and experience. Its award aims to champion great creative work conceived by female creatives, and to enable networking amongst women in the digital industries. Fuelled by good food and wine, guests (female to male ration of circa 20:1) gathered at the Getty Gallery to celebrate the best work of the last year.
The best idea was awarded to Otilia Dobrea, currently a student at Miami Ad school, for her conceptual Virgin Book by weather travel service, shown above. The main award was awarded to Eva-Lotta Lamm for her Sketchnotes work.
What were your top events of the week? Share them in the comments section below...
http://internetweekeurope.com
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