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As an addendum to the previous post – although there appears to be little written on blogs about TED Global, there are a whopping 254 pictures tagged as TED Global on Flickr.

The attendees, while too engrossed to write, were still able to snap away… Including this one of extropian anti-aging beard-king Aubrey De Grey on a punt!

I’ve become so used to being able to read about conferences and events online via the flying fingers of bloggers, that it’s a mild shock not to be able to find anything from TED Global in Oxford.

There have been a few reports by actual reporters, especially on the talks by big hitters like Dawkins, but little of the warp and weft of the threads of an event which the unstructured event notes of bloggers excel at capturing.

By coincidence I ran into Jyri, who had been in the UK attending TED Global, while waiting for my my flight back to Helsinki.

We spent the flight back chatting – and he told me that people with laptops had been asked to leave the front rows of the TED audience, as their LCD-bathed faces were disturbing the illustrious speakers.

How quaint!

In fact, all of TED seems like a quaint throwback to the mid-1990’s – from the lack of blogging/online participation to the wildly hubristic theme (‘Ideas big enough to change the world’) to the $4k price-tag.

Of course, all these factors are connected – the lack of online participation, the high-concept theme and price tag adding to the allure of the conference equivalent of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie.

And, all this of course, is just sourgrapery from someone incredibly envious of those who could attend – and someone who rather enjoyed the mid-1990’s…

Delighted to say that there will be a workshop on ubiquitous computing in the service of entertainment, games, (and I hope) play, at this years’s UBICOMP conference in Tokyo, September.

The call for papers is published – and more details at Julian Bleeker’s site, here.

I’m on the program committee for the workshop, so I’m looking forward to reading some playful proposals over the summer…

From Julian’s site:

Our motivation for addressing the role that ubiquitous computing can contribute to novel and compelling ubiquitous entertainment experiences is partly to emphasize the possible ways that ubiquitous computing can use multi-user scenarios, narrative, geography, location, physical landscapes, and notions of place as an interface to the gaming experience.

Important Dates

• June 17 Deadline for position statement submission
• July 25 Position statement acceptance notifications sent
• July 25 Speaking invitations sent in response to strongest participation statements
• Aug 1 Website updated with final program, talk abstracts, and position statements
• Sep 11 Workshop held in Tokyo

A suprisingly chilled last day after the garage-hack science fair ecstasy of the Maker fair.

I need a shed, a soldering iron, a 3D printer and some flexible medical insurance, asap.

In the meantime, I’ll make stupid things with photoshop (see above)

Time to go back to Helsinki for a few hours, and then off again.

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Update: some of the best, concise notes and reflections on the sessions I’ve found so far at Kareem’s site Reemer.com.

I know you’re meant to trudge around the city to tiny packed venues, but you could also just open up iTunes here…

Red Vs Blue folks on the post-production costs of serving content on the web:

“Imagine if the producers and distributors of Spiderman 2 got a bill from the movie theatres for increased air-conditioning because their movie was too popular”

Currently at their talk: “Why Free is a Good Price: The Terrible Business Model of Red vs. Blue” at SxSW.

Another couple of quotes:

“Homestar Runner is really a t-shirt store with a great cartoon attached”

and on bittorrent, not actually saving them costs…:

“We put bittorrent clips out there, received 45000 emails back saying ‘we don’t understand how to use this and I need to see your clip NOW!'”

Very good stuff on the way-new nanoentertainment industry from the trenches of the long tail.

A March of craziness commences.

I’m going to be in Austin for SxSW Interactive from the 12th-14th. It’ll be my first time, so I have no idea what to expect or what to do. I do know I will miss the Bruce Sterling talk and his legendary party but hopefully I can peg him for 2 minutes chat on Spime-design somehow by virtue of pointing to my runner-up status in a Viridian design competition. But other than that… What do you recommend for a SxSW n00b?

I’ll get there too late for the kick-ball, but it doesn’t sound like a contact sport, therefore no fun for Welsh people. Otwell‘s promised me tex-mex brex, so that’s one thing taken care of.

Then I’m off to ETech/Etcon/whatever for the 14th to the 18th March – where I’ll be acting as Chris Heathcote‘s glamorous assistant for a talk on Tangible Computing – handing him RFID-enabled bunnies to saw in half, and ranting about embodied interaction – that sort of thing.

The good thing is our talk is on the first day of sessions, and early – so get to relax for the rest of what has shaped up into a rather good line-up since I slagged it off.

All apologies for that earlier apoplexy – and congrats to Rael and the team who have put together the final roster. A lot of my wishes came true (Natalie J and her feral robots, check; Neil Gershenfeld, check) –  although I still think that changing the event from an annual occurence to maybe once every two or three years would be an improvement. But now I don’t think I’ll be grumpy in the corner – much – I don’t think I have time to grow a Tony Stark ‘tache anyway.

Finally, after stopping off in Helsinki long enough to pick up some new pants and for Foe to remember what I look like, I’ll be heading to Doors of Perception 8 in Delhi with some other Nokians to get the TechnoUtopianism (© O’Reilly) smacked out of me by all and sundry.

Looking forward to some thought-provoking sessions on co-creating services and infrastructure in South-Asia from both visitors and locals that leapfrog the ‘developed world’ in both technology and sustainability.

There’s still time to get a visa and cheap flight to Delhi to join in, so the blog says.

If you’re at any one of the above ideafests, then drop a comment below, and let’s see if paths cross in the corridors.

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p.s. yes – Fin Fang Foom is there as another tedious Iron Man reference. Sorry – but I love FFF. Bonus link – the Barbelith take on the Warren Ellis’ Tony Stark is priceless.

These are my imagined favourite projects from the ITP Winter Show based on the project descriptions.

Imagined, as I won’t be able to go, but you might.

If you do, tell me your favourites.