We just past this year’s rubicon. This is a great time to have a little review of what’s been happening and how it’s going. It’s been a jam-packed, incredibly productive year so far (the monthnotes have more details and links).
As a side note, over on the ThingsCon blog I did the same thing.
In no particular order:
ThingsCon
ThingsCon has been growing from an annual conference into a global community and event platform with 8 local community events so far this year and another dozen or so to come later this year. Our backchannel on Slack keeps growing and picking up speed. We’ll be running a remote getaway weekend with core members of our community (local hosts, etc.), and we’re preparing for another big conference in 2017.
The Good Home project
Good Home has been a truly enjoyable collaboration, and after Milan we’re taking it to London for London Design Festival and Mozfest. Looks like Berlin might be next after this, then New Zealand. One (storytelling-prop style) prototype that came out of Good Home and a Mozilla Open IoT design sprint is Privacy Machines; may many more follow.
Understanding the Connected Home
Our ebook with thoughts on living in tomorrow’s connected home, is making the rounds. More and more folks report back that they’re sharing it in internal discussions or see it pop up in meetings. This is very much the best scenario we had hoped for: To see it spark discussions around connected homes, and how to design them with respect, privacy, and ethical considerations in mind.
Postscapes 100 top influencers in IoT
Postscapes kindly included me in their list of 100 top influencers in IoT, among the top 20. Thank you!
Client work
Most happy with the wide range of client work this year so far that included projects and clients as diverse as policy research into smart cities for the German Federal government; policy work with Google; HR and IoT community work with Bosch; thinking about the museum of the future; work with publisher WoltersKluwer; and more. It’s been a pretty great ride so far.
Interaction16
Together with Sami and an absolutely lovely and amazing team of local volunteers I had the opportunity to co-chair Interaction16, IXDA’s annual global conference for interaction designers. A true life changer, and I still smile even just thinking about it.
Dearsouvenir
In April, we set up our travel & souvenir magazine Dearsouvenir up as its own company. The first official investment by The Waving Cat GmbH, and a lovely project & team: This was a big step for the company and after two issues I can’t wait to take it to the next level.
Media & speaking
Got to speak at ThingsCon Salon Amsterdam, which is always a great pleasure as the Dutch chapter is the most active local ThingsCon chapter by far, and a truly lovely bunch. I also got a few media mentions and (co-)published a few things, incl. Dearsouvenir magazine; our book Understanding the Connected Home (see above); the policy research report for smart cities (see above); a piece about topic sprints for E-180 magazine, both in digital and print; and some more bits and pieces. Details and links on the media page.
Next up
More Good Home goodness at London Design Festival and Mozfest, another issue or two of Dearsouvenir, a handful of local ThingsCon events (including some as part of a trip to Shenzhen & Shanghai), and of course always a client engagement or two at a time around the various aspects and dimensions of IoT (strategy, policy or product; smart cities, smart home, automotive, business, etc.). Also, another installment of Ignite Berlin and as always lots more writing.
On to a great second half of 2016!
