tonight I was lucky enough to be invited to a round table meeting with the cream of the young adelaide arts, music, design and advertising scene and the adelaide city council.
- band / gig posters - the city needs more public spaces designated for sticking up posters, so people can pop by and find out what's on that night in the city.
- water frontage bars / cafes - we've got the awesome grassed areas next to the festival centre with lovely water frontage that's an ideal place to hang out on a long summer night, but we need some bars / cafes / street food there to attract people so they don't have to venture to the west end for a drink.
- reduce inner city housing costs - there needs to be something done to create affordable inner city housing for young people. at the moment there's just opposite ends of the spectrum from student 1 room accommodation to $700 / week penthouse living. more young people living in the city = more young people out and contributing.
- increase noise in the city - in the last decade pubs and live music venues have been getting screwed by suffocating noise restrictions forced upon them by touchy old residents in new apartments. the city is meant to be noisy and bustling, so stop listening to the whinging few and bring the noise back to the CBD.
- street art zones - there needs to be a few council-blind-eye areas, where street art can go up and not be buffed.
- first friday gallery night - the first friday of the month becomes a night when all galleries in the west end are open with new artwork, attracting people to west end and building a real sense of community amongst the art scene.
- short term empty shop front leases - the council needs to act as a broker for short term shop front leases, so that empty shop fronts can be transformed into month long exhibitions without the usual pain of going through landlords and huge short term lease fees.
- rolling leases - continuing on from the short term leases are rolling leases, so empty shop fronts get leased as exhibition spaces rolling month to month until the landlord has a full-time tenant. this provides great opportunities for emerging artists with little track record to exhibit and a steady stream of income for landlords that would otherwise have no income from those shop fronts.
- close hindley street - the council experimented with closing hindley street for one saturday night. unfortunately the only attraction was a hotdog and a clown. proposal is to regularly close hindley street once a month on a saturday night to traffic and have food and drink stalls from the clubs and shops on the street and some live bands playing. that would attract people, and make the street less scary / seedy.
- improve public transport - free public transport within the CBD, and extended running hours so that people can stay out in the city longer and still get around and home.
- simple bus route naming system - to make it easier for international students, visitors and the general public, there needs to be a simple naming system to replace the bus numbers in adelaide. colour coded routes and simple names of the directions busses are headed would be much more user friendly.
- dedicated street art laneway - it would be great for the council to dedicate one laneway in the CBD to foster street art. a safe place where anyone can paint anytime. a place where we can run masterclasses by the legends of adelaide street art. ideally the laneway would have a secure stereo system that artists / bands / djs can plug into and have live performances there. we'd install picture frame rails so that there could be outdoor exhibitions there.
- de-regulate the rundle st markets - the gilles street markets are a huge success because they're run by the people. move the rundle st markets to east terrace and put them back into the hands of the people, sell organic farmers market style food and have some live bands and art to attract people.
- take more risks with modern architecture - we're sick of the glass stumps going up around the city. hand some architectural design work to graduate students and talented conceptual architects so that there are more interesting buildings.
- support industrial design - after graduating, industrial design students have few job opportunities in adelaide. to keep the talent in adelaide, fund more gallery spaces devoted to industrial design to show off furniture and product designers.
- more public art - hire local designers to create more public art, especially more interactive public art. art that can be modified by either digital manipulation via SMS or the internet, or even by physical touch.
the last few months have been quite good. here's the good stuff i've been working on:
- new internationalist ethical gifts catalogues
- format festival planning for 2010
- ST5K street art festival grant applications for 2010
- a secret squirrel street art project
- teaching myself objective-c
- working on a logic brain with my good friend kuba
- cleaning my apartment
- fixing my motorbike
why hello there.
Before I start, I want to say a massive thanks to Steve Hopkins from World Vision for putting together an awesome prize. I can't say enough about it, hit me up for free promo work whenever you like mate!
Here's the thing. I started writing about my little experience, and it got a little bit out of hand. What can I say, I like to rant.
So I've decided to condense a short version for you in true twitter style, and after reading that, if you still feel like reading on.. well then, I warned you.
The short version_
After a night out with awesome friends, I was greeted by Sydney rain. Boo.
Rain turned to smiles as Loreen and I met up with Steve & Ross. Awesome guys. Both of them.
Next, Amnesia. Cool new boutique design agency, nice 3 level studio, friendly cool people and clearly quite talented. Shame they seem to have a one tracked mind for big corporate jobs. Hope the World Vision gig is the first ethical job of many. Shouts to Brady, Brett & Heather. Verdict? WIN (given the benefit of the doubt on future ethical projects)
micro$oft surface was cool in that it used a different technology than iphone to generate touch interface. Shame it had lo-fi resolution, and didn't do everything it advertised to do.. Needs more apps, and higher res, plus projection capabilities and I'd think it was rad. Verdict? Fail.
Yahoo!7 - If Aidan is anything to go by, Yahoo!7 are in good hands. He's the balls. Seriously. Do you have an SEO question? This. Guy. Knows. All. And he's a nice guy who can speak non-g33k too. Could be a robot / genius. Watch his SEO presentation he gave us and learn. :) Verdict? WIN.
Google bailed on us last minute. For that, Verdict? FAIL.
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Video break_
Watch them all bigger over in my vimeo album here vimeo.com/album/45627
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Now, the long version_
Here I sit, well lay actually, at Sydney airport after a pretty incredible day playing with some of the coolest tech toys on the planet. And although it was a totally overwhelmingly awesome experience, I came away from it with some interesting conclusions.. some of which are very unexpected.
My head space coming into the day was that I was going to be blown away by the amazing studio that Amnesia ran, that the micro$oft surface machine would have to be torn from my sweaty fingers and that the future of the internet was safe in the hands of both Yahoo!7 and Google. I thought I'd leave begging for more, kicking and screaming to afford a little loft apartment in inner Sydney. But its interesting what I actually took out of it.
Firstly, the most amazing part of the trip for me wasn't the tech toys, it wasn't even the beautiful office spaces.. it was the people. Loreen, Steve and Ross are three inspiring souls.
Loreen is the other prize winner from over at problogger. She's such an interesting mix of down to earth mother of three / marketing / competition brainiac / general blogging smarts / environmentalist. Watch what she gets up to when she has some spare time from looking after the kids, its sure to be an inspiring little venture.
The other two people travelling with me for the day were Steve and Ross, the dynamic duo who are saving the world from itself one simple step at a time. These two hot nerds from the school of entrepreneurs have the brains, the ideas and the capabilities to conquer whatever they dream up. Am I getting a little carried away with my praise here? Well maybe, but its deserved. Seriously. It is. If you ever get a chance to work with either of them from Steve's work with World Vision or Ross's seemingly infinite internet smarts, do it. They're two people that make social responsibility kick arse without even trying. Something desperately needed given the current state of the world.
Okay, so now onto the hosts for the day, Brady and Brett from Amnesia & the little walking SEO wiki Aidan. (wtf shout to heather aka likeomg for her wonderful creative process chart)
Brady is the Amnesia goto guy for tech development. He breaks down the fragile wall between design and development departments and is generally an awesome guy. He also happened to be the guy leading development (cough) playtime (cough) on micro$oft surface. He showed us the ins and outs of this touch sensitive table top of loveliness.. from a cute little business card app they built to 4 player pong.. and even photos of running street fighter on micro$oft's surface!!! rooooockkkkk! Plus he let us spoof it interacting with an iphone, dragging photos from it, and well.. he even let me lick it! mmmmm.. tasty.
Brett is the associate producer at Amnesia, a marketing guy and public relations guy.. with a background in journalism.. so really he's pretty much the everything guy there. Which I think is the general philosophy at Amnesia, they all wear one main hat, but under that hat they have an encyclopaedia of head wear, both work and play. We didn't spend a lot of time with Brett, he was pretty run off his feet the whole time we were there, but he was kind enough to buy a few rounds of Mule's.. a new project they're working on at Amnesia. A mule being a combination of Vodka, Ginger beer and Lime, which is a surprisingly tasty combination.
Aidan Beanland, the SEO guy at Yahoo!7, was our last stop for the day. And to be honest, this was the part of the day I got the most out of. Aidan is a warm, friendly, super organised and switched on guy. His presentation on SEO was written in such an easy way to understand, that he present us lots of in depth techniques to apply to our websites and blogs. I was even lucky enough to have him run through my work website www.newint.com.au/shop and get his feedback. Luckily I haven't done too much wrong, just a few little tweaks of page titles and use of internal links to fix things up. I wrote a bunch of notes from the session, but Aidan also gave me permission to link to his actual SEO presentation as a PDF. So read it and enjoy!
Last stop you ask? What happened to the visit to Googleplex? Well, sadly for us Google phoned and cancelled the morning of the training day. Something about an important guest from the US arriving.. sure, these things happen.. but for me Google, you fail. Especially as coming into the day, that was probably the highlight I was most looking forward to. Boo to you. You really should put me on the Android phone beta testing team for that, don't you think?
Okay, so now the tech toys review that you've all been waiting for:
micro$oft surface.
Getting to lay my hands on it prior to its public launch date was pretty awesome, but did the big overweight cousin of the ipod touch live up to its hype? Or was it merely another virtual mime artist of the micro$oft corporation, attempting to pull a digital rabbit out of its hat.. but forgetting to render the hat.. and the rabbit. (imagine if they pulled a penguin.. cough.. nerd reference)
Sadly, I have to confirm the latter. Yes, surface is a cool concept, a neat stepping stone towards touch sensitive walls and objects of the future.. and sure its packaged in a nice clean package, amazingly minimal by micro$oft's standards. But here's the reality check. Its basically just a big glorified low-res tablet with some very primitive software that you can develop apps for.
First epic fail we found was that surface DID NOT detect and transfer photos from a digital camera as their promo video showed. At present it can't even detect anything other than a tiny 8-bit code on a business card. Sure that's mostly a limitation of the apps running on it now, but come on micro$oft, if you're going to release them into the wild for the public to ooh and aah over hoping to win some fanboys and girls, at least release it capable of doing stuff that you say it can on the promo video.
Second fail was the resolution. Its a tiny 1024 x 768. Here's a corporation that screws money out of you at every opportunity and the best concept touch machine they can muster displays the same number of pixels as the monitor in an average household or less than that of 3 iphone displays!
So what is it good at?
Well, it's different to the way an iphone works. Because it isn't limited by size, it can use video cameras to scan the surface for changes in light which means it can scan things that are placed on its surface. That's its main strength (and weakness)
Why is this cool?
Because somewhere down the track you theoretically will be able to lay a page down on the surface and when you pick it up again, it'll be scanned and a copy laying on the surface to manipulate / email / copy / throw at another device.
Why isn't it cool?
For a couple of reasons. Firstly, because its sensitive to light rather than detecting touch, moving lights can control it (lasers too? not sure about this one). So Brady was telling us that this has been a bit problematic when on stage with moving lights, because they activate buttons on the surface. The paper scanning abilities are also arguably a dying art. Its like teaching a young boy to type on the typewriter, sure that's great, but why not just use a computer to avoid having to text scan his work in the future. Similar is for the surface machine, why not just wirelessly transfer the document via wifi or bluetooth. Cameras these days are coming out with wifi built in, mobile phones have it, so why not use that?
Last word on surface.
The obvious pun is that on the surface, its a cool concept, but for me I'm still more excited about the capabilities of my iphone than the future of surface.
Should micro$oft build a higher res version, less sensitive to lights and present the dev apps as open-source, then maybe I'll be wetting my pants.
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Eating and drinking and staying in sydney.
Drink. If you're looking for a nice place to drink quality wine & cocktails, check the victoria room. Beautiful old furniture and lovely lighting, plus bar tenders who really love the drinks they create.
Eat. The best food (from a vegetarian perspective) that I had on the whole trip was from iku whole foods 62 Oxford St, Darlinghurst. They offer organic, biodynamic, macrobiotic, vegan, vegetarian & gluten free food. I can highly recommend the mushroom dahl & tofu currie. Oh and don't forget a glass of spicy hot chai.
Stay. I was put up in the Travelodge Sydney, and although the rooms are pretty small, it was a clean, neat, well organised place. Good value, but the best feature is its location. 3 minutes walk from the Museum subway train station, which connects you directly to the airport in 13 minutes.. and a short walk to loads of cool pubs.
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Okay, so that's about it.
Sighmon does Sydney for a day of tech training. :)
s.
wow, just wow.
New Internationalist Magazine - Drowning in plastic
www.newint.org/issues/2008/09/01/
Slum dwellers in Latin America and Africa build their shanties from plastic sheets and collect their water in plastic buckets; plastic flip-flops protect the feet of millions of peasants across Asia. Western consumers eat their take-out food with plastic cutlery from plastic foam containers while swigging water from plastic bottles.
Now no part of the planet can escape its toxic impact on human health and the environment.
Subscribe to the print edition here:
www.newint.org/subscriptions/
Or read this archive edition of NI magazine now:
This toxic life
They’re in our homes and our workplace, in the air we breathe and in the food we eat. Wayne Ellwood argues that toxic chemicals are changing the nature of nature.
The Polymer Revolution
A history of plastic.
Message in a bottle
It’s a fashion statement and an environmental nightmare. Zoe Cormier examines one of the most successful marketing ploys ever – bottled water.
Plastic is forever
The facts about plastic
Sea of garbage
The good ship Alguita sails an ocean choked with plastic. Blog by Anna Cummins.
Plastic plants
As oil supplies dwindle, the plastic industry is pinning its hopes on biomass. Not a great idea, reasons Jim Thomas.
Abandon the toxic treadmill!
Things you can do to avoid toxic plastics. PLUS the Action / Campaign directory.
James Nachtwey has been selected as this years' TED Prize winner. Tune in on October 3rd to hear his 'one wish to change the world'.
Just a quick note sent from my phone to say hello to the viewers watching at home via the messenger.
Hopefully I'll have my copy tomorrow so I can read all about it.. :)
Night!
Si.
Recent Comments
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natasha killeen said:
[this is good]hey i was wonder how you got a media pass/ where i can get an application ! ? if you... read more
on Big Day Out Yo_ -
sighmon said:
Which reminds me.. everyone who's interested in this, must check out: http://urbanecology.org.au/ and his vision for the future of Adelaide... read more
on the knerds of the round table_ -
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alas, they only gave me passes when the festival wasn't sold out.you apply through the media section of their website..http://www.bigdayout.com/showinfo/mediacontacts.php read more
on Big Day Out Yo_