Interrelativity

Category: Events

  • Nokia Research Center’s 20th Anniversary: Cultivating Freedom, Accountability and Risk

    Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the founding of Nokia Research Center. I happened to be in Helsinki to attend a strategy workshop on Thursday, and arriving a day early enabled me to attend the festivities at the main office of NRC. Antti-Jussi Suominen was the master of ceremonies in an event that featured…

  • Bruce Sterling on Shaping Things through SPIMES: Technosocial Transformations for a Sustainable World

    Bruce Sterling’s keynote at UbiComp 2006 inspired me to go back and re-read his book Shaping Things, in which he introduces the notion of SPIMES — physical objects with digital histories that can be recorded and tracked through SPace and tIME. I didn’t think all the ideas from this book shined clearly through in his…

  • Techno-Spiritual Practices and New Technologies of Enlightenment (A UbiComp 2006 Postscript)

    Genevieve Bell, of Intel Research, was unable to attend UbiComp 2006, and so, unfortunately, her paper on "No More SMS from Jesus: Ubicomp, Religion and Techno-spiritual Practices" was not presented at the conference.  I read the paper on my return flight, and it was so inspiring I wanted to post a few notes about it.…

  • UbiComp 2006: Day 3

    Today was the final day of the 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2006). I'm going to include some notes from today's presentations (continuing a series of notes I've posted from day 1 and day 2 of the conference), and finish off with a few reflections on the conference as a whole. Mark Corner,…

  • UbiComp 2006: Day 2

    It was another engaging day at UbiComp 2006, with a number of good paper presentations (of which, again, I only saw half), videos, an innovative open session and a town hall meeting. Tim Sohn, from UCSD, started things off with a nice presentation on "Mobility Detection Using Everyday GSM Traces". Nearly every talk I’ve seen…

  • UbiComp 2006: Day 1

    Yesterday was my first day at Nokia Research Center, Palo Alto, and today was my first day at a ubiquitous computing conference since UbiComp 2003 (for which I was General Chair). It feels like a homecoming of sorts — reconnecting with many people I haven’t seen in a long time, and finding many themes being…

  • Blogging for Better Business: In Community with Customers

    The central message of Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers, by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel is best summarized in the following quote: The revolution is about the way businesses communicate, not just with customers but with their entire constituencies — partners, vendors, employees, prospects, investors and the media.…

  • Chicago at the Chateau (A Concert Review)

    The band Chicago put on a surprisingly strong — but surprisingly short (one hour, forty minutes) — show last night at Chateau Ste. Michelle.  Approximately 3,800 people came out to enjoy the music, wine and fabulous weather at the winery. I don’t think I’ve attended another concert where so many people were singing so many…

  • The Dance of Leadership

    A healthy community is like a dance, with different dancers stepping forward to take the lead at different times, and others following those leads.  Even followers are leaders, as we lead ourselves along paths or sequences illuminated by those who we consciously or unconsciously agree to allow lead us.  A leader creates a safe space…

  • CSNY vs. GWB at WRA (A Concert Review)

    Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young rendered a rousing rock and roll revue that combined retrospection with rekindled rebellion at the White River Amphitheatre last night.  While I don’t believe U.S. President George W. Bush was physically present at the concert, representations of him — including his words and actions (and their consequences) — were front…