Russell Davies

another possible date for your diary

I've just been down to the Conway Hall and booked it up for Saturday June 21st. I figure we may as well have another bash at Interesting. No other news really at this point, just that's when it'll be. Tickets'll be on sale soon, but I've not lined up speakers or anything like that yet. I've been wracking my brain to try and think of clever and innovative ways we can 'move it on' but couldn't come up with any. So the basic plan is to do it exactly like last time.

If you'd like to speak, please let me know, or if you'd like to suggest someone else who should speak that'd be even better (but please remember no-one gets paid so there's no point suggesting anyone very famous or important.) You can get an idea of the complete lack of theme or purpose of the thing if you go here and scroll down through the whole story. And obviously if anyone would like to help in any way that'd be good too.

Here we go again.

(pictures courtesy of Steve and Tim)

home again

I went home to Derby yesterday, to do some talking to the Creative Industries Network. Very good fun. Met some nice people (either there or via email afterwards), people like Pixel Lab, Momiji and Rachel. And had more of a wander around town than I normally do.

This shop in the old market hall was the final demonstration for me that everything is everywhere. When there's a shop called Tokyo Otaku in Derby's Market Hall then geography and exoticism have finally disappeared.

There's also a huge new shopping centre there with an electronic guide. And what's missing in the shop categories? Music. No music stores. Time was you couldn't be a destination shopping place without a couple of music places. Not any more. Music's been replaced by mobile.

more action cook book

Anne alerted me to the existence of a hardback version of the Action Cook Book. It's a large handsome volume. This is the back:

I think I prefer the paperback cover, but the cook-strips are lovely and big in the hardback. Hie yourself to alibris or ebay if you'd like a copy.

this happened

Went to a brilliant event last night - This Happened. Short talks about interesting Intereaction Design stuff presented with a refreshing openness you don't get in marketing and adland, where case studies are normally presented as inevitable and insightful marches to success. A lot of this seems to be an explicit aim of the organisers. The speaker guidelines include:

"We want to know how a project has evolved - the process. You should tell us the story, not just the result...We also like failed projects, a polished end result is not as important as the process. What did you learn from the project that you didn't know before?"

I'd love to hear more about failed projects. That could be a good idea for a conference, a day of failed projects. And not the sort of failures that somehow make you look, but out and out failures. Anyway. Tangent. Sorry. The splendid thing was that, although there was much talk of failure and side-roads and things that didn't work, everything talked about was very good.

Jussi's project illustrated the dangers of not being allowed to get your hands dirty yourself but is ending up as a rather beautiful thing. Jack was clever and funny about Olinda, and Kenichi's (and Chris') Animal Superpowers project managed to be brilliantly thoughtful and childish at the same time. But the really eye-opening thing was the Snug and Outdoor Snugkit. Partly because it was physical interaction design, no screens and batteries and Processing. Partly because we've been thinking about playgrounds a bit at home. But mostly because Snug seems to be a product of 20 years of thinking and studying and trying, and that seems to be the really valuable lesson; ideas are easy. Making them happen is hard. But worth it.

ukulele mashup genius

Finally, something useful on the internet. This utter work of genius looks at your Last profile, works out which songs are easiest to play on the ukulele and presents them to you. With the chords. Brilliant. Obviously it struggles to help you play much Harry Partch, and there's way too much Beck in my profile for my liking (I think my mac's been listening to him while I was out) but it's official, this is the best thing on the internet, ever.

office space

Some friends and I are looking for some workspace we can share. We don't know much about how you do that, so I thought I'd see if I could invoke the power of the internet to help out. Do you know anywhere we can rent, like this:

Good natural light
Easily securable with 24-hour access
Between 800 and 1000 sq feet
Housing up to 8 people (We could take two floors and sublet)
We need to have some separate rooms, not for everyone, but some private space is a must, we could consider building walls
We need a kitchen
We could afford around £40k per year, but would (obviously) prefer much less.

Around King's Cross would be perfect. Failing that it needs to be West of Kings Cross, and ideally on the Northern section of the Circle Line or the Central Line.

If you know of anywhere like that, or have any good tips on finding somewhere like that, I'd love to hear about them - please email me - russell at russelldavies.com

signs of the urban seasons - february

I'm struggling to find many signs of seasonal renewal in the city, though the umbrella corpses are getting more and more mangled. And starting to be accepted back into the tarmac, to be reborn in the autumn as young, fresh brollies.

abstract vending

geeKyoto

The beginnings of the geeKyoto website is up. And tickets are on sale. You should think about going, I suspect it'll be rather good.

tales from the long tail: graph paper time

Its always a sign you're getting over-involved in something when you break out the graph paper.

This is a record of what happened to my Amazon rank since I mentioned the book on the 10th and Adrian built the ranktracker into twitter. (It looks like, to start with, the blog mentions has elevated it from the millions into the hundred thousands.)

I think it's all fairly self-explanatory, if you can be bothered with it. The tracker reports every three hours, but I've only graphed one per day. (Noting on the right if I managed a higher score at any point during the day.) You'll see I ordered  the twenty books on the 20th. Seven were dispatched on the 24th (which are now on their way to some people) and thirteen were dispatched today. 

All I think I can learn from this is that mentioning the book on the blog seems as, if not more, effective, as ordering and paying for twenty of the blighters.

And, if I've mislogged anything, got my scales wrong, or committed some crime against statistics or information design I can only apologise. It's late and I'm old.