Visit to Copenhagen and Lund for NordiCHI conference

And it’s time for another conference! Last Friday I left for the NordiCHI conference in Lund with my colleagues Alex, Dries and Jeroen. Because the most efficient way to travel to Lund is to fly to Copenhagen and take the train from there to Lund, we decided to leave earlier and to stay in Copenhagen for a day. Dries booked us a comfortable room in the Danhostel (which felt like a night train that isn’t moving), which was very cosy.
We arrived quite late on Friday evening, so we had a quick dinner (which was good actually, with a home-made veggie burger and eight different sauces – not kidding) and some cocktails. Saturday we wandered around the city centre of Copenhagen, visited the Danish Design Centre (which was not too big and had rather strange stuff)and did some white Lego building. Later in the afternoon we took the train to Lund, where we had an all-Swedish dinner (Ikea meat balls and Chocolate Moose - nice movie for fans of the Swedish Chef).

Sunday was the first day of the conference, on which we had workshops. Dries and I went to a workshop on lo-fi haptic prototyping, which was a good workshop. We started with presentations and demonstrations of (supposedly) lo-fi prototypes, though most of the prototypes were quite hi-fi (especially compared to Eise’s home made MDF mobile phone I brought). I especially liked the physical (lego) avatar, the Wizard of Oz haptic feedback by sending a sound file to a mobile phone in silent mode, Nokia’s universal gesture alphabet, the concept of “body storming” and the Philips “shiver down my spine” vest.
In the afternoon we had a lo-fi prototyping session, in which we were divided into four groups and had to make a (you guessed it) lo-fi haptic prototype. There was some really nice stuff to make the prototypes of (balloons, magnets, lego, modelling clay, foam, etc.) and we did quite a few interesting discoveries (when you put a magnet into a balloon, inflate the ballon and stick another magnet to the magnet inside the balloon, the balloon pops!).

Today was the first day of a keynote and paper sessions of the conference. To be honest, I was a bit disappointed by the quality and the content of the presentations. Also, I’m afraid that the keynote (of a Firefox t-shirt wearing speaker) was a bit too geeky for a large part of the audience, although I liked his concept of Evil Design. Interesting exceptions were a presentation about measuring bodily movements with a desk chair (although I’m not quite convinced of the validity of such movements as a measure of emotions) and a presentation about designing for participation in public knowledge institutions (which included the virtual peepholes into the ocean which I reported on at the Participatory Design Conference).
After the conference we had a short tour of the Museum of Sketches for Public Art and a Microsoft reception (apparently, Microsoft is fond of BiFi sausages and soepstengels). Fortuately, Jeroen and I spotted a sushi bar earlier in the afternoon, and we had quite some fun with different styles of eating sushi (fingers and wobbly chopsticks).

Conference venue (Lund University).

More quests and more art in Chicago

I started my day with a nice breakfast at Chicago's largest Whole Foods Market (I'm a devoted fan), after which I took the subway to yet another outdoor store (I know, it is getting boring). The good news is that this shop had the Icebreaker stuff I was looking for, and (even better), they had 20% off of the whole collection today! Nice...

After lunch, I took a subway to the Gold Coast area (sounds good, doesn't it?) and wandered around there. At about two o'clock, it started raining (and I mean serious rain, pouring rain which hasn't stopped since), so I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art , which turned out to be free on Tuesdays. The museum wasn't really big, but there were quite some interesting items. I liked the work of Kara Walker, showing black paper cut silhouettes representing "Negro scenes".

The remainder of the afternoon, the weather was so bad, I bought a magazine and went to The Cheese Cake Factory (!), to eat some delicious Godiva Chocolate Cheese cake. On my way back to the hostel (via sushi shop), I got so wet, I put my clothes in the dryer. Now I'm watching the Presidential Debate on tv (which was roughly disturbed by a fire alarm in the hostel, on which we had to go outside and were only let back inside after the fire department thoroughly searched the building and decided the alarm was false). It is quite boring, to be honest.

Tomorrow is my last day here. My plane leaves around four thirty, so I'll probably have to leave around one o'clock. Still have to go to Wired NextFest, so I'm going to pack my bags in a minute.

Ferris wheels, art and blisters

To start with a few pictures from the hostel (common room and bedroom). I'm in a six-bed bedroom which is pretty big. One of my room mates likes to go to bed really early (seven or so, not kidding), so I try to avoid the bedroom as much as possible at night. I slept quite well, given the fact that the bed is very soft and my back has been in better shapes.

Today I had (free!) breakfast at the hostel and because breakfast is between seven and nine pm, I was ready to go quite early. I left the hostel with the intention to visit the Chicago Cultural Center (because this was about the only attraction opening that early), but I ended up making a long walk. I took the BP Bridge (designed by Frank Gehry, which wouldn't look bad next to the Bilbao Guggenheim) to walk to Lake Michigan. I followed the lake shore until Navy Pier, where I made a ride in a big Ferris wheel (sponsored by McDonalds). Great views, and together with two other early birds I was the only passenger!

From Navy Pier I walked back to The Loop area to visit the Art Institute of Chicago, which was very nice. Unfortunately, the museum was in the middle of major construction, so many pieces of art were not on display and some wings were closed altogether. But, enough remained to be seen and I really enjoyed walking through the museum at my own pace (no offence Eise!). I particularly liked the design pieces and contemporary American paintings. One exposition was especially impressive. It was an exposition of photomontages by Martha Rosler, who combined images of the Vietnam war with images from American home interiors of the 50's and 60's. Quite surprising and shocking (see one of the pictures in the photo below,). The museum had a great museum shop, with interesting goodies (no crap) and lots of books. I bought a book about the use of patterns in design.


After dropping of the book in the hostel, I went on an Icebreaker quest. I took the subway to Lincoln Park, to an outdoor shop selling Icebreaker (according to the Icebreaker website). Conveniently, the shop was located next to a huge Whole Foods, a (mostly) organic supermarket (think Gimsel, but then 50 times bigger). Lovely. I composed a good lunch which I ate at the terrace (see photo).Sadly, no Icebreaker stuff in the outdoor store, so I continued my quest in other outdoor stores which I looked up before- hand. No luck yet, so I'll have to keep on searching.

In the end, I spent most of my afternoon in Lincoln Park, which turned out to be a really nice area of Chicago. I loved being out of busy downtown in a more residential part of the city, with little shops, choice to drink coffee at another place than Starbucks, and so on). Later in the afternoon I quickly walked down Magnificient Mile, the main shopping street in Chicago where all big chain stores are located (apart from the Apple Store, nothing special). I had dinner in a typical American (?) pizza place. Having dinner on your own here in the US is not very bad actually. Mostly, they seat you at the bar, with all the other lonely soles, which easily results in funny conversations (either with the bar tenders or with other guests - today I set next to a guy from working in the business of surgical technologies ).

Now it's time to bother my (probably vast asleep) room mate. I'll be back tomorrow!

Weekend without plans, loads of free time! Yeah, right.

So, after having worked really hard to prepare for our party last weekend, we thought to have a well-deserved duty and DIY-free weekend. Not. Since our house still needed some cleening-up from the party, Saturday morning was over before we knew it. Then Eise went over to Percy's to help him prepare for his birthday/cd presentation party later that day and I went to buy a grappa for Karlo (which is quite a challenge if you don't know a thing about grappa). Made a quick stop at Karlo's birthday party to congratulate him (on his 38th and his personally designed & crafted roof terrace lounge couch) to be picked up by Menw to rush to Percy's party as well. Quite a fun party, lots of music (two bands, two more singers, Percy and his partner presenting their new cd) and an exited horse.



Today we decided to go hiking, which finally enabled me to test my new backpack (which I bought quite a while ago already but never tried). We drove to Mechelen and made a 14 km. hike along the river Geul and through the woods of Epen. Nice area, lots of people walking along the Geul though. And great ice cream with fresh strawberries and raspberries!


And then a sad message when we got home. The little kitten Menw was supposed to take home in a few weeks (the sister of our kitten) died this afternoon. Apparently, she was hit by a car and her injuries were too bad to survive... We will pick up Haroen next Tuesday already, which means we will have to take some precautions to carefully guide the first encouter between Haroen and Babet...

One of the joys of working at home...

Sleepless by coffee

Yesterday evening we had a coffee workshop at Kaldi, a little coffee store in Maastricht. The idea was to learn a little bit about coffee, to taste coffee and to learn making a good cuppa and (most importantly!) a good cappuccino foam.The workshop itself was really nice, very good value for money and really fun. Had a bit too much coffee though, not being used to drinking five espressos after dinner... But anyway.The best part of the evening was the fact that they had exactly the same espresso machine as we have at home (see picture), so we could practice making coffee and foam as we should do it at home too. Pictures below showing Anita (with a very fancy and even more expensive coffee machine) and Pascal learning to make the perfect cappuccino. And now we have to
practice to keep our barista skills up! So I actually have an excuse for making cappuccino every morning, it's all a matter of personal competencies! For the true fans, I've added a movie of how to make latte art (Dutch Championships coming up soon!), which is less easy than they make it seem, I'm affraid...

Surprise!

Look at this, what a little com- plaining about a lack of surprises on your birthday can do... Am enjoying a delicious blueberry muffin WITH a creatively improvised candle on it. Obviously, only women can think of this..., Diana & Sophie, thanks!

Sachertorte and Wiener melange!

Diana and I are enjoying the advantages of business trips...