[S]ome of the most interesting discussions centered on the need for sober, critical thinking about the Internet of Things.
One product of ThingsCon is the âIoT Manifesto.â Written by designers for other designers, it addresses high-level concerns about the IoT in the form of 10 pledges. Designers are encouraged to âbuild and promote a culture of privacy,â âempower users to be the master of their domain,â and be âdeliberate about what data we collect.â Its most provocative pledge might be its first: âWe donât believe the hype.â It acknowledges an important fact about the Internet of Things: Thereâs a lot of actionâbut thereâs also a lot of unconsidered design.
WIRED writes about ThingsCon, the IOT Manifesto and the importance of taking ethics, context, and impact into account when designing for the Internet of Things.
Full article: http://www.wired.com/2015/06/homes-become-connected-designers-will-save-us/
While we will share all, photos, talks & write ups, and a nice little video wrap up of ThingsCon15 very soon, I wanted to share my personal take-aways on ThingsCon. Note: I was bound at the main stage for most of the conference for moderating duties, which led me to miss most of the workshops - but that way I got most of the talks which is nice. So here goes a rather partial and recap of ThingsCon from my personal point of view:
A critical take on Things - discussions far from gadgetism
ThingsCon was kicked off by a thought provoking keynote from Sci-Fi Author Warren Ellis, who early on framed a recurring theme: A very critical (and sometime almost dystopian) take on a connected world - and a deliberate distance from Gadgetism or Tech-Talk. Iâm still haunted by that front door who has an 404 and wonât recognize me. Thatâs terrifying. In this was joined by many speakers across the board - from Claire Rowland and an interesting outline on design principles for connected products, to Scott Smith and his human centric take on a culture that is drenched in interconnected products. We heard some very interesting learnings by the good guys at Rural Spark, locally designing and building a smart, decentralized energy grid in India - and a refreshing Keynote by Bruce Sterling to wrap it all up, nicely linking back to Warrenâs door vision, by presenting his and his wifeâs work on Casa Jasmina, a fully connected house.
While Warren repeatedly highlighted the need to go all the way, to not just design the technical aspect of a product, but also the human-centric side to it, in some cases this evolved into an almost philosophical, but certainly sociological discussion on a connected world and its implications. I was amazed by the deep, theoretical insights on concepts like âembodimentâ and abstract vs. object-centered thinking and design by Prof. Andrea Krajewski. And I was literally blown away by Matt Gorbetâs reading of a beautiful essay by Rich Gold, titled âHow smart does your bed have to be before youâre afraid to go to sleep at night?â an on-point and humorous collection of thoughts and questions dealing with a potential future world where everything is smart, connected and active in itself. Written in 1991! It was one of my absolute highlights of this years ThingsCon, and if you have the chance to should definitely check it out, hereâs a brief excerpt from it. (More to be found here)
How is an intelligent house different from an intelligently designed house? Given a choice, which would you rather live in? How about a basically stupid house, but one that is quite pleasant if you live in it intelligently? Do smart houses prevent you from watching dumb TV? Do smart houses take part in the action of TV shows, by say, adding lighting and special effects? If you don't have children but would like some, do smart houses add the patter of little feet to the background? Does the patter get louder as the children grow up? How smart does the bed in your house have to be before you are afraid to go to sleep at night?
Responsibility, Education, and the IoT
It became very obvious throughout these two days, that implications of the IoT matter very deeply for our lives, and the questions why? and how? ought to be answered by everyone in building this new connected world: designers & entrepreneurs, consultants & clients - and engineering students & universities. These questions shape the very way how we work and force us to find our own answer to them - as open or irritating they might be. The situation is that in many cases, weâre just at the very beginning of merely asking them. Itâs a matter of education, of taking a step back from the breadboard and reflecting on what weâre building, and why. Turns out, an indie-conference is a wonderful place to do so.
Because we had the chance to go beyond the theoretical and conceptual part and actually produce hands-on and tangible take-aways that have the potential to not only keep this discussion going, but to actually feed back into our day-to-day work and projects. One of these wonderful outcomes is the launch of the IoT-Manifesto, a 10-point document that takes a stand for creating meaningful products designed for a world that we all would want to live in. Itâs a joint effort of four studios (The Incredible Machine, Beyond.io, Frolic, Afdeling Buitengewone Zaken) and some good folks from the TU Delft and serves as an interesting starting point for a discussion around vision, reality, and realism on building IoT Products. Another tangible tool to understand the implications of connected products weâre building was introduced by Scott Smith: Thingclash is a dive into what happens to our culture and lives, once we start connecting things to the internet.
In the end, we are all human beings
In a way, this yearâs ThingsCon was way more about people than it was about things. And thatâs a good thing. It was inspiring to see question like What world do we want to live in? And how can we shape it in a way that makes sense for us, people? What are the dangers and pitfalls when in comes to designing products for the IoT - and what can we, as designers, entrepreneurs, researchers, consultants do, to make sure we avoid them? discussed in the audience - and somehow surfacing on pretty much every talk I had the chance to see. As Andrea Krajewski put it nicely:
The object is not the object. The object is an extension of ourselves. Itâs an extension of us, our homes, our lives.
Letâs keep that in mind when we talk about the future of hardware. Itâs the future of ourselves.
The message of this years #thingscon in one slide. Thank you @RuralSpark! pic.twitter.com/u3iiHvtBzh
â Matas Petrikas (@matas) May 9, 2015
With ThingsCon a crazy week is ending - and an interesting transition phase for myself is starting to which I am looking forwrad to. I'll keep this outlet going and of course I'm very looking forward to continue all these wonderful discussions we had over the past days in all kinds of future settings. Thank you all for taking part in making this happen.
I just came back from kicking off a crazy week (with re:publica and ThingsCon yet to come) together with some very amazing people. I had the great honor to once again take part at this yearâs Global Innovation Gathering - and it was mind-blowing.
And so it begins! #innovation #collaboration #entrepreneurship
Ein von Adam Molyneux-Berry (@amusicb) gepostetes Foto am 2. Mai 2015 um 1:42 Uhr
Besides a lot of making new friends (which would be more than enough already), a great fringe program with upcycled 3-d printers and just lotâs of opportunities to chat and learn, I had the chance to take part in three very deep and intensive workshops at this weekendâs barcamp in Berlin. While many of these findings are shared through all kinds of channels, hackpads, and networks, I wanted to share my personal - preliminary - take-aways right here:
Session 1: Social Impact and Technolgy Hubs
Hosted by the lovely Tayo Akinyemi we discussed the purpose, impact, and possible strategies that âinnovation hubsâ might go for. We found that
Impact Hubs tackle complex problems, in that they tackle big, long-term, and multidisciplinary challenges of our society (eg. unemployment, general lack of access resources or information, inadequate education, etc.)
Not by specifically solving these problems, but by providing the space, resources, and ecosystem for others to solve them. This is a crucial (but not always easy to identify) line that not only helps making efficient and transparent decisions when running a hub - it also allows to keep focus on the long-term objective of building an ecosystem, rather than tackling countless problems one-by-one.
In order to understand whether a hub is successful or well-led, an impact measurement with rigid definition of objectives, along with quantifiable goals, roadmaps, and metrics is mandatory. The problem here is, that often goals such as âbuilding an engaged communityâ or âdeveloping a productive cultureâ are intangible, hard to quantify and thus subject to interpretation. Nonetheless these objective have to be defined and monitored against.
Session 2: Hub Innovation and Sustainability
Put together by the great Adam Molyneux-Berry and Tayo, building upon the conversations on sustainability that took place through the past years, this session was split in to two perspectives: entrepreneurs and hubs. I took part in the entrepreneurship track and this is what we discussed:
Again, we found that a clear definition of objective is crucial for any future decision making. This specifically includes highlighting various ways and approaches to building and funding a company, be it VCs funded, bootstrapped, informal, or even family business or conglomerate. To make these decisions deliberately (as opposed to implicitly) hubs can enable founder to actually choose the way they want to operate. And of course, this applies to the strategy and outlook of the hub itself, itâs programming, and provided resources.
We discussed potential and efficient selection criteria to grow a healthy and diverse culture and community, taking into account aspects like motivation, background, education, and (rather the controversial) family and private situation. Wherever one draws the line here it became pretty obvious, that a careful (self-)selection of members is vital to grow a sustainable and engaged community
We mentioned but did not have the time to go into detail on aspects like adjusting to the context and environment of a hub (a co-working space in Berlin is probably very differently led and built than a tech-hub in Kampala). Closely linked to this is a feasible business model for the hub itself to ensure long term operations. I hear that Adam compiled this cool list of best-practices for innovative hub business models, that really amazed my when he read it to me.
Catching up with old(ish) friends. The original Tayo, director of #AfriLabs! Let the games begin!
Ein von Adam Molyneux-Berry (@amusicb) gepostetes Foto am 2. Mai 2015 um 2:42 Uhr
Session 3: Peacehack Camp South Sudan
The final session I attended was led by Stephen Kovats and Hakim George from kap movie who spoke about putting together a peace/activist/technology camp for about a week in late November in South Sudan. I had the chance to join Stephen when he kicked off his #OSJUBA initiative back in 2013, striving to explore the potential of open (source) culture to state building and the development of public policies and services in South Sudan (yep, pretty challenging). I was happy to get an update on the current status of his endeavors and learned a lot about his current work at the agency for open culture, about activism, civic engagement, and the potential of community-led engagement to tackle civil unrest and clashes. We shared best-practices and stories about existing initiatives, here are some of the ones we discussed:
Umati framework (iHub, Nairobi) - a framework to monitor online hate speech. Used throughout election violence in Kenya and beyond.
Incike initiative (Rwanda) - a brilliant, brilliant project to raise awareness and funds for elderly survivors of the Rwanda genocide. It uses mobile crowd funding via feature phones on a massive scale and was put together by the all-amazing Aphrodice Mutangana and his team. So impressive!
Rethink Relief (MIT, Boston + Uganda) - a design-led workshop to identify and solve local challenges between short and long-term programs with interdisciplinary teams. The goal is to come up with a working prototype for a product or service after two weeks. Itâs put together by the wonderful Jona Rephishti and the great folks at MITâs D-Lab.
The prevailing question was: Are these new models of community action big enough to move beyond existing conflict lines? Obviously we could not answer this - be I like to believe that itâs a start and a worthwhile opportunity to showcase alternative paths for communities to choose for themselves.
Well this was just 2 days. I canât wait for the rest of this week. Iâll share more of everything GIG, re:publica, and - of course - ThingsCon15 right here. Good days.
ThingsCon very quickly developed a character and an sense of community on its own - unsurprisingly as the audience and speakers very happily engaged in shaping the program and spirit of the conference. And thatâs a good thing. Just six month after ThingsCon Berlin we had our first community-organized satellite taking place in Amsterdam. I actually believe thatâs pretty much the best ting that can happen to an indie-conference - to be taken over and owned by the community it is tailored for as soon as possible.
Design & Meaning
Now, with ThingsCon15 well on its way, I spent some thoughts on where I see this going, and what actually drives me about it. I remembered an inspiring discussion I had with our good friend Marcel Schouwenaar last year. He pointed out how designers and entrepreneurs have the great chance (and duty) to come up with meaning for their products (You should check it out!). That struck me. Meaning is something that goes beyond technical achievability, even beyond usability, design, or vision. Meaning takes into account the context and the impact of a product - and thatâs crucial. Being aware and deliberate of the context weâre working in can give us a highly capable understanding of the notion of âbuilding productsâ. It pushes us to ask: What does the world we want to live in look like? What can we build to get there? And does your product help us along the way?
Design for meaning can give also some very refreshing answers to the everlasting question of where hardware is going. It can spin the old story of classic buzzwords like home automation, transport, wearables, smart cities, or smart energy. Donât get me wrong - these undoubtedly are the most driving paradigms when it comes to âthe future of IoTâ we discuss these days. And that makes a lot of sense, since there is tremendous potential to be found in these areas, once combined with low-energy systems and computing power.
My point is that the term meaning can help us to be a bit more ambitious about our answers here. To get out of the old rut of chasing fancy and disruptive IoT ventures and embrace the full potential weâre actually looking at here. Understanding the context weâre working in allows us to question it, to reframe its reference and its focus. And often the result here is not fancy, but seemingly boring - and all the more significant. (Amazon Dash Button, anyone?)
Discussing perspectives
I am looking forward to have these kind of discussions at ThingsCon. To get away from the tech specs and think about the society and the future weâre getting ourselves into. What does it really do to our world if everything, including ourselves, is constantly monitored and measured by our own things? What does it mean for us if thereâs a global battle around disruption, data, and consumption by companies right in our living room? What happens if things go wrong or are way ahead of us? Or - even worse? - if weâre in-between things?
In some ways, the dystopian version is already here with IoT. People can't turn their fucking house lights on. The clocks think they're in the next time zone over. The thermostat has 404'd and the doorlock system's getting too many hits so you can't get inside your networked house that's gone insane anyway.
Warren Ellis most certainly will have some thoughts to share on that matter, as will Bruce Sterling, Scott Smith, and many others.
I am looking forward to learn about the Rural Spark, a decentralized, bottom-up and smart energy network to tackle the lack of safe and clean energy for about 400 million people in rural india. And to explore what this has to do with design, research, and field work. Jan Belon will join us to share how and why they came up with it:
Itâs these kind of discussions that I find incredibly inspiring for they seem to open up the context in which we might tend to think concepts like IoT or design or entrepreneurship. Last year, the wonderful Bilal Ghalib sketched a similar point of view when he shared his take on DIY-culture, innovation and impact in a very global context. Itâs truly inspiring and humbling to get this sense of potential for what we call hardware and IoT (or whatever, actually), once we reflect on the terms we think it in.
ThingsCon and beyond
This is why I am so excited for ThingsCon15 - and its why I think that this discussion will certainly go way beyond just one event in Berlin. ThingsCon is but one context to have it andI would love to continue swapping it in more projects to come for sure (one of them might be the amazing Global Innovation Gathering which is taking place at re:publica in Berlin just before ThingsCon). It would be great to have you with us - either on-site, online, or in whatever context you prefer. What do you think?
Over the past years Iâve been thinking a lot about one single question (although in many shapes): How can we work together more efficiently when it comes to distant collaboration?
Efficient collaboration is done by efficient teams. Period.
Diverse and skilled ones, at best. Teaming up with others that share your vision, your motivation and your focus is a challenge in it selfâââand you might argue that its the toughest one. But once you have that in place, everything else is just a question of how not whether you work together. Over the past years Iâve come to believe to believe that the tech and the tools we all use (or lack) to work together way too often get in front of the resource that is so much more important: just a good team. If you really want to team up with your colleagues to work on a project, youâll just do it. Even if you use email and wikis and sms for it. Youâll get things done.
On the other hand, if the team is just not right, no tool on earth will fix it. Yet i've heard many times that 'the right tool is missing', or just the proper way of sharing a story, a blueprint or some code. And donât get me wrong: I do believe that there is way more potential to the platforms we use today, especially when it comes to making them adoptable to different contexts and environments, to explore new ways of storytelling, education, transparency. But letâs make sure these platforms donât get in the way of understanding and revisiting the team that uses it - and maybe just accepting the fact that it might just lack focus, incentives, time, or motivation.
Let's focus on the part that is to be connected.
So the challenge here lies in the social bit: Who should you team up and where do you find the right people? What is a team in the first place - and how is it different from a community? How do you keep a team together and focused on getting things done, while staying open and flexible? (here's a good take on that. tl;dr: no dickheads) And how do we make these resources and people as accessible and approachable as possible?
I believe these questions are far more important than just discussing feature sets or tech-racks. Itâs commonplace I suppose - but instead of merely coming up with yet another tool to connect, weâll have to focus on the part that is to be connected, letâs try to understand why, how, and what for we work with others - and how we can make this more likely to happen.
I guess that if we had to take this decision about a year ago, it would have been way harder to do so. Since day one we have been struggling to get everything we needed together in one place at the same time: 1) a proper team, 2) a concise vision & strategy, 3) sufficient time & capital. We always had some of these elements, but it was not until early 2014 that we had it all in place and we able to entirely focus on our product.
Now we took a step back and - egos aside - faced it: We didnât nail it. Sure, we learned a lot: about collaboration and documentation, about team and project management, and accessibility, about execution, VCs, growth hacking, community building. And buzzwords. But in the end our community did not grow fast enough and embrace our platform as happily as we had hoped. And thatâs okay - because we managed to factor out every other roadblock. It was all idea and evaluation. I can live with that. Because thereâs a second reason:
2. The vision does.
The really believe that with shutting down the knowable platform(s), Iâm not at all shutting down on the vision behind it. Iâm actually taking it more seriously than ever and move on with it. If the big picture of knowable was to explore new ways of connecting people and helping them in joining forces to solve problems all around the world - well then I am incredibly excited to implement all our findings to existing projects, new initiatives, and future ideas. Some of them already learned to walk by themselves. Others are already in the making or yet to come.
Iâll share my thoughts, my work and my questions right here. This will include personal ideas, projects that I work on, wonderful people and stories that I encounter. And seriously, I canât wait.
Feel free to join me along the way, Iâd appreciate your company.
