Wow. Just: wow. This BarCamp was completely different than all the previous ones I’ve attended. Why? Because instead of being a regular attendee, I offered to volunteer during (and one day before) the event. Instead of that diminishing my BarCamp adventure (which I think most people would expect), it has only intensified it and heightened the overall experience; this BarCamp felt so much more greater and satisfying just because I was finally able to give something back to the wonderful Barcamp community.

Uber kudos have to go to the amazing BarCampLondon6 team! Emma, Kevin, Dan, Caz, Leeky, Tom, Cristiano, Dirk, David, Eva-Lotte, David, Mary, Paul and Jan have all been working for the past 4 months on creating such a great event. My two-day contribution is minor compared to the time and effort they’ve put into this and without them this BarCamp would never have happened.

For me, this BarCamp started on Friday evening, when I headed with Cristiano to the Guardian offices to help with setting things up. Together with some others I was appointed the tasks of arranging the swag bags: filling them with goodies, hanging name tags on them, adding the personalized Spreadshirt T-shirts and alphabetizing it all (not an easy and quick task for 150 bags and more than 1500 “goodies”).

Part of this work carried on to the Saturday morning; it’s a bit blurry to remember exactly which of this stuff happened on the Friday and which on the Saturday. After that I was set on the registration desk for 3 hours, checking in people and keeping track of the overall number of attendees. There was a fantastic turnup; I’m guessing things like the personalized Spreadshirt T-Shirt, the donations and the ‘confirm you ticket’ email, all helped to combat the no-showiness of people. 

The rest of the two days I could easily attend sessions, interspersed with bouts of helping out during food deliveries, clean up and stuff like that. Here are a couple of the sessions I went to:

Carcassonne
The first session I went to was Cristiano’s and mine joint session about how to play Carcassonne. We had a great turn out and were lucky that Sheila showed up with her box too. We split into two groups to explain the rules and managed to get both games finished within the time.

Social Games
I went to this session thinking it would be about Werewolf and those type of social games. It wasn’t, but it turned out to be an interesting discussion about games that allow you to portray and play with relationships, like Facade or The Sims.

Miracle Berries
Reinier had brought special miracle berry tablets with him that alters your taste; after sucking on them until they dissolve, everything you eat tastes sweeter. Lemons aren’t sour anymore, off-season strawberries taste delicious and no-sugar yoghurt tastes sugary. At least in theory: it seemed to work for everyone but me. The lemons were suckable, but everything else for me was pretty much the same.
 
Acupressure
While I’m still pretty skeptical about “treatments” like this, I have to admit my body felt better after this session. I’m almost convinced that it’s because of this session that my legs didn’t hurt at all during the entire two days. 

Ancient Techonology
Jane described this session to me as an experiment with a potato and a pencil. How can you not go to a session like that?! It was all about how to create your own spindle: stick a pencil through a potato, wind some string in a certain way around it and start spinning! Jane had actually brought wool with her too, so everyone was spinning and spindling as crazy.

The Saturday evening was of course spent playing Werewolf and other games. Tom and Dom held another of their Geek Quizzes, this time it was tricker than the one my team won in Liverpool. We also managed to convince more people into playing Carcassonne and it seemed like everybody enjoyed it. I only got to play two rounds of Werewolf this time, and of course the one round where I was a werewolf I got lynched because of my past reputation.

The entire weekend was great fun and I’m sure I haven’t even covered a quarter of what happened in those two days. Next week (this Saturday) we’ll be heading down to BarCampBournemouth, which is sure to be great too. I’m already psyched though for the next London; hopefully I can help a bit more this time. Anyone else interested?

Last Saturday I went to the London Transport Museum Flickr Scavenger Hunt (now that’s a mouthful) at the Museum Depot in Acton. We got 20 cryptic clues to find certain “objects” and make photos of them. I think our team became 2nd, with solving 17 of the 20 clues. 

Some of the clues were pretty tricky, but it was great fun trying to figure them all out. Here are two examples:

Clue: A literal 2CV model that doesn’t run on petrol.
Explanation: 2CV = deux chevaux = 2 horsies!

Clue: This caged wonder checks coins rather than defrosts ice.
Explanation: I’m really proud of solving this one! For starters, I noticed the “cages” and told my team the object should be somewhere in this area. Then we figured out that “defrosts ice” probably means “salt”. Finally after checking out most of the objects here, we found this:

If you look closely the brand is “Salter”. 

Besides those 20 clues, there were also photo clues, where we got a photo of something and had to find the exact same thing. I love this LOOtube photo (from an old Bakerloo line sign):

To check out all the photos, have a look at my Flickr set.

Ugh, December has just been too busy! Too many events, meet-ups, trips and other stuff to go to; I’ve been swamped with busyness. 

I’ve been to a couple of London Bloggers meet-ups now and I like the format of them. This time it was sponsored by a couple of winery bloggers, who each donated a bottle of their wine for some wine tasting. Robert McIntosh from WineConversation.com organized it all, and also gave a little presentation about wine and how the one thing he wanted to achieve with this evening was to get people talking and thinking about wine.

Now I’m horrible with wine; the names, grapes, everything. Most of the time I let Cristiano choose, cause I really don’t know the difference between the types (or I’ll just order a sweet white wine or something down that lines). This evening hasn’t really helped me yet, but I think I should read up a bit more about wines and figure out what I exactly like.

That evening I tried seven of the ten wines they had and a couple really stood out to me. I started with the wine I liked the most: the Riesling Auslese 2003. It was a nice fruity white wine, very light and sweet and easy to drink. The second white wine I tried was a Riesling Kabinett 2007, which was much drier and less tasty in my opinion than the first one I tried, but still way better than the usual fair I have. The final white wine I tried was a Vivanco Viura, but that too was quite dry compared to my first one.

From the red wines, none of them really spoke to me. I tend to prefer white over red, but this time all the red wines (at least the two that I tried) were slightly too heavy for me. Those were the Cortes de Cima Syrah, and the Dinastia Vivanco. Looking at the blog posts from others at the meet-up, I think I should have tried Higuerela wine or the Morellino de Scansano.

The last two wines I tried were a port and a sherry. The port was a Quevedo Reserva Tawny Port and I really the nice strong taste of this wine. As I expected, I didn’t like the sherry; it’s just not a taste I can appreciate (my Spanish flat mates come from the Sherry region in Spain and brought us one of their wines last year. Never finished that bottle, cause I really didn’t like it).

Here’s the complete list of wines at the tasting:

1. Vivanco Viura/Malvasia 2007, Bodegas Dinastia Vivanco –  thirstforrioja.co.uk
2. Riesling Kabinett Trocken 2007, Weingut Clauer – winzerblog.de
3. Higueruela 2007, from Sta. Quiteria – tintoralba.com
4. Dinastia Vivanco Crianza 2004, Bodegas Dinastia Vivanco – thirstforrioja.co.uk
5. Bellamarsilia 2007, Poggio Argentiera – poggioargentiera.com
6. CVP 2007, La Casa de las Vides – casavides.com
7. Syrah 2004, Cortes de Cima – cortesdecima.com
8. Antique Oloroso Sherry from Fernando de Castilla – jerez-xerez-sherry.blogspot.com
9. Special Reserve Tawny Port, Quevedo Port – Quevedoportwine.com

Besides BarCampBerlin last year, I’ve actually only been to BarCamps in London and Brighton. Most of the time it’s just too much of a hassle to make it to unconferences in other cities, cause it’s so expensive (wishing the train ticket prices here were like in Netherland; then again, the distances here are much further) and too difficult to get there. Thanks to some of the sponsors though at this Liverpool BarCamp, Cristiano and I got offered to get our travel expenses covered (being BarCamp veterans has it’s perks). Besides that, Alistair and Caz were so great to let us stay at the apartment they were renting. So last Friday, we caught the train up to Liverpool, visiting another part of the UK we hadn’t been to before.

This barCamp was held at the Novas Contemporary Urban Centre, a great venue with loads of rooms and space. It also had it’s own bar down stairs, so later on in the evening we all moved there for the “party”. The food wasn’t exactly fantastic (again cold pizza), but for once there were other drinks besides only fizzy stuff. 

Here are a couple of the most interesting talks that I went to: 

Geocaching

This talk from Alistair was a great introduction to everything Geocaching. Although I’ve already gotten the Geocaching bug and have found some caches myself, there were still quite some stuff I didn’t know about. For instance, I kind of knew what travel bugs and geocoins were, but hadn’t seen or dealt with any of them before. Besides that I’m hunting caches down with pen, paper and a printed out Google map, while the “proper” way is to actually use a GPS device; it was great finding out a bit more about that too. Later that afternoon we skipped two of the sessions to go geocaching in Liverpool.

Game Design – Player Motivations

This talk was about the different player archetypes within video games. There are 4 types: 1. the Achiever, who want to collect, unlock everything (totally me!), 2. the Explorer, who wants to understand the map and discover new and hidden features, 3. the Socialiser, who plays with friends and to make new friends, and 4. the Killer, who screws other people over. Basically most video games are designed while targeting one or two of these archetypes. We had to figure out from 5 games which archetypes they were targeting (Gears of War, Geometry Wars, Mirror’s Edge, Left 4 Dead, Word of Warcraft).

Quiz Spectacular!

Because I went geocaching, I missed the first round of this game, but was still able to join Cristiano’s team, the Awkward Silences. The second round was about guessing the keyword that connected 4 other words, each word appearing after a couple of seconds. I scored some points by guessing the keyword that connects “The Lion King”, “Bernard and the Genie”, and “Love Actually” (I won’t give it away, can you figure it out?). The third round was pretty similar, but here you had to guess the 4th keyword in a sequence (I liked the George, Timothy, Pierce one). The fourth round were Google search questions and I scored some points again with the name of the wife of the 14th president of the US. Finally there was a showdown between the two highest scoring teams, one of which was our team! The team nominated me to go up and play the game, which was basically guessing a list of words based on the descriptions by my team mates (kicking myself that I didn’t get William Shatner, because I thought Cristiano said “Actress in Star Trek”). 

Bitchin’ Pitches

The last session on the Saturday was a one minute pitch session. I wasn’t really planning on presenting anything; I mean, I don’t have a startup or anything actually developed, but right at the end of the session, I thought I’d go ahead and pitch the idea that’s been spinning in my head for ages (a book reading habits website). Much to my surprise, I got chosen to do a 5-minute pitch later that evening at the party, in front of a panel of judges. Eek! My presentation didn’t go that great (but then I hadn’t really thought it through yet), but a lot of people were interested in my idea. Plus I won a Bluetooth marketing dongle (I still have to figure out what this exactly does, but I think this means I can spam people) and a £50 Amazon voucher (yay!).

There were also more great sessions on the Sunday, but to be honest I was still feeling fairly hungover at the time so wasn’t participating as much as I wanted to. Again, thanks to everyone who made this trip possible; I had a fantastic time!

I’ve been asked a couple of times to blog about the events that I’m organizing for the London Geek Dinners. So here’s a quick repeat of three of our upcoming December events:

Mini-GeekDinner: The Death of Reading

The days are getting shorter, the air is getting colder and the fleeting strains of Christmas songs are right around the corner. One last mini GeekDinner before the end of the year! 

This time our guest will be Adrian Hon, Chief Creative Officer at Six to Start. He is one of the main designers and producers behind Perplex City, the world’s first commercially successful ARG (Alternate Reality Game) and has since then been at the forefront of ARG development. This time though Adrian will give us a talk on “The Death of Reading”. 

Again the venue will be our regular Hummus Bros in Holborn at 18:30, with the talk starting between 19:30-20:00. Food will be on a get your own basis, so no need to pay online. If you’re running late and can’t find us at the Holborn place anymore, we’ve probably moved on to the pub down the street.

When: Wednesday, December 10th 2008 18:30
Where: Hummus Bros in Holborn
Speaker: Adrian Hon from Six to Start
Topic: The Death of Reading
Cost: Food and drinks on buy your own basis

Please RSVP on our signup site if you are coming, there is only limited seating.

BBC Backstage Christmas Bash

BBC Backstage is teaming up with most London and Manchester communities to hold two Christmas parties. We will be drinking, having fun, and probably make a fool of ourselves on the dance floor. Will you join us?

Tickets have been really popular and they’ve now run out of standard tickets. But don’t worry! Ticket holders have priority and a guaranteed entry, but basically if by 8pm the venue isn’t full (there’s always a certain number of people who register and can’t make it or just stay for one drink), they’re allowing people to turn up at the door.

For more information, check out the event page.

London Geek Meet 3: Cold War Modern

Again another London Geek Meet! And again something a bit different. This time we’ll be going to the Victoria & Albert Museum for their special Cold War Modern exhibition. Here’s the description about the exhibition from their site:

This period from the end of the Second World War to the mid 1970s was a period of great political tension and exceptional creativity which touched all aspects of life, from everyday products to the highest arenas of human achievement in science and culture. Art and design were not peripheral symptoms of politics during the Cold War: they played a central role in representing and sometimes challenging the dominant political and social ideas of the age.

I’ve heard a lot of good things about this exhibition, including the fun and mysterious promotion of it through The 7th Syndikate. And thanks to the guys at 1000heads we’ve gotten 10 free tickets to share with you all!

To make it fair though, we won’t be giving these tickets away. Our idea is this: depending on the amount of people who sign up, the cost of the extra tickets that have to be bought, will be split over all people who attend. So if 15 people sign up, everybody pays £3 (£9*5/15). If you are interested in coming, emailmseckington@gmail.com. This is absolutely necessary, because we’ll probably have to book tickets for a specific time slot.

Because not everyone has been to the Victoria & Albert Museum before, we thought it would be a great opportunity to also see the rest of the museum. We’ll meetup at 11:00 before the entrance in Cromwell Road. If you’re only interested in the Cold War Modern exhibition, we’ll have a second meet-up point at 14:00 inside the musuem in the hall before the exhibition. 

When: Sunday, December 14th
Time: 11:00 for main museum, 14:00 for Cold War exhibition only
Where: Victoria & Albert Museum
Nearest Tube: South Kensington
Activity: Museum exhibition
Cost: Food and coffee on buy your own basis, tickets depending on how many people sign up (won’t be more than £7 per person though)

Sign up by sending an email to mseckington@gmail.com.

Lately I’ve been addicted to the game of geocaching. Calling it a “game” though doesn’t seem right; it’s not what you’d typically call a game. I like to consider it more of a current day techy treasure hunt.

Geocaching is a treasure-hunting puzzle-solving type of game, where people hide and look for secret containers (called geocaches) with the help of GPS. Some caches are straightforward: the clue is a GPS location, you go to that location and the cache is hidden somewhere there. Others can be a bit more elaborate, where you first have to solve certain puzzles and riddles before you can find the cache.

The sizes of the caches also vary; in some cases these caches are tiny (see picture below), containing only a strip of paper to write down your name to show that you’ve found the cache. Other times it can be an actual box and people leave items behind for others to find.

The first cache I ever found was in Portobello Road (check out the cache details here) and the result was the above nano cache. It’s a nice and easy geocache to start with, cause the instructions to find it are pretty straightforward. 

Another geocache hunt we did was for the second London Geek Meet. This one was all about spotting Space Invaders, cute little alien tile pictures that are part of a world wide street art project. We were supposed to find 12 Space Invaders and each of these would lead to a clue needed to solve the location of the final hidden cache. In the end we solved all the clues and found the final location, but failed in finding the geocache there. If you ever want to do something a bit fun and different around central London (it starts in Covent Garden), definitely check this hunt out.  

Finally last Sunday we finished a Geocache hunt I’ve been wanting to do for some time. It was based in Regent’s Park and would lead to a geocache hidden at a secret garden within Regent’s Park. A couple of weeks ago when we did the photo shoot with Carlo and Fabiana, I solved the first part of this hunt and calculated where the location was.

I was expecting that it wouldn’t really be a secret location; I’ve been to Regent’s Park often enough and I thought I had seen most of the places. But this truly was a secret garden. Plus it was beautiful. And this was on a very rainy day in the winter; I can only imagine how this must look with luscious green in the summer. Even if you’re not interested in finding the actual geocache, it’s worth doing this hunt alone to find that secret spot (check the details here). 

So far I’ve been doing these geocache hunts with my mobile phone. I don’t have GPS on it; I just use Google Maps for approximate locations and although not very precise, it works well enough. I’m not completely addicted to this yet that I need a GPS unit, but if I ever find a cheap device, I’m definitely getting it. The problem is that most GPS devices are so expensive because they show a map and directions on them. What I’d want though is just a simple gadget that can tell me what the current GPS location is (beeper size, maybe?). Does anyone know if something like that even exists?

All in all, geocaching is a fun little game and a great way to discover new locations. I’ve already found some instructions to caches hidden in the Netherlands, around where my parents live. Let’s see if I can convince my brother and sister to go geocache hunting with me!

Remember the mysterious Dried On Paper invite? Turns out it was all about the launch party of the new INQ1 phone. Dried On Paper == Ink == INQ. Get it? (It was only after two days, reading blog posts of other people that I actually “got” that)

Thanks to the guys at 3mobilebuzz, I also got an invite to the official launch event that Thursday morning, getting a first look at the device and the chance to ask some questions to the brains behind it. I was twittering during the main presentation itself and got really excited about the possibilities of this device. After a hands-on session with it though and some more info on what it can (and can’t) do, I’m not exactly jumping with burning desire to buy one myself. It is, however, a step in the right direction and I’m curious to see what other devices will follow after this.

Integrated Social Apps

The main feature of the INQ1 is that it has several integrated Social apps on it: Facebook, Skype, Windows Messenger and Last.fm. After logging in once, these apps will stay synced and updated, running continuously in the background. They also work without having to be online; for instance, say you’re in the tube. Before going underground, the INQ1 would have updated the Facebook app, giving you access to all the latest Wall messages etc. You can go and do your usual Facebook stuff, and the app will sync everything later once you’re online again. 

Address Book 2.0

Another cool feature of the INQ1 is it’s address book. Instead of maintaing your contacts manually, you can access your social network address books. After logging in the first time, the phone will import your Facebook, Skype, Windows Messenger contacts all into your address book. This means when your friend Bob phones you, you’ll see Bob’s Facebook avatar appear on the screen, without you having to do any extra effort.

Message Inbox

Because all these social apps are so fully integrated into the device itself, there’s also one main inbox where you can find an overview of all the different types of unread messages. So emails, Facebook messages, MSN and Skype chats and text messages, all together in one overview. 

Price

The phone is available for only £79 with a Pay-As-You-Go plan, or for free with £15 per month plan, which includes unlimited web access, unlimited texts, and unlimited free 3-to-3 calls. Now this is what truly puts it apart from all other phones on the market. While the features may seem to be competing with the iPhone and other Smart phones out there, those are not it’s true competitors. People with enough money will buy an iPhone or a Blackberry or a high-end Nokia. No, this phone is aimed at those people who don’t want something as elaborate as that, but do want access to their social networks. And for this price plan I am tempted a little to get one myself.

What’s Missing?

So why won’t I buy one myself yet? There are a couple of things missing to make me want to replace the phone I currently use. For starters, it depends solely on the manufacturers which “social networks” make it into the phone. They’ve chosen now for Facebook, Windows Messenger, Skype and Last.fm, but what about other more newer networks? I’m sorely missing Twitter on this phone and I would have loved all this integration applied to that app. Besides that it doesn’t have a full keyboard and/or a touch screen, relying rather on the standard 12-button keypad. It’s sufficient, but you’d kind of expect a “social networking” phone to have a smarter way of inputting text.

While the INQ1 for me personally is not the “next big thing”, as I said above I am very curious to see what other devices will come after this. It is the first lower budget phone to focus more on the internet capabilities instead of the type of camera in it or the prettiness of a phone. I don’t use my phone that much for calling or texting or taking pictures; I use it for checking my emails and Twitters and browsing teh internetz. The next step of mobile communication should be social network communication and this is the first phone to focus on just that.

The INQ1 should be available in December on 3, right on time for Christmas. 

I’ve been meaning to write about this conference for more than a week now, but things have just kept on popping up. As I said in a previous post, Playful was a different type of games design conference, not only featuring game designers (in fact, I think there were only two that were actually just that), but mainly people who were passionate about games and had a different perspective to game design. 

I arrived slightly late (ugh, public transport), so I missed the intro from Toby Barnes and most of the talk from James Wallis. I got to see all the other presentations though and all of them gave a really unique view. In total there were 15 talks, each of them 20 minutes long. I won’t try to describe every single presentation, instead I’ll highlight the ones I found most interesting. 

Guitar Hero Hacking

Roo Reynolds had a cool talk about how he used ControllerMate to interpret the Guitarhero/Rockband guitar “buttons” and pass it on to GarageBand. The result was being able to use your GuitarHero guitar as an actual instrument and create and play your own (or other people’s) songs. His slides and audiocast are up on Slideshare. Here’s a short clip of Roo playing Hotel California: 

Games and Music

A nice (and completely unintentional) followup to Roo’s talk was Matthew Irvine Brown‘s presentation. He talked about the similarities between how you learn games and music (how you learn how to play a game and how you learn to play music, like reading notes and scales). He had done a couple of experiments to see how people could learn music principles through a more game like structure.

In one experiment Matthew took brass band type of instruments like trumpets, trombone and tuba, and created Guitarhero-like plastic controllers. In another he used a breath controller as the controller for a small remote control car (exhaling/inhaling in different degrees caused the car to go left/right). Finally Matthew had another experiment with a singing sock puppet (see this video to see what I mean), which got these type of reactions from people:

Addiction

Adrian Hon normally talks about Alternate Reality Games and that type of game design, but for this conference he wanted to do something different and not rehash an old presentation. So he talked about addiction and his own experiences with it. He told us how a couple of months ago he decided to play Team Fortress 2. Now the cool thing of that game is that you can play in clans with people, so Adrian found a fun clan to join and played regularly with the same group. Only problem: the clan was based in the US, and their standard playing hours were 1am-3am.

After a while Adrian had trouble sleeping and chose for a weird solution: drink alcohol. Apparently for him alcohol would make him sleepy, so he’d drink a couple of beer/wine/(I don’t remember what exactly) every time he would play at night. At one point though it came so far that he’d also drink on the nights he didn’t play. It wasn’t a lot, not enough to think “oh, I’m a alcoholic”, but eventually he realised he shouldn’t be drinking like that. So he stopped with the drinking and consequently with Team Fortress 2 too.  

212 Box and Mystery on Fifth Avenue

Eric Clough is an architect with 212box (based in New York) and he first gave a couple of examples of cool design stuff his company had done. The main one that everyone was interested in though was Mystery on Fifth Avenue (check out the New York Times article). Eric explained a lot about this apartment, highlighting a lot of things not featured in the article.  

A Playful Stance

Kars Alfrink gave a interesting presentation and a different take on design. The documentary film Dogtown and Z-Boys is about the beginning/birth of competitive skateboarding. Skateboards at the time (1970s) were seen as a land-bound pastime for surfers, nothing more. A group of kids took these skateboards and combined them with the empty concrete round swimming pools to create a more acrobatic and exhilarating game. They basically took these existing objects and created their own game with it. Kars proposed that games shouldn’t be designed, but instead tools should be designed with which people can create their own games. 

Hardware Hacking

In this talk Matt Biddulph showed the results of hardware hacking and playing around with electronics. He first explained how it was possible through products like Arduino and that basically you can hack anything together you want with some basic soldering skills. He showed examples like Johnny Lee’s Wii hack, the Tenori-On, the BBC Dabagotchi and the DSBrut.

There were 9 more presentations, each giving a unique and cool perspective to game design. Check out some other blog posts about Playful: Digital Consultant, Roo Reynolds, James Wallis. I’m hoping most of the talks will be uploaded, cause I did see a camera recording everything. All in all, it was a great day and I look forward to next year’s event.

Last week I got a mysterious email inviting me to a VIP event for a new device that wouldn’t be disclosed:

On the 13th November a new device designed to keep you in social sync more than ever before will be unveiled. We thought you’d be interested in coming along and being involved.

As our special guests, you and a friend are invited to this exclusive event to witness how this new product will impact your life and social interactions. Taking place in a premier East End London venue, there’ll be music from Disco Bloodbath, The Unabombers and Hexstatic are on visual duties and there’ll be plenty of free food and drink.

This is VIP only and places are very limited, so please confirm your attendance ASAP by replying to this email and we’ll then send you your official invitation.

The party starts 5:30PM 13th November. More details to follow.

I emailed saying I was interested and got another email in return: an official invite would be mailed (snail mailed) later that week to me and I got a code which I had to fill in on DriedOnPaper.org. Now when I went to that website last week, all you saw were two target like circles with a countdown at the top. After filling my code in and after other people also filled their code in, we got this: 

Next to that I got the following message:

Code accepted

---

The countdown’s begun… You know when, you know where. Why? We’ll tell you when you get there.
More will be revealed once all the codes have been entered.
Come back and check    

The underlying image still hasn’t been completely revealed and I’ve been really curious to find out what this is all about. Then this morning I got a package. Upon opening it, I discovered this:

Stamp? Ink? Dried on Paper? The stamp revealed the following message:

Okay, so nothing new in that, but I’m guessing this slip of paper is my official invite.

At the moment we have only a couple of clues: the phrase “Dried on Paper”, dancing people and a DJ (the image on the website) and a stamp plus ink. Oh yeah, and the venue (from what I can make out of the website) is a photo studio. Plus the product is “designed to keep you in social sync more than ever before” and “will impact your life and social interactions”. Anybody care to guess what this is about?

Just a short post to let you all know what I’ve been doing lately. So Halloween has come and gone, and I didn’t get a chance to do all five of my ‘5 Days of Halloween’ blog posts. Last Monday I got sick and was stuck in bed for the following three days, being completely unproductive. No blog posts, no work, just a lot of sleeping and lying around. Ugh. Plus I missed out on a lot of cool London Games Fringe events and I’m really kicking myself for becoming sick just this week. 

Anyhow, even though I wasn’t feeling 100%, I did make it to Playful on Friday. I’ll followup with a real blog post about it soon, but in short: it was a great event with a lot of interesting speakers. There was a cool mix of speakers from different fields and because each talk was only 20 minutes, you got to see and hear a nice variety of perspectives on games. 

Then yesterday I went to check out the new Westfield mall in Shepherd’s Bush. Wow, it’s big. And way too busy. It might be fine after it settles down after these few opening days, but if it remains like this, I can’t say it’s a nice atmosphere to shop in. Too many people, too much congestion. In fact, it was so busy, the mobile network kind of died and I couldn’t get through to anyone (much to my annoyance, cause Cristiano and I split up to go to different stores, and weren’t able to find each other again). I’m hoping it will get better once the ‘newness’ of it has worn off, cause there is a cool selection of different types of shops. 

Next to that, I’ve been busy preparing for my trip to Middlesbrough on Tuesday. I’ll be be holding two talks while I’m there, both on connecting through social networking. I’m pretty nervous about it all, cause I’ve never done something like this before. It should all go fine though; I know more than my fair share about the topic, and through BarCamps I’ve had enough practice with holding presentations. Still: fingers crossed it all goes according to plan.