Fold tHe boX (3)

The Jack Klaff session had some weird vibes: laughing one minute, getting completely thrown off the scent the next and ending with a chilling finale. Klaft is a South African born Princeton professor/actor who was also involved in the Starlab initiative (as is Serguei by the way) in Brussels. I'm not sure I know what he talked about in the end ... but he got us sitting on the tip of our chairs.

He was followed by John Engel, production manager in the movie business and author of Uncommon Sound, a history of the guitar since the 1920's with a focus on all those ground-breaking left-handed guitar players like himself. He introduced us to another lefthanded guitar player, Djamel Laroussi, Algerian-French, who produced some trancelike sounds from his guitar (with the strings upside down) and who got the audience joining him in clapping and singing ... sort of, anyway.

I missed the last part, so I didn't get to see Catherine Verfaillie (which is a pitty), nor R.U.Sirius (behind the 10Zenmonkeys blog) nor Noam Perski (who, I read on Twitter made this equation: all datacenters in the world have an energy consumption of 2% which is more than the aviation industry worldwide) , Calligrafitti (who probably designed the awfull TEDx t-shirts) or Paul Collier. And I don't know either whether the missing speakers (Pedro Brugada, the heart surgeon? Caroline Gabriel? ) eventually showed up.

I wouldn't call it Burn the Box, and I do realize that when we think TED, we think TED.com and all those really really great guests they seem to have an endless stock of. It was certainly worth the trip, however. And absolutely to be repeated next year, with more possibilities for interaction (tweets on a screen for example and have speakers react to them if they want to)

I haven't figured out what the incentive was for those like me who paid double the amount of the 50€ fee ... and I haven't found any information yet on the TEDxBrussels website (movies, slideshows, ..) so I'm guessing it will come, eventually.

I hope.

Fold tHe boX (2)

The afternoon sessions had a much more TED.com-feel to them. A fascinating though barely understandable Serguei Krasnikov, straight from Tintin in the USSR on building time-machines (and explaining that you cannot go back to the past to kill your younger self and stuff like that). He was followed by the famous Conrad 'mathematics' Wolfram, rooting for a new way of teaching children maths. (Why does everybody always say they need to know the basics? They need to know how to calculate by hand, from the head? Do we need those basics when working with a pc or driving a car? Do we teach a todler that a cat is a fourlegged feline mammal with an aversion to water or do we let him play with a kitten? Why not teach our children how to use the tools that exist to understand math on a conceptual level?)
And he is , of course, the father of the Wolfram Alpha search engine that could perfectly answer the following question 'what was the weather like when John Brown was born'.

It got even more hilarious with Marc Millis, former head of Nasa's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project ... on stuff like colony ships, travelling for 120.000 years when looking for an habitable planet ('if homosapiens build a ship and left when they originated, they haven't arrived yet'), the need for energy to sustain the trip and other cool ideas. In short: @ one point we will really need to get off this planet so we should be getting on with it.

Fold tHe boX (1)

Yesterday's TEDxBrussels event 'Burn The Box' in the European Parliament left me with mixed feelings. It was fun to listen to hear Michel Bauwens (an old university buddy) starting about his bad Karma day. First a trip from hell from Thailand where he lives followed by his laptop disappearing. It wasn't so much the laptop he was worried about he told me during the break but the reaction of his wife on hearing about it ... We listened to Negroponte rooting for his 'one laptop per Child project' and to Karel De Gucht being interviewed (again) too long about Van Rompoy and too short about what was really important (aid to developing countries).

It got really interesting when Dambissa Moyo talked about Dead Aid and did that splendidly, seated in one of the easy chairs, no need for cues or paper notes. Marc Van Montagu surprised by being as emotional as ever when talking CGO's and about all those great ideas that could fairly simply help developing countries grow their own food.

Really disappointing was Clayton Schaeffer. Not a gifted speaker, reading notes: undoubtedly the subject was very relevant but I don't think anyone understood what it was all about ... something to do with landtitles, microfinancing, registries, rights of the poor, help get rid of charity (the 9 trillion dollar question in the title being the overall worth of all assets of the poor).

David McCandless entertained the crowd with a great exposé on the largescale information overflow and how to manage it. His theory: use our ability to visualize data to help us with that. A very interesting and practical view of the visualization of abstract data, in order to detect trends, and make the data more readily available to anyone.

The notion of “awareness” is based on some key factors: our vision, our taste, our sight, … The combination of these allows us to combine those senses into something we are “aware of“. He illustrated it with some real cool graphs that, indeed, say it all. One of them I distinctly remember having seen somewhere before is posted here. But maps like the Map of the Internet are typical for the stuff he talks about.

But all in all: no Burn The Box stuff, not really inspiring, no wow ... yet.

Let's materialise (2)

Afterthought. This amazing chair is actually called AI. Not the movie, no. Why AI? Because the design (surface, sotfness, comfort, ...) and the functionality (being able to support up to 120 kilos) is human. But it's the computer that finally designed the chair, or, to quote from the website:

Like the biological structure and mechanism of bone, the artificial intelligence software knows where to create sufficient support. The AI stool is an intelligent product that grows in free space with an artificial intelligence 'DNA' code. This code contains all of the information required to ensure that the object will transform perfectly from a virtual design into a 3D object that achieves the optimum strength or intelligent softness whilst maintaining the desired visual aesthetic.

Personally I think this is a little bit .... spooky. But hey, cool stuff, right?

Let's materialise ...

Last night's BGGD19 was impressive; the venue was the offices of Materialise, best known for its activities in the field of rapid industrial and medical prototyping. Materialise has acquired the position of market leader for 3D printing and Digital CAD software in addition to being a major player in medical and dental image processing and surgery simulation. Last night however, focus was on the MGX division for design products. Cool stuff! And unbelievable how it's produced, with one machine creating an object in one long session (depending on the object: from a couple of hours to a couple of days), layer by layer, no assembly or waste or long production lines needed . Very impressive. Check them out or keep track of what they are doing, it's worth it.

Key note speaker Dominique D'heedene enlightened the BGG's with a presentation of DesignArenas, an e-tailer specializing in bringing hotel luxury and lifestyle at home. DesignArenas partners with luxury and design hotels, build collections of interior design articles used in the partner hotels and builds a compelling visual experience through the webshop. The interesting thing is that she has her own collection Arenas as well. And some of us will know her as an IT Architect with IBM. Fascinating combination of jobs!

Why America doesn't understand Europe

This morning I read the Vinocur column in today's International Herald Tribune and frankly couldn't believe what I was reading. Some excerpts:

Why would an American president not come to a celebration marking the fall of the Berlin Wall, and with it, the triumphant end of the Cold War — one of the high points of the United States’ and Europe’s common 20th-century history?

Whatever the exact answer — and it could be that a fatigued Barack Obama didn’t want the physical strain of a trans-Atlantic trip days before a weeklong tour of Asia — his absence from the Nov. 9 ceremonies in Germany has reinforced Europe’s fear that it has become an increasingly insignificant part of the president’s worldview.

That's for starters.

The author goes on analyzing the lack of a warm Atlantic friendship which, he thinks, is largely due to the fact that the foreign policies of Obama are , well, a bit disappointing.

Fair enough. But then:

When Europe picks its first council president and high representative (foreign minister) on Thursday, it will probably pass over internationally meaningful names like Tony Blair, Joschka Fischer or Carl Bildt, in favor of blander, less markedly willful men and women.

This discussion is getting ridiculous. Why would we give the presidency to someone who comes from an anti-European, we-don't-want-the-Euro, leave-us-ruling-the-waves country like the UK and, to top it off, to a Blair who has become a caricature? Internationally meaningfull? Yes, when it comes to charging huge fees.

So Vinocur ends with

If Mr. Obama, quite understandably, were to see them as blanks — quick now, who led Europe at the Nov. 3 E.U.-United States summit meeting in Washington? (Answer: Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt of Sweden) — then Europe’s concerns about its deepening irrelevance for America seem realistic.

Djeezes!

Let's mashup this flu

... when typing in a zip code Google offers a new feature displaying where flu vaccins are available. Only one major hickup: the efficiency of this tool is totally linked to the availability of the data. Reserves need to be reported. And I imagine reserves need to be monitored as well, almost in real time, to avoid rushes on health centers that are supposed to have vaccins according to Google but ran out some time ago. Still: a cool way of mashing up data. With thanks to the guys from Smartplanet. Oh, and only in the US, I imagine?

Teach ADAMS about user centric design

Lo and Behold! 2 athletes have been a bit careless about their whereabouts and got suspended for a year by the Flemish anti-doping agency. Said athletes defend themselves by saying the app they have to use is too complicated, Internet is not available everywhere and they can't log in when they've forgotten their passwords. Be that as it is, one example of 'too difficult' kept going around in my mind: Xavier Malisse explained that he has to indicate his 'Daily Residence' when he is e.g. trainig for a couple of weeks on the other side of the world. His training venue cannot be his Daily Residence. He then doesn't know what to fill in, leaves it blank, gets an error and a faulty whereabouts.

So I went looking for this application and found a description of Adams on the Web.

Djeezes! If they would have considered getting the advise of a usability expert instead of creating an application that is based on the rules and the data needed, the end-result would have been something an athlete can use. Not something based on rules like:

As mentioned in the Location Descriptors section, athletes have to create location
descriptors for “Mailing Address”, “Daily Residence”, “Training” and “Competition”.
Yet, some might not be applicable.
“Daily Residence”: Every day of the quarter must have a “Daily Residence” entry.
As the “daily residence” appears in orange in the calendar, each day of the
calendar must have one orange entry.
This information can’t be provided by the team manager either

I for one don't know WTF this means ...

The Luxemburg Flu

Isn't this a tad strange? We have this website monitoring the numbers of Belgians infected by the Mexican flu. I personally still don't know too many people actually being sick. A lot of them, myself included, have a cough or a slight cold ... and even those with a flu have the flu (the regular flu or the other one: there is not much difference except when you belong to a risk group. Every GP will tell you that).

But look at this map!

Wouldn't you expect the major cities to be critical in spreading this disease? Where people are packed together in schools, office buildings, on trams and busses, on the subway and on the train?

But no, it is our lovely, green, very lightly populated provice of Luxemburg that carries the crown. Or did they switch the legends and the colours? Are we talking Luxemburg Flu now? Not even enough pigs in Luxemburg to consider a semantic mashup ...

Always nice to be proven right :-)

New study proves what I've been saying for al long time, especially to those who advocate that our kids today are turning into weird, a-social, isolated and creepy kids when you look at the time they spend online.

No, they are not. And there is a new study to prove it.

In fact they are very social creatures, thanx to having a lot of online friendships. I see it in my 13 year old son, who gets to know new friends by meeting them IRL after having met them through other friends online. I see it with myself, meeting up with people I haven't seen or spoken to in ages and hooking up again online. Not necessarily to spend real time with them but just to follow what they are into and, once in a while, actually getting together.

So, yessss, it always feels great to be proven right :-)

I'm so jealous of people who invent stuff like this

You have to agree that it's a great idea, even though just a gimmick and probably a very expensive one: the complete Beatles catalogue digitally remastered on an USB stick looking like that! I'm not particularly interested in spending fortunes on Beatles catalogues (aren't they more or less part of the human genetic imprint by now?) but I would be crazy enough to want to have one of these ... With thanks to Mashable for pointing it out to me :-)