Lecture, paper, website- repeat.

It’s been an age since I updated this blog.

In fact, I need to be much better at keeping this blog up to date, and also blog about the ‘original content’ that I’m creating as part of my PhD. This month has seen loads of work go on. I’ve written a conference paper with Chris Jackson for ICDHS 2012 (in Brazil!) about the future of collaborative tools and spaces for open design. We took a reflective tone with some of it, talking about the how E.F. Schumacher and Ivan Illich wrote about what tech / institutions / spaces needed to be available for a more ‘convivial’ society… less about monopolistic and hierarchical institutions, and more social, human tech suitable for ‘fully satisfying work’. 3D printing, and other domestic high-quality fabrication tools help enable this, but so too do spaces like Fab Labs. Anyway, although it was great to collaborate on the paper with Chris, I’m glad the writing is over.

I also had a great opportunity to deliver a lecture to the second year product design students on open design- I also took in my MakerBot Replicator, which they loved. I’m glad none of them went all-Luddite on me and smashed it up because they see it as a threat to their sovereignty as designers… I was pretty provocative in asking them what their role as designers is if people traditionally labelled merely as ‘consumers’ can conceive and produce their own stuff. There was some great discussion after.

Also, I’m really pleased to be talking to a community representative of a large Cystic Fibrosis community tomorrow night - we’re going to do some co-designing to fill my PhD case study site with some content for more people to interact with. Really looking forward to it! I shouldn’t say more yet, because I’m not sure it’d be 100% appropriate. We’ll see though, I’m hoping it’ll take off and I can invite anyone who wants to design take part!

If you’re interested, you can check out the info site for my first case study.

Also, really hoping I can make it to the Open Design Symposium in Linz later this month!