What happened? ThisHappened, at the RichMix

I went to ThisHappened this evening at Rich Mix, ‘a series of events focusing on the stories behind interaction design. Having ideas is easier than making them happen. We delve into projects that exist today, how their concepts and production process can help inform future work.’ Speaking there were: Karsten Schmidt (aka Toxi), Cripsin Jones (the maker of Tengu), Massimo Banzi (the founder of Tinker.it and co-founder of the Arduino project), Dee Halligan (Science Of) and Rory Hamilton (live|work).

It was a good evening with a range of different topics discussed. I particularly enjoyed seeing Crispin’s development and prototyping process of the Tengu, taking something from a simple idea and developing it into a real live.. thing! This linked in nicely for me with Massimo’s talk on the development and uses of Arduino and some of the new extendable modules which are out now / soon. My ears pricked up when he mentioned their new project to enable extreme rapid prototyping, requiring very little expertise on the developers side. No more breadboard hell is how he described it, exciting! I look forward to trying it out on some projects when it is finished.

Unfortunately I missed part of Karsten’s talk about the interactive tables made for the London College of Fashion graduate show. Luckily I managed to get a chance to try them out first hand and have a chat about them during London Design Week at Moving Brands, where they had a rather nice get together and natter about the state of new media.

Dee’s talk on the ‘Science of..’ exhibitions was very in depth, alot of text up on screen… I’m more of a visual person so I was worried I was going to start drifting off, but it actually proved very interesting to learn more about it. Having had chance to read through some of the briefs first hand is no doubt why I found the introduction rather slow, but it was really good to get a good overview of the entire process of a science of exhibition, and getting a picture of just how many people are involved (alot more than I realised). AllofUs even got a mention, so yey for… AllofUs!

Rory’s talk was the final one of the evening, explaining how live|work helped to design and organise better use experiences for the Baltic Gallery in Newcastle, again a talk that I was not excited about at first but it was really nice to see the way they empowered the staff of the Baltic, and took on their ideas and experiences.

Overall a very good evening, I would recommend checking it out next time this is on. Now that they are sponsored by tinker.it and can host the evening for free (as long as you signup in time) this is definitely an event to attend if you are at all interested in ‘new media’!