SHiFT is a happening, an international conference and unique event, gathering leaders and participants from all walks of life, to discuss and share Social and Human Ideas For Technology.

The conference theme this year is DIY. This is my proposal:

Do It Yourself.
Three simple words. Three simple words often seen together. Three simple words that, once put together, create meaning beyond the individual value of each word.

DO: Do what? Do when? Do where?
IT: Referring to what exactly?
YOURSELF: Just me?

The combination of these three words immediately impacts us. It sounds like something anyone should want. This small sentence shouts at us: “The power is yours.” Hearing this sentence immediately urges us to act, now.

But let’s step back for just a second and try to understand the meaning and implications of these words on our lives. The simplicity starts to fade and a complex story unfolds.

A story about work, education and relationships.

And perhaps, once we uncover this story, we will understand the real meaning of DIY.

The challenge is to uncover this story before the conference

Packed for an inteview with James from Elmine Wijnia on Vimeo.

And I attached a tripod to the side. It was heavy!

I’ve met James through the Dutch Connection, a network of expats and locals living mainly in Amsterdam. Over the course of a couple of years the network transformed into a foundation of which Ton, James and I were co-founders. Sadly, the foundation went nowhere, but the connections are still there. Ton and James even worked together on project around open data for the Ministry for Internal Affairs

James is a warm and wonderful guy. He now works as an interaction designer based in Amsterdam, but he was brought up in England and went to university in America. Before his current work he was a cook and despite his current occupation, food is (still) his big passion.

It was a lovely interview and I hope to be able to publish snippets very soon.

faciliteeronline.nl

Now that the website is finished, we can work on the next step: building an online community around the topic of online facilitation. It’s an area of expertise not many Dutch know of, but skills more and more needed by people organizing online projects or projects with an online part. Nancy White is a big inspiration for us and we’d like to pass that inspiration on to people in a Dutch context.

More on this soon, so if you’re interested, stay tuned!

Yesterday evening I uploaded the video for review and today I took time off from editing. A day in between before going through a final iteration helps to view the product with a bit of distance, because (and I’m sure you recognize the feeling) my first reaction to any constructive criticism after finally pushing a product out into the world is: “Do you know how much work I’ve put in there already?!”

Obviously I don’t say these words out loud. I’ve learned to step back, listen to other people’s reaction, let it rest for a little while, review my work and make the end-result even better than it was before.

Then I tell myself I’ve done the best I could and hand the product over to the client with a little voice inside screaming: “Don’t you dare criticize it!”

I wanted to get blogging practice back into my routines and at November 23rd last year I set myself the goal to post at least one post every day.

The summary above says it all: I sure kept my promise!

I’m glad to reach this day. It’s proven me difficult at times to be able to post something every single day. Mind you, holiday-season was right in the middle of it all, weekends are often spent outdoors and some days I’ve been working so hard that I’m actually too tired to post something worthwhile. Even now, after finishing a full days work of finetuning a video I’d rather lay in the bathtub and relax than writing this.

Nevertheless I’m glad I did it. It has helped me to write more, to start searching for interesting things to tell, to notice interesting articles by others and to kick-start 2010.

Now the hard part will come. I can finally stop referring to my quest by adding numbers to the title and it will be harder to notice for you and me to see how much I’m actually writing.

Therefore I take this opportunity to make a new promise: I will publish at least one post each day from Monday to Tuesday, untill March 1st. Anything posted on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays is my gift to you.

I’m counting on Gerrit to encourage me tomorrow, to keep up with my writing (see comment here).

Part of my service is providing my clients with the raw material for future use, but not on tape, since one would need a camera for importing.

My latest project is about 42GB big. Big job to transfer that to DVD’s! Wondering if there are better solutions

(about the number in the title)

Had a lovely dinner with my brother and his girlfriend today. Quite relaxing, except for driving 187KM back and forth to the other side of the country. Not exactly the greenest thing to do, but sometimes social investment beats environmental care. Let’s hope someday soon these kind of visits do not require fossil fuel of any kind without losing the comfort of driving in your own car from door-to-door without delay.

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Geeklounge Enschede from Elmine Wijnia on Vimeo.

Pedro, Patricia, Joao, Margarita, Tomasz, Olga, Henk, Melina, Robert, Lilia, Alexander, Mark, Edwin, Irina, Ton and me. Thank you for your conversations!

And for clearing my severe headache

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Where I spend my Friday evenings from Elmine Wijnia on Vimeo.

“…kind of tired…”, talking about understatement of the year

And what it looks like when there are kids moving around in this space (recorder in 2008: a two-day training during the holidays).

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Today I’ve been filming at Protospace, the FabLab in Utrecht. I’m producing a short promotional clip for them and today was film-day.

7:30am: departure
9:45am: arrival in Utrecht
10:00am: finetuning the script
11am: start filming
4:30pm: packing up after last interview
5:15pm: drive home
7:45pm: buy take-a-way food
8:00pm: arrival and dinner

Intensive day, but one well spent

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