Let’s disconnect at Picnic

On the first day of Picnic, on Wednesday morning, we all met up and briefly presented our research topic. My current research focus, very generally, is basically on how social technologies can make people happy. In addition, as technology can sometimes place a lot of demands on people, requiring a lot of effort and personal input, I like to focus on more lightweight forms of interaction and positive expressive technologies that facilitate minimal forms of connectedness between people. These, and other research themes and flashes were presented during the ‘Inquiring minds’ special session. Although, we mainly got quick impressions of research happening in The Netherlands, it was a good way to start the conference, to get a glimpse of current new media research and get the discussion going. All combined, the first diverse impressions of PICNIC were promising. Apart from the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam being a great location, it also had a great decoration. Unusual conference items -such as goats, grass, picnic tables, tents, hearts, balloons, sheep, the sound of birds - had been artificially placed to create a natural festive ‘picnic’ environment.

More importantly, day 1 also had some excellent keynote speakers with even a standing ovation for Itay Talgam who conducted PICNIC08 and demonstrated the theme of collaborative creativity unexpectedly well. This day appealed to me as it pointed to various social-techno issues I have been addressing in my work. Linda Stone challenged the idea of befriending and the strange social behaviours we engage in online. She, her panellists and the sketch group Idiots of Ants pointed out that our off-line social interactions are far more nuanced than online tools currently allow them to be. Although not all Picnic’s participants were suffering from ‘social network’ fatigue (yet), judging from the audience’s involvement in twittering, social networking sites, and always-on services, the time may have come to ‘disconnect’; to reconsider how we can build social tools and applications that can be better integrated in our busy social lives. Besides, there might be a need for simpler communication technologies that can still delight people.

Day 2 continued to inspire. The keynote ‘Secret and lies’ was one of the highlights of my attendance. Actually, this is a lie, which according to Genevieve Bell we tell about 6-200 of in a day. Although, the scheduled conference talks seemed very tempting, I could not resist participation in the all-day Green city workshop. There, I got completely absorbed building my own personal power station during the excellent workshop offered by the Waag society that infused the sustainability challenge with fun, beauty, playfulness and participation. The reason I liked the hands-on approach is because we can talk about the issues, but doing something can at times be more rewarding.

Day three was ‘Man in suits’ day. I kept on ‘zapping’ and browsing the Picnic terrain trying to find that wow experience, but it felt a bit too corporate and shallow for my liking. However, the Surprising Africa Special was a welcome antidote. Particularly, the inspiring talk by African architect Francis Kéré (further detailed here) saved my day.

A final observation of the whole Picnic event is that for a community whose interactions are often virtual and happening on-line, it was a welcome opportunity to do some physical social interacting and networking in physical space instead. Picnic offered a valuable opportunity to disconnect from our computers, our virtual social lives and experience what’s directly happening around us.

Of course, after three days of Picnic there is more to say left. Apart from encouraging people to think more about minimal forms of connectedness and exploring how technology can make technology happy, I am in the business of decontextualizing information. In response to the many cohesive stories, I will present the rest of what I heard at Picnic in a completely decontextualized way. This set of speakers’ quotes is presented in line with the theme of ‘collaborative creativity’ as I took the liberty to leave out time, location, names on purpose –I hope you will forgive me. You can guess the origin for fun or use it to trigger your own inspiration. The common line is, that it all happened at Picnic.

“Ideas come from everyone and all people”-“People are different”- “People want what they want”-
“Some get married because they get some money”- ”Users come first, not money”- “In case of fire
use the lifts” -“We just use what we can find.”-“We share all information” -“Data drives all
decisions”- “Not all collaboration leads to creativity”- “Everyone is creative- “Most creativity is
collaborative”-”Who knows who the Rem Koolhaas for Afrika is?”- “Where you are, is what you
get”- “We are not building enough delight”-“Building by means of local resources”
“Almost Dense Strong Stuck””
“He’s quite interesting, but is wearing an ugly cardigan”-- “Virtual is real too”- “The computer is
doing its thing again”- “How do computers work?”- If you need to appear on an Internet list to know
whether you're someone's friend, you may have problems a computer can’t solve”- “Giving back to
the people what I learned in Europe”-“I have nothing to do with the Internet”- “Internet has become
our global campfire”-“Does being on the Internet actually make you happy?”-“I wish you a happy
picnic”- “Hope you all become friends at Picnic” -“We turn strangers into good friends”-“Do you
want to be my friend?”-“A friend is not the only role we play”- “It is complicated”-“ “Never look at the
trombones. It only encourages them.”
“O, I love this question”-“Why are you doing this?”