Journal tags: dconstruct2013

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dConstruct 2013 videos

All the videos from last year’s dConstruct have been posted on Vimeo (with a backup on the Internet Archive). If you were there, you can re-live the fun all over again. And if you weren’t there, you can see just what you missed:

  1. Amber Case
  2. Luke Wroblewski
  3. Nicole Sullivan
  4. Simone Rebaudengo
  5. Sarah Angliss
  6. Keren Elazari
  7. Maciej Cegłowski
  8. Dan Williams
  9. Adam Buxton

Don’t forget the audio is also available for your listening pleasure. Slap the RSS feed into the podcasting application of your choosing.

Revisiting the brilliance of last year’s dConstruct should get you in the mood for this year’s event. Put the date in your calendar: Friday, September 5th. Last year was all about Communicating With Machines. This year will be all about Living With The Network.

More details will be unveiled soon (he said, hoping to cultivate a feeling of mystery and invoke a sense of anticipation).

Listen to dConstruct 2013

If you didn’t make it to this year’s dConstruct, at least your ears can catch up. If you did make it to this year’s dConstruct, your ears can experience the fun all over again.

The audio is available, is what I’m saying here.

  1. Amber Case: Ambient Location and the Future of the Interface
  2. Luke Wroblewski: Infinite Inputs
  3. Nicole Sullivan: Don’t Feed the Trolls
  4. Simone Rebaudengo: Great; things are connected, but what will they actually talk about?
  5. Sarah Angliss: Tech and the Uncanny
  6. Keren Elazari: The Heroes and Anti-heroes of the Information Age
  7. Maciej Cegłowski: Fan is a Tool-Using Animal
  8. Dan Williams: Unexpected Item In The Bagging Area
  9. Adam Buxton: Is My Laptop Ruining My Life?

The audio is on Huffduffer for your listening pleasure. If you’d like to take it with you on the go, here’s the RSS feed—just pop that into your podcasting/catching software of choice.

While you’re at it, this might be a nice opportunity to go back and explore the dConstruct archive where you can find every talk from every dConstruct from 2005 to 2013. That’s 70 talks, or about 46 hours of listening pleasure.

Share and enjoy!

dConstruct music

If you were at dConstruct last week (lucky you!), you will have heard this music during the breaks. All of these tracks are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence.

Yes, that last one is from my band—a little bit of audio nepotism.

dConstruct 2013

dConstruct 2013 …wow! I could try to describe it but you kind of had to be there.

At the after-party—which was held right there in the Brighton Dome; a new twist which worked out great—I kept hearing people enthuse that it was the best dConstruct yet (although dConstruct 2012 was pretty bloody amazing). People congratulated and thanked me, which made me feel like a bit of a fraud because, frankly, I was very selfish in my curation: I got the speakers I wanted to see, talking about the topics that I wanted to hear.

I’ll admit that it was very gratifying to find out that trusting my gut worked. Let’s face it, it wasn’t exactly a safe or typical line-up for a tech conference. I’m feeling vindicated (and very relieved) that the risks paid off. And how!

Every single speaker was amazing. Seriously, I’m trying to think of how I can thank each of them, but I keep coming up short. Words alone can’t express how grateful I am to all of them. Each of them put in so, so much effort …I was truly gobsmacked.

The cumulative effect was astounding. There were emergent themes and strands that were woven throughout the day, resulting in the perfect balance. The two over-riding feelings were fear and fun. The audience were, by turns, terrified and entertained.

The topic of “Communicating With Machines” resonated wonderfully with other Brighton Digital Festival events too: dConstruct, Improving Reality, and Immaterials felt like they were all tackling the tricky task of making the invisible visible—networks, power structures, technologies—but the dConstruct speakers did it with bucketloads of entertainment value thrown in. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much at an all-day event.

Mind you, it didn’t feel like a long day. The time just flew by! I thought it was just me but then lots of other people said the same thing at the after-party. That’s quite something when nine talks just whizz by without a single dip in quality.

Seriously, I am blown away by the generosity and talent of the speakers.

Amber, Luke, Nicole, Simone, Sarah, Keren, Maciej, Dan, and Adam: thank you so, so much!

Video and audio from dConstruct 2013 will be available soon …but you kind of had to be there. And if you were there …thank you!

Counting down to dConstruct 2013

It’s dConstruct week—just a few more sleeps to go! The speakers are starting to arrive into town, the conference badges have been delivered, and the epic task of applying hundreds of stickers to hundreds of badges has begun.

Stickering

The Brighton Digital Festival is already in full swing. Reasons To Be Creative kicked off yesterday so the town is already full of geeks hanging out, drinking coffee, listening to talks and discussing them afterwards over a beer, and generally having a good time—exactly the kind of Brighton behaviour that curmudgeons like Andy and Colly love to hate.

The Immaterials exhibit headed up by Timo is opening at Lighthouse tomorrow. I’ve been walking past in the mornings coming into work and it’s looking fantastic. Although it did lead to a moment of cognitive synaesthesia:

Meanwhile over at 68 Middle Street—soon to be Clearleft’s new home—an exhibition of The New Sublime is already underway.

There’s so much going on this week: Reasons To Be Creative from Monday to Wednesday, Improving Reality on Thursday, Maker Faire and Indie Web Camp on the weekend, and, of course, dConstruct on Friday.

I’m so excited about this year’s event! It’s definitely not your typical web conference and it’s certainly not your typical conference line-up. It’s going to be a blast spending the day in the company of such splendid speakers.

If you’re coming to town for dConstruct—or for any of the other wonderful events going on—here are a few tips on some places to eat…

The Guardian recently published a list of the top 10 10 budget restaurants and cafes in Brighton. Seems like a pretty fair sampling. The Seven Bees cafe is recommended for its fry-up—a recommendation endorsed by Lomokev who has eaten and photographed just about every fry-up in Brighton and beyond.

Chris has put together a Foursquare list of places to try.

On the weekend, the Brighton and Hove Food Festival will be running its market on New Road and Jubilee Street, right by the locations of Maker Faire and Indie Web Camp, so there’ll be no shortage of tasty treats on offer.

On the day of dConstruct itself, we won’t be providing lunch, but we have arranged for some discounts at nearby cafés and restaurants. Also, it’s a Friday and that means Street Diner will be happening just up the road from the Brighton Dome.

Alas, the weather forecast is looking pretty damp for Friday—even though it’s going to be gloriously sunny until then—so be sure to bring your brolly.

Brighton in September

dConstruct is now exactly five weeks away. To say that I am excited would be quite an understatement.

I am insanely excited about this year’s dConstruct. I think the line-up is quite something—a non-stop parade of fantastic speakers. And the speakers themselves are equally excited, spurred on by the excellent company they’ll be keeping. Seriously, this is going to be an amazing day.

I’m also excited about all the other events happening around dConstruct as part of the Brighton Digital Festival.

The first week of September will kick off with the Reasons To Be Creative conference: three days of three tracks of all sorts of design and code.

Reasons finishes on Wednesday, September 4th, which is the same day that Seb will be running his fantastic CreativeJS workshop. I took this workshop myself a few months back and I can’t recommend it highly enough—you’ll come away feeling like you’re superpowered. Seb is a great teacher. And don’t be put off by the whiff of coding; this workshop is for everyone. In fact, I think designers with very little experience of code would be best served by it.

There are still some tickets available for Seb’s workshop and remember that booking onto the workshop also gets a complementary pass to the dConstruct conference day as well.

In between Seb’s workshop and the dConstruct conference proper, there’s Improving Reality, that wonderful conference on technology and culture curated by Lighthouse in Brighton. I’ve really, really enjoyed the last two years so I’m going to be there again this time ‘round on Thursday, September 5th.

Then right after dConstruct, there’s a weekend of good stuff happening over the Saturday and Sunday:

  • Brighton Mini Maker Faire — a day of interactive exhibitions on the Saturday followed by a workshops and panels on the Sunday. There’ll be talks and panels on the Saturday too, including a panel moderated by Maggie Philbin!
  • The Big Sussex Market will be running all weekend as part of the Brighton and Hove Food Festival. This will be on New Road, right by the Brighton Dome where Maker Faire will be happening.
  • Indie Web Camp will also be running all weekend, just round the corner at Lighthouse. This little gathering is something very dear to my heart. I was talking about just the other day on the Breaking Development podcast.

Phew! That’s quite a full dance card.

If you’ve got a ticket for dConstruct, remember that as per the terms and conditions, if you need to cancel or transfer the ticket you’ve only got one more week to do so.

If you haven’t got a ticket for dConstruct, what are you waiting for?

See you in Brighton in September.

dConstruct bulletin

I have some dConstruct news for you. First and foremost, mark your calendar:

Tickets for dConstruct go on sale at 11am on Tuesday, May 21st.

That’s just eight days from now. In some previous years, tickets went very quickly. I don’t think we’ll see a repeat of those heady days of selling out within 24 hours this year, but it’s still worth grabbing your ticket nice and early. At £135+VAT, it’s a steal (as usual).

If you want to be all set next Tuesday, the Eventbrite page for tickets will be dconstruct2013.eventbrite.com. Speak, friend, and enter.

If you’re wavering about whether or not to come this year, dispel your doubts. Just look at how much people enjoyed last year’s dConstruct—it was truly awesome, as you can hear for yourself on the dConstruct archive. This year’s line-up continues the tradition of blowing minds with brilliance.

On the subject of this year’s line-up, it is now complete with the addition of Simone Rebaudengo who will share his tells of neurotic network-enabled toasters. He was a huge hit at this year’s UX London and it became clear to me that I had to have him for dConstruct. I mean, the theme is “Communicating With Machines”, for crying out loud!

I’ve also been rounding up the finest and brightest teachers for full-day workshops that will precede the conference. The workshop tickets also go on sale next Tuesday. A workshop costs £395+VAT and that includes a complementary ticket to the conference day as well. Your choices are:

(Speaking of workshops, if you fancy a full day of responsive design with me, I’m doing a workshop on a workshop right before Ampersand in June and you can grab a 20% discount before the end of this month—‘twould be lovely if you could join me.)

In case you can’t tell, I’m getting very excited indeed about this year’s dConstruct. It’s going to be a lot of fun! Hope to see you there.

dConstruct 2013

Last year’s dConstruct was amazing. I know I’m biased, but you don’t have to believe me: everyone agreed it was an amazing conference.

Personally, I had the time of my life. Literally. The one-two punch of Brighton SF and dConstruct was one of the best couple of days I’ve ever had in my life.

But the day after dConstruct 2012 I remember waking up and thinking “ah, shit …how am I ever going to top that?”

Well, clearly, I can’t. But I can still do my damnest to put together a fantastic line-up for dConstruct 2013 …so that’s what I’ve done:

I think you’ll agree that’s not your typical conference line up. It’s going to be great! And it’s going to be a lot of fun. Trust me.

Trust is something I feel I’ve earned after last year’s tour-de-force. Last year’s line-up was pretty unusual too, but it worked superbly. Now I’ve got to make sure that I don’t squander the trust I earned.

So if you came to dConstruct last year, I don’t need to tell you why you should come back this year.

If you didn’t make it to last year’s dConstruct, you can make up for it this year. You don’t want to miss out two years in a row now, do you?

Tickets will go on sale in a few weeks time. I’ll announce the exact date soon. I’ll also be updating the information about the workshops we’ll be running this year.

And if you’re planning to come to Brighton for dConstruct, make sure to stick around for the weekend. The Brighton Digital Festival is happening again this September. That means a Maker Faire, meetups, hack events, and art shows all around town.

See you on the first Friday of September!