I was talking about Web2.0 and Social Network Analysis at the FH Zweibrücken. The slides of my updated short version of the SSSW06 talk are available for download as pdf. Enjoy!
PS I met Prof.Speck over there showing me some really interesting demos on visual SNA stuff.
One of the godfathers of HCI Ben Shneiderman was part of the closing Interactivity Panel at day4. The panel was about the “I” in HCI and reflecting on the potential of live demonstrations -like BluetunA- at CHI. Unfortunately such presentations are currently “valued less” than full papers despite their highly interactive and self-explaining character. We will see what happens at CHI2008.
After the session I had some final demos at our booth. Then I had to pack up. Feels always a little bit strange to clean up after such an intensive experience … (Since I have a family life at home I did some souvenir shopping in the afternoon.)
Between 6 and 7 pm the 25th anniversary party of CHI was celebrated with ice and cake. I had 4 pieces of cake and 3 times ice … and some final good wrapup with Tom about computational aesthetics, smart students and shaking research. For those guys who asked: here are the slides of my talk.
Enjoy, spread the word! We need help from your excellent students.
“It Never Rains In Southern California”, told us Albert Hammond in 1972. Until day3 I thought this is true. But when I entered the coffee shop in my hotel to get a medium latte double shot I saw people with umbrellas on the streets? Damn! But I will not complain, day3 was a typical kind of “a day in the valley” thing.
9 pm: I started with the abovementioned excellent -non-starbucks- medium latte
9.30 pm: Checking DFKI emails over VPN at conference site
10 pm: Booting the BluetunA demo setup (which is pretty stable now)
10.30 pm: The demo booth staff drops in and we are all in good mood to rock the world
11 pm: Checking the slides for the talk, recharging the magic MacBook pro (=professional stuff)
11.30 pm: Shaking the audience with a non-technical talk about sociocultural impact of BluetunA
11.50 pm: Giving away the last remaining promo t-shirts to people asking intelligent questions
1 pm: Having excellent sushi for lunch with the geekgirls … and somebody else pays the bill
2.30 pm: Demotime
3 pm: Giving a videocast interview to Lisa Rein a silicon valley activist (having been in some relation to Cory Doctorow)
5 pm: Learning something about ethnography
6 pm: A good friend of mine who is now with APPLE picks me up for BBQ at his house
10.30 pm: SMSing the geekgirls to ask for the state of the GOOGLE party “it stops at 11 pm?! they are too lame for us”
11 pm: Having some drinks at UglyJoe
1 am: SKYPing with home telling them how awesome a typical “day in the valley” can be …
We started at 9 pm in blue. I started at 8.30 pm in order to have the demo up and running for the press. WIRED showed up and we had good discussion. This was especially for me -a longtime WIRED aficionado- a great pleasure. We will see what will happen. Over the course of the day we heard talks and gave demos, same game as yesterday. I was impressed by the quality of the talks in the interactivity session. Content as well as the aesthetics of powerpointing were really well done. Unfortunately the conference is so crowded that for some tracks you are not allowed to get in! Sold out! You have to queue up and wait until people are leaving such a session. Hmmh, we were not so happy with this. Tomorrow is our talk about BluetunA. Today we had Samsung day. 2-3 people working for their research department visited our booth. At this moment Ari is demoing during the job fair. Yes if you want to have a great job at Google, Ebay, Yahoo, SAP, etc etc etc here is the place to be! …To be continued …
Testing brandnew applications in a real-world setting is a fruitful experience. I have never ever in my whole live scanned such a huge amount of bluetooth devices. BluetunA is not always happy with this. But Arianna and me -”Mr.T-Shirt”- find always a way to keep people in good mood. We should have 2000 instead of 10 t-shirts. But a lot of brave attendees have also downloaded BluetunA to their private phones!
On day1 I met 6 different people working for NOKIA research checking our freeware - and we have presented only for 3 hours during reception. 2343 more people to drop in tomorrow, wednesday and thursday.
Yes, this is Silicon Valley: Home of the nerds and uebergeeks!