Every now and then I find a link to a blog or website that sends me off on a jaunt for a day or week or well, forever. This jaunt can show you new shiny things and concepts you were unfamiliar with but as you let them seep into your brain you realise that it all makes sense and you get the feeling that you already knew this, somehow. The catalyst for the current Damien adventure was a twitter message from Hugh Macleod where he recommended Russell Davies and David Armano.
Russell has a hugely fun post called “How to be interesting” which is certainly an easy philosophy to follow that will bring out the creative side in everyone. If that post wasn’t good enough, it seems Russell also runs a conference in this area, called, naturally enough “Interesting“. That link will show you the blog posts building up to the conference this year and videos of all the presenters. I’m probably going to be on that blog for the next few days watching all of them. So far I’ve just watched one, which is the Series of Tubes talk by Tom Armitage. It’s not a talk on net neutrality, despite the name. It talks about infrastructure and more. Watch it if you like history and odd inventions.
[Aside: Check out Russell’s Book on Egg Bacon Chips and Beans]
Many of these talks seem to come from people who I suppose are in the interaction design area and again I’m reminded of Matt Webb and his work. As I read more and more blogs in this space and watch videos of people that understand humans and the way we go about our lives, it is reassuring that there are people out there that are designing and building things that suit us and are creating objects that make our lives better instead of making things shinier so they’ll get our attention.
If you want me, I’ll be over here watching a lot of videos.
I just can’t keep up with the analogies here. I’m off to make a tea and have a nice lie down.