I’m writing this sitting in a foggy Village Bagels in Amsterdam looking out onto the snowy streets. It’s been a while, and things are different than they were a year ago.
Last week was a busy one (are there any other?). A bunch of PLAY Pilots integration work getting ready for the release of Bandjesland and some work getting back up to speed with Urbanode.
Monday marked work for PLAY Pilots and Urbanode and finished with another This Happened Utrecht. The fourcelabs guys really swung it out of the park with their presentation on Wip ‘n’ Kip. I also wrote up some soundbytes for This Happened.
Tuesday I went to Hilversum to meet with the friendly people from the VPRO in their awesome headquarters. That night there was the opening of the installations of Mediamatic’s Sensorfest (sort of the Dutch version of ITP) and I did a bunch of data journalism work on project querétaro.
Wednesday I worked all day in Rotterdam at Buro Pony’s offices on mérida and finished the first version deliverable for querétaro. Also announced the third edition of the Dutch Data Drinks.
Thursday I got interviewed by Reimer Meulenbeek for Johnny Wonder about serious gaming (which is getting very serious indeed). We had a strategy meeting with the journalism track of Hack de Overheid and finished the day with a great dinner with professional friends.
Friday I met at the Amsterdam department of Economic Affairs to talk about interfacing with the city and about our presentation for the Open Innovation Festival this week (Friday morning at 11.00 in City Hall). There was a bunch more roundup integration for Bandjesland before heading to Utrecht to go to the opening in Tivoli at Le Guess Who?
It is hard to describe just how much the Bandjesland experience rocked if you weren’t there, but we are going to do our best by at least putting the full tracks and all the recorded samples on PLAY Pilots. Stay tuned for that, it is bound to be hilarious.
Friday also the outcome of the press innovation subsidies were announced and a project we submitted made the cut and we got featured on a large Dutch blog. I am still to formally plan the project and write-up our plans and aims what to do with the money, but rest assured that we will be open, we will deliver quality and that we will take things to a higher level.
Sunday played around with cablegate.wikileaks.org till deep into the night as anybody with an interest in data and journalism is wont to do.
Congrats on winning the press innovation subsidy! Reading through the other winning projects, my attention is also caught by what GeenStijl calls the ‘Kickstarter clone’. Recently I happened to be talking to a fellow artist and friend of mine about whether or not a Dutch equivalent of this site was in existence, and whether or not it would be a good idea to start one. As far as I can collect from the press release and Nieuwspost’s own (placeholder) site, this particular project is purely concerned with journalism, whereas Kickstarter is mostly geared towards art projects. Do you happen to be aware of any similar crowdfunding projects currently being developed in the Netherlands with a focus on creative/art projects, or if such services have been attempted in the past?
I asked @Juhavantzelfde because I know he advised on the launch of just such a site recently and it’s: http://www.voordekunst.nl/
Thanks! Will have a look.