Hans de Zwart’s end of the year media overviews are one of the highlights of what still happens on personal blogs for me. He’s a voracious reader and one of the rare people who acts on his moral clarity. Also, Hans is a great guy and I had the chance to briefly catch-up with him last year.
I’ll see if I can pull something together, but definitely go through his list. I always pick up more than a couple of interesting things to explore.
Looking back on 2023 I can say that we made lemonade out of an overall pretty shit year.
But not to worry. This is probably just one shit year in a sequence of many more shit years to come. No sign of anything getting better in our near future and lots of trends pointing downward. Does it have to be like this? Not in any way but the majority of people are stupid and we all suffer together.
ACL
I had messed up my knee in late summer of 2022 during a climbing accident and after a bit of stalling figured out that having my ACL reconstructed would be a good idea.
The surgery was scheduled for February 23rd of 2023. That made a lot of the beginning of the year waiting to go into surgery which was followed by getting the surgery (a supremely weird experience), then recuperating from it at home for a couple of weeks and going back to work while doing physical therapy.
The chronology as far as I could piece it together:
I got around mostly using ride shares during the first part which was fine. Turns out that I spent €474,55 on cab rides. A fair bit of that was thankfully reimbursed by my saved up mobility budget. I stopped taking cabs and started cycling on the electric Christiania on April 15th and then had my first outing on the road bike on June 18th.
During one of my final check-ups I told my physician at the hospital that if I didn’t rationally knew I had knee surgery, a lot of the time I couldn’t remember it. There was no noticeable difference anymore.
Of course there are still lots of situations where I notice it. The difference in strength between the two legs is still there and catching up very slowly. But that things are more or less back to normal is exactly what was promised.
I’m cleared to boulder again from around Easter if I choose to ever practice that sport again.
Kids
School
The kids started their school year with the German event they call the Einschülung, something that I disagree but I have no shortage of things that I disagree with about the German school ‘system’. That’s for another blog post.
The concept of the school and how classes are setup is very cool and the teachers are young and engaged. If everything worked the way it should, things would be amazing. The only issue is that most of the time there are staff shortages that fully destabilize whatever plans or schedules had been drafted. Those shortages stem from the deep dysfunction of the Berlin civil service and mostly because of a lack of funding for the schools that need it the most.
I’m not sure what we’re going to do there but for now we’re going to see if things look up in the second half of the year.
Let it be clear that Germany is a country that in no way values kids and their education.
Father
Related to our kids going to school, on their first school day morning my dad passed away suddenly in Amsterdam. We knew he was sick but we had no idea that things would progress this quickly.
The funeral was of course in Turkey so I took a flight to Amsterdam to be with my family and see him off and then flew to Turkey with my mother to do the burial in our village. It was the first time I was back in Turkey since 2015.
That was a difficult thing to do and after that everything is different.
Holidays
I heard the news about my dad’s illness on our holiday in the Alps this year. Our first family holiday in a long time and otherwise a resounding success.
After all the affairs were wrapped up we went to Amsterdam for a week during the fall break to keep my mother company and to have the kids experience a bit of the Netherlands again. It was good to be back and to see people we hadn’t seen in a long time.
Studies
I’ve continued the trend of unapologetically self-studying things that I fancy. I can recommend it.
Abstract Algebra
To continue to study category theory I diagnosed a gap I had on basic abstract algebra and tried to close it. I didn’t finish either of the textbooks (Fraleigh and Galian) because it seems that text books are bad for self-studying people.
I worked through a couple of YouTube lecture series on the topic which gave me much more value.
Sheaf Theory
Then I continued on and off in Sheaf Theory Through Examples which is a very mixed book. It’s nowhere near as good as Fong and Spivak’s book and now nearing the end it is getting very obtuse and inaccessible. I’ll finish this and then move on to Bartosz Milewski.
Japanese
I kept studying Japanese for most of the year and on a whim I registered for the December JLPT. During registration I had a choice where I could either go for the safe but relatively irrelevant N5 level or stretch myself and go for N4.
I picked N4 and that turned out to be a lot tougher than expected. I had to push very hard on both vocabulary and grammar to get to a point where I even felt it was worth going to Düsseldorf to take the test. The 1-2 months before the test I was cramming flash cards throughout the day and studying most evenings.
The test itself in Düsseldorf was even harder than I expected and I think that it’s unlikely that I passed it, but who knows… Results are due end of January.
Even if I don’t get the certificate, stretching myself to N4 has made me study much much harder than I would ever have otherwise and I’ve advanced quite a bit. Also I got a quick trip to Düsseldorf out of it where I could eat Asian food at a level and authenticity that’s impossible to get in Berlin.
CulturaI
With everything else that was going on, I didn’t have anything significant happen here. No time, no energy, no relevance.
I don’t really know how other people manage to binge dozens of crappy Netflix shows. I can’t really imagine spending entire evenings watching television. Do people do this still?
There are lots of good shows still that I would like to watch (The Last of Us, The Bear, Succession, etc.) but there’s just no time.
Books
I only read 15 books this year with Galian, Genki and the sheaf theory book—none of which are listed below—sucking up most of my reading time.
Cold Enough for Snow was a nice book and it also happened to be the only piece of fiction I read this year. The rest of the books above are all highly situational and none of them are particularly interesting or made a lasting impact.
Video
I watched six movies this year. The only notable one was Heat which I first saw as a teenager in the City cinema in Amsterdam.
When it comes to television things look slightly better:
Games
During my recovery from surgery I started and finished Breath of the Wild. The irony of having had a climbing accident and making Link free-climb epic cliffs on Hyrule was not lost on me.
That was the year. Let’s see what the new one does.
Finding time for side projects and putting out new versions of Cuppings is difficult as always, but I’m glad we have a new version out this week again.
The list of things still to do is long as ever but for now enjoy the newest most up to date version of your favourite coffee drinking guide.
In this podcast episode a court case is treated (with the public prosecutor) where during a fluke accident a girl riding along on a bike is killed by a bus in Amsterdam.
The thoroughness and consideration with which that is done contrasted immensely with how things run in Berlin and made it clear to me (again) how unserious this city is.
Dit artikel bevestigt eigenlijk prima mijn beeld van het leven in Amsterdam waar veel mensen aan de pillen zitten.
Leuke aflevering met Menno en Wimer over de lange en rijke geschiedenis van hun bureau Booreiland en de volgende stap die ze nu zetten.
https://www.studiogeorge.nl/degebakkenperen/booreiland-clarify
Goed werk van de Groene wat onthult hoe Kroes ervoor zorgde dat Uber zijn gang kon gaan in Nederland. Het zou me verbazen als Uber het enige bedrijf was waar StartupDelta zo’n rol voor gespeeld heeft.
https://www.groene.nl/artikel/dank-voor-je-geweldige-steun-neelie
Lovely bit about the broodje kroket and about Dutch colonial history.
Foursquare is responsible for an inordinate amount of good times I’ve had, it still powers @cuppings and I’m still pleased that we got it to launch in Amsterdam as its first international city.
The trimodal salary distribution for Amsterdam (and likely other cities as well) as displayed here is very useful information and will hopefully help push compensation (and innovation) in Europe closer to American levels.
https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-salaries-in-the-netherlands-and-europe/
Als ik het verhaal over witwassen in de Amsterdamse binnenstad hier lees, denk ik dat het hier in Berlijn zonder overdrijven tien keer zo erg is (decennia armoede, corruptie en geen enkele prioriteit bij de lokale overheid).
https://www.groene.nl/artikel/ze-zijn-hier-zo-lekker-aan-het-witwassen
Een lang en grondig interview met Cody Hochstenbach over de wooncrisis in Nederland. Studio Tegengif is een favoriete podcast wat een soort Nederlandse versie van The Weeds lijkt te worden.
Daar ook genoemd dit gênante bericht over hoe in Nederland de dakloosheid blijft stijgen, een door en door door de politiek gecreëerd probleem.
https://www.groene.nl/artikel/broer-ik-heb-mijn-9mm-helemaal-geleegd
A very revealing article about the liquidation wave in the Netherlands of the past years. Some of the interesting points:
Not enough popcorn in the world to read this exposé on Booking.com.
Let’s just say that if almost everybody tells you not to write your website in Perl and you still insist on it, then you deserve all of the consequences of that decision.
But they seem to be making so much money than most of the dysfunctionality in the article does not really affect the company.
Reading about Amsterdam canceling 10’000 parking spaces, does make me feel as if I’m living in an idiot’s city.
Fuck you a million times.
Clear words for the liberal Dutch audience from Mona Eltahawi who cancelled her talk at De Balie because of their platforming of far right speakers.
For my personal archive, here is the talk I gave at Thingscon Amsterdam last year.
ThingsCon Amsterdam 2016: Alper Cugun from ThingsConAMS on Vimeo.
Last Tuesday I gave a talk at EMERCE Tech Live on the main stage of the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam. It was a lovely event and it was fun being back in Amsterdam however briefly.
It was a business focussed practical riff on my ‘Designing Conversational Interfaces’ talk that may have blown some people’s minds. So it goes!
Next up, @alper talking about conversational interfaces. Join the livestream at https://t.co/mdVhV45tsg
— Peter Bihr 🚀 (@peterbihr) December 2, 2016
Up now #thingsconams Designing Conversational Interfaces with @alper. Here we go: chatbots! “Why isn’t this presentation given by a bot?” pic.twitter.com/62AGWjAxle
— TIStv (@TIStv) December 2, 2016
Conversational interfaces at Thingscon (at @Volkshotel in Amsterdam w/ @iskandr @alper) https://t.co/VRvsntSq78 pic.twitter.com/U6IcGtHZJI
— !ianus keller (@ianus) December 2, 2016
“Are chatbots the end of applications?@patagonia said ‘we can do this better at our website, so please delete our app.” @alper #thingsconams
— TIStv (@TIStv) December 2, 2016
Next: the mastermind of Designing for conversational interfaces @alper on the UX of messaging and chatbots #thingsconams pic.twitter.com/ISFlwttIrl
— Info.nl (@infonl) December 2, 2016
Now @alper on designing for conversational interfaces. From Eliza to Lark. Via Clippy. pic.twitter.com/9pBIvZHAs9
— Iskander Smit (@iskandr) December 2, 2016
Again someone stating the end off #Apps, will messaging be the answer?@alper @ThingsConAMS #thingsconams pic.twitter.com/YvriSdFr0J
— IoT Sensemakers AMS (@SensemakersA) December 2, 2016
The UX of messaging and chatbots is what @alper talks about in his keynote. #ThingsConAMS pic.twitter.com/ULpQsQPDRS
— ThingsCon Amsterdam (@ThingsConAMS) December 2, 2016
On stage @alper: (at @Volkshotel in Amsterdam w/ @iskandr @josk @frankmeeuwsen) https://t.co/BYiYlCm954 pic.twitter.com/d0OghNZLvF
— guidoz (@guidoz) December 2, 2016
Entering the world of #chatbots @duolingo and & @hm leading the way@alper @ThingsConAMS pic.twitter.com/u2Ibsac3ot
— IoT Sensemakers AMS (@SensemakersA) December 2, 2016
Best practices and interesting newcomers in the world of chatbots according to @alper: @qz, Marsbot, @SlackHQ and @duolingo. #thingsconams
— TIStv (@TIStv) December 2, 2016
“Prototyping an interactive chatbot is not very different from writing the script for an interactive story book.” @alper #thingsconams
— TIStv (@TIStv) December 2, 2016
Digitale dementz, too much noice from messages and notifications @alper #conversationalUI #thingsconams
— Anouschka Scholten (@anous) December 2, 2016
There’s no “view source” for chatbots. – @alper #thingsconams How do we figure out how systems work? The UX for AI.
— Ame Elliott (@ameellio) December 2, 2016
“‘UI for AI’. Whatever kind of Artificial Intelligence, chat will be the interface.” @alper #thingsconams
— TIStv (@TIStv) December 2, 2016
Chat is for AI what the lightbulb was for electricity: a first experience of the this new technology, says @alper #thingsconAMS
— Peter Bihr 🚀 (@peterbihr) December 2, 2016
Amazon can take your data in a truck, but I don’t think German companies are allowed to do this, by law. @thingscon @alper
— Axel Roest (@axello) December 2, 2016
“Chat is for AI what the light bulb was for electricity”: great talk by @alper at #ThingsConAMS
— Martina Uhlig (@martina_uhlig) December 2, 2016
Designers! Let’s get to work. @alper on the next technologies we need to design for. #thingsconams pic.twitter.com/imjImkbOTZ
— Ame Elliott (@ameellio) December 2, 2016
#chatbots entering the messaging apps human use among each other can be very envasive and lead to stress… 😨@alper #thingsconams
— IoT Sensemakers AMS (@SensemakersA) December 2, 2016
Designers need to program to make really interesting stuff. With Framer @alper #thingsconams pic.twitter.com/wc0ZQ3G1ii
— Iskander Smit (@iskandr) December 2, 2016
Slide van de dag, met dank aan @alper #thingsconams pic.twitter.com/xQPurwgiRM
— Frank Meeuwsen (@frankmeeuwsen) December 2, 2016
#thingsconAMS impressions: @alper pic.twitter.com/9othPU1Kdn
— Peter Bihr 🚀 (@peterbihr) December 2, 2016
Travel is making it hard to keep up writing these notes weekly (or write anything for that matter). So this blog is turning into an expensive affair.
Way back when this happened I was in the Netherlands for an appointment that was cancelled and because of that I had to fly to Munich from Amsterdam for a day of workshopping. The next night I flew back to Amsterdam to spend the rest of the week at Hubbub HQ in the Netherlands.
We did our strategic sessions about which I probably have written elsewhere already but this was as good a time as any to revisit this brilliant interview with Jack Schulze. They don’t make them like that anymore.
No one cares about what you think, unless you do what you think. No one cares what you do, unless you think about what you do. No one ever really cares what you say.
Advice to frame and put above your desk.
The last day I did a coffee tour of Amsterdam, which is in utter bloom at this moment with Third Wave coffee places opening up literally left and right. I paid a duty visit to BrunsNiks which is one of the best up and coming design firms of that city where most stuff is bullshit.
What is also brilliant are the new Hackers and Founders offices of the eponymous meetup group. My old office in the Volkskrantgebouw got evicted because they are turning that into a hotel (like pretty much everything in Amsterdam) so they got together with the neighbors of Bottlenose and some other friends and rented a nice floor smack in Amsterdam city centre. I can’t take any credit for what they did but still I’m half proud of what that turned into.
And that segued nicely into the speaker’s dinner for our Hack de Overheid event (which got a nice press release drop over at Wired thanks to Bruce). The event, the next day in City Hall, was one where all of the founders were present at one and the same location. That already was amazing. After the day was finished I spent the evening talking philosophy with Simeon.
And the next day it was back in the train to Berlin which has added a whole hour because the flooding has damaged a bridge and caused a large stretch of tracks to be dislodged. Deutsche Bahn says that reconstruction will take until December. That may be just in time for next year’s flooding.
Two weeks ago I headed towards Amsterdam where I’ll be the week after next again. I did a massive sprint on Cuppings and prepared my presentation for Sign of Times in Pakhuis de Zwijger.
I worked on a bunch of projects over at Hubbub on Tuesday and on Wednesday I was there again but then to prepare my presentation. That talk went really well despite the torrential rains of the day and I had a great time catching up with the people who had showed up.
I caught up with Daphne on Thursday and wandered around the city a bit looking for good coffe which I found at the newly opened Head First.
I finally ended up at the presentations of the Liquid Journalism masterclass and got to talk with Alexander and Laura.
On Friday Kars got married which was the other main reason I was in the Netherlands for.
Unbelievable how many weeks behind I am on these. That’s not wholly intended, but the last couple of weeks have been a bit busier than usual. This was the week of April 15th which I spent mostly in Amsterdam.
I spent a full day with the team on Tuesday working on KAIGARA:
I drank very awesome coffee that Angelo had brought back from his road trip along the west coast of the USA:
We celebrated shipping some projects that night with Kars and Simon and the next day I was back at Hubbub for another day of work. That night it was off to the Open State offices in Amsterdam for a bit of envisioning with our new managing director. A very solid and constructive session, well catered by our in-house team of Bite Me:
My work setup at the brilliant Koko:
The Thursday I spent working at the Open Coop and preparing my Python programming course I gave on the now defunct Gidsy.
Friday I took the train back to Berlin and it was confirmed to me again that train companies are stupid. If I take a different train to Berlin I need to pay the difference in distance even if I start and end in the same place:
And Saturday I also managed squeeze out a long overdue Recess!.
So lots of stuff and more to follow.
Two week notes in one because last week seems to have been too busy to write any.
Week 313 was spent in the Netherlands with a somewhat hectic visit. I spent a lot of time at the Hubbub studio and at the Open Coop.
And of course the inevitable five (!) visits to the Village who were serving only Coffee Collective coffees when I was there:
And that Friday was Free Bassel Day in remembrance of our friend who is still imprisoned in a Syrian prison:
And then it was an ICE back to Berlin already:
I did manage to get some good writing in those two weeks. First one piece about why levying a tax on data is not a bad idea at all: Taxing data is not crazy. And the week after that about Jaron Lanier who is a crazy person with some interesting ideas: Who owns the future?
TORREON should be about finished by now. And last Friday we also forcibly launched the German incarnation of Politwoops now with an accompanying Twitter account because the SPD chancellor candidate posted something he shouldn’t have.
Also I’m doing another bout of programming education for non-programmers in Amsterdam next week with a course and a meetup. More on that in a bit.
And I finished my Recess! post.
I got things back running again. Did a bunch of work on TORREON. Most Hubbub stuff is in a weeknote over there now that I am writing now alternating with Kars Alfrink.
I updated my Thinkup which proved to be something of a mixed bag now forcing me to upgrade my hosting package.
Wednesday I had my first class of my language course at the Goethe Institute which proved to be a bit too easy for my taste (which is probably always the case if you already know a bunch of languages). The practice will be good for me in any case and I hope to apply the practical parts more and more in German professional life.
Having started everything in Berlin —to my chagrin— on Thursday I went to Amsterdam for the Open State board dinner and some other odds and ends that needed seeing to. That day I also fasted for my friend Bassel who is jailed in Syria just for being a free software activist.
The board dinner that night at the new restaurant my brother runs Fa. Speijkervet was a lot of fun. There are a lot of changes coming up and almost all of them are for the better.
Friday I hung out at Koko in Amsterdam. A nice new coffee place run by two girls who are totally into coffee and fashion. A big recommendation if you want to escape the hectic Amsterdam city center. After I did our meeting at De Gids (again see the Hubbub weeknote), we did a run of the town with Kars and Alexander Zeh.
Saturday I learned about the suicide of Aaron Swartz an immensely respected figure in freedom and/of information. He was one of the rare people both whose software I used and whose thoughts resonated with me. He got so much done in that short time he was here that his passing places a big burden on the rest of us to continue that work.
I then ended my theater going life by seeing the final Mightysociety show in Frascati. More on that when there is time.
Sunday was another Hubbub workday —yes we have a lot to do— with ample visits to the Village which is really an even funner place then than it is during the week.
Last Monday was the last day in Berlin before the holidays so something of a push here and there to get things to go through. That night we had a vvvv workshop at the studio hosted by Joreg to teach somewhere around eight people the basics of node based graphical environments (the only other one I had used extensively before was Open DX and of course there’s Quartz Composer and Impure Quadrigram).
I messed around a bit with it and managed to produce this bit of media art. It is very interesting to have the power of DirectX9 under your fingers without having to program at all, though the whole fact of non-programming feels a bit strange to me.
Also there was this bit about the journalistic climate in the Netherlands:
https://twitter.com/alper/status/280658121272217600
I would recommend anybody interfacing with journalists to be wholly guarded and keep clearly in mind what’s in it for them in the interaction. The way it is played by most actors, it hasn’t been about the uncovering of the truth for a long time.
Tuesday was my travel day to Amsterdam where I wrote a bunch of stuff in the train and had an Open State board meeting that evening.
I spent most of Wednesday in Utrecht at the Hubbub studio. That night I had dinner with Tim de Gier, Loeki Westerveld and Justus Bruns partially by plan, partially by coincidence.
Thursday was also spent at Hubbub discussing business and getting work done. That night I had drinks with Kars and Lieke in a smashing new Utrecht establishment.
On Friday I met Edo van Royen at Studyflow, had lunch with Peter Robinett, coffee with Justus Bruns, dropped by at my accountant, had a beer with Thijs Niks and then drinks at the Open Coop with Lex and Alexander. Having said that: these visits to the Netherlands always tend to devolve into a flurry of errands that barely leave any time to think. That is going to change for the next one.
Last week was a week for some work in the Netherlands and some much deserved catchup with friends and colleagues over there.
On monday the protocol of the meeting we had in the Berlin parliament about open transit data was published. It contains all the proceedings and slides.
On Tuesday I went to Hilversum to give a workshop on journalistic data visualization over there. It’s always fun to give these and it’s going to be even more fun to see the results coming out of it.
After that I bounced over to Utrecht to relax a bit in the Village. It had been too long ago and it’s still the best coffee store in the Netherlands. After that I went to Hubbub headquarters for some future planning with Kars Alfrink.
On Wednesday we had a lot of stuff to do with the (Open State) foundation (more on which later). That same evening we had a board meeting.
On Thursday I had a nice lunch with Tim de Gier and finished my next game review for the paper.
This is the view from the Amsterdam office. Pure luxury for that city.
Also I had to buy the new book “Koorddansen in de Kaukasus” by Olaf Koens about his adventures in the Caucasus. It is a fast paced collection of stories in this very bizarre part of the world.
I also managed to visit the newly opened EYE movie institute on the IJ shore. A beautiful building with a stunning view, heralding in a new era for this part of Amsterdam.
Next it was the train back to Berlin and prototypes for some new applications.
Last week was crazy hectic, notwithstanding the fact that I was ill at the same time. Sickness and deadlines are not fun, but thankfully both were survived.
What had to be done was the prototype iPhone app for the first playtest of saba. Which was finished in the nick of time with programming sprints that ended later and later into the night.
Then it was a train on Friday to Amsterdam for the Open State board meeting followed by the more general strategy day on Saturday. A lot of fun was had and important things were discussed during the weekend (see this write-up by Natasja Trifkovic), which makes it all worthwhile, but some downtime would be welcome at this point.
I just read the double interview in Amsterdam Weekly with Johannes van Dam and Undercover Glutton. It is a lovely interview and their combined knowledge of food is certainly impressive. What I am a bit less impressed with is their knowledge of metropolitan cuisine. At one point in the interview van Dam extolls the culinary variety in Amsterdam and there I must take offense. I have traversed the city far and wide and I have come up empty more often than not for many a dish. Eventually I gave up and moved to warmer culinary climes.
The problem in Amsterdam first and foremost is that many dishes and types of food lack proper representation. There are even entire cuisines missing. It is a long list, but below follows an attempt to distill my years of disappointment:
Breakfast
Try to find a place in Amsterdam to have a decent meal1 at 08:00 and you’ll come up empty. This is tied mainly with the departure of blue collar work from the city and the city getting a more languid touristy character. There’s the mad commute around 08:00, but nobody goes in for breakfast except a take-away coffee and croissant.
Brunch of any type
Tied to the previous, there is hardly a brunch offering to speak of. This is a ridiculous poverty compared to San Francisco or even Copenhagen. Most Sunday’s are highly improved by this type of food, though it can also very quickly degenerate into a fad.
Full English breakfast and the British kitchen
There are a couple of touristy places offering something like the Full English and there’s one lunch place that does a meagre version, but the city all in all lacks greasy spoons. The British have elevated eating disgusting things to an art and we should take notice. With the breakfast already unattainable, don’t even look for more specialty offerings such as the Scottish Egg or Welsh Rarebit. Relatedly I have not been able to find a reliable and affordable source of Eggs Benedict in the city in my years.
BBQ
London has recently been treated to the best BBQ this side of the pond with the opening of Pitt Cue but Amsterdam doesn’t even sport an attempt at this discipline. The festival of the Rolling Kitchens had some attempts in this direction, but the quantities were not enough for the appetite of the audience and an availability of one week a year does not amount to much.
East-European or Russian cuisine
In the Netherlands we pretend that Eastern Europe does not exist, except for Polish people who we use for scapegoating or when our pipes are clogged. The Slavic treats of Borsht, Perogi and the likes, are impossible to find and in the whole of Amsterdam there is not even one Russian or similar restaurant.
Ramen
There is currently one location in Amsterdam that does Tonkotsu Ramen and does it excellently but it only serves them a handful hours every week. You do not need to be a nippophile to be hit by a sudden ramen craving, but you will be coming up empty.
Burrito
There is also now only one place in Amsterdam that does an acceptable burrito and it is swamped on Sunday evenings. It isn’t Californian, but that is a minor detail.
Proper Coffee
Coffee in Amsterdam has been improving and there are some players that have upped the city’s game reliably. That success has however prompted a lot of douche places that look nice, but where the coffee is undrinkable. Add to that, some places (outside of the center) ask €2,50 for a mediocre cappuccino. Kees Kraakman is about to open up North any day now which will give that area a much needed caffeine boost but overall it is not enough.
Pasteis de Nata
Here in Berlin you are nearly smothered in this treat at an affordable price (the same in London). In Amsterdam, they are near unfindable and expensive when you do. The general pastry situation is laughably poor compared to either Lisbon or Paris.
Taco adds the following:
@alpercugun Add to lacks: really good tapas, more than one korean restaurant, authentic schezuan, good southern US style BBQ —Taco Ekkel
I treated the BBQ above. I can agree about the Korean offerings which are few and too expensive. I rarely ate tapas because most taperias are ballententen. And I have never had Schezuan, so I can’t comment on that.
The shortcomings above may be fixed in the future, but progress will be slow and incomplete because the Amsterdam culinary scene is broken on a deeper level. I can best explain that using two factors:
No 24 hour availability
Peter reminded me of this one, which is pretty important. I have long bemoaned the lack of a 24h diner in Amsterdam. I would take any diner by now, but for a city pretending to be international, the lack of food options for a traveller touching down on Schiphol between 02:00 and 07:00 is rather dismaying. Amsterdam is not ‘the city that never sleeps’, so much is clear, but allowing the people that don’t sleep to cater for themselves, would be tolerant for a start.
This is a symptom of the Dutch mentality to create rules for everything, even the things that would otherwise sort themselves out. Dutch regelzucht nips a lot of otherwise nice things in the bud. This has effects on the opening times of restaurants, but also on the (im)possibility of food carts and other displays of eating and drinking outdoors, but probably also on the ways you can prepare food and who you can hire to do that. I’m not advocating total abandon of rules here, but I am quite sure the Dutch implementation errs too far on the side of caution.
Absurdly poor price/quality ratio
The rampant inflation of housing in the city also has had an effect on culinary offerings. People paying upwards of €1200/month in rent, don’t quaff at a single sit-down dinner costing around €20 for the simplest of meals2.
Many of those people are new entrants to Amsterdam which is the biggest city they have experienced thusfar. These people are really nice and they mean well, but they are still hicks who are easily impressed by the trappings of the big city village that Amsterdam is. Their newfound abundance in cash and lack of taste spoils the market and makes good options for the discerning eater, harder to find.
The fact that Johannes would not mention these issues and he gives Turkish charcoal grill after charcoal grill 9 marks every week3, testifies to his age and his local knowledge. Most of the people I know consume food with a global or at least an European perspective and given the best there is on offer there, Amsterdam cannot compete.
I know the scene is improving and ever in flux, so some of the things I have mentioned above may no longer be true, but I haven’t even been gone two months yet. Additions and discoveries are of course welcome here or via more private channels.
The year has started nicely and the event line-up is already brimful.
Thursday a week ago saw the iBestuur Congress in the Netherlands where the winners of the Apps voor Nederland competition were announced. I’m happy to see this last app competition to a succesful end and I look forward to what more we can bring. See a write-up of them over at the Hack de Overheid site.
Last weekend I was joined here by fellow game makers from the Netherlands to participate in the Berlin Global Game Jam. We fought hard and managed to crank out the unparalleled Nakatomi Rider. Niels wrote it up for the papers (available over at Bashers).
This week in Berlin the Transmediale takes place to which I hope to go in the following days. I have a difficult relationship with art, especially when it is in the domain of media, but watching the Graham Harman lecture tonight and the introduction to it, it was clear to me that Transmediale is as on top of current developments and artistic relevance as they can be.
There will be a night in Pakhuis de Zwijger to celebrate the Nederland van Boven television series that the VPRO produced in the Netherlands1. I will be joining the esteemed panel there as a board member of Hack de Overheid to talk about issues of democracy, participation and truth in cartography.
With Martijn de Waal happily having gotten his PhD2, it’s now full steam ahead for the conference he is organizing together with Michiel de Lange called “Social Cities of Tomorrow”3. I will be speaking in a brief time slot about Apps for Amsterdam and how data commons happen.
I will probably be attending LIFT to see a certain person speak.
Finally in the near future there is also an undisclosed Berlin event for which I will be speaking which will be my first abroad since I left the Netherlands.
Talking to two young theater makers yesterday, I remarked that the majority of the Dutch plays I see don’t deliver the relevant and socially engaged experiences I would want them to. To which they asked why I still bothered going to the theater, a question I hear regularly from those in the more modern performing arts. They themselves hardly ever go and they make participatory theater, not the stage dramas that first come to mind. That is a response I get more often: that theater is boring, irrelevant and really ‘Why would anybody want to go?’
I often think the same on my obligatory trips to the Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam and other venues. What I need in theater is a visceral quality, acute social relevance and deep street savvy. One of those is hard enough to find most of the time, let alone all three. I went to 33 plays last year and only a handful of them delivered. The few that did, redeemed the boring, too long, too simple plays I’ve been to, but I think that there are irresolvable obstacles preventing the quality of theater from increasing.
On most of my visits I’m struck by how narrow a demographic (by age and social-economic status) frequents most theaters. This cannot but influence the performances to cater to the audience. The audience’s wishes notwithstanding, artistic autonomy would require boundaries to be pushed, but that too doesn’t happen all too often (see also ‘De studio uit, de wereld in’).
Having said that, the theater makers I would go to blindly in the Netherlands are:
Now having just moved to Berlin, I’ve seen a bunch of plays at die Schaubühne2 but nothing very titillating yet. That may be in part because I am yet to see something by Thomas Ostermeier, but it does beg the question why a theater would stage such wildly varying material and why the room still is full most of the nights. Answers to those questions are forthcoming after a more thorough sampling.
Going over the list of services that the municipality of Amsterdam offers this week, I couldn’t help but notice this:
the option to change your date of birth (without a foreign certificate)
This is a very interesting option. I am not aware of the reasons one could assert to change their date of birth, but the fact that the option is listed, says something. In any case, it shouldn’t be too difficult to come up with a reason that fulfills official requirements.
Why would you want to do this?
I am reasonably sure that most statistical inference methods on databases are pinned fairly rigidly on the fact that somebody’s date of birth never changes. The various parts of your name can be mismatched, but if you do not have an id for somebody (like a social security number), the date of birth is your best bet to reduce the number of possible matches.
If you manage to change your date of birth if only by a day and re-register with that everywhere, you will have shed your privacy tail and can start anew. That by itself, struck me as a hopeful thought. Now just to have somebody try it out.
Post scriptum: I talked about this with Rejo and he suggested I FOIA the number of times this occurs and the reasons why it happens. I put that on my list, for some time in the future.
In the beginning of the week I spotted an interesting dataset on Sargasso, requested to play with it and got the following visual published the next day (our write-up).
Then it was off to Berlin to finalize things with the appartment and prepare the move.
My review of “Where is my Heart?” was also published in the nrc.next that week (tweet):
Finally my proposal to present on the Apps for Amsterdam project on the Social Cities of Tomorrow conference was aspected and I will be attending and presenting at that conference in Amsterdam. Data commons are a topic that is very near to our practice and I look forward to exchanging ideas with those attending.
Ik zou nog schrijven wat de conclusie was van het cameratoezicht op mijn gestolen fiets uit het vorige bericht. Daar stond al hoe je voor dit soort zaken van het kastje naar de muur gestuurd wordt. Ik had nagelaten dit op te schrijven door drukte en frustratie met hoe het gaat in de stad, maar gelukkig herinnerde Rejo Zenger van Bits of Freedom me eraan.
Bijkomend voordeel is dat ik met behulp van ThinkUp mijn tweets van toen kon terugvinden en het verhaal weer aan elkaar kon puzzelen.
Ik had het een beetje opgegeven. Ik moest mijn aangifte afmelden bij een hulpzame agent van het lokale bureau. Toen ik hem vertelde dat er een camera op het plaats delict stond stuurde hij even een patrouille langs die ‘eyes on the scene’ deden en navroegen bij Stadgenoot.
Kort daarna wist hij me te vertellen dat de camera wél van Stadgenoot is ondanks dat Stadgenoot dat ontkende. Alleen volgens Stadgenoot was de camera niet aangesloten en hadden ze dus ook geen beelden van de diefstal1.
Daardoor konden we niet anders dan mijn aangifte onverrichter zake sluiten. Als je ergens een fixie ziet met een doorgeroeste Paddy Wagon wielset en eventueel twee spoke cards van de Pariah alley cat, dan is die van mij.
Vragen die blijven naar aanleiding van dit incident:
Wat blijft:
Er is geen register van camera’s in de openbare weg en wie ze beheert. Dit maakt het makkelijk voor instanties om je van het kastje naar de muur te sturen zoals Stadgenoot deed.
Elke camera die op de openbare weg gericht is zou een vergunning en registratie moeten hebben of deze nu werkt of niet. Aangezien de functionaliteit van een niet door het normale publiek te controleren is.
Another week and another change at the office. One thing that does define the Open Coop is that everything is in a constant state of flux adding jitter so none of us remain stuck in a local optimum. The global optimum we are shooting for in and around our location in North is rather ridiculous but best not shared in public.
I flew into Amsterdam on Monday morning (takeoff Schönefeld at 07:20) to a rather broken working day. My locative transgressions leaving at least Peter Robinett confused enough to do something about it. He built me a personal glanceable: Where’s Alper? (write up). That is the best reason to build software: because you need it.
Attended to it by my speaking agent Tessa, I submitted a talk brief to NEXT12 about Love in Time of Gamification. And I registered at Hybrid Plattform in Berlin, looking to see what kind of collaborations come from that.
The rest of Monday and Tuesday were spent preparing a workshop for the Dutch broadcasting corporation the NOS on the topic of data visualization using off the shelf tools. The course was mainly focused on Google’s tools such as Motion Charts, other charts APIs and Fusion Tables but we also managed to touch on some theoretical and ethical questions during the workshop.
For me it was great to see how far Google’s Fusion Tables offering has come since last I looked at it, becoming a proper tool for big data analysis and visualization for those with the right skills and inclination. Though the data import/export as well as the ties to Google are problematic for corporate customers. It is also very promising how a web savvy group of people as those at the NOS can use the data they have at their disposal to create public facing interactive products. That is the aim and I am very curious what comes out of the NOS during the next year when it comes to data.
After the course I got the obligatory television studio tour and despite having foresworn television some years ago, I could not help but be awed by the studios, the proceedings and the massive disconnect between what happens in physical space in Hilversum and how it is experienced throughout the country. The process of media power at play is an impressive thing to behold.
I met with Erik Kroesto talk about the intersection of photography and the internet. And then I went to a lecture in the Facing Forward series by Amber Case and Manuel DeLanda. I had read this piece about Case before and the talk contained not much new and DeLanda who I had got pointed to by Matt Jones very recently took his time to introduce us to genetic algorithms as form finding functions. A laypersons introduction to genetic algorithms for me does not contain anything novel either, but DeLanda delivered it with intelligence and wit, which made it still immensely bearable.
Most surprised I was still at the relative novelty the audience experienced for material that has been old hat in my social sphere for the last couple of years. Tellingly in a room of hundreds there were only a handful of people who had even mentioned the event on Twitter let alone who participated in any kind of discursive backchannel.
I was and still am more interested in DeLanda’s book on simulation. The next day I participated in a workshop in W139 where DeLanda gave me and a bunch of art students an introduction into Realist philosophy as opposed to the other branches.
We ended the week with talking about the communications plan and the merger for Open State (the future foundation into which all of Hack de Overheid and het Nieuwe Stemmen are to be combined).
This was accompanied with a bunch of festivities among which a Coop party on Thursday, constitutionary drinks on Friday and then off to Utrecht for the Hubbub studio warming. Kars Alfrink has crafted himself an ultra fine place of work and I count myself lucky to be allowed to work there from time to time.
I’m incredibly proud of the team and events coming together in our organization of the biggest Hack de Overheid feature yet. Looking back on the past year, it has been an incredible ride with the various Apps for… competitions and no small amount of personal and professional changes.
At the end of this month, on Saturday the 26th, we’ll be holding a Hack de Overheid event like you’re used to with some notable additions that are going to blow everybody’s mind. The event is called Code Camping Amsterdam, it is part of the Apps voor Nederland program in collaboration with Waag Society and you can register on the bottom of the page.
We’ll be having three internationally renowned speakers whose work alone speaks for itself, let alone their presence on our event. Marietje Schaake is our most favourable representation in the European Parliament but as far as I know a politician of her stature has never before spoke in front of an audience of Makers in the Netherlands before. Marius Watz‘s visual art inspires awe and wonder and I have used his software on several occasions in my work for Monster Swell. Matt Biddulph‘s work and shipped products have been used by most of the people I know and inspired me and I think many more programmers to build more and better.
The location in the derelict Toren Overhoeks1 is a culmination both of convenience and inconvenience. Just across the central train station, but without any facilities left in the building2 it exemplifies a once and future state of our cities. Remnants of an age gone by where hackers gather with makeshift facilities to create something better.
After the event there is going to be a party by the Eddie the Eagle Museum a formation famous in their own right for holding the most out there awesome parties in the city3. It is a privilege working together with people this competent when it comes to fun and so creative when it comes to convention. See their party description:
The future has found us! And its leader is a code. Our digitally hypnotised desire has led to a world without mistakes, governed by spyware and malware. Humanity is an experiment proved inferior. Let’s crack the code to correct it. Enter the Hackathon and exuberantly celebrate a world without errors! With high, low and no-tech, we are the new Trojan Horses marching in, ritually erasing the failings of the past. Let’s roughly and frantic lose our last human bit with a codefest in the Tower of the Shell.
Finally as I have hinted before, the currency for application contests is diminishing along with the consolidation of the open data platforms and the publication of more and more datasets. If after Apps voor Nederland is over, you follow-up with another cookie-cutter competition, that would be missing the point. That also means that this competition is the best moment to get your datasets out and get attention for them in the ecosystem as it is right now. What will be next? We have some ideas, but we don’t know anything for sure yet. The only thing that is certain: you’d better be there next Saturday!
This summer I shot a roll of color film I had lying around using my trusty Yashica D medium-format camera. The subjects were passers-by in our Amsterdam office. The results were better than expected.
Ties shines on this classic laptop shot (the stickers do add a nice touch):
Martijn in a similar stance has a razor sharp glance (and curls):
James’s essence is captured quite nicely in this picture: 
Peter came out a bit under-exposed but turned out nicely with some brushing up (and burning):
The tallest of former coworkers Tim comes out nicely too:
All in all, that is five usable frames from twelve shot which is a more than decent score. It looks like I should shoot more portraits. Any volunteers?
I was at an event organized by ARCAM tonight concerning co-operative housing projects which are already very popular in Berlin but are rapidly expanding to other cities. Amsterdam is busy launching its own initiative and Michael LaFond from Berlin presented their experiences with this way of building.
It was an interesting evening to attend. The slides were poorly visible from the back, but I managed to jot down a large part of the Q&A where most of the action was. It is interesting to see how eager for knowledge the Amsterdam crowd is. It strikes me as odd that building a house yourself would be novel, but given the market as it is, it is. Also: the Dutch with their capacity for trade and organization should be pretty good at this thing. If that will be so, remains to be seen.
Notes first quoted:
Muni of Amsterdam is going to emit a bunch of self building plots
There’s going to be an event this weekend in Houthaven for the first batch of plots.
Michael LaFond, American Architect living and working in Berlin
id22, Institute for Creative Sustainabilitystarted Wohnportal-Berlin
focus on co-housing, community organized housing projects
daz – köpenickerstraße
local innovation, community
baugemeinschaften, hausvereineemphasizes participation in cooperative and community oriented designs
organize Wohnportal, platform for architects and housing activists to get their project out therelast year: started working with people in other European cities
organizing a tour of the creative sustainability projects around the city
An increased demand even in participation.
Berlin:
1.9M housing units / 3.5M residents
1.82 person/unit
70m2/unit
40m2/person
Weak presence of corporations on the market though everybody leases.Since 2009 Berlin offers land to Baugemeinschaften at fixed prices.
The best concept and not the highest bidder wins.
Criteria:
1. Neighborhood and community orientation
2. Architecture and urban design
3. Sustainability and ecology
4. FinancingChange in economy and demography forces Berlin like Amsterdam to look at the concept of building houses yourself.
Baugemeinschaften started in Tübingen and Freiburg
List of examples among which:
* Möckernkiez, public access
* Spreefeld Berlin, secured a road to the land and got the land cheap from the Federal Government, some of the best architects in Berlin
* AH+, outside of the city center, buildings will produce more energy than they consumeBaugemeinschäfte are growing larger to the 100 and more houses per project
Co Housing Cultures book due to be out
blok0.nl
amsterdam.nl/zelfbouwManifestation this weekend with the release of 300 plots.
Initiator of the Vrijburg Project, landscape architect also present.
Vrijburg has failed in collaborating with Nuon to create sustainable energy projects.
Now the questions as much as I could transcribe them:
Q: How do you manage people who want to rent? Or people with unequal incomes.
LaFond: 3 of the projects are affordable housing, some in re-adapting existing buildings. People pay €5-6/m2. There are examples of non-profit cooperations. People that really don’t have any money, can’t live there.
Q: The real-estate market in Amsterdam is rather transparent. Transactions are being done between housing corporations, developers and the city. Can co-housing create more transparency in the housing market? So that fairer pricing of land becomes a possibility?
LaFond: By making the scale of projects smaller that becomes easier. For democracy, the equal distribution of land is very important.
Q: The self-build aspect? Who carries the risk if the plan fails?
LaFond: You can have affordable houses from non-self-organized projects and vice versa. People that do have money: a core group forms and they look for a piece of land with or without an architect, or they apply to a city land auction, with a group facilitator. They identify the concept and organize a Baugemeinschaft. People bring their own money and they need to go to the bank themselves for credit. The ones without money need to get support from a foundation or other organization. The main reason that projects don’t succeed is because they can’t find any affordable land.
Q: How important is the role of the architect?
LaFond: If you want to emphasize the group or community, the focus should be with them. There’s always the combination of the future inhabitants, the architect and the moderator. The most important thing in Berlin is that people adhere more strictly to the division of roles and don’t try to play multiple parts.
Q: Do the architects design the energy systems?
LaFond: Almost always there will somebody extra working on that.
Q: How do people find it?
LaFond: There’s the website. The events where people come together and word of mouth about the project. Some architecture firms have their own waiting lists for people who want to be on the next project.
Q: What’s the role of the moderators?
LaFond: There’s no investor/developer for these projects, that’s why they are more affordable. Btu that’s also why it demands more intensive participation. They need to understand people and organize them. Manage relations. Sometimes have to protect participants from the architects. There are not that many people who can do this and want to do this. Most architects can’t or don’t want to do this. (There seem to be companies specialized in this.)
Bob van der Zande (stad Amsterdam, Zelfbouw) also present.
Q: Is the municipality thinking about social housing in the next 10 years?
Van der Zande: We are hoping that there are so many different houses being planned that the option of social housing will materialize.
LaFond: Some of the co-operative projects will give people the money they invested back but they cannot sell or speculate on the house themselves. This changes the house from a property on the market into something that is there to use. More projects like that are needed to guarantee affordable housing in a city on the long term. If people can make money on their property and there’s nothing to prevent it, it is not odd that they will do so.
Q: How is the other obstacle (that of financing) being tackled?
LaFond: Constructions take some time to develop. Umweltbank and GLS bank are very important for these projects. They make less money from the interest and they have a greater desire to support ecological and social projects. It happens that people can collectively apply for money to get credit so not everybody needs to have the same amout of money. GLS is the best example in Germany. They offer different kinds of Burgschaften, you need to have a combination of money, income, property, or a relative who has money. Now also Kleinburgschaften: 25 people can all risk €3000 to join together and cover the risk. Das Miethäusersyndicat (started in Freiburg) exists to help housing groups to buy their buildings and renovate them. Because they have so many buildings now they can get credit to do more buildings. These structures took 20 some years to develop.
Stiftung Trias and Edith Marien Stiftung don’t like private ownership much. They work to take land away from the market. Community land trusts.
Vrijburg architect: In Amsterdam one bank is interested in these projects: the Rabobank. All the other banks are running away.
Onlangs zijn de wielen van mijn racefiets gestript toen deze over het weekend geparkeerd stond op de Korte ‘s-Gravezandestraat in Amsterdam.
Ik heb aangifte gedaan van de diefstal en er staat een camera op het terrein van Stadgenoot gericht op de openbare weg waar mijn fiets staat. Ik probeer te achterhalen van wie die camera is om te zorgen dat die beelden bewaard worden en beschikbaar zijn voor het politie-onderzoek.
In principe ben ik tegen camera’s in de openbare ruimte maar als ze er hangen ben ik wel voor transparante en heldere informatie over van wie ze zijn en wanneer je bij de beelden mag. Dat het hier slecht gesteld is met die informatie bewijst de volgende rondgang:
Stadgenoot ontkent dat de camera van hen is en zegt dat bewoners niet zomaar camera’s aan hun huis mogen bevestigen. Ze zeggen dat deze waarschijnlijk van de politie is.
Het politiebureau dat erover gaat zegt ook niks te weten van deze camera en verwijst door naar de gemeente.
De gemeente weet na herhaaldelijk bellen en talloze malen doorverbonden te worden uiteindelijk te achterhalen om welk stadsdeel dit precies gaat en dat team handhaving van stadsdeel Centrum zou moeten weten van wie die camera is. Dit team is ‘s ochtends tussen 9 en 10 op kantoor waarna ze de straat op gaan. Dus morgenochtend wordt dit vervolgd.
I was at a meeting this weekend by the Pop-up City and the documentary displayed about urban development fits into a wider recent trend where people kick the creative class and blame them for society’s ills. Usually the dreaded specter of gentrification is pulled out to show how apathetic and different and outright bad the Creative Class1 are.
The documentary shown last weekend “Creativity and the Capitalist City” by Tino Buchholz actually showed an interesting and nuanced picture of urban development. Unfortunately this was marred by the rabid and insubstantial left-wing outings of the movie maker afterwards. That discussion did oust a lot of resentment that I think needs to be addressed more openly and more honestly than it currently is.
As was remarked in die Zeit recently about the same issue in Berlin: the only thing worse than gentrification is no gentrification. The debate is a lot more heated over there because of the massive influx of hipsters and their friends from all over the world into an impoverished city. A trust fund takes you a lot further in Neukölln than it does in Bushwick, but it also sparks xenofobic pamflets and immolation of vehicles.
I am a part of that same creative class —if you want to use a blanket term— and probably also a cause of gentrification. But I am sick of apologizing for our success. We picked a profession, we worked hard, we created value (we are not bankers) and now we are winning. Well I can tell you: it feels good to be winning.
It is perverse to rest the blame of society’s ills on those people actually doing something with their lives. I have had this problem before. If you’re a successful migrant in the messed up social debate in the Netherlands, you were nearly forced to apologize for your own success to the rest who were not. I sure as hell wasn’t going to do that. The only solution is to ignore the naysayers. It always is of course.
I can do what I am doing because of a lot of hard work and perseverance. The field of study I got a Masters in is definitely not one of the easier ones at my university but it does guarantee you a job in a wide number of techno-creative fields. For some strange reason people still are not lining up to go to technical universities, and most that do go do not finish it. Complaining to somebody else must be easier than actually working to secure your own future.
It is hard enough already in the attention starved world to stay up to date with your close ones without having to take into account every other person. Even more so if your outlook is international and you want to participate and compete on a trans-national level. A rare enough thing as it is. Should we do stuff for our neighborhood? Sure, but who should bear the onus? Shouldn’t the people who want to do stuff, maybe start something themselves and see where it goes?
Working in a creative profession is subject to taste but it is in many ways also highly meritocratic. Those with affluent parents and large networks will divide a larger piece of pie among themselves. But if you work hard and put in the effort with just a spark of vision, it will most certainly amount to something in the long run. If it doesn’t, change yourself and try something else. Keep trying until you find something that works. Is that difficult? Maybe, but it is also the only way.
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.”—Thomas Edison
There are a ton of jobs in technology right now. Amsterdam cannot find itself enough interaction designers, interface designers, front-end engineers and programmers to fill current jobs. The shortage is large enough that a lot of growth opportunities are being hampered by it. Literally all comers will be able to get a job. So get at it. Teach yourself something, find a course and persevere for a couple of years. You may strike gold.
“You can tell yourself anything is too difficult, or you can just do it.
You just need to be hungry.”— http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/opinion/sunday/i-went-back-to-the-land-to-feed-my-family.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
We, the employed, already pay taxes. As a base that should be enough. If anybody out there is failing to keep up their end of the bargain, it’s the government we are paying the taxes to. They are bailing out the rich and keeping the poor ignorant with well meant institutional schemes that rarely amount to anything (just look at the Wire). Government should change and if the recent occupy movements serve as a wake-up call to do that, all for the better. Though experience does not make me very optimistic on that front.
If there is anything we shouldn’t do in the Netherlands, it is to pretend that things here are as bad as in the US or anywhere in Europe. We have the lowest unemployment in the Eurozone. We have an egalitarian society, cheap education, social security and mobility. Pretending otherwise is disingenuous and self-serving. You can do pretty much everything you want in this country and I say that not being white, not being privileged. I sincerely believe all it takes is for you to get out and make something. So do it.
Je gaat een verlaten loods in waar je verwelkomd wordt. Je mag de ontmoeting met de ander aangaan voor een persoonlijke ervaring en voor een hoger doel. De bedoeling wordt gaandeweg duidelijk en het uiteindelijke aanbod is lidmaatschap van een club, van dé Club.
Veel mensen worstelen door het wegvallen van traditionele structuren met vragen over zingeving en hoe we de samenleving moeten inrichten. Met de crisissen waar we de laatste tijd door geplaagd worden zijn die vragen urgenter dan ooit. Elke moeilijke tijd heeft mensen nodig die nieuwe dingen verzinnen en uitvinden hoe het verder moet. De Club is een mengvorm van kunsten, mensen en thema’s die hen zoekt en verbindt.
Elke avond is anders. Iedere deelnemer haalt eruit wat ze erin stopt, op de avond zelf en daarna. Wat het wordt, dat weet niemand maar de uitnodiging staat open en de noodzaak is duidelijk. Het enige wat er te verliezen (en te winnen) valt is een alternatief.
De Club speelt zich nog tot 25 september af in Roest Amsterdam en daarna in Eindhoven en Gent. http://de-club.nu
The sidewalks of the newly renovated Marnixstraat:
These are too narrow to accomodate people walking along them side by side, let alone when the sidewalk is obstructed by plants, bikes, scooters, furniture and other things.
“Sidewalk width is invariable sacrificed for vehicular width, partly because city sidewalks are conventionally considered to be purely space for pedestrian travel and access to buildings, and go unrecognized and unrespected as the uniquely vital and irreplaceable organs of city safety, public life and child rearing that they are.”—Jane Jacobs
Add to that the fact that Amsterdam city politics is hostage to the car and you get this.
I’m right now reading The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the seminal volume on city planning by Jane Jacobs, for the first time.
The experience is a warm bath unlike any other. Reading the first part on ‘The Peculiar Nature of Cities’ I could not help notice the urban fabric everywhere around me realized by the people that make up the streets here in Westerpark, Amsterdam.
Then reading the second part ‘The Conditions for City Diversity’ brought home how and where those conditions are lacking currently in Amsterdam.
Reading this book was long overdue for me. So many of my own ideas about city planning and urbanism are mirrored, most probably from the osmosis and inspiration I have gotten from friends over the years. It is quite uncanny. But there is still a lot to learn from Jacobs’s book and it should be compulsory reading for all council members of Amsterdam and other cities.
Two issues that are particularly striking right now:
In chapter 13, ‘The Self-destruction of Diversity’, Jacobs talks about how when an area becomes diverse enough that it starts to attract people, the attraction and the increasing prices that generates may price out the very factors that made it attractive in the first place.
This is taking place right now in the central areas of Amsterdam. Most apartments are affordable only for the high double incomes or they are split up into rooms and let out to students and young professionals at a high markup. Along with the pressure that tourism puts on the city center and the lack of attractive areas outside of the A10 perimeter, this makes for high pressure on real estate prices. Where house prices are on the decline pretty much everywhere in the Netherlands, they are sharply on the increase in Amsterdam.
The issue as it is identified by Jacobs is that there is a high influx of people looking to live in Amsterdam but there are not enough attractive quarters for those people to choose from. This puts all the pressure on the city center, whereas vast spaces outside of the A10 perimeter are (rightly) considered unattractive. This is a blatant failing of city government to create a supply of attractive living quarters to service demand.
Jacobs talks about ‘the need for primary mixed uses’ and ‘the need for aged buildings’ to create diversity. Those two needs make it abundantly clear why a city development such as IJburg cannot be a worthwhile place to settle for the next thirty years.
First IJburg contains no necessity for people to go there except to leave the island for work in the morning and to go back home in the evening. Footfall is near zero. I myself have only been there three times maybe in the last two years (and that still is three times more often than most people in Amsterdam). That makes it dead and unattractive for stores and other facilities to open. Those that try, cannot make ends meet and usually close down again quickly making for a rapid succession of tenants and lots of empty storefronts.
Secondly, because it is all new development, rents are too high for many essential neighborhood facilities to take root. IJburg will not have a Turkish grocer or a coffee house because those kind of stores need older, more run down (and therefore cheaper) buildings to settle in. Moving there means giving up access to those tiny neighborhood stores and in fact on lively neighborhood life altogether.
One has to wonder, what were the architects, the council and the developers thinking (if at all)?
Update: Read more playful reflections on the pertinence of Jane Jacobs to the Dutch urban fabric over at Hubbub: New ideas must use old buildings
Seeing this presentation in Amsterdam as the culmination of Mobile Monday, was something great. The far reaching vision and reality based optimism Kevin Slavin lays down (his comments) are something we should aspire to. It is worth watching and watching again.
Some choice quotes, though we should just hope that he finishes that essay:
Reality is augmented not when it looks different but when it feels different.
Maybe the aspiration to 3D optical AR starts to feel a little bit like pornography. Like a thin veneer of the actual experience that is flattened for the eye, that’s rendered for the eye which is the one sense most easily fooled to begin with.
Nobody knew better than me and the other people in that room that this was just computer code but it felt like a spirit had moved through the room and knocked all these phones off the table.
For pilots there is no reality except the one right in front of them.
Singular focus in which the eye is looking at rather than around. It diminishes reality. It closes it down. Because as it turns out for the driver as for most everybody here, reality is understood to be the whole world around us, not just that thing in front of us.
They’re inventing new ways to see, rather than new things to look at. And rather than inventing new places to go, they are inventing kind of new ways to travel. Because the whole thing is there’s no shortage of stuff in the world and things to see and enjoy. Reality is plenty, thanks.
Urbanode running from an Android Phone from VURB on Vimeo. The movie shows an Android phone controlling the stagelights at the Melkweg using a colour picker on a webpage.
I’m quite proud to have been part of the local systems integration crew of Urbanode with the steps we made on controlling environments using web technology. The movie above shows my laptop connected to a lighting panel in the Melkweg running an OLAD (Open Lighting Architecture) server talking ARTNET/DMX to talk with the panel and the urbsville NodeJS application that exposes the available lights as an interface on a webpage for the Android phone.
So the flow is as follows:
So starting with colours and intensities of lights, the next step is being able to hookup arbitrary properties of any kind of device and making it all work solidly so application developers, lighting specialists and game designers can get ahold of this technology.
A lot of this is still quite abstract and the technology setup is pretty cutting edge but this is an essential building block for moving forward. Being able to control physical devices using Javascript has already been possible as has service discovery in spaces (tons of demos by Philips, Sun and the likes). Urbanode breaks out of the local application cul-de-sac and exposes everything straight to the web using the web’s most native control language: Javascript. This is a big step in totally commoditizing device control and normalizing and expanding the scale of operation.
This has been blogged about already by the Urbanode team “Prototypes for discoverable services in public space”, “Alpha Release: Urbanode” and picked up by Bruce Sterling on Wired. I would encourage you to go to github and clone the code and tell us what you think.
We hebben bij ons op de studio in @ouroffice binnenkort twee bureau’s vrij. Wil je op bureau met de leukste en creatiefste mensen van het Volkskrantgebouw —Eric, Maarten en ik— roep dan en we kunnen kijken of het past.
Koffie, internet, bureau en andere voorzieningen reeds aanwezig. Dus je kunt er direct in. De huur is een koopje voor de locatie en het kantoor is één van de mooisten in het gebouw. Kom eens kijken als je interesse hebt en/of neem contact op met mij.
Mensen die me kennen weten dat ik er nogal heftige meningen over de stad op na houdt. Veel is goed, maar veel kan ook beter en ik zou die verbeteringen graag zien en eraan bijdragen.
Zo twitterde ik wat met Sebastiaan Capel, stadsdeelraadlid voor D66 in Amsterdam die in zijn twitterprofiel Jane Jacobs heeft staan1. Dat is een goed begin, maar waar blijven dan de verbeteringen in de stad? Zeker aangezien een eerder onderzoek liet zien dat D66 één van de auto-vriendelijkste partijen in Amsterdam is.
Dus kwamen we bij elkaar voor één van Sebastiaans stadsgesprekken, waarvan het verslag nu op zijn site staat:
Het is een leefbare stad, het is hier prettig toeven, maar ik merk wel dat er heel weinig gebeurt, juist omdat iedereen het wel OK vindt. Ik vind dat je breder moet kijken, maar het overgrote deel wil dat niet, die zijn tevreden zoals het is. (“Stadsgesprek #4 Alper Cugun over 24-uurs economie en vertrutting”)
Een en ander behoeft misschien nog toelichting maar het was vroeg en we gingen hard, dus ik ben heel blij dat dit eruit is voortgekomen. De uitspraak over de 24 hour diner is trouwens van Ben Hammersley, maar hij vindt het vast niet erg dat ik hem geleend heb (voor een goed doel).
D66 lijkt op het moment de vriendelijkste partij voor “De Stad”. Nu kijken wat er verandert.
Last week I attended the Design Mind Salon with Bill Buxton (our hero) as one of its speakers. I managed to jot down some quotes by him. All of these are paraphrases but they’re good ones:
Great design does not come from a great designer or a great department. It comes from a culture.
Mos people who talk about the importance of design do not know who makes the design decisions. Most people who are making design decisions do not know they are doing so, or have the competence to do so.
If you cannot toss your ideas out, you will go nowhere.
Agility of mind and humor to come to great solutions. Play is fundamental to creative thinking and design.
To go from invention to maturity (billion dollar industry) takes 20 years on average. You don’t have to predict the future, you just need to know the last ten years.
The ideas are lying right in front of us. They are waiting to be picked up by people who see them. We need people who serve as a Geiger counter.
Think of a musician, cinematographer, artist who does not know the history of their discipline. Now find a designer.
The only way to engineer the future tomorrow is to live in it yesterday.
Smart home already exists in cars. People don’t think about this as architecture.
They see the world through different eyes and in different ways. Because they are trained to do so and they try really hard at it.
If you do not have the broadest base of experience to bing to the question, why do you expect to be better than the competition?
The Renaissance man is dead long live the Renaissance organization.
Competent designers have theory and technique not only vision. You don’t need inspiration. This is not art, this is business. Creativity can be learned and improved upon. You need to practice.
Bits of Freedom did a terrific job hosting a salon with Eben Moglen this afternoon at The Hub. As Mr. Moglen did, I am going to take the liberty of assuming you already know who he is1 and I’m going to proceed to write a biased view of the afternoon.
I love Bits of Freedom in its current incarnation to death —all its members are trerific people too— and I support their causes though I’m often vocally critical of certain approaches, ideas and dogmas of the privacy movement.
Everything taken into account though, BoF are our own stalwart bastion in the fight for digital freedom so I suggest you support them.
Anyway, to get going:
Many of the points raised today with regards to control, power and its properties, the interregnum moment we find ourselves in, xenofobia, databases, anonymity are highly pertinent to the current global political environment. Mr. Moglen is a gifted speaker with a broad legal and historical perspective which is awesome.
There are a bunch of issues that I find pertinent that seem not to be touched upon within the current movement and this piece is one way of getting them out into the open and out into the Google.
I managed to get one question in that got misinterpreted and had a lively debate afterwards with Mr. Moglen about the cultural cleft between designers and hackers.
What is often a risk with the hacker/counter-cultural attitude to technology is that any protest you have against the current state of things can be interpreted as a plea to abolish said technology and go back to the prior state.
Mr. Moglen had some part in this with his plea against digital payment methods and contactless transit payment (de OV-chipkaart).
I know he wasn’t for abolishing these things, but the more extreme outliers in the privacy movement either want to or they want to cripple these systems with freedom to such an extent that they become unusable or their utility becomes compromised. Sometimes these point of views are porpagated with such a disconnect to the larger part of society that it borders on Luddism. I think that is a real risk.
What the privacy movement needs to do is to speak out clearly for the benefits of these technologies. I clearly see the value of the OV-chipkaart and any plea for rolling back the system back to the strippenkaart is ludicrous on a variety of levels. Even if the OV-chipkaart is as Mr. Moglen stated: a policeman in every tram.
The benefits and the need for technological and service innovation in society are clear and that is not where this battle should be fought.
The challenge should be: how to create these systems and in the meantime also safeguard our privacy and freedom. What legislation needs to be carried through in mandates and audits in such a way as to not compromise or hamstring the design and yield usable, pleasant and secure systems. That is a big challenge, but it is the only one.
The track record of the free software movement when it comes to usability and consumer appeal over the past decades has not been stellar2. In netbooks and other devices adoption is increasing but the frontier has been moved on to mobile devices and on to closed (but tempting) app platforms.
Mr. Moglen talked about the freedom box which is going to be a plug which you can put in your complete personal computing surface which will store your media and backups, intermediate your necessary services, talk to your cell phone and federate with suitable social services. This is the vision.
From an experience point of view this is going to be a hell of a nut to crack. We already have best of breed applications that serve most of these ends3. These are already crystallized, have tremendously talented people working for them and have massive network effects. Building functional parity services is going to take a lot of time, these are probably not going to be as interesting, usable or seductive as their proprietary counterparts and in the meantime those will have moved the goalposts.
There may be a large opportunity for such a device in the developing world and free culture innovation out of China or Brazil could help improve such a thing massively, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
The broader problem is that both designers are not very keen to work on open source projects (though that is changing) and that open source projects are not very keen on design input. Yes, anybody can fork a project and build something ‘better’, but the division of effort is not useful while the division of labour within a project: programmer program, designer design, would be more welcome.
My discussion with Mr. Moglen served as a reminder how immense this cultural divide is and frankly I don’t think it is bridgeable in any traditional way4. It gets mired in assumptions on technology use, problems that need solving and a misunderstanding of what people (users) actually want and value in software.
So in short: freedom without usability does not amount to much. I consider myself rather well versed in these issues but I use Apple products and Facebook5. If all the knowledge within the movement cannot deter me, then 1. imagine the general public and 2. realize that it is not an education problem we are dealing with.
So the free personal webserver is a great vision and a lofty goal, but mind that the goalposts are being moved once again and that before that project is done society may have changed under our feet.
I asked a question about this but that seemed to be so far from out field that it got misunderstood and turned into something about wireless net neutrality.
The issue is this: We have a rich set of rules and affordances governing access to and rights in public space and the built environment. With the wiring and virtualization of public space, how can we proactively codify similar rules for these new situations to create generally good outcomes?
What I meant by the wiring of public space is the fact that every object from lanterns and traffic lights to every brick and tile can and will have an internet connection (think Everyware). Construction companies and IBM are pitching this stuff on greenfield cities and systems already6. We in the old world are somewhat insulated from these developments due to sheer inertia, though we already have near perfect parking camera surveillance.
The virtualization of public space is nearing with the linking of real life and online be it conceptually or in full blown AR. Object and facial recognition, real-time image processing and filtering and differentation/personalization are going to have large scale effects. Imagine coupling this with ad supported carrier provided AR displays and things get really hairy really quickly.
I think this is going to have large scale repercussions7 and it would be good if the privacy movement had its eye on this ball as well (yes, there are many balls), however nascent it might seem at this moment.
Update: This discussion is exactly one touched upon by Zittrain in his “The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It”:
But people do not buy PCs as insurance policies against appliances that limit their freedoms, even though PCs serve exactly this vital function. People buy them to perform certain tasks at the moment of acquisition. (Chapter 3)
I went to the penultimate day of the Matisse to Malevich exposition in the Amsterdam Hermitage for some visual inspiration.
Stunning works by Matisse, especially his red room:
Not much a fan of the inbetweenist fauvist works on display, though most of them looked nice. The various Picassos strewn about were a welcome distraction.
Like I tweeted, you have all this colour and style and visual artistry, and then you get: Malevich. Black Square; game, set and match.
Hard to imagine a bigger “Fuck you!”
Others have done this, but these are my thoughts.
Glad to hear I’m not the only one thinking of Maneki Neko all the time. I have been since I first read it years back. And of course also always thinking of food and travel, of the Primer, Jason Bourne and executing a minimal material lifestyle.
How does this work? Can I tag others? Maybe some Dutch people for a change (Dutch allowed, English preferred): Kars Alfrink (thanks!), Olaf Koens, Jaap Stronks, Ernst-Jan Pfauth, Anne Helmond1
Terwijl we aan de andere kant een strijd voeren voor vrij beschikbare openbaar vervoersinformatie is het openbaar vervoer zelf in een ‘wereldstad’ als Amsterdam nog een zooitje.
Op dit moment is de hele metrolijn van Amstel naar Centraal dicht vanwege onderhoud aan de roltrappen (!). Dat is op zich al WTF. Nog erger is dat er ruzie is tussen een aannemer en de gemeente en dat daardoor de metro volgende zomer weer dicht moet1.
Op de Wibautstraat rijden nu elke vijf minuten vier bussen heen en weer (dat is dus waarom iets als een NZ-lijn nodig is). De stad kan zo’n aannemer op zo’n punt dan niet breken, gek genoeg.
Dus missen de belangrijkste metro-verbinding in de stad maar het GVB maakt nog steeds bakken vol met winst (€150’000 per maand) mede door een geïntroduceerde gebruikersfout in de OV-chipkaart:
Een doorslaand succes die ov-chipkaart alleen niet voor de reiziger. Dat de OV-chipkaart slecht ontworpen is wisten we al. Er moet een chipkaart zijn, maar als we vastzitten aan hetzelfde slechte ontwerp zonder enige mogelijkheid tot verbetering dan liever niet.
Some notes, this time not ordered by day, but by theme.
A bunch of conceptual and game design progress for Ebi. We created a concept which is fun, viral and not impossible to implement given the time we have. Also big thanks for the baristas at Brandmeester’s for keeping the creativity fueled.
Coffee at Stumptown with @mosselman and @remcojanssen. Signup at the mental stimulation Google Wave (still a free spot left for this week!).
I attended all three days of the Mediamatic Mapping Festival. There was a lot of familiar stuff there but still saw some interesting things (see Monster Swell’s tweets) and talked to some cool people (among who catalogtree). The amount of interactive data visualizations was somewhat disappointing. It is about time we transformed data and insight into read/write media.
Some writing:
Some updates on Haïtinu.nl a site I have been working on.
I was already in the habit of starting my mornings drinking the best coffee in Amsterdam at Stumptown and would regularly chat with the mayor. After planning some morning meetings there, getting an early start, drinking great coffee and having a good conversation with people you’d normally not talk to, proved to be a good idea.
So I opened a collaborative document with my free spots to see if people would be interested in meeting. Early, just for coffee and just for an hour. This is going quite nicely so far, and I’m going to see if I can fill it up for the entire duration of Stumptown’s run here in Amsterdam.
I’ve still got a free spot for next week and will post my schedule for the week after shortly. Signup at the Wave:
I recently got glasses to make my vision even better than it already is. Nothing wrong with my eyes, but once you’ve seen the difference in sharpness, you do not want to go back. For me it’s an augment:
Talking about augmented reality, this piece of design fiction by the guys at Layar is very convincing to show that AR definitely is going to be a big deal. Here’s to all the naysayers:
This week I biked past Zeeburgereiland on my bike route from the Eastern Docks to IJburg and all I saw was completely desolation and this billboard. I had wanted to bike along side the IJ but this part of the city is so unfinished larg pieces of it are inaccessible.
This is what it looks like through the fence:
I completely forgot the text on the billboard and had a hard time finding the place. Google Maps doesn’t even know it yet1. Just look at Street View.
My trusty neighborhood council member Jan-Bert Vroege is usually available to answer these kind of questions for me and he pointed me towards the right site.
It’s going to be the site of some significant development in the near future. It’s odd that in developing IJburg the city skipped over this part and is only now beginning to fill it in.
The site points to a fantastic concept at the site of the current silo’s to build an art house, playground, museum and restaurant with a fabulous view and attractive position: the Annie M.G. Schmidt house.
Looking forward to this, but curious if the exurbs of the city beyond where I live (Diemen + Bijlmer) will ever be (re)developed or if we’ve forsaken those to become multicultural ghettos:
I biked on to IJburg and large swaths of that area still are empty and being built and filled in. Most people won’t remember how long it took for tram 26 to be extended there or when the first supermarket opened (is there one now even?).
Some nice parts too:
Concerning that part of urban development we can learn a lot of the prefab cities being erected in the East (take Dan Hill’s account of New Songdo). I know it takes time to fill up residential units and some amount of organic growth/frontier mentality is good, but is it that hard to have basic amenities in place when the first people arrive there?
This Wednesday was Foursquare Day, but I don’t know who went. We just had ours recently and I just dug up the pictures from my camera:
Een kleine fietstocht lansg het IJ voor een toekomstig project:
Via Johan Schaap kwam ik op het spoor van een popup store van Stumptown Coffee Roasters hier in Amsterdam op de Albert Cuyp (4sq).
Popup stores zijn vet en nu is de Albert Cuyp niet het armoedigste deel van de stad wat betreft caffeïne-toevoer, maar zoals in het artikel in de Times ook te lezen staat:
I’ve gotten to really know the city. But I’ve tried to find good coffee, and it’s been challenging. It’s way underdeveloped compared to the U.S., or even London or Scandinavia.
Dat is serieus waar. Mensen hebben hier geen smaak of budget voor goede koffie. In de meeste café’s krijg je een verbrande halve kop espresso, met enkele goede uitzonderingen. Het personeel (‘baristas’ hebben we hier niet) neemt het werk ook niet serieus en is niet ontvankelijk voor constructief commentaar.
Laatst bij de Koffiesalon kreeg ik van de jongen achter de bar triomfantelijk “nog een beetje extra melk”in mijn kopje gekwakt. De koffie die je uitserveert is goed, of hij is het niet. Rot op met je extra beetje melk.
Ik verheug me op mijn eerste bezoek aan Stumptown. Het moet wel goed zijn. Slechter kan in elk geval niet.
Update:
Ik ben er geweest en de koffie is er inderdaad fantastisch. Nu maar hopen dat ze blijven.
Een nieuw gedicht van onze Dichter des Vaderlands “Een mooie dag om stilte te verscheuren”:
Ik stond trouwens dinsdagavond ook op de Dam.
Verbazingwekkend snel en pijnloos:
Dat balletje is om in te knijpen als de afname te langzaam gaat. Dan kun je dus bloed helpen eruit te pompen. Maar als je nogal ongeduldig en competitief bent ingesteld en je krijgt zo’n balletje in je handen gedrukt, ga je natuurlijk direct knijpen. Wedstrijdje wie het eerste een pint bloed eruit perst?
Over 10 weken weer. Nu nog de Sanquin Foursquare Badge1.
Doe hier de test of je ook bloed mag geven.
Dit gedicht van Ramsey Nasr had ik gemist. Hier het Hemelse Leven.
Van een bijzondere schoonheid weer.
Just saw this picture of the Wellington RFID farecard system at Adam Greenfield’s Flickr stream (CC-by-nc-sa photograph):
It’s called a Snapper card.
Compare this to the London based Oyster card:
And the Hong Kong Octopus card:
This international sea food theme makes me think that we have definitely missed a branding opportunity here (and this for a country of fishermen). Our entire OV-chipkaart system1 has been grossly underdesigned on all fronts, so no surprises there2.
So I’ve got two proposed alternative names for our low countries farecard system:
or
How do we get this change implemented? And anybody care to mockup a concept?
De OV-chipkaart is een groot succes in de Amsterdamse metro. Het aantal zwartrijders is afgenomen en navenant ook het aantal geweldsincidenten.
Mooi en nog meer onbegrip voor de mensen die tegen de ov-chipkaart zijn. Hij mag nog wel verbeterd worden, maar de waarde van de chipkaart is nu duidelijk bewezen.
De GVB zegt in de pers dat het niet mogelijk is om de harde kern van zwartrijders aan te pakken. Ik denk meer dat het een kwestie is van niet willen of dat de kosten niet opwegen tegen de baten. Het is de vraag in hoeverre je de kieren dicht van een veiligheidssysteem.
Ik post dit even hier omdat de GVB een van de meest gesloten en niet web-savvy bedrijven van Nederland is, dus voor de lezers zonder enige hoop van wederhoor.
1.
Wat mij een paar keer is gebeurd is dat er een marginaal iemand vlak achter je mee door de poortjes glipt. Ik ben meestal te in gedachten verzonken met muziek op om het snel op te merken, maar de mensen van het GVB die bij die poortjes staan DOEN NIKS. Wat hebben ze dan voor zin? En wat kan ik er dan van zeggen als de mensen van het GVB het goed vinden wat er gebeurt?
2.
Evenzo mensen die poortjes intrappen: doorseinen via beveiligingscamera’s, metro waar ze in zitten subtiel vertraging laten oplopen en ze door politie op het volgende station uit de metro laten trekken, onder curatele stellen en dwingen schade te vergoeden.
Het kan wél als je het maar wilt.
Er is een beweging in Amsterdam van onverstandige en enigszins bekende mensen die tegen de Noord/Zuidlijn zijn.
Afgelopen week nog een flyer op de site van Thomas Schlijper. Schlijper is een fotograaf die leuke foto’s maakt van het centrum van Amsterdam. Voor de grootstedelijke ontwikkeling moeten we iets verder kijken.
picture by Wynand van Poortvliet
Zeker nu kunnen we het ons niet permitteren om dan €3.1 miljard weg te gooien. Amsterdam heeft dringend beter openbaar vervoer nodig om de verschillende stadsdelen en vooral het Amsterdam bÃnnen de ring met het Amsterdam búiten de ring te verbinden.
Tegen zijn is zó makkelijk. De partijen die tegen zijn, zijn de SP1 en enkele marginale politieke bewegingen. ‘Politici’ met een gebrek aan basale economische kennis (en een dosis gezond verstand)2. Voor hen hier een klein lesje.
De economische term Sunk cost gaat over wat je al hebt uitgegeven aan een project. Aangezien je dat geld niet terug kunt krijgen kun je het uitgegeven bedrag voor toekomstige beslissingen beter negeren.
Dit gaat niet blind op maar het is een handig concept om in het achterhoofd te houden. Zeker in grote projecten kan er op een gegeven moment niet meer gestopt worden door de sunk cost. Daar komen het Sunk Cost dilemma en de uitspraak ‘throwing good money after bad’ vandaan.
Er is dus geen kant en klaar kort antwoord op dit probleem. De afweging of je door moet gaan met het project moet uiteindelijk gemaakt op basis van de waarde van het uiteindelijke resultaat.
Wat zijn dus de totale kosten van stoppen?
De discussie moet zich richten op hoe groot je alle kosten schat. Ik schat de Afwikkelingskosten als verwaarloosbaar, de Opportunity cost als gigantisch4 en de Morele kosten als onverteerbaar. In de discussie gevoerd door de tegenstanders richt men zich op het beetje ongemak wat we nu in de stad hebben en de kosten die er de komende tien jaar nog te verwachten zijn.
Een partij oprichten en wat schreeuwen voor de verkiezingen kunnen heel veel mensen hebben we gezien. Vijftig jaar ver kijken, een visie formuleren en impopulaire beslissingen nemen is veel minder mensen gegeven.
Ik ben sinds een tijdje lid van D66 tot redelijke tevredenheid. Maar nu doe ik net de Stemwijzer voor de gemeente Amsterdam en daar komt het volgende uit:
Nu kloppen Stemwijzers nooit helemaal, maar ik heb toch redelijk wat verschillen met D66 in Amsterdam1. Dat boeit me niet heel veel, want ik ben vooral geïnteresseerd in de landelijke politiek maar het heeft toch wel wat toelichting nodig.
Ik doe dit uit aardigheid met D66 en met het idee dat je juist naar je eigen partij kritisch moet zijn. Elke andere partij (ook GroenLinks) zou er veel bekaaider van afkomen.
Hier de verschillen:
Ik: Oneens
D66: Eens
Wat mij betreft mogen de parkeertarieven in Amsterdam geleidelijk opgehoogd wordt net zoals je een kikker in een pan kunt koken door geleidelijk de temperatuur omhoog te doen en mogen de vrijblijvende parkeerplaatsen langzamerhand teruggegeven worden aan de burgers van Amsterdam. Het is mijn mening dat het getuigt van enigszins beperkte verstandelijke vermogens als je je in Amsterdam voortbeweegt met de auto.
Het blijkt dus dat D66 nogal een partij is voor de autobelangen2. Daar komen we zo nog eens op terug.
Ik: Eens
D66: Geen van beide
Zie vorig punt. Hoe minder auto’s in de stad hoe beter.
Ik: Oneens
D66: Geen van beide
Geen uitgesproken mening van D66 wel van mij. Als je al begint met segregatie en minderwaardigheid in de inburgeringscursus, waar blijf je dan? Als ze dan wegblijven, ze met zachte tot harde dwang toch naar de cursus halen.
Ik: Eens
D66: Oneens
Ik vind topsport vet. Wat mij betreft niet echt een breekpunt.
Ik: Oneens
D66: Geen van beide
Cameratoezicht op straat draagt er weinig aan bij de veiligheid te vergroten zeggen alle mensen die er verstand van hebben3. En we hadden het al over het zwakke privacy-track record van D66, daar kun je deze dan weer bij optellen.
Ik: Eens
D66: Geen van beide
Tunnels zijn cool. En als je dan wegen moet aanleggen waarom dan niet uit het zicht?
Ik: Oneens
D66: Eens
Ik heb geen idee welke criteria hiervoor gehaald moeten worden en waarom de overheid zich hiermee zou moeten bemoeien.
Ik: Eens
D66: Geen van beide
In de verziekte vastgoedmarkt moeten er dingen blijven om de macht van speculanten in te perken. Dat CDA/VVD allebei voor een kraakverbod zijn is al genoeg reden om er tegen te zijn.
Ik: Oneens
D66: Eens
Diversiteit van amusement en ervaringen hoort wat mij betreft bij een grote stad. Ik ben er ook niet voor om Artis te sluiten.
Ik: Eens
D66: Oneens
Onbegrijpelijk. D66 is gewoon een autopartij. Parkeerplaatsen in de stad zijn dode ruimte. Er is op veel plaatsen nauwelijks ruimte om je fiets neer te zetten en meer speelruimte in de stad is ook eenzijdig goed.
Ik: Oneens
D66: Geen van beide
Ik ben hier eigenlijk voor maar ik vind het dom om dingen verplicht te stellen waar je met een stevige (structurele, eenvoudige) subsidie hetzelfde effect zou kunnen bereiken.
Ik: Geen van beide
D66: Oneens
Ik heb geen flauw idee welke bestuurlijk kwesties hier spelen. Het kan me eerlijk gezegd ook niet heel veel schelen.
Ik: Eens
D66: Oneens
Ik heb heel veel bezwaren op de stedelijk ontwikkeling zoals die in Amsterdam plaats vindt. Voor diversiteit in je buurt lijkt het me toch noodzakelijk dat er gemengd gebouwd wordt.
Op de Zuidas komen bijvoorbeeld series woontorens met alleen maar dure huizen waardoor je een yuppie-ghetto krijgt4. Het resultaat is een gebied met een ontzettende schrale publieke ruimte.
Ik: Oneens
D66: Eens
Wat mij betreft is de stadswacht een werkverschaffingsproject met beperkt nut waar mensen al teveel bevoegdheden hebben. Ze blinken erin uit om fietsers terecht te wijzen maar op probleemlocaties en moeilijke tijden (‘s nachts) zijn ze nooit te vinden. Nog meer bevoegdheden is een slecht plan.
Update: En uit Kieskompas komen eerst een paar vage randpartijen bovenaan voor er een half zinnig resultaat uit rolt. Zoals Frank zegt inderdaad kansloos en nodig toe aan verbetering. Mochten de organisaties advies willen voor een statistisch beter resultaat en een gebruiksvriendelijkere site, kunnen ze altijd contact opnemen.
Na het radio-item van vorige week staat nu het filmpje dat Lody en Annejan vanochtend van me schoten bij Dwaze Zaken nu online op NOS Headlines.
Ik weet nog niet helemaal wat ik ervan moet denken dat ik hiervoor gevraagd wordt, maar het is wel erg leuk om te doen.
Afgelopen weekend was ik ook bij de nieuwjaarsborrel van D66 Amsterdam in het kader van de gemeenteraadsverkiezingen die er aankomen. Ik heb toen samen met wat anderen wat video’s gemaakt van de verschillende lijsttrekkers, gemeenteraadsleden en andere belangrijke D66’ers (ook van Alexander Pechtold en Boris van der Ham) in de komende periode voor het D66 Amsterdam videokanaal.
Simpele middelen, een Kodak Zi8 met externe microfoon en one-takes zonder nabewerking. Videotechnisch is het dan ook niet geweldig, maar inhoudelijk is het resultaat (gezien de middelen) meer dan aardig.
Afgelopen donderdag werd ik samen met de manager van Dwaze Zaken en de burgermeester geïnterviewd (Radio 1 link1) voor Radio1 over Foursquare. Foursquare het mobiele spel, vrienden-vinder en sociale gids die we afgelopen jaar naar Amsterdam hebben gehaald en dat nu ook overal speelbaar is.
Leuk om het terug te horen van vrienden. Ik wist zelf niet wanneer het uitgezonden zou worden2. Ik had wel een uur over toepassingen van internet in horeca en locatie gebaseerde diensten en spellen kunnen praten denk ik, maar als je maar een minuutje hebt dan sneuvelen er nogal wat leuke dingen bij de montage.
Hier nog even het belang van mobiele spellen. Dit soort mobiele toepassingen en spellen werkt om drie redenen (die elkaar versterken):
Dat past niet in twee minuten radio.
Ik schreef hier al eerder dat de ov-chipkaart kut1 is. Het is nog steeds kut.
Hier moet ik even een filmpje van schieten om het voelbaar te maken. Er staan tijdens de spits rijen voor de poortjes. Op station Amstel blokkeren groepen mensen de roltrappen boven op de perrons omdat ze daar in- en uitchecken (wat niet de bedoeling is). En de poortjes zijn gewoonweg niet snel genoeg.
Je kunt niet op spits-snelheid door een poortje heen lopen. Als ik dan probeer om het poortje open te beuken krijg ik een grote bek van de beveiliging die natuurlijk ook niet beter weet.
Laatst kwam ik met de trein aan op Amstel en wilde toen overstappen op de metro. Inderhaast kon ik niet de juiste terminal vinden of lukte het chippen niet. Gevolg is dat ik bij het uitchecken bij de metro vervolgens €4 kwijt was.
In- en uitchecken bij het overstappen is een ronduit achterlijk ontwerpfalen en legt de complexiteit bij de gebruiker. Een gigantische no-no in user centered design. Verbeterscenario: je checkt op één plek in en ergens anders uit en het systeem berekent zelf de goedkoopste route tussen die twee punten en brengt dat in rekening.
Een automatisch betalingssysteem moet minder werk opleveren voor eindgebruikers, niet meer.
Nu wil ik die €4 terugclaimen bij de GVB (meer uit principe dan wat dan ook). Nu is het al bizar dat dat bij de GVB moet en niet bij de centrale betalingsafhandelaar: de ov-chipkaart.
Bij het GVB moet je een PDF-formulier downloaden, uitprinten en terugsturen. Als je ze opbelt, willen ze je wel een formulier met antwoordenvelop toesturen2.
De transactie waar het om gaat kan ik op ov-chipkaart.nl nog steeds niet zien. Daarvoor kreeg ik van GVB het nummer van TLS3 0900-09804 zodat ik met hen kon bellen over de website. Die website is zó slecht, dat het goed zou zijn als iedereen dat nummer belde over de website. Misschien dat ze er dan iets aan doen.
Het is niet erg dat dit allemaal niet perfect is gelukt in de eerste poging. Het is een complex proces en de eerste versie is redelijk goed gelukt. Het systeem heeft geen grootschalige outages gehad, en saldo opladen en reizen met de ov-chipkaart werkt.
Het is wel erg dat de ontwikkeling nu compleet gestagneerd is en er niet geluisterd wordt naar gebruikerswensen. Er was een forum waarop mensen hun ideeën, wensen en bezwaren kwijt konden, maar de terugkoppeling daar was bijzonder slecht en het is nu ook opgeheven5.
Het neerzetten van een ov-chipkaart is het begin, daarna begint een continu proces van kaizen, van het verbeteren van de dienstverlening, en het beter aanpassen aan de gebruikerswensen. Dat is de enige manier om een gebruiksvriendelijk systeem te krijgen en te houden en dat is toch wat we willen?
Tuesday, December 8th, we had the first issue of the UX Book Club Amsterdam chapter.
Dirk Geurs and myself along with Bart Schoenmakers had seen the runaway international success of UX Book Clubs and wondered why there wasn’t an Amsterdam edition yet. I visited the Zuid-Holland edition organized by Jeroen van Geel when I was still living in Delft and that was definitely a lot of fun.
Because it’s an open source initiative, having this itch means you get to scratch it yourself. So we got cracking. We rounded up some interest (thanks Peter Boersma), made a page on the wiki and one on LinkedIn (Join the LinkedIn Group if you want to participate!) and got it underway.
One hurdle (or maybe I should call it an advantage) is that because none of us can provide a location1, we need somebody in the book club to sponsor every event. This is some extra work but it also adds some variety to every event. Also, if you want to participate and your office has room to spare to have 10-15 people talk about a book for an hour or two, get in touch!
The first event was graciously hosted by Stijn Nieuwendijk from valsplat. An awesome user research (very important!) firm based in Amsterdam.
The first book the group chose to read was “The Back of the Napkin” by Dan Roam about clarifying ideas and solving problems using simple drawing and visual methods.
There was food (though we shouldn’t count on this in the future):
There was discussion:
And there were back of the napkin sketches, this one depicting the UX Book Club process:
The discussion was too wide spread and far to summarize coherently, but I think I can try a one paragraph version:
The main concensus was that The Back of the Napkin was not a complicated but still quite a good book with some simple methods to use drawing and visual problem solving in a business context. For UX practitioners who are already well versed with visual methods, drawing and dealing with large amounts of information, the techniques laid out in the book may be overly familiar. I still thought it was nice to have everything laid out in a coherent framework. All in all an interesting book, but more suited for our non-visual colleagues.
The event being a success we are now looking forward to the next one. It’s not a very difficult event to organize (though it is a lot more work than you would suspect) but having one under the belt can only make the next one easier and better. We now already have a venue for the next event (to be announced shortly) and will be starting the book choice.
For the book choice we are still looking for a method that will ensure enough interest so that the people voting for the final book will also be present for the event.
So stay tuned, watch the LinkedIn group and I hope to see you at a future UX Book Club.
Veel geluiden over de NZ-lijn de laatste tijd: “besluit aanleg Noord-Zuidlijn was verkeerd”. Azijnpissers die op elke fout in het proces zeiken, mensen die twijfelen aan het nut van de operatie1. Er is zelfs serieus overwogen om ermee te stoppen door bijv. een nieuwe politieke partij.
Wat mij betreft moet de NZ-lijn er komen en nog tien door de hele Randstad heen. Bereikbaarheid is essentieel en die paar verzakte huizen zijn geen ramp, de stad is wel meer veranderd gedurende de afgelopen honderd jaar.
De mensen die voor het stoppen zijn getuigen van een onbeschrijfelijke lafheid die ik niet kan toestaan in mijn stad. Nu stoppen zou heel Amsterdam opzadelen met een collectief trauma voor de komende 50 jaar.
Er is nog wel meer over te zeggen en natuurlijk moet het proces beter aangepakt worden, maar er zijn zoveel mensen tegen alle verandering dat ik me als tegenwicht genoodzaakt zie vóór elke verandering te zijn (tweet).
Ik ben eenduidig voor de ov-chipkaart. De cognitieve moeite die het bespaart bij het reizen in het openbaar vervoer (temminste als je simpele routes gebruikt en niet overstapt op de trein) is geweldig.
Maar er zijn toch nog wel genoeg irritaties. Dus ik ben voor de ov-chipkaart maar ik ben zeker ook voor een betere ov-chipkaart dan dat we nu hebben. In de implementatie hebben de ontwerpers van het systeem de bal grof laten vallen.
Brenno de Winter somt mijn irritaties en meer netjes op in dit artikel op Webwereld, met als belangrijkste:
24. De vervoerder staat centraal
Het hele systeem lijkt er vooral zo gemaakt dat het de vervoerders het leven makkelijker maakt en de reizigers maar ten dele, en soms geheel niet. De vervoerder krijgt ‘eerlijker’ betaald voor zijn geleverde diensten. Overal waar problemen ontstaan, wordt de hete aardappel naar de reiziger geschoven. Niet de klant, maar de leverancier is koning. (Webwereld)
Er heeft geen enkel inclusief, toegankelijk, gebruikersgericht ontwerp plaats gevonden (of als het dat heeft gedaan, zijn de resultaten bijzonder mager1 ).
Voor wie werken die vervoerders nu eigenlijk?
Like I said yesterday, I added support for the Amsterdam subway to fakesubwayapis and fakesubwayapis-data. My forks: gae-fakesubwayapis and gae-fakesubwayapis-data.
I hope Aaron includes this code sometime soon.
Further support including all the other transit modalities, GPS coordinates and routes should follow but no idea yet when I’ll find the time.
Thanks Kilian for the indispensable git-advice.
And Kars noticed that there’s a flurry of activity around the digital city these weeks in the Netherlands. Tonight Visible Cities in De Verdieping, Urban Screens this Friday at the same and Terrains Vagues next week at Tumult in Utrecht.
Update: And my code and data are now in the mainline and browsable at the application.
New city, new group, same rituals:
Ik hou van veel en lekker eten en ik merk dat ik daarmee in het buitenland beter terecht kan dan in Amsterdam. Hier een paar restaurant-tips die voor mij in Amsterdam ontbreken en waarvan ik denk dat ze weleens een succes kunnen worden.
Mochten ze al bestaan dan hoor ik het graag. Mocht iemand ze willen beginnen dan zou ik het erg op prijs stellen.
De Burgermeester is mijn voorbeeld van zo’n niche in de Amsterdamse horeca die niet bediend werd. Hier is recent de Burgermesteer geopend en deze loopt nu prima.
Voordat de Burgermeester er was, moest je heel goed zoeken in Amsterdam om een grote culinaire burger te kunnen vinden1. De burger had hier blijkbaar teveel een fast food associatie en was verplicht smerig.
Succesvoorbeelden uit het buitenland genoeg en dan in het bijzonder de Burgermeister, Marienburger en Kreuzburger-achtige tenten in Berlijn.
Je ziet ze heel veel in Californië en Texas, de taquerÃas waar je voor weinig geld een goed gevulde burrito met vlees, bonen en rijst met daarbij hete sausen, guacamole en nachos kunt krijgen. Er gaat geen dag voorbij dat ik niet aan een burrito denk. Toen ik in San Francisco was at ik het ongeveer om de dag. Als ik er ooit heen zou verhuizen, zouden de taquerÃas een belangrijke reden daarvoo zijn.
In Europa bestaat er al een imitatie in de vorm van Dolores vlakbij Alexanderplatz in Berlijn. Kenners vinden het misschien niet vergelijkbaar, maar het is heel fijn om in de Duitse winterkou dit stukje Californië tegen te komen.
In Amsterdam is er bij mij in de buurt de Taco Shop die ik nog moet uitproberen, maar meer keuze zou niet gek zijn.
Update: The Taco Shop uitgeprobeerd en deze was best ok en ook goede prijs/kwantiteitsverhouding. Geen burritos verpakt in aluminiumfolie zoals ik gewend ben, maar goed te eten. Volgende keer de Chimichanga bestellen.
Meestal moet ik er niet aan denken om na het uitgaan complete burgermaaltijden of stacks van pannekoeken met maple syrup weg te moeten werken, maar als het dan ergens kan, dan in het comfort van een mooie klassieke diner.
Soms heb je gewoon laat nog honger en trek in lekker eten. Daar is in Amsterdam nog steeds moeilijk aan te komen. Waar ga je heen na 0:00 voor niet-shoarma of patat? Ik denk dat één diner-achtig restaurant wat 24 uur per dag open is ergens in het centrum, op heel veel bezoekers kan rekenen.
CC foto door Thomas Hawk
Het ‘gezonde’ fast food van de In ‘n Out Burger heeft als West-Amerikaans fenomeen een allure die moeilijk uit te leggen is. Feit is wel dat de burgers en de frieten er heel lekker zijn en dat het een sympathiek concept is tussen de grote ketens in de Verenigde Staten.
Pas in Shepherdess Cafe in Hackney het klassieke Engelse eten geprobeerd en dat was een succes! Alleen zó jammer dat we dat hier niet hebben; niet een goede plek om Engels eten te eten, niet een serie greasy spoons en eigenlijk helemaal geen plaatsen waar je voor £7 ( = €7) kunt zitten en lekker veel kunt eten.
Ik denk dat deze concepten mits goed uitgevoerd grote successen kunnen worden en in de meeste gevallen niche-vullers zullen zijn (zoals de Burgermeester nu is). Dus een slimme restaurateur kan hier zijn slag slaan en mijn buik vullen. Of moet ik toch naar San Francisco verhuizen?
Ik zit op mijn balkon in de namiddagzon te bellen met een vriend als op de kruising Bertrand Russellstraat / Maliebaan een fietser geraakt wordt door een auto. Die weg gaat vanaf Julianaplein heuvel af de Maliebaan in en fietsers hebben voorrang op auto’s die uit die wijk en vooral uit het kantoorgebouw van Fortis komen maar in de praktijk moet je dondersgoed uitkijken1.
Het afsluiten van die weg voor auto’s is geen optie maar de drempels die er nu liggen zijn wel erg laf. Dus ik heb de situatie meteen aangemeld bij ‘Verbeter de buurt’. Zien of daar iets mee gebeurt.
Het leek me ook boeiend om te kijken of het Parool of AT5 iets doen met dit soort dingen maar dat is vrij karig2. Ik heb het opgestuurd als tip naar AT5 bij ‘weer en verkeer’.
Een fietser die aangereden wordt op een kruising is geen nieuws, behalve voor die fietser zelf (ze was flink boos) en voor ons in de wijk die elke dag over die kruising heen moeten fietsen. Iets wat ook in lijn ligt met dit stuk van Adam Greenfield in Urban Omnibus over Everyblock een site die alles wat er bij jou in de buurt gebeurt verzamelt. Het is geen nieuws dat je in een krant wil lezen, maar het is wel verdomde interessant als je je op die plek bevindt.
Het is helemaal geen gekke gedachte dat een lokaal medium zoals AT5 of het Parool alle noemenswaardige gebeurtenissen, misdaden, ongelukken, vergunningen maar ook buurtzoekertjes en feesten etc. etc. zou verzamelen en gebruiken als lokale context voor het gebied waarover ze schrijven.
Maar gezien de rommeligheid van beide sites, is dat misschien een iets te hoog ambitieniveau. Over het gebrek aan IT-capaciteit bij veel Nederlandse media zit hier nog een stukje in de pijplijn maar het is veelzeggend dat Everyblock is overgenomen door MSNBC.
De broncode voor Everyblock is dankzij de beurs die ze hebben gekregen van de Knight Foundation onder een open licentie beschikbaar gesteld. Ik zeg maar, het is zeker niet makkelijk om een versie voor Nederland te bouwen maar het is wel de toekomst van nieuws dus wel de moeite waard3.
Recently DataSF launched and I’m not very familiar with the concept, but it looks like a step in the right direction for city based data initiatives more or less in line with the “Cities That Think Like the Web” initiative. I still think the holy grail of reusability for government websites is a bit off and can only be combined with excellent websites and web literacy, but we are making progress.
We could pass the Open City Motion here in Amsterdam but there is in fact nothing in it which is new or contradicts current legislature and initiatives regarding open data and open source. It’s all already in place, it just is not being done (properly).
The biggest problem is that the issue is mudlded by a bunch of directives —is this NOIV or some other initiative?—, a lot of people don’t know what they’re doing and the political will and prioritization from the top is missing.
After a significant enough portion of the populace has become more web literate and one or more election cycles have passed we may get a group that will implement this, but I and my early adopter tech friends can’t really wait for that. So what to do?
Jan Chipchase had asked this question recently in a post on this street scene which already had me thinking.
Yesterday I was present at a lecture by Dirk Overduin on some succesful interventions around the use of public space.
It’s hard to strike a balance between the use and abuse/overuse of public space. Mostly perceived ‘abuse’ of public space stems from other social problems (homelessness etc.) and regulating public space too rigidly impoverishes all of us.
Looking at the street scene from China, I’m disappointed that we do not have similar uses of public space here. To be able to play tavla on the sidewalk in the city while drinking çay…
Gecekondu on the island at ARCAM is a fun initiative and they have a full program for the next couple of days so be sure to visit them.
Things are a bit slow in Amsterdam, this being high summer. Having Foursquare (see previous post) and being able to drink some beers in the city now and then does make it a lot more relaxed.
Robert Gaal and I initiated the launch in Amsterdam and it looks like it is really taking off right now. Dutch daily NRC.next wrote a two page spread on the site and quoted me and some others in it. Normally I don’t bother with papers, but I went to our neighborhood store and bought a copy:
It’s a nice balanced overview piece of the service and the trends towards more ubicomp in your nightlife experience. The big question is, these guys have delivered, will anybody else match them in the foreseeable future?
Local social network Hyves is bluffing they will introduce similar functionality but it begs the question why they didn’t already? I’ve seen this concept come by in briefings more times than I care to count and nobody has been able to get the buy-in and pull off the experience.
And when was the last update of the Hyves iPhone App? Or of the Facebook App for that matter?
In other news: There was some drama recently with people from outside of Amsterdam adding venues outside of Amsterdam and getting rebuked by some people within AMS.
Foursquare’s policy is that anybody who wants to play in whatever fashion should be allowed to do so. The data generated can always be filtered better later on using better algorithms and more insight. Just think twice about friending me if you plan on checking in outside of Amsterdam.
I can’t say enough how pleased I am to be riding this bike through the city.
I’ve given her a name but it functions mostly as a teleport to a random location in the city where t < 15m. Already being familiar with the topography of Amsterdam is a plus and tearing through the city, riding faster than most people without any effort1 is fantastic.
Now comes the more difficult task of keeping this bike in this city.
