The fruits of Media Sandbox

I wrote this post for Life | Art | Us on 15 May 2011. Click on the link at the bottom to read the full post.

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Run by Watershed in Bristol, Media Sandbox 2010 was set up to award a series of £10,000 commissions to stimulate innovation in public services and support research and development in innovative content, applications and experiences using open data.

The projects commissioned were not primarily charged with producing services or tools for audiences directly. From what I could gather, the main aim was to try out new ideas and provide people working in local government with tangible examples of creative ‘open data projects’. This aim was born from an acknowledgment that if we want local authorities and governing bodies to get behind open data projects, in the context of driving innovation in public services, a shift in culture is needed.

Here’s some more information about the three projects showcased at FutureEverything 2011.

Read this post in full: The fruits of Media Sandbox.

Futuresonic 2009 round up

I wrote this post for InterventTech on 16 May 2009. Click on the link at the bottom to read the full post.

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BLOG EXTRACT – So it’s May again which means that it’s time for me along with hundreds of other art-tech and social media types to descend on Manchester for Futuresonic09.

First of all I’d like to say a BIG ‘well done’ to the Director of the festival Drew Hemment and his brilliant team. This years conference was really well organised and brought a great collection of speakers together. The ranging insight and expertise each speaker brought to the conference felt relevant and the mix of practicing artists and ‘tech-industry’ representatives generated some interesting debates on the platform.

The over arching thread of the conference was environment 2.0 but within that key sessions were guided by a few more specific themes. These were:

• Digital futures
• Identity & trust
• Mobile
• Semantic web

Some InterventTech round up posts on specific sessions to follow soon.

Read this post in full | Futuresonic09 round up.

Enter by Google…

Playing with my friend Victors iphone over lunch on Friday, i noticed that Google have ditched ‘Enter’ on their iphone app…and they’ve swapped in ‘Google…’

In all honesty, on pressing ‘google’ to submit my search query something funny happened inside. My stomach definitely turned. And the only thing that could of caused it was my fondness for ‘Enter.’ I missed it.

I’ve grown up with ‘Enter’… I know what it does, and I respect its objectivity.

So…I got thinking. Now Google’s redesigned the laws of the keyboard…what’s next? What else might Google try its hand at? A perfume range perhaps…

Now just to be clear, I generally like Google. They’ve been ‘exposed,’ as acquiring a bit of a lazy bone of late (with the old Chrome T’s & C’s)…but Google engineers have developed some fantastic applications and services over the years. Applications and services that genuinely make my life easier and better…

Although I’m confident that any fragrance that Google might release would be a sweet.x mass market smash! what my turning stomach told me was that I’m worried about ‘Enter.’ And perhaps even more importantly…that I’d prefer it if Google focused it’s efforts on the improvement of ‘search’ and the development of new brilliant apps.

NOTICE – my wish list excludes the unnecessary brand’adisation of iphone applications…

-claire welsby-