I thought this would be good. It wasn't.
There were only a few installations, nothing much to do with Austria (other than being held in the Austrian cultural forum on E. 52nd Street) and the only real connection to the reference about how the Romans quelled the masses with bread and sport spectacle was in the accompanying book.
Slightly funny video watching people on the street copy the Zidane head butt from the last world cup though.
A bunch of us got together yesterday morning to start planning Interesting New York.
We discussed the spirit of Interesting:
We talked about dates. And whether we should do it this summer or in the fall. August in New York is vacant, so that probably won't work. July seems ambitious, but possible. And September seems reasonable, but far off.
The day of week the conference should be held started an interesting debate. Saturday or weekday? Interesting London and Amsterdam are on Saturday, and Sydney is on a weeknight. Saturday sends a strong signal that the day is about leisure and not work. And allows people to come who can't get the day off work. A weekday evening says the same thing, but I can't stay awake past 9pm and hopefully we'll too many speakers to get through in only a few hours.
www.interestingnewyork.com will be where people can find everything they want to know about the day - once we build it.
The next steps are:
Now that London and Sydney have been such huge successes, and Amsterdam is on its way, I'm feeling the pressure to start planning Interesting NYC.
If you are interested in helping organize, plan, and design the conference, or if you already know that you want to be a speaker, please reply with your contact details in the comments section, or email me at david@openintelligenceagency.com.
UPDATE:
Thanks for the huge outpouring of support. We have more than enough volunteers for the planning committee. I'll send all of you an email about a time and place to meet up next week to choose a conference date, venue and who we know that can help us with specific things like website design and hosting, stage lighting and sound, etc. Thanks again everybody.
There's a great little exhibit on toy history at the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison.
It occurred to me while I was walking through, how much toys try to teach us about life and how they reflect the times.
Like an SUV for kids. Both personal transportation and good for hauling things.
Before there was video games, there was electronic football. The user had absolutely no control over where the pieces moved.
Same idea as Bob the Builder. Who doesn't like construction?
You can freeze frame, pause, and rewind.
Building for gifted kids.
Not sure what these games were about. Never really played them.
Agricultural training toys.
Like interactive detective tv shows.
Were these supposed to teach us that insects aren't that scary?
Wiffle ball. A great solution for one-on-one baseball.
Playdough. Still useful for creativity exercise.
Teaching our girls to be housewives.
The cowboy mythology . President's still get elected by tapping into this myth.
Early CSI lab.
Space. The final frontier.
Couldn't really stop the power of television.
Fantasy.
Personal transportation for kids and ad agency execs.
Things that sing and make noise.
House for boys?
Genius. Build an elaborate trap for a simple chore. (sometimes what planners do)
War is the answer!
And people think video games are violent.
Learn about careerism and family planning.
Is this about playing surgeon or playing doctor?
Authority and coercion games.
Creative tools.
Learn to sit in traffic jams.
War is the answer!
Dare-deviling. Cool.
Can't remember what these were about.
Counterintuitive chemistry I guess. Things shrink when heated?
Never played role playing games. I hear they're popular.
Can't see any redeeming qualities in this game.
Early days of manipulating what's on TV.
The revolution will be televised. I like how it says Video Computer System near the cartridge input. It's like it was struggling to be taken seriously and thought 'video game' was too childish.
Mobile video games. Great for keeping kids occupied on long car trips.
I never had the patience for the rubik's cube.
What was the attraction to these?
Power for little people.
I'm too old to know what these were about.
Made a billion off trivia.
My Little Pony?
The best summer toy ever.
These seem to be new ones I know nothing about.
Well this was a bust. The panel never answered the question on the front of the invitation: what makes something hot?
Instead they rambled on about high culture and how 'normal' people consume what they (the panel) create or spot as emerge trends. It was all a bit too elitist for me and unfortunately didn't live up to expectations.
Going to see this tonight at the Copper Union. Should be interesting.
http://upcoming.org/event/163371/
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