A Sustainable Train of Thought

Photos from Exit

Sunday, June 19, 2005

Erez posted some photos on his website from the end-of-year show in Torino last week. You can check them out to get a sense of what people were exhibiting, and there are some links to the individual thesis websites.

Once I get my photos out of my camera and onto my computer, I’ll have some photos of the show to, well, show as well.

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Panoramics of Rome

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Had some time to finally stitch together some of the photos I took in Rome of the Colosseum and the Foro Romano. Click on either of the thumbnails to get the larger image.

This panoramic gives you some sense of how big the Colosseum is:

This panoramic isn’t the best, but it illustrates how much is crammed into such a small space:

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More Photos

Friday, June 10, 2005

Finished commenting all the photos from my tour of Italy during spring break (way back when). Photos are now online in my gallery. I just finished the last of the comments while sitting in Malpensa airport outside of Milan waiting for my flight to Zurich. I had to get all the comments done before heading back to the US, if only for the principle of the thing!

I’ve been giving some thought lately to switching over to Flickr. One feature in particular that I like is the ability to create albums with certain groups of people. All your new photos are available in a shared album—everyone can see everyone else’s photos as they’re added. This makes sharing photos for events such as parties and weddings really easy, because you deposit photos to a central location and everyone who’s allowed to access them can do so with very little trouble. That kind of functionality is really only useful if everyone has a digital camera and web access to regularly check on the collective album. But if everyone’s into it, it can be quite fun and interesting. Aram, one of my classmates at IDII, has been an avid member of Flickr, and he’s got a ton of photos online. I’ve got a few which I used just to test out the service way back in November sometime.

Right now they’ve got a really interesting deal where you get unlimited disk space, 2GB of data upload per month, and archiving of all your photos for about US$25/year. Not bad, considering most of my webspace is taken up by my gallery. And thats with all the lower resolution photos too. With the unlimited space on Flickr, I could be posting photos in their original resolution. Flickr also allows you to set some permissions, so you can determine who can access your photos and who can download copies. I’ve just put a lot of time and energy into my gallery, so I’d hate to see it go to waste…but the benefits of Flickr are becoming very tempting…

There’s also this new service called Vimeo which allows you to share you video clips. Looks like there’s finally a demand to share all the digital media we’re collecting. Vimeo isn’t quite as compelling just yet, but I’m sure it will become more attractive as personal video recorders (PVRs) become more widespread.

Ok, they’re calling my flight for boarding…unless I find wifi service in Zurich, my next post will be from the other side of the Atlantic!

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John Thackara Weighs In

Thursday, June 9, 2005

As I mentioned before, I’m not in a position to comment publicly on current events surrounding IDII. However, others can, and have.

John Thackara, organizer of Doors of Perception and a former member of the IDII steering committee, had this to say in the June 2005 Doors of Perception Report:

INTERACTION IVREA MORPHING
A brutal policy change by its main sponsor, Telecom Italia, has forced Interaction Design Institute Ivrea to move to Milan and
effectively merge with Domus Academy. The two organizations describe the move stoically as “a great opportunity for growth”, but the fact remains that the Ivrea team will be broken up and funding for the combined entity drastically reduced. Telecom’s decision is short-sighted and represents a stupendous destruction of value: It is breaking up a hub, five years in the making, for a new community of practice in a subject area strategically crucial for telecoms. Interaction Ivrea’s end of year show opens Friday 10 June in Turin at 6pm at Via Porta Palatina 15.

Also, Simon King, who apparently applied to IDII and received an acceptance letter this spring, tells his story.

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The Future of IDII

Tuesday, June 7, 2005

This is such a difficult subject to broach. I’ve been trying to avoid writing about it for some time.

I hate to sound cliche, but I have some good news and some bad news.

The bad news is that Telecom Italia, which sponsors IDII as part of its Progetto Italia, has decided to move the school to Milan and merge it with Domus Academy, another one of its projects.

The official press release from IDII contains the information currently available to the public.

It is incredibly difficult for me to articulate my feelings on this matter in a public venue. Quite obviously there is a lot going on behind the scenes which we cannot talk about. Quite obviously this is a very stressful situation for everyone involved. And quite obviously I would like to describe in more colorful terms exactly what I think of all this. However, that is something best saved for conversations between friends in secure, undisclosed locations.

The good news is that our year is being allowed to finish the program as originally intended and designed. In other words, our class is the last IDII class. We will all move to Milan. We will focus on our individual thesis projects. We will complete our second year according to the values, quality, and ethos of IDII.

I’m not sure what else to say at this point.

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End of Year Show

Friday, June 3, 2005

Apologies for the lack of posts in the past weeks (months?)—I’ve lost track of time, and things have been incredibly insane around here. More so than usual, if that can be believed.

We finished the Mattel project, wrapped up our documentation, have been searching for internships (now that we actually have time and brainpower to do so), helped the second-years prepare some material for their thesis presentations this week, and entered a design competition, all the while dealing with quite a few other things swirling around amidst the chaos. More details soon…

Interaction design, service design, and a little bit of green

Photos from Exit

Sunday, June 19, 2005

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Panoramics of Rome

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

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More Photos

Friday, June 10, 2005

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John Thackara Weighs In

Thursday, June 9, 2005

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The Future of IDII

Tuesday, June 7, 2005

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End of Year Show

Friday, June 3, 2005

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