Word of the day: FrieNDA:

frieNDA n.

1. An agreement between friends to “non-disclose” confidences without formal paperwork, such as an NDA.
2. A necessity in the Bay Area (and beyond).

Yet another new term for me - but such a truely crucial one indeed. Jup.

I'm currently at «LIFT06, conference about new technologies and people.» - what a nice simple title, and a what a promising event so far - beats Tweakfest by a couple of lenghts, no doubt about that.

More soon, radio silence is definitely over.

Addendum: I'm not going to blog about this conference too much, it's really well done and quite a bit classy, but I still can't really cope with all that chatter: Having Anina, Bruce, Cory and Scoble all in a radius of 2m during fondue leaves but one impression: I'm not impressed (but by Cory, who remains a role-model of integrity, heck), so I went having a Campari Orange on my own, sitting in my best suit in a club with heavy green armchairs, a dark red carpet and a singing blonde pianist behind a white grand piano - but still.
I know that a conference is nothing but a temporary spatial medium, but that chatter is so tiring..
Oh, and please note I'm not complaining, actually :)

Tagged 'lift06'.

I spent all of last week in Basel, becoming a (hold your breath) "Certified Knowledge Manager". More about that most interesting experience later on, now I just want to tell you about how pleasant a stay at good old Basel that was.
Now that ART is starting (remember last year?) there's really quite some stuff going on (some say too much). I had the pleasure to hang around with Barbara Strebel, I really did enjoy go see the Gare Du Nord, hear the organizer of the ART Conversations, and stop by at the UBERMORGEN vernissage at plug.in, things like that. I liked it.

The first image above I took at some kind of performance called "Staatsempfang - Das rotokoll" (Anna Geering, Jo Dunkel and 25 performers), a parody mock-up of a Swiss state reception, with all the bells and whistles that took place at the Kunstmuseum, the second one is a shot taken from the UBERMORGEN BANKSTATEMENTGENERATOR,

Jep, that was somewhat funny.

My girlfriend had just left me (and is with some student of political science called Paul now, and I felt -pathetically- felt like wounded deer at dusk), so that Basel program was a good one indeed.

Last night Brahmananda cooked some delicious Nepalese stuff at Andreas's place, I just uploaded a bunch of pictures made by Carlos, featuring the fabulous folks above.

That shot's my favourite, that's Ina and Simeon (serious scientists during the day! ;)).

See also: Official team photos.

Just watched some videos (after work ;)) of Burda`s Digital Lifestyle Day 05, which seems to be have been pretty posh an event (and quite a party).
Among quite a number of more or less important people from more or less important companies (folks from blogger.com, flickr, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft.. kind of everybody) Loïc Le Meur and Stefan Heidenreich had short presentations there, you find all the videos online.
I haven`t heard any of the speakers mentioning RDF so far, but some of them (Herr Heidenreich for example, explicitly emphasizing formats) should have (says the geek in me).

Well, although this sounds very much like an occasion for Marc to show up, Mr.Digital-Lifestyle himself is missing.

I'm in Milton Keynes for workshop at KMI these days. When John an me arrived, we naively took a bus to the city centre. We drove and drove, it all looked like endless suburbs: an indoor skiing facility (see picture), garden center, huge shopping centers, etc.
Finally the bus arrived at some ugly, lonesome park-and-ride place, final station: We had been driving all through the inner city - which is nothing but a stand-alone suburb.
You see, it's one of those experimental "new towns", a sixties' utopian artificial city.
In fact it feels rather dead indeed. Where's the townsfolk?

[via Jeen Broekstra]

« In the year 2014, The New York Times has gone offline.
The "Fourth Estate's" fortunes have waned.
What happened to the news?
And what is EPIC? »

If you haven't seen it yet, do take the 8 minutes to watch the video.
Short, arguable, pretty.

There's strong evidence Muriel is well alive.

I've been in good contact with her friend Fabian Sommer (who is somewhere in the Himalaya) and the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, this morning I got news from Fabian: Her departure to Kandy/Walanpane (which is in the hills and surely save) on Christmas Day is confirmed, she should be back (and hopefully back on line) at her parents' house (which remained undamaged) by tomorrow.

That's good news indeed.
Still all this remains an incredible tragedy.

However, I whish all of you all the very best for 2005.

These days are emotional indeed.

First we spent wonderful days at the Therme Vals , one of the most beautiful spas in the world, built and run by Annalisa and Peter Zumthor. For the first time Rachel and I managed to get one of the beautiful "temporary" rooms. We were lucky to attend two concerts of modern music, Steve Reich's "Violin Phase" played in the spa was wonderful. Finally some time being offline, me and my girl, water and music, snow and mountains and books ("Internet Art", "Philosophien der neuen Technologie") and a great cuisine().
Relaxing in luxury.

Then we went to see my family in Basel, my mother got a really fine little camera (she loves it already), my parents gave us "Cremaster 3", "The Right Way" and Das Bild der Menschenrechte". In a word: Abundance. Cornucopia.

But then: The Tsunami. No words for this.
Muriel is in the region, in Sri Lanka where there more than more than 10,000 people killed. More than 10,000 people killed.
If she followed the christmas plans laid out in her weblog, she was somewhere between Colombo (on the probably safer west coast of Sri Lanka) and the Kandy / Walapane area, which should be safe, far enough from the sea, I guess and hope.
But she hasn't replied via SMS for the last 17 21 hours, so I'm more than a little worried. I almost started praying.

This is horrible.

Saturday I had a first and interesting meeting with Barbara Strebel, one of those rare women that can look back on ten years on the net, bringing THE THING to Switzerland, involved in starting nettime et cetera, a long, long time ago. An internet dinosaur that is very much alive indeed, knowing many of those early pioneers and real online heroes.

Anyhow, she's not actually a techie, rather sort of a "social engineer", dedicated, a bit frustrated about local culture politics and its players, with some bad feelings about former combatants but still with an obviously immense capacity for enthusiasm. We spent almost the entire day together, and one of our many topics was blogging (speckled computing was another), we even tried a live demo and I'm pretty sure she'll also have a weblog soon.. I'd love to see her blogging.

If you've been a long-time attentive reader, you remeber mentioning her a long time ago, and if you know her you might also guess what she thinks about that posting of mine. Anyway, she didn't actually know me before reading my blog, read it, mailed me, and soon after we meet in Basel. The internet seems actually good for something :-)

A report on my lifeClipper experience follows as soon as those guys send me the pictures of me as a wired cyborg - so stay tuned :)
After that, my next report from wired Basel will come from Viper or earlier.