Brighton in September

I know I say this every year, but this month—and this week in particular—is a truly wonderful time to be in Brighton. I am, of course, talking about The Brighton Digital Festival.

It’s already underway. Reasons To Be Creative just wrapped up. I managed to make it over to a few talks—Stacey Mulcahey, Jon, Evan Roth. The activities for the Codebar Code and Chips scavenger hunt are also underway. Tuesday evening’s event was a lot of fun; at the end of the night, everyone wanted to keep on coding.

I popped along to the opening of Georgina’s Familiars exhibition. It’s really good. There’s an accompanying event on Saturday evening called Unfamiliar Matter which looks like it’ll be great. That’s the same night as the Miniclick party though.

I guess clashing events are unavoidable. Like tonight. As well as the Guardians Of The Galaxy screening hosted by Chris (that I’ll be going to), there’s an Async special dedicated to building a 3D Lunar Lander.

But of course the big event is dConstruct tomorrow. I’m really excited about it. Partly that’s because I’m not the one organising it—it’s all down to Andy and Kate—but also because the theme and the line-up is right up my alley.

Andy has asked me to compere the event. I feel a little weird about that seeing as it’s his baby, but I’m also honoured. And, you know, after talking to most of the speakers for the podcast—which I enjoyed immensely—I feel like I can give an informed introduction for each talk.

I’m looking forward to this near future event.

See you there.

dConstruct 2022 — Polytechnic

A lovely heartfelt personal look back at dConstruct.

dConstruct was about the big ideas, but not in a wanky TED way. It was about ideas on the horizon brought into focus, it always left me wanting to know more.

dConstruct was never about the big showy thing that will make you millions. It was about the interesting. It gave you seeds to take away with you, and that’s important.

dConstruct: The final chapter! | Sally Lait

I love the thoughtfulness that Sally put into her personal write-up of dConstruct.

Reflections on Dconstruct 2022 – Bill Tribble

Wow, what a day. A really diverse selection of talks that went all over the map. From building vast world-changing health systems, to scaling and archiving global online communities, to the beauty and joy of calligraphy. And lasers. I enjoyed the lot, which is rare for me at an event like this.

A rather lovely write-up of the final dConstruct!

Above all it was nice to see the diversity of approaches and reasons for doing ‘design’ / art / whatever. Some of us are solving the hard problems, some of us are thinking philosophically or creating new tools, and some of us are just having fun – and all approaches are valid and useful.

Spotify – dConstruct 2022

If you were at dConstruct on Friday and you enjoyed the mood music during the breaks, this is what you were listening to.

dConstruct 2022 – Photos by Marc Thiele

Marc very kindly took loads of pictures at dConstruct on Friday—lovely!