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This year, like previous years, the Dutch digital industry gathered together for a variety of inspirational talks during the Dutch Digital Day. The conference is hosted by the industry association DDA specifically for people who work at digital agencies in the Netherlands.
We went with a couple of Lab Digital colleagues and gathered at Undercurrent on a windy Friday afternoon, luckily the sun came out when it was time for drinks and food!
The line-up was diverse, funny, and inspiring:
- Marie-Anne Faustinelli
- Mieko Kusano
- Tom London
- Sietske Klooster
- Mike Monteiro
- Jamie Bartlett
- Jan Dirk van der Burg & Flavia Faas
- Chris Downer
- LJ Rich
- Ivo Roefs
- Viktoria Modesta
We’ve selected a few that stuck with us and are happy to share a summary with you.
Marie-Anne Faustinelli (1995) is a content creator with a preference for video clips. In 2017 she graduated from the Utrecht School of the Arts with the internet film ‘Maar Als Iedereen Zo Denkt’ (But what if everyone thinks like this). With this experimental video clip, she won the Special Jury Award within the student competition of the Dutch Film Festival. After that, she made the internet film ‘Koop Een Nieuwe’ in collaboration with VPRO Dorst highlighting the consumer society we live in nowadays.
‘Koop Een Nieuwe’ (Buy a new one) is a 4-minute video clip from a parallel world. In this world everything is perfect, and everyone keeps buying new things. Spending is the norm and sustainability is for losers. In that world, nobody actually knows what it really costs to produce the things which they buy or throw away every day. Everyone keeps on spending because that is what everyone does all the time.
The world of ‘Koop Een Nieuwe’ is a more extreme version of our world. The song is based on the consumerist ideology that prevails in the West. Wanting to buy new things, when we could do with what we already have, is deeply ingrained in our culture.
Although deep down we know that climate change is a serious problem and resources are running out at some point; our current production method is not sustainable. Yet it seems as if we are not sufficiently aware of the link between our buying behaviour and the loss of our dear little planet.
Curious about the movie?
Mieko Kusano was born in Holland and her father is Japanese. In her work, she uses best of both worlds: the ‘zen’ from Japan and the minimalistic approach which can be seen in for example Mondriaan and De Stijl. Mieko studied Industrial Design Engineering at the Technical University in Delft, and since 2003 she has worked as a Design Director at Sonos.
In her younger years, Mieko was always fascinated by games and the fact that gaming was mainly practiced by boys and not by girls. She was one of the few girls that played with, for example, the Walkman or Donkey Kong on the Nintendo. During her graduation, she wondered: ‘Why is there a Gameboy, but not a Gamegirl?’. This is a typical question that indicates her continuous focus on the user. After her graduation, she started at Philips and put this question into practise: she developed a gender neutral PDA/game console.
And then, in 2003, there was Sonos. At that moment it was still one of the many tech start-ups at the American West Coast. What immediately appealed to her, was the vision of the owners that they didn’t want to make a ‘thing’, but they had this clear vision to make a ‘system’. Not only should it be a product ‘from music lovers and for music lovers’. It should also be a product that could keep growing. Sonos didn’t want products that become useless after a few years. They wanted to keep improving their products and developing new ones. For Sonos, the most important thing is the focus on supplementing the older products instead of replacing them.
Personally, Mieko is always focused on keeping the products as human as possible. The Sonos speakers are full of electronics and speaker technology, but on the outside, they are really clean and minimalistic. In her opinion, the different Sonos products should be very intuitive for users.
I think Sonos is really successful in these goals. Just look at the products and their concise instructions, for example at https://www.sonos.com/nl-nl/home, and judge for yourself.
What a talk! Tom is a real strange dude and a whirlwind on stage. I don’t know what drugs he is on, but I want some 😉
Tom started his talk by telling who he was and where he was from. But first he handed over a rolled-up sheet of paper to someone in the audience. This one would be revealed at some point later in the show.
His Wikipedia page (which he mentioned he created himself) will tell you that he is a creative hacker and artist, and one of the first things he ‘hacked’ was the Google ranking. In its early days the Google ranking was fairly simple: putting the correct keywords in the domain would bring you to the top of the search results. So, what if you wanted to be known as a magician in London to get more work? Well, you just name yourself “Tom London the Magician”, buy the domain name, and voila, you’re on top of the searches for magicians in London. Mission accomplished.
For his magic tricks he uses technology, e.g. data, online tools and NFC, in a creative way to impress the audience. In his show he did an experiment with the audience in which he hacked everyone’s phones, and he also did a trick with a calculator. Meanwhile, he was jumping back and forth with small anecdotes about the tricks he did for other shows and the cool techniques and tools he uses.
For the calculator trick he asked someone on stage to enter some random numbers without looking at the keyboard. He then asked the audience for some more random numbers, such as one person’s shoe size and another person’s age, performing a series of calculations with these numbers. Everybody in the room could do the same calculation and the outcome was a big number 21062019. This, you might have guessed already, was also on the piece of paper he handed over to the audience at the beginning of the show.
Besides his magic work and keynotes, Tom works as an artist combining technology and data to create art. He showed a mirror in which he can display tweets based on an algorithm. While looking into the mirror you will see messages about depression slowly appearing (just the message, no sender). which he collects from Twitter. The slowly appearing message in combination with the gloomy, green text and the fact that you look at yourself, create a surreal effect. One other art work displays big colored dots that every second change position in a grid. Every dot represents an hour (color 1) or minute (color 2) and counting the colored dots tells you the time.
Mike Monteiro is a Design Ethicist and wrote two books, Design is a Job and You’re My Favorite Client. I liked his talk because (design) ethics resonate with me and it brings design to a whole new level. Mike prefers that designers have backbone. He talked about a few examples and how the world would be different if the designers from those companies or products just said ‘no’ and ‘why?’.
What if the designers at Twitter said ‘no’ and ‘why’ when it became clear that harassment and bullying became a problem on their platform, but the company decided not to fix it? What if they didn’t just view it as a PR problem which had to be fixed? What if the employees working on the platform stopped as soon as they saw where the company was heading? Mike says he’s sure there are people who work at Twitter that try to steer the company in the right direction. But maybe, saying no has to be done in a more drastic way.
He believes that not only should all designers know the words ‘no’ and ‘why’ but also actually use them and keep using them while doing their work. That it’s the job of the designers in this world to protect us from unethical decisions. It makes me more aware of what is being decided on a day to day basis. The GDPR is already making people more aware of the use of their personal data, but these ethical decisions should be made in many more areas.
Jamie Bartlett is a British author, journalist and, until recently, director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at a UK based Think Tank named Demos. His research and articles about digital topics and the effect on our society were the reason for his talk during the Dutch Digital Day.
In our profession it is tempting to focus on the positive aspects of ‘the digital revolution’: the possibilities it offers people to get in touch with each other; the commercial opportunities for companies; the new business models that are emerging.
However, speakers such as Jamie Bartlett (and the aforementioned Mike Monteiro) encourage people to think about the negative aspects as well. They put all developments and digital possibilities in perspective.
In his talk Jamie discusses the effects of big data, personalized advertisements / communication and other digital developments on democracy. The lack of transparency, the possibilities for manipulation and, above all, the absence of adequate legislation and regulations are particularly worrying. Bartlett therefore argues in favor of reforms to better protect democracy. Among other things, he discusses the need for us to become active citizens again, the need to protect free elections, the need to safeguard equality and the need to restore confidence in a sovereign authority.
All in all, this is an interesting story that provides food for thought. Are you also interested in this subject? Check out Bartlett’s book: People vs. tech.
Thanks @DutchDigitalAgencies for hosting another superb event. We really enjoyed the speakers, food & drinks, atmosphere and camaraderie. We are looking forward to next year’s event!
On behalf of Lab Digital:
- Els Gosens
- Arjan Meulenbrugge
- Chiel te Loeke
- Antoine Hurkmans
- Vivianne van der Linden