designswarm thoughts

As I prepare my talk for next week’s Xtech in Paris, frantically trying to read the books that got delivered too late, I wonder about the people who do the conference circuit and have to give talks every other week. I think, from what I’ve seen and heard, that there are 2 types of speakers who work very differently on their talks:

1. The gardener: Matt is a good example of someone who starts off talking about a subject on a smaller scale and slowly adjusts it and adds content as time goes by.

2. The improviser: Bruce Sterling would be the prime example here of someone who masters their material extremely well. He flavors it differently picking up some things for a certain type of audience and shaping it to make it relevant to them. I’ve seen him speak twice and seen a number of videos of his talks and it’s always quite impressive.

So there, this is my first proper conference talk, and I am quite nervous, especially since i’m addressing the main subject of Ubicomp in a very different way. Hopefully I’ll try to string together the things that interest me the most about ubiquitous computing, the internet as a product designer and what this means for our cultural perception of the material world. More on that very soon I promise : )