ThingsCon 2017. Looking back. And forward. An elevating community!

Three weeks ago already! It was a super fine edition of ThingsCon Amsterdam again. Two full days, with about 25 sessions, 11 keynotes, a student talent program and lots of demos (reports). But in the end the numbers do not matter that much, it’s the experience that counts. ThingsCon is strongly oriented towards the community.

Thoughts on the conference

We aimed for a conference to highlight ethics in practice (thanks Dries for this meme). In 2016 we introduced our overall mission with ThingsCon to foster the creation of a responsible and human-centric IoT. This has become increasingly important throughout the last year with the developments in the world, both in tech as in society as a whole. More and more incidents with data breaches, discontinued companies breaking products, not speaking of politically developments. But also on a positive side with the announcement of GDPR, the IoT Mark initiative, and the follow-up discussions.

This year we wanted to combine a positive look on connected products with a critical design view. What does it mean in practice, from manufacturing to security, to ethics by design? As Simon Höher stated in his impressions of the conference:

After four years, ThingsCon certainly has left behind the early DIY-days in Berlin and matured into a global movement of incredibly dedicated, skillful, and resilient practitioners, that push for a responsible take on building connected systems and technology around us.

We wanted this focus in the program and I was happy to notice that everyone felt the same sense of urgency. At least, that is the impression I got from the sessions (too bad I did not have the time to dive into them myself). Maybe even more than we expected, the conference highlighted the character of the community, re-establishing ThingsCon as a community of positive critical makers. More than the last two years even there was a shared feeling at the end. We definitely plan to take this drive and build iterations with the usual tools like Salons and with new tools like joint initiatives.

Earlier this year, we already entered a European funding call with a couple of partners that are rooted in the ThingsCon community, initiated by Max from ThingsCon Berlin. Connecting Amsterdam, Dundee, Aarhus and Siegen. Super cool process already, whatever the outcome may be. At the conference Rob van Kranenburg sketched how we could lever possibilities from the NGI initiative here, something we definitely plan to follow up.

Dries also did some very nice reflections on the community feel;

For sure, everyone operates within an organisational or company context, but I think we’re too often undervaluing the importance of the people who (want to) care on a personal level.

With great influence comes great responsibility. It may be a cheesy quote, but it is therefore no less true. We are at the point where the IoT is diffusing into everything and changing the character and behaviour of the things we use. This happens in ways we are not aware of and in ways that are not open and transparent. Currently, the drivers are often purely economic in nature resulting in a sneaky feeling that should make us all uncomfortable. That makes it even more important to have a stage like ThingsCon: we need a place to think about the state of IoT and take a stand together.

In that sense, the blurry blackbox that Tobias Revell showed in his opening keynote presentation is a sharp metaphor. It is of course exact intention of initiatives like the IoT Mark to clear the blur and take responsibility.

As Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino addressed in here closing words: we need to connect the younger generation even more to this agenda. Young designers, developers and entrepreneurs may need a framework to guide them. It is a challenge area that we would love to explore with our educational partners.

For me these developments will the driver for ThingsCon Amsterdam in 2018. I hope we connect with our existing community and start new initiatives.

More than ever the makers and designers of the new connected products are important in creating good products, to unlock value as part of the design process. As Simon Höher noted in his impressions: we can ignite product managers with the importance of responsible.

This is what we need to do: “Asking and discussing what healthy, responsible, ethical, and good actually means to us as a community.”

Plans for 2018

So that brings me to a peek forward into the coming year. We think there is a lot of potential in this community now to take the next step. We are very happy to have Dries as full member in the organising team now, and we will involve the German team as always. And the new Fellows of course who contribute already so much in this years conference. Next we are proud to have about 800 practitioners as part of direct community.

I think we can roughly divide our activities in three parts

1. Create a place for the community to meet and initiate actions
2. Inspire and educate interested professionals providing knowledge in the form of articles, case studies, presentations
3. Be a partner in specific initiatives to get things done now or in the near future

1. a community place

We value our community and hope to create an open atmosphere to enlarge the community with new active members. We do this by inviting interesting people to share their knowledge. And we will be focusing on formats that have interaction as the starting point, like the workshops at conferences and salons.

Even more than before we connect these active sessions to concrete follow-up programs, preferably lead by/together with our community. We feel it is important to offer participants a platform for encounters with like-minded people.

2. a learning community

We don’t want to be a self centred community; our base is creating inspirational and learning events, small or big, by bringing together experienced professionals to share their stories with interested others.

We like to pay specific attention to the future professionals in extending the partnerships with universities and schools. A talent program that runs within the universities and opens up to the world via ThingsCon events is our ideal.

We plan to extend both the number of partners and the length of the program starting within the curriculum of the schools. An extended award program is the first step in 2018. In addition to that we can offer participating universities ThingsCon focused contributions to the educational tracks, defined in close partnership with the participating institution.

3. an acting community

We see that ThingsCon is a great partner in consortia for development of specific topic based programmes. ThingsCon can be the connector between partnering people and institutions, or it can be one of the partners in consortia. Or ThingsCon can be the initiating partner in the program around NGI (Next Generation Internet in Europe).

We see a lot of potential to create public private partnerships within several domains where ThingsCon plays a role as the responsible design-focus.

Events

The backbone of the activities will be formed by the Mothership-conference in December, and the Salons throughout the year.

The Salons will only be organised in close partnership with third parties that can cover the costs.

In concreto these are activities we use as rough outline for 2018. Some are more concrete than others;

• ThingsCon Comedy Sal00n (Antwerp)
• Salon Internet of Sleep
• Salon Home Panopticon (Eindhoven)
• Focussed event on ideation tools in collaboration with ideasofthings.eu (near Antwerp)
• Salon Internet of Sports (Amsterdam)
• Salon + summer course Internet of Food (Rotterdam)
• Salon Circulair Things of the Internet
• Salon Future cities/Smart Mobility (Rotterdam)
• ThingsCon ‘Benelux’ :-) (conference 2018)
• …

We invite all of the community to contribute and build us further these moments. Both for content but definitely also as partner in organising. You know how to find us.

It closes a great ThingsCon year. With one conference, four Salons and a trip to Shenzhen. Thanks all for making it possible and being part! I wish you all happy holidays and see you in 2018!