Journal tags: 2015

I have a feeling that 2025 is going to be a year of reflection for me. It’s such a nice round number, 25. One quarter of a century.

That’s also how long myself and Jessica have been married. Our wedding anniversary was last week.

Top tip: if you get married in year ending with 00, you’ll always know how long ago it was. Just lop off the first 2000 years and there’s the number.

As well as being the year we got married (at a small ceremony in an army chapel in Arizona), 2000 was also the year we moved from Freiburg to Brighton. I never thought we’d still be here 25 years later.

2005 was twenty years ago. A lot of important events happened that year. I went to South by Southwest for the first time and met people who became lifelong friends (including some dear friends no longer with us).

I gave my first conference talk. We had the first ever web conference in the UK. And myself, Rich, and Andy founded Clearleft. You can expect plenty of reminiscence and reflection on the Clearleft blog over the course of this year.

2010 was fifteen years ago. That’s when Jessica and I moved into our current home. For the first time, we were paying off a mortgage instead of paying a landlord. But I can’t bring myself to consider us “homeowners” at that time. For me, we didn’t really become homeowners until we paid that mortgage off ten years later.

2015 was ten years ago. It was relatively uneventful in the best possible way.

2020 was five years ago. It was also yesterday. The Situation was surreal, scary and weird. But the people I love came through it intact, for which I’m very grateful.

Apart from all these anniversaries, I’m not anticipating any big milestones in 2025. I hope it will be an unremarkable year.

I usually write a little post at the end of each year, looking back at the previous 365 days. But this time I feel like I’ve already done that. I’ve already written about my year of learning with Charlotte, which describes what I’ve been doing at work for the last twelve months.

Apart from that, there isn’t much more to say about 2015. And that’s a good thing. 2014 was a year tainted by death so I’m not complaining about having just had a year with no momentous events.

The worst that could be said of my 2015 is that Clearleft went through a tough final quarter of the year (some big projects ended up finishing around the same time, which left us floundering for new business—something we should have foreseen), but in the grand scheme of things, that’s not exactly a tragedy.

Mostly when I think back on the year, my memories are pleasant ones. I travelled to interesting places, ate some great food, and spent time with lovely people—Jenn and Sutter’s wedding being a beautiful blend of all three.

So instead of doing a year-end roundup of my own, I’ll just point to some others: James, Alice, Laura, Eliot, Remy, and Brad.

I look forward to reading more posts on their websites in 2016. I hope that you’ll be publishing on your website this year too.

Happy new year!

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 2015 is just ten days away. Time to draw the pre-conference podcast to a close and prepare for the main event. And yes, all the talks will be recorded and released in podcast form—just as with the previous ten dConstructs.

The honour of the final teaser falls to Nick Foster. We had a lovely chat about product design, design fiction, Google, Nokia, Silicon Valley and Derbyshire.

I hope you’ve enjoyed listening to these eight episodes. I had certainly had a blast recording them. They’ve really whetted my appetite for dConstruct 2015—I think it’s going to be a magnificent day.

With the days until the main event about to tick over into single digits, this is your last chance to grab a ticket if you haven’t already got one. And remember, as a loyal podcast listener, you can use the discount code ‘ansible’ to get 10% off.

See you in the future …next Friday!

The newest dConstruct podcast episode features the indefatigable and effervescent Brian David Johnson. Together we pick apart the futures we are collectively making, probe the algorithmic structures of science fiction narratives, and pay homage to Asimovian robotic legal codes.

Brian’s enthusiasm is infectious. I have a strong hunch that his dConstruct talk will be both thought-provoking and inspiring.

dConstruct 2015 is getting close now. Our future approaches. Interviewing the speakers ahead of time has only increased my excitement and anticipation. I think this is going to be a truly unmissable event. So, uh, don’t miss it.

Grab your ticket today and use the code ‘ansible’ to take advantage of the 10% discount for podcast listeners.

I remember when I first saw Paddy’s illustration for this year’s dConstruct site, I thought “Well, that’s a design direction, but there’s no way that Graham will be able to implement all of it.” There was a tight deadline for getting the site out, and let’s face it, there was so much going on in the design that we’d just have to prioritise.

I underestimated Graham’s sheer bloody-mindedness.

At the next front-end pow-wow at Clearleft, Graham showed the dConstruct site in all its glory …in Lynx.