Key things in 2008:

• Joining Future Platforms; especially working with Bryan Rieger on the design for Trutap version 2.
• Making a Twitter acount. Honestly: I can’t imagine my life without Twitter. It is an invaluable tool! And after a two-year infatuation with the service, I’ve come to realise the problems with Facebook. This must signal some kind of personal digital enlightenment.
• The first half of September was pretty heavy going life changing. It was the month of dConstruct, BarCamp Brighton 3, both in Brighton, and Nokia Open Lab, which took me to Helsinki, Finland. I pushed myself out of my comfort zone in several ways: going to a strange country to an event based on an email invitation; and at BarCamp, voluntarily engaging in public speaking(!). I am really thankful for all the kind words and support for the latter, else I’d likely be scared out of ever doing it again.
• Mobile Design UK started! It’s organised by Priya Prakash, Bryan Rieger, and myself, and its aim is to build a community of mobile designers (as opposed to development and business) in the UK. Having seen the power of inspiring people in groups I realise how valuable it is to start and organise these things. Stay tuned for the next event.

I’m incredibly thankful for all the amazing opportunities I had in 2008.

Apart from SXSW Interactive in March, the new year is a blank canvas. I’ve never been to Austin before, so I’m really looking forward to that, to say nothing of the parties, panels, and talks at the event. I’ll be catching up with lots of people I met in September, and naturally, blogging the panels until my fingers bleed.

Just a recap of what I’ve been up to:

• Mobile Design UK’s inaugural event was held on Wednesday 3rd December. (Expect a brief recap post soon.) We’re extremely happy with how it went and 25 people turned up to see presentations from Nokia, Trutap, Lastminute.com Labs, and Flirtomatic. Photos are on Flickr. The next event will be in February, so watch this space! Meanwhile, subscribe to the Mobile Design UK feed.
• RCA Open Day. I’ve been following the design interactions department at the RCA for a while. They do a lot of cool stuff and I’m really glad I went: the students are quite brilliant. Check out Nelly Ben and David Benque. It is always nice to meet interesting, creative, talented, passionate people. As well as being all these things, I found that everyone I spoke to was very friendly and approachable, and patiently answered my questions.

  As for the course itself: I absolutely love everything it stands for. Some of the projects students are working on are quite out there (see James Chamber’s “Blowout” project). The RCA wants to encourage “skeptical fascination with technology”, for students to “play a part in shaping a technological future”, to “have skills for making ideas tangible”, and to “think about implications as well as applications”. Fantastic, right?

  At the end of the day, though, I felt strongly that I want to stay within the industry and continue to work on great commercial products. So for now I am resisting the siren call of academia.

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, Bryan Rieger has launched Mobile Design UK along with Priya Prakash.

Bryan has asked me to be involved too (yay!), so I’ll be writing up the first event on December 3rd at the offices of Flirtomatic in London. See full details below (or view the original post here):

“We’re happy to announce the details for the first Mobile Design UK event scheduled for Wednesday December 3rd, 2008 at the Flirtomatic offices on Great Marlborough Street. The doors will open at 6:30 and we’re aiming to get things underway by 7:00pm.

Flirtomatic
Europa House, 2nd floor
54 Great Marlborough St, London
[ view map ]

Seeing as this is our first meeting we’ve opted to keep things very casual and would like to take the opportunity to discuss what people would like to see from Mobile Design UK going forward and select a few volunteers to help ensure things do in-fact move in that direction.

That said, we have no intention of devoting an entire evening to bureaucracy and chit-chat and would like to kick things off with a few spectacular (no pressure) presentations by Mathias Dahlstrom from LastMinute.com Labs, Ali Driver from trutap and Jaseung Chang from Flirtomatic. If you’d like to present (refer to this happened… for guidelines) at a future Mobile Design UK event please get in touch either via comments on this site or the Yahoo Group.

After the meeting we’re likely to head out to The Coach and Horses for drinks nearby - if anybody has any other recommendations please drop and email to the list.

As we’ve actually had a much bigger response to Mobile Design UK than originally expected we’re going to have to ask those who are planning to attend to put their names on the sign-up list via the Yahoo Group - and we may have to either limit attendance or make other arrangements depending on the actual number of people planning to attend.

Last but certainly not least, I’d like to thank Priya Prakash and the entire team at Flirtomatic for providing us with such a fabulous location.

To register for the event please sign-up at the Yahoo Group via the following link:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/mobiledesign-uk/database?method=addRecord&tbl=1

Mobile Design UK is proudly sponsored by Flirtomatic and Yiibu.”

Hope to see you there!

Some personal milestones since moving to Brighton, in no particular order:

1. I live in Brighton.
Very fast and spontaneous decision. Zero regrets. It wasn’t easy, but I made it work: moving to a new city, jobless, and without ties or contacts, is something I thoroughly recommend.

2. Started, and actually maintained, this blog.
Scary, for lots of reasons. I’m Googleable. I’m making my thoughts tangible. Blogging has helped me to understand my job better, and it’s helped me to understand the whole industry better. Thinking, understanding, writing, sharing are all good things. I would encourage every single person to have a blog, if you can read, write, and have a brain. Just make a Wordpress blog and start writing about something that interests you. While I’m at it, I’d encourage you to use Twitter as well. Life is fleeting. Publish!!

3. Got a job doing something I love and am genuinely interested in.
Really glad I’m no longer in the shoes I was, post-graduating: flung out into the real world clutching a bit of paper. I was lucky to fall on my feet and figure things out.

4. Met some great people.
This isn’t really an ‘accomplishment’, but luck, and a side-effect of living here. Brighton is teeming with quite a number of smart, talented, inspired, inspiring, passionate people. It’s helped me to understand how important it is not to be an island, but to be part of a community. Islands don’t develop, they just get smaller. Great people help you grow.

5. Attended a BarCamp and actually did public speaking.
Kind of a big thing, for a girl who contemplated breaking her own leg to get out of it at school.

–

Some future goals:

1. Write more and write better.
But at the same time, relax about writing: I think I automatically slip into a formal essay style, which actually constrains directions I want to go.

2. Do more public speaking (BarCamps)
And become more confident about it. My first BarCamp was pretty much baptism by fire, as James Aylett put it: my audience included someone involved with BarCamp’s founding, and several other muses.

The best way to think about BarCamp is giving back: sharing what you know, in exchange for learning more about what other people know.

Ah yes, and not entirely unrelated to the rest of this post: I’m going to SXSW Interactive (March 13–19th) in Austin in 2009, and can’t wait to catch up with the great people I met at dConstruct and at Nokia Open Lab.