Beta Symposium Vox Pops 2

Nicholas found the format of the symposium working (it was our first go, I think it will settle into a clearer rhythm with practice, be nice to find a fourth chair too), and the to and fro of the conversation. The diversity of ideas and ways to approach things is one of the ambitions of trying this method, so even if it ends up being the teaching team that talks, you see thinking in situ, rather than rehearsal. Nicholas nicely uses the experience conversation in relation to coffee, it’s a very good example of why the experience economy is what now matters. Ditte also thinks it worked, and Brian’s important point that design fiction is about people do matter. (Ditte is from Denmark, Denmark has a relation to design that Australian designers, well, get rather hot and excited about, design, and design methods, are very much part and parcel of the Danish ‘experience’, in particular human centred design, i.e., design where people matter.)

And Edward G, using Seuss’s rhymes (of all things, btw there’s a tradition where any public lecture on Seuss requires the speaker to use anapaestic meter) opines positively. Chantelle OK, but not as much as before, and in relation to FaceBook for professionals, it’s probably LinkedIn, which was around well before FaceBook but has seen enormous growth in the last 5 years (advantage of being an early mover). Ditte gets deep into ANT, which is having a bit of an incidental renaissance with the discovery in the English speaking world of German media studies, and the rise of what is loosely called the ‘new materialism‘ in particular media archaeology.

Danielle, like many others, picked up the experience point. Perhaps this will appear as a question in a symposium from a class? Patrick has a good response about this, and why experience matters. Rebecca notes that if the world already reports news, then, to paraphrase, the problem is how to curate this, not create it. (This problem is literally seeing millions and millions of dollars thrown at it.)

Vincent offers a four week overview. How to design a webpage? Sorry, lynda.com is a good place to start, but your blogs, for instance, are written in PHP amongst HTML that talk to a MYSQL database and rely on very sophisticated CSS. We might do very simple text editing of a page, just to see that it really is just text, but web design, today, at anything approaching a professional level involves interaction design, coding, graphic design, and systems admin. Most of us auto install a content management system, buy a skin, skin the site. What you should learn is that if you are serious about online work, then you work with a team, with those other skills. Those that can do it by themselves, right now, they choose where hey want to work (a former student of mine is currently in Canada after working in New York, he can pretty much work where ever he wants, those who can code have inherited the earth at the moment, coding is not a media skill).

Kevin is a plus, wondering about futures and the example of 12second.tv versus Vine. Louisa ponders how good it must be at Google, the downside is that companies like Google provide all this so you don’t need to leave, buying into the geek culture of heroic 18 hour work sessions. It works for a while, till you turn 30, or have kids. Or have to be responsible for another person. Dominic, like everyone else, likes that some hard questions about media futures have been raised, as I’ve said here a few times, we really are one of the best courses to equip you for this, and if it comes up again, we’ll talk about it again. It is scary, but also exciting precisely because the barriers to entry are now gone, and a whole lot of stuff now becomes possible. Danielle uses pictures (the photo essay is a great form, and recently a scientific medical journal published a graphic essay, so you know, as my use of the Graham reading hopefully indicates, I’m all about expressing ideas, making arguments, with evidence, how you do that, well, it’s a new media age so use it), to say that by the first unsymposium some pieces are falling into place. As I said in week 1, it will make sense just not right away. Denham enjoyed the format, and that we can now make and do (sounds like a Nike ad) from the get go, and that being able to think with the future might matter.