Italian Rendezvous

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I'm not in Rome anymore, and in fact, I think that was two weeks...three weeks? Some weeks ago. Nonetheless, I'm finally sitting down to write this so we'll start with Rome - as a side note, I'm sitting down to write this, in my bathing suit, on my balcony, suntanning. :P I hear you still have snow in Vancouver? How's that going for you? Its apparently 11 degrees but it feels more like 15 or so...seeing as how I'm not at all cold. I need tanning oil if anyone is sending things here, that would be nice. :P


As always, I will write the short version before getting into all of it.... :P

Went to Sonderborg, in Denmark for the design conference called SIDER where Mads and I did an amazing all star performance of presenting our project, the Ladies and Mens room mixup. It was a beautiful presentation and the organizer even thanked us for it afterwards, so that was fun. Next up, like literally next was Rome, which was a last minute decision to go but probably one of the best decisions I've ever made, thank you Cristo for helping me in that choice. In Rome I presented my paper, met some truly incredible inspiring people, slept six hours over three days, and went on a beautiful winery tour/dinner and made some new Swedish friends. Home from Rome, big party on boat, then straight on to the next project at school. Since then, been a whirlwind of school, half machine, and trying to wrap my head around design conferences, and then last night I went to a ball, complete with ball gown, date wearing tuxedo/tails and an orchestra. Yeah baby :D Okay which brings us back to me sobering up on my balcony, as I got home at 730am from said ball, and am now writing my blog. Details of everything below, thanks for reading!!! Comments welcome.


Hmm where to start, perhaps with Rome but let's explain the leadup to it. Its been weeks of sleeplesness. Went from madness in Dublin, to a cocktail party, So Sophisticated in Copenhagen, to sleep for about forty five minutes, to a train ride to Sonderburg, to our presentation so it felt like a little getaway which even though I've spent more time away from my apartment than in it in the last five weeks, was still needed. Anyway, we had very, very little sleep and then did our presentation, surviving on coffee alone, and did a wicked job. First off, our class seemed to be the only school that actually created real prototypes...and second, our presentation was awesome, yes it was. Mads and I are both natural presenters, which I say with absolutely no modesty...cause its true, and we totally rocked the stage, it was fantastic. Then we passed out on the train on the way home, lol cause it was seriously much needed sleeping time.

Next up, I think four days later, was Rome. I had been debating whether or not to go, as the plane tickets were expensive, but a]I was the contest winner and b]it would be a great opportunity to network and c]uh...Rome? Yes please. So although I was still sketchy on going, I started to look for somewhere to stay and found someone on couch surfing - Cristo. After talking a bit on MSN he convinced me to go: Not only did he know of the conference - which was cool, obviously its big enough that people actually know about it, but he just happens to work in the same field, as an experience designer/usability guy and said hey, while you're here, you should talk to us about working as an interaction designer, so I hopped on board. Thank you Cristo. I flew to Rome, and was picked up via motorbike by Cristo and we went back to his apartment - how much fun motorbikes are, I cannot even express in writing, motorcycles are fun, but motorbikes, and the people who drive them, in the context of Rome, is insanity. These tiny little bikes are like swarms of bees, flying through traffic with no fear whatsoever, all coming to a sudden halt at a red light, snaking their way through cars until there's a small horde of them at the stop line, when the light goes green, they're like horses out of the gates, they take off waaaay faster than the cars and all burst out of the traffic whipping through the streets again. Its madness, and so much fun. :D That night, we went and met with Cristo's boss, the interaction/experience design guy and had some wine and tapas at a nearby bar. After that, Cristo had improv class, in italian, which was fun and awesome to watch, because it was all about body movement, and I've actually since used some of their exercises in my own recent project. Next we went to a bar where I had the best strawberry caipirhina yum, but to make it even better, I had it with a plate of prosciutto and cheese I SO love Italy.

The next day was the start of the conference. I met a few people right away, Cameron from Yahoo first, which was cool, he was a student too but working at Yahoo, completely brilliant guy full of creative ideas so it was really inspiring to talk to him. Then a few more people, a professor who was the keynote speaker from Wales who ended up inviting me to speak at his University regarding interaction design woohoooo, a professor from northern Sweden, a few others, and then I met, but didn't register mentally, the other guys from the design competition, they introduced themselves, but I knew them from their screen names as we had been working on our projects in an online forum and I totally didn't clue in to who they were until much later, haha, dork moment. Nonetheless, I figured it out soon enough. The presentations were really interesting to watch, probably one of the first times I've really paid attention to lectures in that kind of situation, they were all about Human Computer Interaction in a learning environment and it was really cool to see the professor's point of view and to see where the field is moving to. However, at about two p.m. I decided that I'd had enough since it was like fifteen degrees outside and we were trapped in a room so Cameron and I went to see the sites of Rome. We successfully found the Colosseum and all the stuff around it, and got to see a bunch of cool little parts of the city on the way so that was really fun. We went into the Colosseum and had eleven euros taken from us for entry - taken because I'm quite sure it wasn't worth eleven euros considering everything else is free, and the whole place was under construction. Nonetheless, we managed to enjoy ourselves taking some pictures, meeting a very shady looking cat, play with motion sensors protecting statues and ponder exactly the uses of different areas and structures within the building. I had given the Swedish guys my number before leaving saying to give me a call about dinner but by 8pm I decided they didn't want to have dinner so I went home, showered and was geeking it out on the computer when they decided to messsage me. Thus, begins our adventure...

[How I keep ended up hanging out with Swedish people in other other countries than Sweden, I don't know. Kim calls it SWEDAR. I think that's a brilliant term. Thank you Kim. I mean of course it makes sense, they were in the design competition as well - though the competition was international so how the finalists all ended up coming from Sweden...well I guess we're just awesome at Interaction Design here :P Anyway, on with the story. They were Anders and Nils from Linköping, Sweden, north of Malmö by about five hours. They had a friend with them, Lars who actually lives in Malmö so that was good to have someone from Skåne, so that when it came time to make fun of the accents down here, [apparently its the Texas of Sweden] I at least had an ally. They told me where they were and I headed out to meet them, after a loooong transit trip consisting of the slowest bus EVER, the wrong piazza, a trip under about five city blocks through the metro system's many escalators and moving side walks, and finally a cab ride when I gave up, I found them at the restaurant where the waiter/owner actually bugged me about being so late, and brought my food straight out, since the guys had been there for at least an hour already. Thus began a very long night, but an amazingly fun one. We went from the restaurant in search of a bankomat/atm and finally got some cash. We headed on to try to find a bar and succeeding in finding a jazz bar with the word cocktails in big bright letters on the side. We headed in and bought eight euro cocktails, choking a bit at the price, and then getting desert like drinks...much to Nils' dismay. They were incredibly girly drinks but were tasty so we set out after one drink to find cheaper drinks.... this was our mission of the night. Good bars, cheap drinks. Apparently, impossible in Rome. We asked a taxi driver who told us to head in a certain direction, and about three meters from the cab, a couple stopped us to ask if we knew a good place to go....and of course, Swedar in full effect, they turned out to be from Copenhagen. Anyway, we made our way to a bar-ish area, asked a waiter if he knew a good bar, and he directed us around the corner to a place where we went inside, realising that perhaps this was a bit upscale compared to what we wanted but it had music and couches so it did the trick. It however, had ten euro drinks, so we quickly figured out that our mission wasn't going so well. I met a Swedish girl in the bathroom... Swedar. When I came back, our little couch area had turned into a full on VIP room full of the very stereotypical italian men and....a load of girls wearing lingere with champagne. We decided to stay a little while and so I thought hey, let's join the fun girls, which consisted of me alone [Remember, Swedish guys, shy, no talking to girls in lingere, it would be wrong] going up to the girls and taking photos with them and being given champagne. So that was fun. Next up was us trying out another bar... via walking around until we found a taxi and getting him to drop us in the 'student area' where I had had the strawberry drink the previous night. I found the bar again, but it was closed...and the area turned out to be insanely shady and questionable. We started asking people where to go and were directed a bar called "Mads" which I thought was quite funny and so we went in, and judging from the number of men, and the buttplugs for sale near the bar, it was a gay bar. Nonetheless, we had a "Sweet Mads" cocktail and found some cocktail napkins with which to create Nils and Anders presentation for the conference the next day. Yes, they planned out their whole presentation on cocktail napkins, fantastically classic. :D From here, we went outside, and found what we had been told about, a half open garage door - the sliding metal kind - with people gathered around it on a dark street corner. Shady I did say. However, it turned into an amazing time as inside said door, there was a lovely italian family, mom, dad, two kids ten and under... and a fridge full of beer. It was a deli shop specialising in pork, and we had beers, and pork sandwiches, and even had our beers opened by the kids - who were fighting over who got to open the bottles for us, very sweet. Outside, we had conversations in Swed-English and then while socialising with a crazy italian man in a suit, realised that a common language was french, so I switched to french and tried about three times to explain interaction design and our project to him, however he was insanely drunk and couldn't gather the concept of the computer... so that was a failed attempt. Lars became some sort of local celebrity somehow, and was pulled off to the Mads bar again where we soon left from as it started to turn into rowdy insane italians in the street. Our way home we were walking to catch a cab, and one the way saw one car drift around a corner, and another drive directly into a pole - unreleated, and five minutes apart from each other. The one driving into the pole simply backed up, trunk completed in a "V" and drove away again. Very odd. And the second accident I'd seen as the previous night, someone did the same trick but driving into a parked car. These people drive insane, I'm tellilng you. We got home at seven, and woke up at eight to get to the conference. :D

The next day was our presentation and I woke up after sleeping one hour, got ready wearing my very classic all black outfit plus teal heels, and Cristiano’s roommate made us breakfast - espresso and croissants - he was incredible :D What a great way to wake up, to an Italian man making you an Italian breakfast. At the conference I was presenting my work on investigating “Liquid Place” - an evolving space which facilitates learning. I had investigated three areas, a Montessori Preschool, an electronics workshop by Half Machine and a hip hop group that has a culture night at a night club in Malmo. Through looking at these three, I had figured out some similarities in how people learn in each environment - see presentation here: http://www.vanessacarpenter.com/ItalyPresentationVanessa.pdf It went really well - people were asking questions afterwards, and I was even able to do a little bit of marketing for Half Machine in the process.

After spending the day watching presentations and trying to regulate our sugar and caffeine intake to compensate for the one hour of sleep we had had the night before, we headed out on a tour bus with the rest of the conference attendees to see some of the sights of Rome. The bus took us through all these amazing areas with vineyards and incredible views and we stopped for a while at the Pope’s summer residence, which was a beautiful building on top of a hill overlooking the city of Rome. It had this huge courtyard with gardens and a little rotunda type thing which could be great for meals in warmer summer nights - it was quite windy when we were there. After that, we headed out on the bus again, took a few wrong turns and ended up on a very curvy-not-made-for-buses road where we had to turn around on and head back, and kept encountering other vehicles where one of the vehicles would have to back up quite a ways so that we could find a passing point. Special times. We finally got to the vineyard where we were having dinner and after going on a tour, and tasting their wines, we had the most fabulous meal. Each course was exquisite - and huge - I completely thought that after the pasta which had us moaning about being full that dinner was over, but then they brought out red wine. We were confused. Red wine means meat. How could there be meat after so much food? But yes, meat it was, and then dessert wine. It was an incredible meal, and the ‘kids’ table as we were, myself, Nils, Anders, and Cameron - the students of the crew ended up with an overtired-overfull laughing spree which was fun and ultimately painful since we were so full. The conference organizers, William and Carlo, gave me a plaque and some lovely gifts for being the winner of the contest, which was really sweet of them. It was a fantastic evening and we headed back to Nils and Anders’ place to meet Lars to go out afterwards, but later decided we were a bit too exhausted, and called it a night.

I met up with Nils and Lars the next day for some proper sight seeing. We went and saw a lot of interesting places and found a beautiful sunlit cafe where we had espressos, - note, asking for a latte results in a glass of milk - and sandwiches. We wandered around a bit more, went wall-climbing to steal oranges - see photo, visited the Vatican, an art gallery, had gelato, and invested in prosciutto, cheese, and olives and then went back and made caipirinhas at their hostel - and I’m sorry Nick but my new brazillian drink maker is Lars, best caipirinhas ever. We met up with Alberto, who is the person I was talking to about interaction design in Rome and possibly working with him and he and his girlfriend showed us an amazing square in Rome - can’t remember the name right now - but we had a great dinner at a cosy restaurant and then went to a wine bar afterwards. We finished up the night having a mojito at a bar that was on its last call and I grabbed a taxi at 3am to go back to Cristiano’s place to get my things. I said bye to everyone and got in another taxi to catch my bus only to find out that the tourist office had misled me and there was no bus - so I got another taxi, yes, I’m now at sixty euros worth of taxis and got to the airport for 5am. I completely passed out on the plane and woke up in Copenhagen at eleven a.m.

Rome was amazing, I met incredible people, had the most beautiful dinner, learned a lot about interaction design and made new friends and contacts. And of course, it was ROME :D What a fantastic trip.

Back to CPH:

I got to Copenhagen at eleven a.m. and tried to catch a bus and a train but neither were running so I ended up having to wait a while to leave the airport - and get to the boat by one p.m. to meet with two girls who were having a party at the barge that night. I had visions of going, meeting them and then sleeping while they set up but no. Apparently the two hours I got on the flight was all I would be promised as when I did get to the boat, there was tons of stuff to do to prepare for the party, and from that point, until five a.m. when we went to bed finally - it was an insane party, well run, but very active - until eight a.m. when I had to wake up to make sure that the cleaning had been taken care of, it was a crazy busy time. I did get some fun dancing in though.
I finally got some sleep Monday night and then Tuesday I bought a ticket to Linkoping, in Northern Sweden, to visit Anders for a design probe conference that was happening at his university. I fought with ‘tradera.com’ - an ebay-like company which sells train tickets last minute and finally, at nearly midnight, managed to buy a ticket for five a.m. the next day. I went to Linkoping and the conference was quite good, got me motivated about design probes again, and met the Masters of Interaction Design class up there - which was very cool. It was really motivating and inspiring to talk to them and see what their ideas were. We had dinner at a student pub playing Jazz and I went back home via bus - meaning no sleep - at midnight again, getting back to Malmo for seven a.m. I had breakfast with my friend Jonas and then we went to class where I managed to sleep on a couch for a couple hours until class started.

Recently:

So that covers up until April 9th-ish... bringing me to this week, which is April 28th. I’m not too sure what happened in between. It was a mad, mad combination of class, where we’re studying bodily awareness, and physical movement in relation to interaction design; attending the Kunsthal Charlottenborg for my friend’s installation - a Half Machine/8bitklubben work of art called “The machines are playing when you’re not in the room” - which is basically a light installation that shows pretty light combinations reflecting off a wall but if you go over to check it out, it turns off, and only works when people are not ‘in the room’. This landed Half Machine a spot on the local TV station, and a magazine interview which was quite fantastic. See here: http://lorry.dk/moduler/nyheder/showregvideo.asp?dato=11-04-2008&cID=1&vId=418961


Ah yes, and the ball. I was listening to Michael Buble's new CD - yes, yes, hush. Anyways, it got me in a mood to go dancing. So I called up Pete, my Swedish friend who is more Canadian than I am - and asked him where I could go dancing - he knows these things. He said there was a ball happening the following weekend and so we went. I found a beautiful amazing dress that was all flowy and wonderful and he wore a tuxedo with tails and we went - there was an orchestra, and everyone was wearing their gowns and tails. Lund, the city I live in, is very set in its traditional ways and as such, everyone was fully ready for a ball - apparently they happen quite often. All the guys have various medals from the associations they belong to and the girls are all glammed up. It was fun because amongst all the glamour, there was a VIP section we managed to get into, within which they were serving pizza, beer, and snaps - like schnapps, but swedish. The various 'houses' of students were standing on tables and chanting out their houses' chants and everything was a bit chaotic but very fun. It was a great night and we even ended up having an after party at Pete's place - having bloody mary's at 7am to finish off the night.

Besides that, its finally turning into summer here, weather has been amazing, I have a tan, everyone has sunburns across their noses, and as I started this blog, I’ve been living on my balcony which is like a small piece of Hawaii right in my own apartment. Its fantastic.

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Photos

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Sonderborg, where the presentation was

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Presentation at Sonderborg

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Dinner with Swedish friends in Rome

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Mission: Get oranges.

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At the Pope's Summer House

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Cafe in Rome

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Sight seeing in Rome

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Dinner presentation

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At the winery

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Peter and I before the ball

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At the ball

Comments

[Nick]

NOOOOOO!
Oh well, less work for me when I'm over there. ;)