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May 7th 2011

Published: May 23rd 2011

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SwedishVanessa

Bahnof Servers, Dzl powered

It's been a long time since Australia and so much has happened, so much in fact that it's been nearly impossible to write anything down. Even now, I'm on a flight to Vancouver, and should be spending the remaining hour on my laptop writing a business plan but I felt like writing, getting thoughts out of my head and telling some of the story since Australia.

We returned from Australia and were welcomed by Denmark's winter, long, cold, and overall very opposite of what we'd seen in Australia. This year I was prepared, Sorel snow boats, wool I'd bought in Australia and the right gloves. I even biked many times on the days when it was at all possible and the paths were cleared. We had a number of fun weekends, a quick weekend away to Stockholm to work on Stille Teater, this project we went to Musac in Spain with; and we got to see the Vasa museum, an extraordinary museum housing a viking ship which was fantastic. We also visited the server-house of Bahnof, where Wikileaks is stored. It was very cool, as was the underground tour that my friend Anders took us on, Stockholm underground, nuclear storage

Leaving my job at halloween is fun

centers and all. 😊 Friends visited from Canada on another weekend and all in all, the winter started well. We also had a fun event, called Hygge med Bagtanke to celebrate the 'official' opening of GeekPhysical. The name means 'cosiness with ulterior motives" which it was, Christmas cheer with gløgg and cookies and cupcakes but with a twist, such as, each cupcake had a tiny geekphysical business card in it, and the entertainment was of course, installations we'd made. We filled the apartment with them and turned it into an art gallery for the night. It was a lot of fun.

My job ended in January so between December's Christmas breaks and the anticipation of the end of work, it was a strange season. We had a short trip to Cologne, Germany to once again visit my great-aunt and Renata. It was beautiful, with Dzl and I moving from Christmas market, to Christmas market, tasting, trying everything, on an eternal hunt for laser cut Christmas ornaments and drinking too much gluvin by 5 in the afternoon. Visiting my aunt was nice as Dzl understands German so she told us many stories of how she and my great-uncle Victor met,

Helle & me at Christmas dinner

and their love of apple liquor and something about hiding amongst barrels of it when they first met each other. We had another short trip up to Aalborg in Denmark to conduct a workshop with students there. You can see the video of it here:

We also went to my work's Christmas dinner and my fabulous friend Helle attended as my co-worker, Kasper's date. It was a fun night, dinner at a beautiful restaurant at Tivoli, a walk through the snow-covered shimmering-lights festival that is Tivoli at Christmas and watching Mamma Mia in Danish (ridiculously fun) followed by dancing like hip hop stars (albeit dressed in formal dinner wear) at a South African bar. Dzl also made a fun cookie decorating device for Christmas. This was awesome and can be seen here:

We celebrated Christmas at Dzl's parents house, again having a traditional Danish Christmas, lighting actual candles on the tree, dancing around the house holding hands and singing Christmas songs, and opening gifts together. Dzl found a traditional bread making bowl for me as I've begun to experiment with making bread, one can knead the bread in the bowl as it's large and shallow. Our New

Christmas @ Dzl's parents

Years was spent at home, with two dear friends, watching fire works outside our window and reminiscing about the year laying on a large bean bag chair. I think this set the tone for the year, relaxed, and thoughtful.

January and February saw me being hectic, trying to network like crazy as I opened GeekPhysical full time. At the very beginning, we had our one year wedding anniversary and relaxed (or tried to) by going to a well-recommended spa, which turned out to be not so exciting. We made up for it by stopping by an Italian deli and buying loads of wonderful dinner ingredients, cooking at home and having a wonderful night in. As far as GeekPhysical goes, we've been doing small projects over the past year and Dzl's been living off doing consulting and engineering work for people but now with him working full time as an IT Guru, running the electronics and workshop at Roskilde University, it was my turn to find clients and jobs. I've spent since the last week of January learning as much as I can, meeting new people, putting our names out there, entering the magical world of Twitter, and trying to

Hygge med bagtanke

gain fame on the internet and off. One of our first jobs of the year was for Venture Cup, a group that helps entrepreneurs get started. At their 'software finals' for software entrepreneurs we created a 'geeky' environment complete with the biometrics posters measuring heart rate and galvanic skin response and the Giant Printer, an old project of Dzl's from his past in LAB, an artistic experimental electronics group. It's a printer that works as a plotter, spray painting large surfaces with images from a computer. It was fun, we painted the Venture Cup logo and took some photos and video. We put this up on YouTube and within two weeks, had two emails from separate groups asking how much our printer was to borrow. For one, the timing was impossible but for the other, we thought perhaps we could do it. A guerilla marketing company in Brazil wanted us to paint the hand prints of 2000 of the football team's fan's on the stadium along with their names. Since that email in March, there have been hundreds of emails and planning and as I sit on this plane now, with a Brazilian visa in my passport, I still don't

Gaga news coverage

I'm mid-bottom, Nina is the star

know for sure if we're going. Madness. It's 1000 details, contracts, back and forth, logistics, not to mention Dzl has completely redesigned the printer and 'printed' new copies of it on a CNC machine so he can have multiple printers working at once. It's been crazy but if it works out, it will be our biggest and best job yet. We'll print hand prints of fans on the Rio de Janeiro football stadium and make fantastic videos to go with it. We hope it works out and I said goodbye to Dzl as I left Copenhagen saying, "see you in Brazil!" We'll see.

Events wise, it's been busy. November was the Lady Gaga concert, and the best of the crazies went together, myself, Mads, Nina and Bent. Nina and I had a somewhat undeclared declaration not to reveal our costumes to each other before the night of the concert and showed up outside of Bent's door, having made our own costumes, and somehow, having made the same costume. Amazing. We had both found giant playing cards in the dollar store and crafted our costumes around them. Bent and Mads went in their David Bowie-esque style and the four of

Cologne, aunt & Renate

us managed to not only look fabulous but end up splattered all over Swedish newspapers the next day which was great fun. Next up was Copenhagen Burlesque, a party which I think I've written about before, but is basically a throwback to the 1930's when Burlesque was very much in style. It's held in the beautiful theater house in Copenhagen, and once again, Dzl and I were working the event, which is always a privilege and a pleasure, there's nothing like having a dressing room complete with a lighbulb lit mirror to make you feel the part. This year, my dear friend Nynne sewed me the most amazing costume, a huge green ruffled skirt that was all ruffles at the back and pencil skirt at the front. Even better, the train was detachable. This worked quite well for the burlesque dance I performed, a short 2 minute routine to Christina Aguilera's "But I am a good girl". My friend Heather, normally a dancer at the event, was just three months pregnant and declared herself "not pregnant enough to have fun with it and do a pregnant-belly dance, and not slim enough to do a regular dance", helped me with my

Cologne Christmas Market

routine. It was so much fun. Dzl and his engineering skills helped me rig up my skirt to have another hidden skirt underneath, a vibrant pink skirt from my Indian wedding outfit, which came out, peacock style during the dance. The grand finale was the removal of the green ruffled train, swinging it a few times around my head and loosing the corset, with a flourish of tossing my top hat in the air to applause. I do love dancing. It was so much fun! Dzl built the most incredible belt, a steampunk inspired belt full of gears and dials and handmade in his workshop. (see photo) it's really the most beautiful artwork. He had a top hat with decorative leather and the flight goggles used by pilots back when planes had open tops. It was all very festive. Two of my friends dressed as sailor-brothers and made a show of singing sailor songs and writing their phone numbers to girls on dirty playing cards. There was an entire troupe of performers dressed as old ladies doing callisthenics with very convincing makeup, a fantastic hula dancing diva, my friend Mads doing magic tricks with fire coming out of his walking

Biking in the snow

staff, and endless elaborate costumes.

In amongst all this, and in the name of doing something good for the groups that I interact with on a regular basis, I, with a friend started a network in Denmark and Sweden called "Everybody Knows Frank" (you might remember Frank, the hippo from Tenerife). Frank in this case refers to anybody, the guy who's birthday you are at, and standing next to you, is a stranger to whom you start conversation by asking "so how do you know Frank?". In this network, Everybody Knows Frank, and they just need to get to know each other. The network is composed of all the creative types, people from illutron, the different art and tech groups in Malmo, schools and interactive, art, hacking, or other creative types. I had found, moving between these groups, that often, two people, each one in a different group, might be working on similar projects, with similar technology, or have a need to order parts in bulk but had no one to share the order with. There was also a distinct need for people to bounce ideas off each other, to seek the knowledge and experience of others and to

Burlesque

learn from each other. In this way, Everybody Knows Frank became a network for these people to connect, to get to know each other, to work on projects together or pick each other's brains, and to meet up once or more a month to hang out and play with geeky stuff. So far, we've had three big meet ups, the first of which was on the first sunny day of the year, on the barge, a perfect day, and several smaller workshops (like 3d jewellery building) it's been really great and I'm excited to see it go further. http://www.everybodyknowsfrank.com

Following Burlesque was April, in which suddenly, summer came early to Denmark. The winter abruptly ended and the sun came out and everyone pulled out their shorts and sunglasses and fled for the beach, the grass, the cafes and summer began. I completely took advantage of "working my own hours" and spent loads of time outside, soaking up sunshine. It's been beautiful. Over Easter holiday, I went to the beach near our place twice, once to just lay on the beach with a friend and talk about life, and once with Nina and Dzl to have a perfect picnic of

Burlesque

smoked salmon and mackerel, strawberries and avocado. It was so summery! Following this I went with a friend up to a 'summerhouse' in a beautiful and quaint little area called Liseleje. It was like visiting Birch Bay, tons of little houses or cabins, each made for a weekend visit or longer, and perfect white sand beaches. We spent the day on the beach and I even managed to trick my brain into thinking I was in Australia again, and ran into the ocean for a swim. My brain quickly realized what was going on however as my entire body went numb from the cold water and we quickly retreated back to the hot sand. It was so cold in the water that I didn't even notice a bad cut on my foot from something in the water until 10 minutes later when I could feel my feet again! We had a great dinner of fish fresh from the dock's market and watched the sunset and bought ice cream before heading home. Talk about a perfect summer day. The next day was spent at home and the next, in Sweden with Jonas and his girlfriend. Dzl and I took the train

illutron dinner

out to their summer house and it was equally beautiful, very reminiscent of Oregon's coast, long stretches of uninterrupted beach with little tiny sand dunes where you could lay down and hide between them to shelter from the occasional wind. Since it was Easter, there were beautiful feathers in all the trees, a Swedish tradition at Easter time. We spent a while on the beach before we all got too hungry and headed to a nearby cafe which was very decorated in a football-meets-surfclub-meets-navy kind of way. We went to the local fish market and bought tuna steaks and some ingredients for dinner and spent the night with Dzl as the bbq master, and the rest of us chopping and making shish kabobs and salad and whatnot. It was so delicious! The house has a beautiful covered patio where we ate in the setting sun and it was truly a beautiful day. We spent the night and had a very typical Swedish breakfast the next day, with yogurt, breads, cheese, jam, and a product whose name I cannot remember, but is basically blueberry cream, blueberries, sugar and cream which one pours into a bowl and eats like yogurt. It was

Angle grinding!

fantastic. We headed home as we needed to start cooking Easter Brunch for Dzl's parents. We made lamb, a salad of avocados, pears, spinach leaves and a dressing, and mint-caper dressing for the lamb. It was really tasty, but we made the mistake of trying to enjoy the weather and eat outside, where we roasted, even I, who can happily live in Hawaii or Australia, found it unbearably hot to be eating or sitting still and so we finished up quickly and headed back inside. Fantastic weather for April and a much needed relief after the winter. I also picked up a new weekend activity, rather than working and being crazy all weekend, I've started to relax. Two weekends were spent watching a friend's football (read, American football) game and going for brunch and enjoying the city. It was amazing! It's so nice just to relax for a change and not run around and work or go nuts. I think the theme of the rest of the summer will be to have calm and happy weekends and really enjoy my time more.

So all of that brings us to this past couple weeks. We had our first party

Jellyfish!

of the year on the barge, the theme being 'demented fairy tales'. Dzl went as Alibaba the Ninja Pirate, combining several costumes including a Zorro mask, his Indian outfit, and a Ninja belt. I went as Princess Jasmine from Aladdin, but with a beard and my friend was as the Genie from Alaaddin, complete with entirely blue skin and a black goatee. It was so much fun, it's the same crowd as Copenhagen Burlesque so the costumes were beautiful and amazing. We were greeted by Nicolas and Mads shooting fire cannons into the night sky and I got a great photo of me as a bearded belly dancer shooting the fire cannon. Mads' girlfriend was dressed as a beautiful princess with a twinkling white feather skirt that he somehow magically controlled with an Macbook remote, turning the lights on and off. Other memorable costumes were a very tall woman with her very short boyfriend who were of course, Frodo and Gollum, although, come to think of it, Hobbits aren't so tall, but... in this case I think it only mattered that Gollum was shorter. Mona came as an Absenthe fairy with green EL-wire (read, lit up wire) in her hair,

New Years Eve

a fantastic corset and green stockings. I love everyone's ability to put so much effort and thought into their costumes, it's always great to see.

Then on to Vancouver. The Computer Human Interaction conference, one of, or perhaps the, biggest Interaction Design conference in the world is in Vancouver this year and Mona, Amanda and I submitted a workshop proposal for it, concentrating on "Greenwalls". Greenwalls are walls of highrises or buildings which are made up of plants. The companies that make these walls make them in a wall that they can be vertical, are weather-proof and come in patterns and designs. However pretty they are, they also serve a purpose, reducing CO2 and rainwater and contributing to a "greener" city in many ways. I say many ways because this is Mona's domain, she is studying sustainability so I'll leave that explanation up to her. From my end of things, I'm interested in how to engage people in understanding that the walls are more than just pretty plant-walls but rather giving them the opportunity to learn about what the walls are doing for the city and for them. This is where Amanda and I come in, interaction design in

New Years Eve

full swing, how can people interact with the walls? So, here we are, on our way to CHI11, and checking out a very cool conference with tons of talks (I'm talking like 25 talk choices in every 2.5 hour segment of every day, it's nuts). Mona is doing this for her school degree fulfilment so she is running the workshop, working with grassroots organizations to suggest ideas to them and I'll be at the conference, networking and learning about all the new stuff going on in the world of HCI.

So much has been going on besides business and costume parties but it's not the type of thing that can be defined by events, it's an evolution of thought, of being, of understanding the world around me. I was elated, literally dancing down the street on my last day of work, leaving behind a well paying job and being happy to be laid off, to focus on what I've always wanted to do, run my own company, have my own hours, never spend my day forced to sit at a desk in an office again. Maybe one day I'll need to, but hopefully not. A great example is two

1 year anniversary

days ago. I met a woman from the Technical Museum of Denmark, who I've been working on some ideas with for exhibitions for her museum. We met at Ikea, had a coffee and went shopping together. I got paid for this. Two hours of shopping at Ikea. We stood in each room, took some photos and brainstormed 28 ideas of how we could make the artefacts in each room tell a story about their history, explain the changes in technology, in furniture, in how people use the home over the past 100 years. Each room became an opportunity, a magical portal into new ways to tell stories, and I loved it. We had so much fun and it's exactly what I want to be doing with my time, being creative, bringing experiences to life, and creating memorable moments for people. In that moment, I really felt like, this is what I want to do. That's one of the 'events' that's been shaping me since my lay-off. Others include endlessly long talks with Dzl about life, what we're doing, how we can evolve, how we challenge the standards that society expects and demands. Copenhagen is a very forward thinking city in

Everybody Knows Frank

many ways, there are two types of people as I can see them, traditional Danes, and the people we hang out with, the illutroners, the Christiana people, the entrepreneurs and Venture Cup folks, this spans art, philosophy, fast paced business people and anarchists but it all has the same feeling, change, grow, evolve, re-examine, make. These people are all making things possible, making new experiences and challenging ways of thinking and doing and being and living. And so are we. We're untraditional, and love being so. I love explaining what I do to people and changing it every time depending on what situation I'm in and still telling the truth. "I'm in marketing", "I make explosions for a living", "I'm working with computers", "I teach tangible computing", "I work with concept development", "I'm an entrepreneur".... and countless more. On a more personal note and even saying that of course I must admit that my business, GeekPhysical permeates, nearly defines who I am and what I'm doing, not to mention who Dzl and I are. We are GeekPhysical, inventor and interaction designer. But, on a more personal note, it's scary, becoming what you do, many people I think go to work

My new little red bbq!

and go home and are their work selves and their home selves. I am many selves. I am, as a dear friend has decided to name me: Network Girl: she who networks, even in her sleep, all the time, with no fear of meeting people and always striking up conversation (thank you Daddy for the ability to talk to anyone and sound convincing); then we have High Heels Girl: she who loves to dress up, be fabulous, be the belle of the ball, be a girly girl, and stand out in Copenhagen's distinctly feminist-flavored environment as she who likes doors opened for her and drinks bought for her, a Princess of sorts; finally we have, and now we're bordering on two names here, Starfish or Jellyfish Vanessa. Either one depicting quite easily, the at-home one, who few, very few, rarely see, she who is not so confident, much more mellow, and in need of near constant attachment to those close to her. There's a few more, there's Gym Vanessa who is a fitness enthusiast, and is loving the free time to be able to go to the gym four or five times a week and have crazy killer workouts and

A Danish Summer House

keep up to a small degree with (some) football players, muhahaha (coincidentally this is also competitive Vanessa), and Housey Vanessa who is secretly a bread-baking, Martha-Stewart-esque housewife in disguise. So with the distinct fear of developing some sort of multiple personality disorder, I venture forth, or rather, the 5 or so of us venture forth, trying to meet the demands of whichever situation presents itself and sometimes successfully and often unsuccessfully transistioning between all the Vanessas to be the one who is needed at the moment. Apologies to all those who have received Network Girl when they should be getting Starfish or Jellyfish Vanessa.

In the past four years I've changed a lot. I've changed from the city girl who couldn't understand Scandinavia to the much more European flavoured girl who appreciates sitting in a cafe for literally countless hours, who has actually come to enjoy learning this mad language of Danish, and who survives the Danish winter. Not to mention the girl who suddenly knows what she wants to do, and the girl who isn't afraid to try new things, and in fact, insists upon trying new things rather than entertaining the terrifying thought of becoming bored and

After an April ocean swim

typical. I feel like I'm a lot more in tune with how people think, feel, react, and how I should react to them. I'm much more relaxed, I know things will work out some way or another. I feel like I don't need to try so hard to please people except in extreme circumstances and even then, it's taken some months but I've learned to relax in that as well. I've learned to trust my relationships, know my friends will be there and know how much I need to put into a relationship to keep it going. I've got confidence and faith in myself and Dzl and feel like we can take on the world and much more. I finally feel like I can guide people and thank all those who have guided me (Mads and Dzl in particular), and I see the same fear, the same uncertainty or arrogance in others who are younger or newer that I myself had, even just a year ago. I'm aware that I'm wrong, and dumb, and that I will make mistakes and will sound like an idiot, and will do stupid things. I'm also aware that for the most part, I'll recover

Spring in Sweden

from them and so will whoever I've offended. It's a cycle and if I can be relaxed about it, so can others. Dzl's been begging me for years to appreciate the moment I'm living in and to stop running - well so have you all, I know, but he's been saying it daily. Finally I feel like I'm doing that. Even though I'm busy as hell with GeekPhysical I've finally found the time, with new friendships and new perspectives, to stop, to enjoy the weekend or cooking, or talking, and stop my brain, stop the email, stop the madness. I feel like I can be successful without the stress, and yes of course there will be one or two days where everything goes to hell but the next day will be fine again and I just need to remember that.

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Vanessa Carpenter

SwedishVanessa

In 2007, I moved to Malmo, Sweden to complete a Masters Degree in Interaction Design. I used to live in Vancouver British Columbia, Canada so this is quite the adventure. I started here with my good friend Amanda, who was my tour guide and emotional support, we had fun, learned a lot and now she's back in Vancouver, and I'm married to a Dane and have a business here in Denmark. Lots has changed, but the adventures, all around the world, continue... ... full info

Joined	August 30th 2007	Trips	0
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