In September I travelled to Amsterdam for the PICNIC 2011 Festival. The event is like a big fair and this year it was held at the old shipbuilding area called NDSM Wharf, a ten-minute ferry ride from Amsterdam's Central Railway Station. A variety of different structures including temporary buildings, old containers, tents, an old ferry boat, were used for the sessions and presentations.
PICNIC was a great opportunity to meet people thinking about the intersection between design, city planning, internet, history, art ... lots of energy and very creative ideas. Among my favorite presentations were those by Adam Greenfield, Ben Hammersley, and Charles Landry (links are to videos of the presentations).
On Friday I attended a session sponsored by the European Creative Business Network. We split up into teams and developed ideas for venture capital funding. Our team of four developed the concept for an on-line game that would be played via mobile devices ... and we won the first prize: 5,000 Euro to develop the idea in more detail! We're working on it.
The photo below is of us taking the ferry back to Central Station after dinner one night, note that it's a roll-on/roll-off ferry for bicycles and mopeds ... extremely convenient and easy to use.
I'm already looking forward to PICNIC 2012! All my PICNIC 2011 Festival photos (many of which are of the Amsterdam Harbour) on flickr.
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