Posts tagged as createinnovate

I’m sat in the Hubbub studio in Utrecht. I’ve been visiting for a few days, and on my final morning, thought I’d catch up with Kars, and borrow a desk to catch up on some email. It’s lovely. A pleasant, cool space with excellent light, and Vechtclub XL (the co-working/studio environment Kars’ studio is part of) is wonderful: lots of makers, craftsfolk, and designers under some very big roofs. I’m a little jealous.

Week 95 was short. I spent it in Newcastle, running a three day workshop for CreateInnovate with David Varela. In that time, we took four pairs of filmmakers through a crash-course in what’s described as ‘cross-media’. I focused on technology and procedural work; David spoke a lot about writing and story, and we both neatly intersected around narrative and games.

It was a busy, exciting three days. We managed to cram a lot in, thanks in particular to some diverse guest speakers Skyping in on Monday afternoon, and thanks also to the enthusiasm of the participants. It’s always exciting to go on a journey with new people, because you never quite know where you’ll end up – and I certainly left with many new ideas, not to mention a broader window onto Film. And, of course, it was a delight to work formally with David for the first time.

The rest of the week was spent out of the studio, visiting friends in Utrecht, and how I come to be in Kars’ studio. Back in the UK, at the Guardian, on the Tuesday of week 96 – and then it all begins again.

Another week cranking hard on Lewesdon.

Graham, the other developer on the project, is on a well-earned holiday, so I’ve had two weeks to push the website that most people are going to utilise and experience quite far forward. It’s very much a working wireframe, extending Bootstrap just enough to do what we want, and to understand the pathways through the site. I’m also off the project during week 95, so I was aiming to leave it in a state where he’d be able to pick things up on his end of things – the Scala tools that are going to do some of the crunchier, high performance work.

This week, that meant adding things like authentication – so that Guardian users can log in with their own accounts – and making sure the alpha UI is coherent and functional. I also took some time to write quite a lot of tests, getting the ball rolling for me writing more in future, and also to cover a complex set of functionality: setting the “open” and “close” timestamps for “swarms”, our large-scale surveys. A useful exercise, and it immediately lifted my confidence in my code.

By the end of the week, much of the deck we’d been using to explain the site had been replaced by functioning code: just in time for a demo with the Editor. He was enthusiastic and asked useful, pertinent questions, which we’ve added to the list of editorial feedback. In a couple of weeks, we’ll be showing the work so far to everyone who’s offered us tips.

For the rest of the week, I was prepping for Week 95’s workshop: one large talk and one small to write, along with making sure we had a working timetable. By Friday, I had a decent schedule spreadsheeted up and shared with my collaborators, and a decent draft of my talk about digital media. Come Sunday, I’d be on a train to Newcastle.