We had some friends over for a little Australia Day party on the weekend. My contribution was a pavlova, pictured above. It’s the first time I’ve ever made one and it came out pretty good. There were also Tim-Tams, vegemite rolls and a bottle of Hardy’s - all courtesy of Ben and Sarah.
I haven’t posted much about work in the past couple of weeks. It’s been pretty busy. Last week we had a research seminar at Sandbjerg for the SPIRE centre. It ran on Tuesday and Wednesday, but I only joined for the second day. Wendy and I ran a little workshop to tighten the proposal for our edited volume. The results were encouraging and we will meet later this week to put together a call for participation for the people who could not attend. I also introduced the SPIRE blog, which I recently set up. Hopefully it will turn into a place where we can start to build more of an online identity - something that’s been sadly lacking so far.
On Thursday, the first and second year students presented the results of their Design Specialization course. This is a three week course where the students are able to set their own topics and objectives. They are free to either work alone, or in a group. I think it’s a pretty interesting concept for a course and the results were very impressive. I supervised two of the groups that presented, one was called ‘Software as a Design Tool’, where the aim the students had was to get some hands-on experience using software such as Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere. The students decided to combine their efforts to produce a video for the Segway track at Danfoss Universe, a local science park. The other project was called ‘Scrumgy’ and the purpose was to redesign an existing product (a networked media player) and rebuild it as a working prototype. It was really wonderful to see the dedication that all the students brought to their projects and the quality of the work that they produced in such a short period. We took some videos of the presentations they gave with the plan to put them up on YouTube, so once they’re up, I’ll add a link.
The week before last, I had a three-day teaching seminar organized by the University for new teachers. It was also at Sandbjerg, so I feel like I’ve almost spent as much time out there as I have at my office in the last two weeks. Learning about teaching is very important to me and the content _seemed _good, but unfortunately, the whole course is run in Danish and my Danish skills weren’t really up to the task. Hopefully the later parts of the course, where a mentor comes and works with us personally on our teaching will be more valuable.
There’s also quite a bit happening this week. Today and tomorrow, some researchers are coming down from the Interactive Institute Design Research Unit for a workshop titled “intangibles of everyday living”. The idea is to look for common research interests and possible cross-overs across some current and upcoming projects. Should be interesting.
…And of course, the thesis continues.