A journey through an interesting day

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of being invited to the conference ”An Interesting Day 2018" by Bakken & Bæck, which took place in Amsterdam at a famous nightclub & former school. Deschool was the perfect venue for the topic of this year’s edition: Playground. Already by just looking at the quirkily crafted, thoughtfully written e-invite, my inner child got excited.

We invited the most interesting people from the tech and design field to talk about their flagship projects, random daydreams, and serendipitous strategies. With topics ranging from Minecraft to menstrual cycles, we’re aiming for the unexpected

Back to school

Fun and unique approach for meaningful topics, I am how cool does that sound?
Let me tell you, it definitely met my high expectations, which is why I am sharing my experience with you today…

Each room was dedicated to one main activity: talks, installations, games, and performances.
It was like going to a really fun, first day of school with the most entertaining breaks between “lessons” and lovely “classmates” from all around the world: the Netherlands, Poland, United Kingdom, United States, Canada… just to name a few.

Welcome to an interesting day when your body and your mind come out to play, get ready to explore some new ideas and plenty more…

Inspiring talks

- Anna Holmes created Jezebel, a feminist website in order to reflect women’s reality in our society. She stood up by changing women stereotypes in the media.
Now she’s SVP at Topic, a digital news magazine that explores various topics using visual storytelling. She really put emphasis on images (photo, video) to tell a story and get people’s attention.

• Ida Tin described her career as a female entrepreneur and her vision of leadership. It all started with a motorcycle tour across the globe and now she’s the CEO of Clue, an app that helps to track women cycle (including me :)). The app has the world’s largest data set on female health.

• Joy Mutai works for UN habitat with Block by Block project, which use Minecraft to improve and design public spaces by actual citizens in third world countries. It helped 30 locations in 20 different countries. That’s really cool to see how impactful this method is and making the residents a part of changing their city. I mean, who else knows a city more than a resident, right?

• Tracy Ma, graphic designer, shared how she got the most of her creativity, working for magazines covering white old men. In order to approach corporative topics, she’s using graphic design through radical and creative ways to deliver a straightforward and significant message. She showed her crazy, original, inspiring creations for Bloomberg magazine and her different collaborations for NY Times.

• Zach Lieberman talked about his passion for poetic computation through his work and school. For instance, he created the Eyewriter, an eye tracking tool that can help people draw with their eyes. He had the idea when one of his friends, a graffiti artist became paralyzed, so he could keep his passion alive.

One of the most inspiring things was how diverse the speakers and the audience was and very refreshing to see a majority of female speakers sharing their experiences and how their work is impacting the society we live in.

A unique playground atmosphere

Breaks and after school session was entertaining and a nice way to socialize, here’s a sneak peek of what happened:

These two far-fetched teachers who kept the audience entertained to the max with funny games

Loved the design identity of the event (even the goodies were kept in the “back to school” theme — just look at those cool backpack stickers) Illustrations made by Oscar Grønner.

The Rodina, a poetic machine where you shoot on huge bubbles out of space. A cosmic metaphor to represent data.

Also attended to a contemporary performance where dancers were pointing out the relationship limitations between human & machine, or is it the other way around?

To conclude, it was definitely “An interesting day”. Extremely inspiring and a clever reminder of how as a kid you’re always learning by playing, something we tend to forget on a day to day basis. Every designers, techie, and manager should keep that in mind! Don’t take work or yourself too seriously, have fun, explore, be creative because that is how we can push our limits and come up with better results!