Matthew Hutchinson

I’m a bit late to the party with this round-up, since @media ended last Friday. But I have excuses you see ..

In short I have to say I enjoyed @media 2006 more. This year seemed (to me) to be much more designer focused with fewer technical topics. It was an excellent event, well executed with some great speakers – but with the huge amount of sketching going on, I found myself surrounded by those who ‘push the crayons’ – so to speak.

On leaving I had the feeling that I had heard most of it before, yes, possibly at last years event. I also preferred last year’s venue, the grand scale of the Business Design Centre in Islington gave the impression that there were fewer attendees. Although I’m sure if you counted up, you’d find more people here this year. The absence of wi-fi seemed to be another common complaint.

All-in-all it was definitely worth going to. I only took a couple of photos (many more on flickr) and notes during the whole event (rumple.. crumple..) To sum up a few of the talks;

read the rest of this entry ...

Don't Stop Believing - Petra Haden

heard on project.ioni.st, nice tribute – but this doesn’t beat the Journey (and Peter Griffen doesn’t come close either)

In my grand plan to relocate I need to find someone to move into my current room in Brook Green. (not-pictured below)

• Slide-show
• Original Gumtree Advertisement or Craig’s List (posted today)
• Where it is on Google Maps
• Photos on 23hq

So if you know of anyone who is interested in a (large) top floor bedroom in a friendly house-share near Brook Green) point them to the links above. I expect this will go quite quickly, I have already had a number of enquires (photo is of The Palace of Soviets, which I’m sure would have made a great chick magnet)

A ‘bad’ King has 1000 bottles of delightful and very expensive wine (possibly reviewed on cork’d.com). A traitor to the king sneaks into his castle and threatens to poison him. Fortunately the guards catch the servant after he has only tampered with one wine bottle. The guards don’t know which bottle has been poisoned. With me so far ?

Furthermore, after drinking the poison it takes one full month to kill the victim. The king has an upcoming(.org?) party in exactly 1 month, and wants to serve all 999 bottles i.e. without serving the poisoned one.

Being a cheap ‘bad’ King, he wants to employ the least number of wine tasters, saving on his party budget. What is the minimum number of wine tasters the King needs ? And if you were a member of this unlucky bunch; which one would you want to be ?

Where indeed ? Well literally, right now I’m between Friday sessions at @media 2007. But due to these events bigger things are going on. Basically my time at the BBC has come to an end, and in the spirit of ‘onwards and upwards’ I am off to live and work in Dublin, Ireland.

In a few weeks I’ll be working with Rails and the very excellent team at Exoftware, trying to find somewhere to live in Dublin and doing the whole re-location dance again.

Working at the BBC has been an invaluable experience. I joined last January starting as a Technical Project Manager. I have had a huge insight into the workings of a very (very) large institution; the ups, downs; ins, outs; twirling and spinning. Working with great UK agencies on million-pound, multi-lingual projects was challenging as my first job in a technical management position; but I couldn’t have wished for a better place than the BBC to ‘cut-my-teeth’.

Hat’s must be tipped to my immediate team of fellow TPM’s all of them excellent managers with their own areas of expertise. Without a doubt the best team of people I have ever had the privilege to work with so far.

Going back to a developer position is something I am very keen on. Working as a TPM did offer a few opportunities to delve into code, but I found myself enjoying more of the freelance work I continued to pursue through Hiddenloop. Building things end-to-end on mostly green-field projects.

So very busy now, for the next few months at least, light posting ahead – next 30 miles.