Maybe it’s the time of year but we’ve really been feeling the love recently.
Last Friday I attended We Love Technology which kicked of Sheffield’s lovebytes festival this year and I came away from it all giddy with techno joy. There was lots of talk about a convergence of ideas between the many different fields of design, craft, diy and technology. James B’s talk about social friction has given our ideas around social gaming new life. I love the idea of open hardware and as a big instructables fan I think defining an open source style process for hardware is a great idea. There were a few generative artists, an electronic log and my most loved things of the day were the thought provoking items made by Mr Jones.
Tim had an adventure to the Casual Connect conference in Hamburg and came home with the fire of social gaming burning in his eyes. We’ve generally been moving our gaming ideas in that direction, starting to focus more on social gaming (watch this space for a Beastie Burger Facebook version) and having spent 3 days hearing other developer’s love for social gaming, it’s opportunities and it’s benefits we feel reassured and motivated to move our plans forward.
And then yesterday we found out we’d made the short list of 45 companies to join in the BBC @ North project. It’s a great opportunity for us as one of the smaller companies on the list, being in a group with some of the north’s best digital and creative agencies makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.