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FooCamp 2011

Posted by _tango! on June 6, 2011
Posted in: art, brand, conference, design, entertainment, experience, food, fun, green, ideas, information, inspiration, materials, me, music, style, tech, thoughts, wacky. 1 comment

I’m heading out to SF towards Sebastopol for a new unconference that I have never been to but was incredibly excited to be invited to  FooCamp (Friends of O’Reiley) which is an invitational camp, where 250 awesome people, hackers, designers, creators, makers, and questioners  gather to come up with whatever is on their mind and have great discussions with people from all over the world from different fields to boggle your mind! I’ve had quite a few friends attend and everyone seems to be energized full of ideas and disruptive ones when they return from this 3 day backyard camp gathering. There is not much online about it, but here is a write up from our friends Andrew on his experience a few years ago! I’ll be back next week with lots to write up about, and keep secret at times. Let me know if your in SF. I’m out there right before Foocamp this week.

(picture from laughingsquid)

Jay Walker’s library of human imagination

Posted by _tango! on May 22, 2011
Posted in: art, brand, design, entertainment, experience, food, fun, green, ideas, information, inspiration, materials, me, misc, music, style, tech, TED, tedmed, thoughts. Leave a Comment

I’ve been waiting to visit Jay Walkers incredible “Library of Imagination” for several years now and in about 12 hours I’ll be inside pondering, wondering, imagining, and wishing I could take everyone along. I’d write more about it, but the 2008 TED video above or the Wired article will explain it best until after I return, though I’ll have no photos as this is not allowed during my visit. I’ll have to thank TEDmed for arranging this visit, which is also a must go to conference I highly recommend.

Handspring Puppet Co.: The genius puppetry behind War Horse

Posted by _tango! on April 14, 2011
Posted in: art, brand, conference, design, entertainment, experience, fun, green, ideas, information, inspiration, materials, music, style, tech, TED. Leave a Comment


One of my favorite talks and demonstrations from this years TED2011 conference came Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler, of Handspring Puppet Company

“Puppets always have to try to be alive,” says Adrian Kohler of the Handspring Puppet Company, a gloriously ambitious troupe of human and wooden actors. Beginning with the tale of a hyena’s subtle paw, puppeteers Kohler and Basil Jones build to the story of their latest astonishment: the wonderfully life-like Joey, the War Horse, who trots (and gallops) convincingly onto the TED stage.

TED2011: The Rediscovery of Wonder

Posted by _tango! on February 26, 2011
Posted in: art, brand, conference, design, entertainment, experience, fun, ideas, information, inspiration, materials, me, style, TED. Leave a Comment

I’m off to the TED2011 conference, which will be my 10th TED conference. I’ll be stopping by LA this weekend to meet up with some TEDsters, then in Palm Springs all of Sunday to meet with TEDx organizers, then Long Beach for a backstage peek, then back to Palm Springs the rest of the week. Let me know if your going, in LA, or follow me on twitter for updates. And yes, that is me on the back of a shared bike last year cruising around the resort during one of the session breaks with my friend Ash from Australia. Also follow the Facebook Fanpage for occasional quick updates.

User-Led Innovation Can’t Create Breakthroughs; Just Ask Apple and Ikea

Posted by _tango! on February 19, 2011
Posted in: art, brand, design, entertainment, experience, ideas, information, inspiration, me, thoughts. 1 comment

Great article  from Fast Company about Innovative designs not being consumer-led. I’ve always believed in this. Consumers know what they love and hate now, but they never know what they want tomorrow. Users often don’t know what they actually want even though they might say otherwise.  Focus groups are sometimes useful, but in most cases they an excuse to do when creativity is lacking or something to ease the mind in management. To innovate is to lead, not to follow, or as the article concludes with ” It’s time for brands to step up and trust themselves again”

Anyhow, read the article mirrored below after the jump.

Continue Reading

Google Art Project

Posted by _tango! on February 2, 2011
Posted in: art, brand, design, entertainment, experience, ideas, information, style, tech. Leave a Comment


Google Art Project is StreetMaps inside several museums plus more. You can explore several museums across the world, while looking at a painting really close or from far away, you can watch Youtube videos about them as your curator, and you can create your own collections. It’s like having the worlds best museum all in 1 webpage! If you own or curate a museum, you can submit your library to the ArtProject as well.

The Noun Project

Posted by _tango! on January 30, 2011
Posted in: art, brand, design, entertainment, experience, fun, ideas, information, inspiration, style, tech. 1 comment

The Noun Projects is a visual library of icons representing everyday things we stumble upon daily, but this library is free to the public for use under Creative Commons. Pretty sweet project, and they also have  Kickstarter page if ya want to help them out.
Heres a bit more about them:

Mission
“sharing, celebrating and enhancing the world’s visual language”

The Noun Project collects, organizes and adds to the highly recognizable symbols that form the world’s visual language, so we may share them in a fun and meaningful way. Here is our pledge to you:

FREE
The symbols on this site are and always will remain free. We believe symbols can not be effectively shared with the world if they are not free.

SIMPLE
Everyone like simplicity. We want you to be able to come to our site and effortlessly find and obtain what you are looking for. Simple as that.

FUN
We think a language that can be understood by all cultures and people is a pretty amazing thing. We also think our symbols and the objects or ideas they represent are works of art worth celebrating. Check out our store.

HIGHEST QUALITY
We get excited about things like scale, proportion, and shape. We are committed to design and quality in everything we do.

DLD Conference 2011 Livestream

Posted by _tango! on January 23, 2011
Posted in: art, brand, conference, design, entertainment, experience, food, fun, ideas, information, inspiration, materials, music, style, tech. Leave a Comment


For those of you that could not make it to the DLD conference in Munich this year like myself, there is a livestream of their lectures all 3 days. Take a peek at their schedule then grab some food and watch the all day series of talks. Keep in mind the schedule is in Munich time, so I think about 5-6 hours ahead of EST.

*they also have a great archive of each video in that livestream url. Watch these anytime.

Cocohon 555

Posted by _tango! on January 22, 2011
Posted in: brand, conference, entertainment, experience, food, fun, green, information, me. Leave a Comment


Cocohon 555 celebrates a gathering to bring together a feast with 5 pigs, 5 wine makers , and 5 chefs.  I’m thinking about going to the one in Boston next sunday. They have dates in NYC, Seattle, Napa, SF, DC, Chicago, Denver, LA, and New Orleans as well. Looks pretty amazing. Has anyone here been?

“Cochon 555 is a one-of-a-kind traveling culinary competition and tasting event–five chefs, five pigs, five wine makers–to promote sustainable farming of heritage breed pigs. Each stop along the ten-city tour offers hard-working local farmers the opportunity to connect with like-minded agriculturalists, renowned chefs and the pork-loving public. Our goal is to help family farms sustain and expand their businesses and to encourage breed diversity. Cochon 555 is the only heritage breed pig culinary competition in the country.”

via cocohon555