Please Make Peace
3 May 2010 by céline
Met with Brett today to have lunch and discuss about OpenCinema.
Why i posted this particular image?
After reading Habib’s tweet; “Talks abt imminent Israeli/Lebanese war ths summer, really hope not. Wish thr was a way 2 influence. Enough wars, we wnt peace, I wnt peace!”
Reminded me about a particular graffitti piece I made in Beirut in 2008, 2 yrs after the Summer War with Israel.
The war, the remixing, all this is related as it all came to while I was stuck in Montreal in 2006, when my flight was canceled. i was going to see my mom, when the airport got bombed more then once. I wanted to create a video where we look at the CNN footage, but we hear my mom talking to me on the phone. I had recorded her and she was saying: “Don’t worry, it’s ok. We will rebuild the airport habibi don’t worry”
On buzzwords and mainstream culture
21 Apr 2010 by célineIs the brain lazy, or simply overwhelmed? And is there a different between these two states? As they both appear to put the brain on stand by. One does so, out of exhaustion, and the other: out of, well… laziness, motivation perhaps..
When mainstream culture picks up words like: “amazing”, “curating”, “ninja” or even “web 2.0″ like it is the case over here in Montreal, it can only mean 50% of the fundamental understanding of these words got lost somewhere in between the reader and the author. Or between the broadcaster, and the audience. And the conversation going back around can only be again divided by 25% of the understanding again.
So where does this leave us?
Well, it could be that it makes it harder to explain the culture to lazy adoptions of buzzwords, makes it also harder to work with quality as not everybody seems to understand the goals, or the meaning of the actions. But when we press the big PAUSE button, and take the time to take time, and explain calmly. Only then, can we hope the message was fully assimilated. And the buzzwords can finally die.
Amen.
On serendipity
21 Apr 2010 by célineTrying to describe serendipity, Wikipedia says: “Serendipity is the ability of making accidental but fortuitous discoveries, especially while looking for something entirely unrelated. The word has been voted as one of the ten English words that were hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company.[1] However, due to its sociological use, the word has been imported into many other languages.[2]”
…making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of: for instance, one of them discovered that a camel blind of the right eye had traveled the same road lately, because the grass was eaten only on the left side, where it was worse than on the right—now do you understand serendipity?
I’ll try my own humble explanation of the word serendipity:
Serendipity is looking for a book you have long lost, and find an unexpected notebook you completely forgot about, and be happily surprised about it.
Jeff jarvis says: Serendipity is unexpected relevance
Serendipity is not randomness. It is unexpected relevance.
What is serendipity for you?
searching for serendipity… what can you find? Never what you are looking for.
How to design something that offers this kind of surprise, magic, and stickiness..
Designing social interactions
20 Apr 2010 by célineI have been working on a project for over 6 – 7 months non-stop.
We worked in a small team, using Agile process, small iterations, 3 weeks between each launch. I personally have learned a lot.
I’ve learned more about people, and dynamic between them.
I’ve learned how to deliver the best I can in 3 weeks
I’ve learned how to collaborate better with dev
I’ve learned how to keep it cool
I’ve learned how to solve solutions real fast
I’ve learned how to focus on the goal, and keep on going
I’ve learned how to communicate calmly (even if very excited) my ideas, and present our work with enthousiasm but clarity
I’ve learned how to say No
I’ve learned how to design in French
I’ve learned how to clear a bad situation with a coworker
I’ve learned how to keep up the faith no matter what
The best memory I have is when all the dev guys working on the project were gathered around my computer and were all playing with the visual design, Photoshop was On, and they’re ideas made this search bar:
These are some snapshots of the original wireframes, as a record, archive of a memory, of that time we all sweat over something we believed in.
Archives dans la mémoire of designing social interaction in Québec, Montreal.
Finally Lefil.ca goes live one last time on April fools day.
