There’s an abbreviated (and probably better for it) version of this on the British Council blog. Read that instead if you’re short of time. I don’t usually think of myself as an ‘innovator’ because I’m old enough to remember…
Stop having ideas
I’ve completely changed my mind about something. I used to talk about ‘making things fast’ and the great power that comes with the ability to generate masses of ideas. It doesn’t matter if they’re rubbish, I said, just make them…
Talk for Open Platform at the Do It Anyway festival
Here’s the talk I wrote for Open Platform’s “A Random Process” experiment at Sheffield Access Space’s “Do It Anyway” festival, this weekend. It’s basically a development of my lightening talk for Future Everything. There were a handful of presenters/performers going up…
The year so far and Leviathan
I never seem to blog anymore. Thought I’d get things going with some recent news. It’s almost half-way through the year. The story so far 2015 has been a year of professional anxiety so far, really. I feel like I’ve done…
Everything I know about sales
Hack Circus costs a bloody fortune. I am less than half way through what is, without doubt, the most expensive three years of my life so far. I think I knew it would be hard, but I didn’t know why…
The age of fun is over
In 2011, at the first Culture Hack event, I did a talk called “What if we have fun?” It was only short, but I talked about the value of subversion when engaging with tech – turning stuff inside out and…
Why I don’t want to talk about Hack Circus yet (but I will say this)
Haven’t blogged for ages! I’ve been a bit busy. A few things have happened. We made an amazing event and a new issue of the magazine, then I went to Greece for two weeks. More interesting, maybe, is what didn’t…
Starship Hack Circus
Citizens,You will by now be aware that we have been receiving radio signals from Earth-like planet KOI-3284.01. There has been much debate over protocol, but the longer governments and space agencies take to wrestle with the politics of response, the more…
Reflections on a residency
My three-month residency at Brighton’s Lighthouse Arts came to an end this week. We finished with a bang of flashing lights and music and paper radios and my BBC BASIC slides, and BBC Click came to film us working for…
On 7 Up and personal (hi)stories
Since the hype around the new film Boyhood, I’ve been reminded of the famous long-running ‘Up series’ of documentaries that started with ‘7 Up’ in the 60s and followed its real-life cast every seven years from then onwards. We’ve been…