1. Interaction Design and strategy work for .gov
I started work on a project with the Dutch Ministry of Internal Affairs. I’m working together with Ton Zijstra which is proving to be a pleasure. It’s all about making government data available in more accessible and reusable ways where possible. On the current list of what we’re delivering are a set of guidelines on how to go about doing this, (It’s gonna be a mixture of a cool flow-chart and explanation) plus a few examples of some government data that we’ve opened up. We’ll serve government data up in multiple formats, including an API. Alper will support this project code-wise (he’s already been hacking away at widgets that reuse gov data for some months, as well as doing an interesting mash-up with Kars in 2008).

The guidelines will aim to address any government worker or team asking the question “How do i open up some data?”. Hopefully we will translate this into English following our Dutch version. We’ll also fully document and make available the open government data examples and ideas for services that might ride on top of them too.

Alper and I recently visited GovCampUK in London which was inspiring again. Good to touch base with people like FutureGov, Open Knowledge Foundation, Rewired State and of course MySociety.

2. Less than a month till NARB launches on March 7
Tijs Teulings and I were fortunate to get funded back in September 2008 to develop NARB, a new software service (a web platform, an iphone app. and a mobile website) that helps people find and comment on art.

The good news is that we’re kinda almost there! Last week we did our first beta test at Museum van Loon. We’re doing another one this week and if you have an iPhone and want to join let me know.

We’re officially launching NARB at Rotterdam Museum Night, March 7.

Tijs presented to a unexpectedly large audience and jury at the Spin Awards inspiration day. He was actually expecting to talk to 3 jury members in a small room. Surprise!

We were nominated in the category, best mobile concept for our Roomware Hyves Party application. This event driven application was put together to help celebrate Hyves, the largest social network in the Netherlands, reaching 5,000,000 members. You can see some pictures of it here and here, with some video here.

We realized we needed to have fine-tuned our presentation more towards marketing then technology. The jury was made up of experienced marketers who really wanted to see passion and impact reflected in numbers (how effective campaign or action was). Hopefully they picked up on the fact that we just demonstrated a way for advertisers to link with Hyves in a powerful new oblique way. Companies are just crying out to mine the power of social networks. It’s of course how you do this that is important. No-one likes getting spammed. As for Alchemyst and the Roomware Project and speaking for myself. I’m into creating collective experiences in physical spaces, something i predict we’ll be seeing a lot more of.

Barely up and running, but boy is it good to get started. I have been working on this project which has been 6 months or more in the making, so it is an absolute pleasure to quietly put out to sea. Curious to see how people respond beyond the initial teething troubles from small bugs here and there. What is it? It’s a social network for people working inside public services. No it’s not got reviews of bands and people playing music, with crazy photos of teenagers pozing in the mirror with a 45 degree facial close up shot. It’s where people working in public services go to hang out and find each other, where they can let off some steam, and share war stories, and of course, find new solutions to fix the problems they face each day caused by bureaucracy (amongst other things) while serving the public. This is a dutch-language and dutch centered service for those of you from outside the Netherlands.

Welcome to the world of BeroepsEer!(translates to working pride in your particular craft)

What it includes for those hungry for the functionality laundry list is:
- profiles
- groups
- events
- blogging (individual, groups, everyone)
- video blog (send us your uploaded video interviews/opinions on your perspective)
- presentation of discussion, people, groups, institutions over location (googlemaps)

did i miss anything?…probably…also we did not build messenging in the first version which is a sort of standard social networking functionality for people to talk with each other inside the network.

1. Information architecture
2. Designing and developing an online platform
3. Blogs/wiki’s explained
4. Building for the Internet of Things