Workshop LoRa

Quick-start with wireless devices on the LoRa Network

Wireless IoT on LoRa with the KPN Things Portal
LoRa (Long Range) is a low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) technology. KPN has set-up a LoRa network with national coverage. To support activation and management of devices and their data, we have created the Things Portal.

Workshop
This workshop will have a practical hands-on part and a conceptual part.

Everyone will get a Marvin LoRa development board to work with. You’ll be programming (easy instructions) the board, bring it online through our Portal and choose an end-point to send it’s data to.

Now that we’re inspired, we’ll discuss the possibilities of low-power wireless devices and come up with applications. At the end we’ll choose a winning concept, which will take home a device.

You’ll get to keep you account with the LoRa access.

What to bring
Bring your laptop, we’ll bring devices. If you have a device with LoRa connectivity you’re welcome to bring that too.

Max 20 people.

The workshops is hosted by Elias van den Berg, Martijn Voerman, and Simone Tertoolen

Ashlee Valdes

Ashlee Valdes (@ashevaldes) is fascinated by new technology and human behavior, a combination which has led her to become a facilitator of innovation methodologies. Drawing from a background in psychology and business she has worked in research management in 3 countries, her native USA, South Africa and the Netherlands. 

Bringing together research, service design and new technology development, she has worked with innovation labs at INFO and Thomson Reuters, on topics ranging from IoT, AI/ML, to fin-tech. Building communities around topics of impact and learning are one of her motivators, and as such she has joined the board of ThingsCon in early 2019.

Ashlee is part of the organising team of ThingsCon and curating the session on storytelling.

Andrea Krajewski

Prof Andrea Krajewski is an industrial designer, speaker and blogger. Since 25 years she is fascinated by the changing role of design in innovation processes. In 1994 she co-founded 360° – a design agency with an interdisciplinary approach, designing products at the border of digital and analogue media. In 2002 she was appointed as a professor for the Design of Interactive Media Systems at the University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt. Here she established the interdisciplinary study course Interactive Media Design the UX-Lab and the THINGS-Lab – the current centres of her research. The contact to the ThingsCon-Team for her was like love at first sight.

Andrea is part of the organising team, was curator of the RIOT publication and is moderating at the Student Masterclass.

Session: We, the body, the internet, and things in between

Bodystorming the wearable Internet of Things

The Internet of Things spreads in our homes, our neighbourhoods, our cities and landscapes; and to our bodies, to ourselves. We have attached computational smart technology to our bodies for centuries beginning with rings with an integrated abacus in the 1600’s or the watch. Arguably the internet has brought a whole other dimension to the possibilities, necessities, and enhancements we add to ourselves; smart watches, fitness bands, smart medical devices, imploding in the multifunctional black slates we carry with us as if they were a part of our body. Through them our activities transform into informational utterances voyaging into the vast networks, possibly re-appearing magically through other things or on someone next to us. Where else do they go on their journey? Are we a thing on the internet? Can the wearable IoT provide a potential for an alternative narrative that enables us to stay human on a network of things?

As part of his PhD research as an OpenDoTT fellow Jens Ewald wants to discover the untold stories of the body, the self, and the things in between. Where are we now? Which aspects of the body and the IoT have you not yet discovered?

Session

Join us in a session to explore together the current state of the wearable IoT with a collective body mapping and gain new narratives through visual storytelling. Gathering our own stories and experiences with connected products in our day to day lives on our body we will transform stories of the now into alternative proposals of a potentially more poetic wearable Internet of Things, not products.

Maximum Participants: 15
Participants don’t need to bring anything.

Hosted by Jens Ewald.

The future of mobility is trip-chaining! An ideation workshop

Friday 13 December 11-13h

Female Mobility

Female travel patterns differ from those by men. Since we move within a mobility system designed by men, there are probably many opportunities left unseen. This impact talk presents female mobility both in numbers from literature and science and qualitative insights from the field. It will change your perspective on mobility!

Read more on the research into female mobility done by the session hosts Lieke & Frieda:
https://medium.com/female-mobility/female-mobility-a-longread-69959b044773

Ideation session

People that pursue multiple purposes in life, don’t usually commute from A to B, but build tripchains. Tripchains are multi-stop routes, that arise when people have a variety of errands to run. Think of grocery shopping on your way home, or dropping kids at school and continuing to work. Traditionally, women tripchain more than men. One of the reasons is, that more women combine paid work with unpaid work. Tripchaining is for everyone! Tripchaining is the future!

Following a pitch-presentation sharing insight and numbers around opportunities for innovation – we will work in a guided ideation session on propositions that improve tripchaining. We welcome great do-ers and thinkers!

Hosts

Workshop is hosted by
Lieke Ypma
Frieda Bellmann
During the session participants will be supported by designer/illustrator
Nikky Lenstra

Curated by Pieter Diepenmaat

Session: Connected storytelling

Storytelling

Storytelling is one of the oldest methods of teaching and learning. Stories have been passed down since the beginning of mankind. First by mouth, then by text, more recently radio and moving image. They carry lessons, emotion, wisdom, religion and entertainment. They enable us to see ourselves in other worlds as well as in the shoes of another. Stories are a lens in which can make sense out of confusion, help others see a new frame of mind, and even carry data.

So what happens to this ancient human art with the advent of connected objects?

Connected storytelling

Let’s explore how modern day storytellers are not just using but making technology to impart messages. From the platform that enables digital stories to be realised, to the objects who become interactive story tellers themselves. Add data collection and privacy and things start to get complicated. How does a storyteller act as an artist, creating interactive experiences while being responsible?

This session will present cases from 4 pioneers in this craft followed by a panel conversation with the audience.

Host & speakers

Moderated & curated by Ashlee Valdes

Speakers:
Edwin Jakobs; partner at RNDR.studio
Hanne Marckmann; Chief Furware Officer at Go Wonder
Vera van de Seyp; designer / creative coder
Tijmen Schep; privacy designer at Pineapple Jazz

Session: The Hacking City

Adding a digital layer to the city collecting data, making our infrastructure responsive and generating new forms of participatory design, will become an intelligent layer. Autonomous things, decentralised systems, it all is becoming part of a potential city AI. Will the city become an intelligent creature on its own, will it take autonomous decisions, steer the citizens more than the citizens steer the city? The first iteration is the role of the autonomous objects and the intelligent services we need to use the city. We are not ourselves deciding what our path is, we are ruled by the mapping engines of Google leading us through the most dirty alleys. The city is hacking our life. The city is licensing its services to us.
In this session we like to discuss this possible future of the smart city and what to do about it. Who is ruling who?

Host & speakers

This workshop is curated by Iskander Smit and Martijn de Waal and moderated by Gerd Kortuem, professor of IoT at TU Delft. Panellists/speakers are:

Sjoerd ter Borg; designer and artist
Kars Alfrink; designer and researcher TU Delft
Naomi Schiphorst; architect with focus on smart environments
Tessa Steenkamp; experience designer at Unsense

SMD for terrified beginners

In order to reflect on internet of things related topics, a critical element is having internet connected hardware that works. This workshop allows you to endeavour into better understanding and experiencing what it takes to build IoT products.

SMD Soldering

You know those tiny little components in modern electronic devices? It’s both possible and easy to assemble those by hand. You can do it, and during this workshop you will learn how! We’ll be replicating, in a scaled-down and de-automated way, all the steps that happen in an electronics assembly factory. Think you don’t have the tools? Think you can’t manually place 0402s? Everything is possible with patience and practice. The equipment is minimal and you probably already have it.

This workshop will allow you to understand what it takes to assemble a working printed circuit board. By going through this process manually, the often ‘hidden’ assembly process will be brought to the foreground in order to better understand what is actually going on.

This workshop is hosted by Kliment Yanev

Session: Relate to the machine

Human – nonhuman relationship

Our relation with machines is changing. The relation between humans and nonhumans is becoming more duplex and AI is influencing the behaviour of the devices. We wear devices more close on our body and we are interacting with things that become more self-aware and get agency or even citizenship. We need to rethink this interplay and how we design for these.

Session

In this session we focus on the new intimate interactions we have with these objects with agency and the consequences for design. We are discussing the need for having a relationship with these tech and what that entails in the first place.
How do we design technology that we can have a responsible relationship with? How do we design technology that enables us to have responsible relationships with each other?
We invited researchers and designers with different backgrounds that share their thoughts and findings and present them in statements for the discussion.

In the second part we like to discuss the ethical questions of these new interactions through the workshop ‘Make Me Think!’.

Hosts

This session is curated and moderated by Iskander Smit. Maaike Harbers will lead the discussion using her ethics workshop ‘Make me Think!’

Speakers:

Maria Luce Lupetti; postdoc researcher TU Delft AiTech
Cristina Zaga; associate researcher UTwente
Gijs Huisman; senior track researcher Digital Society School

Program

Our Two-day program

This is the full ThingsCon 2019 program overview. Student are welcome to join the general program but maybe you want join our special student program.

Continue reading “Program”

Speakers & hosts

Our speakers & hosts

We are happy to announce our keynote speakers and hosts for sessions and workshops. These include:

Marleen Stikker
Tracy Rolling
Heather Wiltse
Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino
Klasien van de Zandschulp
Mirena Papadimitriou
Davide Gomba
Wouter Reeskamp

But wait, there are many more:

Continue reading “Speakers & hosts”

ThingsCon 2019

Our sixth annual conference took place 12 & 13 December 2019. Come shape the responsible IoT with us and dive into…

Look back at Thingscon 2019!

×