Initial Impressions from IDMAa

I attended the International Digital Media Arts Association (IDMAa) conference at Ball State University the past several days. Some very compelling presentations. I heard Tom Kelley from IDEO speak about innovation, the architect Philip Beesley speak about building forms that approach "living", and Joe Mandese from MediaPost give a recursive overview of what he was blogging about during the conference. Mike and Michael (Bloxham and Holmes) discussed a media usage study underwritten by Nielsen to study the amount of video that consumers watch. Ball State University has been a leader in media usage studies since the seminal Middletown Studies.

A few initial thoughts:

• Given my love for UCD and people-centric technology, Tom Kelley's comments about how anthropologists are some of the best people to identify innovative opportunities, seems intuitive... He calls it Veja due, looking at something you have expereinced before with a different perspective.
  

•  Often, it is the esoteric thinkers who build or develop things for the sole sake of beauty or interest, who spawn ideas. We need more people who make stuff because they can, not because they see a need. 

• Technologists are interested in what makes something "living". Approximating the living behavior, either through AI or sensation, seems to be the next step in computers at the bleeding edge...although this statement has probably been true for the last 30 years.

• Art, Design, and Communication overlap as they feed technology innovation. More interdisciplinary research and collaboration is needed to spur innovation. 

• Everyone is still struggling over how to research social networking. The topic has worked its way into specific disciplines as functional areas of academia seek to apply traditional research methodology to something so new and amorphous.
  

Conferences like these always get the mind working and the fingers typing. GO IDMAa!