Hello everybody!
Phew, Mindtrek = over! I usually attend 4-5 conventions in a year but this was my first time visiting a conference. In the end, they did not differ that much, which I found pretty interesting. We were asked to be analytical but since being analytical over stuff that requires knowledge which I don't have is not really my strength, I'm going to be a bit analytical about how the conference was made from the viewpoint of a convention organizer. But first, I'm going to talk a little about what I heard & learned.
I usually go to hear the opening ceremony of conventions so I went to see that too in Mindtrek. And boy, I'm so, so, so glad that I went because I got to hear Neil Harbisson's keynote lecture and I was just blown away. I'm still amazed because of that lecture, my mind and world got expanded so much. Happy accidents happen and me going to hear the opening ceremony was one. I'm so glad. Let me tell you why.
Basically Neil Harbisson told us about his life as a cyborg and all the possibilities cyborgism has to offer. He told us about his antenna that can transfer colours to sounds so he can hear them and how he can listen to the colours of space. He also told us about his colleague Moon Ribas who can sense earth- and moonquakes thanks to her cyborg sense. I had never even thought that we could expand our senses in such creative ways! It really opened a new door for my creative thinking. How far can we go? How crazy can we go? How can we use this technology to make life more interesting or more easy? I'm really, really excited to see & hear more about cyborgs.
Otherwise the lectures were pretty OK. I really enjoyed the ones that had something to do with games and/or theatre. I wanted to go see some VR lectures as well but ended up not going to a single one for some reason...? Well, these sort of things happen. First I was struggling pretty badly because I went to some lectures I couldn't understand at all but luckily I found some interesting and understandable ones in the end! You can read about my adventures at Mindtrek from my Twitter feed below. I didn't want to use the hashtag for a couple of reasons: 1. To avoid my tweets being selected to the big screen, 2. Not wanting people to follow me in hopes of getting intellectual content out of my account, 3. Mindtrek was obviously not aimed at me, so me tweeting about Mindtrek would've felt wrong because I'm not part of their community. This one's a bit hard to explain but maybe this sort of example would help: It was like a non-geeky person would've gone to a geeky happening and not understanding anything, thus proceeding to tweet criticism or "wrong" stuff online, possibly making the community look bad. I didn't want to make their community look bad or myself look stupid. I don't know if this cleared anything up but yeah, please continue to my feed now...
Tweets by oonamedia
Then a couple of words from the perspective of a convention organizer! Overall Mindtrek was a nice experience with not much issues. However, I did pinpoint some things that could've been better:
Name tags/tickets
1. People were printing name tags on the morning of the conference, which seemed a little odd to me. Next time maybe they could print them the day before to make things run more smoothly? They were not being overly strict about me having the name tag with me so they just gave me the Mindtrek bag and let me go attend the panels, asking me to fetch the name tag later. So, not having the name badge didn't really affect my schedule. However...
2. ...that also means that they weren't really keen on ever checking the name tag or badge. Anyone could've walked into the venue and attended since neither Mindtrek staff or Tampere-talo staff were paying any attention to who had a badge or not. Also nobody was there to check who had bought the more expensive pass that included the lunch, resulting in non-payers eating there. That's quite problematic since the lunch-inclusive pass was way more expensive and letting just anyone eat the lunch puts the buyers of that pass in a very unfair position.
The conference booklet
I've collected program booklets and made one myself as well, so I have a couple of things to say about Mindtrek's.
1. First of all, TBA's. There were a couple and that's usually alright BUT they were never even updated to the webpage either. I have no idea what was held during that time. Maybe they could put up a deadline next time for the speakers to ensure that they either attend or do not attend? TBA doesn't serve anyone: the conference-goers have no idea what the lectures include and the speakers probably don't get that much audience.
2. Maps were not up-to-date. The main auditorium was marked on the map even though it was not in use at all: thus making me believe that the main hall in the schedule pointed to the main auditorium. It was never said in the booklet that Park hall was the main hall. Fortunately they had some signs up in the bulletin boards that pointed that the Park hall was the main hall but still, it took me some time to realize that.
3. Keynotes. It could've been useful to mention that all the keynotes were held in the main hall instead of just marking them happening everywhere simultaneously.
4. Not good enough program descriptions. It's understandable that sometimes it's not beneficial to the convention to print expensive booklets that have all the info about programs but in these cases you should have all the info on the website in a handy form. I wanted to check what programs contained a couple of times but because the webpage was so odd my phone didn't want to co-operate with it. It was not mobile-friendly at all, at least for me. Maybe technology conference could invest in better technology next year. Mindtrek app would be a really handy thing for next year!
Also, some of the programs were running late.
Then some positive points as well:
- Nice, calm environment (minus that one rude guy shouting at the keynote speaker)
- Overall things seemed to work despite the flaws I mentioned
- I really liked the idea of breakfast & coffee
- Some lectures were really interesting and inspiring
For next year they could maybe include some entry-level lectures as well for people interested? I know the point of Mindtrek isn't really to introduce newbies to the business, but just a suggestion! ;)
Mind-boggling creative thoughts,
Oona
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