uɐɯʞuǝɯ ɐsoɹ, Jonnet M

ik-a-sketch

At Social RFID Hacker Camp 2009, Day 6

The art of collaborative drawing

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Ik a sketch: the makers - At Picnic 2009 uɐɯʞuǝɯ ɐsoɹ

Two big Americans just drew a cat -'no it was not a cloud'; a process that resulted in interactions that were very child-alike. A wonderful outcome within the setting of such a corporate, grown up conference. This kind of social outcome was one of the the things Neil and Edwin aimed for from the start.
Neil and Edwin seem pretty satisfied with the result of the project. The giant (but unfortunately not biggest-ever) ik-a-sketch is however not a very surprising outcome. The project unfolded itself very linearly; nothing really changed from the start. They thought of a game, they build the software, then the installation, then it worked (all in 5 days).
Of course there are also a couple of things Neil and Edwin would have done differently, if they were given the chance to do things over. Next time for instance, they would start with ordering the wood - now the materials were there only the day before the last day, which provided some last minute painting stress. But some stress was good though, since the rest of the project was kind of fluid.
They would also choose to program in a more stable environment. Now the ik-a-sketch relies on Processing, open frameworks however, could be a more stable, robust environment. Another thing they would do differently is program the installation of the final computer from the start - the migration of the software from one mac to another wasn't trouble free (kind of lab labor intensive actually).
The ik-a-sketch was one of the projects that was first up and running. Walking through the 'halls' of the Gashouder I heard the name of the project multiple times: prove of success!
Some review can be found here and here