Another year, another issue of the Bye Hi post (2015, 14, 13, 12). Overall, I have gone through some major changes – mostly related to the way I now think of my work and how I approach it. Perhaps for the first time in my professional career I am starting to develop some form of focus. The boat seems to hover around less and is slowly lowering more anchors.

On a non-work related level, it it mostly all about children and the marvel of seeing them grow up. As a parent I constantly question myself on how I need to change/adapt my own attitude towards life. In 2015 we took care of two foster children. One of them stayed for 5 months, the other is still staying with us now. This is intense, and sometimes draws a lot of energy out of me and my wife. But seeing the impact of bringing some peace and harmony to the complex situations these children come out of is very rewarding.

2015, the year in which I thought I would:

Know if my PhD can be rerouted / rebooted

Yes! Rerouted it is. This has been my personal major achievement the past year. I managed to get a ‘Baekelend’ funding grant at Studio Dott to continue my research. The focus has been altered, and is now much more on design processes for products that consist of digital and physical parts (ie. hybrid product service systems). I’m really happy how this has turned out, for the first time in years I feel that people are actually supportive instead of sceptical – which changes a lot of things, mostly mentally.

Build at least one other example of a meaningful connected product

Failed (and not failed…). It would be lame to say that I didn’t build anything ‘new’ because I don’t have the hardware yet. I have a concept ready in my head, but need to sit down and actually make/craft/code the thing. Having the Particle Electron at hand would make this a lot easier though 😉

Will put together a publication on meaningful connected products (and hope to distribute it at thingscon 2015)

The publication I started working on resulted in a IOT Ideation Toolkit, which I worked on together with my excellent Studio Dott colleagues. We’re currently doing initial sessions with this set of tools, but it should be released to a broader public before the summer.

Own a GoodnightLamp (!)

Yay! I even wrote a longer post about it here.

Actually read the books I buy.

Failed, drastically.

Somehow get involved in my father’s CNC business

Yep, we’ve been doing some small projects on the side. Over the last year my father managed to build closer contacts with the people at OpenDesk – I hope this will take off at some point. We attended a larger interior objects oriented trade fair last year, where we showed some pieces of the OpenDesk collection. We had an advert in Charlie magazine. But ‘selling’ the whole CNC thing to a mainstream audience is not straight forward.

Do more geocaching with my wife and children

This was good. But I think my wife and I are enjoying it more than our children. Nevertheless, geocaching has been a good mechanism to get us out of the house and explore places in the neighbourhood.

2016, the year in which I will:

• Work more focussed. Set up partnerships with people I enjoy working with.
• Close my facebook account (started doing that on Jan 1st)
• Revive my Little Printer
• Co-organise Fri3d Camp
• Organise a new humans & things event
• Run PhD related workshops in London and Rotterdam
• Go skiing with my daughters (ie. their first time on ski’s instead of sleds)
• Finish a project that has been catching too much dust