Nordic Exceptional Trendshop 2006

Sofa talk

In the two black leather sofas on the stage are seated Louise Skyggebjerg, George Dyson and Colin Bulthaup. Together they have just lectured on inventors and creative environments over the last one hundred years. Skyggebjerg on the Danish inventor Ellehammer. Dyson on his father Freeman Dyson and the team of scientists who invented the nuclear bomb and the computer in the 1950s. And Bulthaup – a young American inventor of the new millennium.

Essential to all inventors is funding.

- The tragic side of the story about Ellehammer is how difficult it was for him to get his work funded, as Dyson noticed.
Skyggebjerg replies: - It was actually easy to get finance in the beginning of a project. Ellehammer’s charismatic person convinced many investors. But the investors were disappointed when Ellehammer could not show results right away. And then they took away their funding.

Host Henrik Føhns turns the conversation.

- What about morality? How can you work day in and day out on building a bomb and in night time concentrate on e.g. working on the computer – as the team around Freeman and van Neuman did.

George Dyson: - It was a moral issue that the scientists at Princeton struggled with. But the military financed the project. They said: - “Well, if you design our bomb, then we will finance all your other crazy ideas!” And many essential inventions were made. The government doesn’t think that way any more. Today we just get the weapons. Not all the other crazy and innovative ideas.

Colin Bulthaup: Just do it

Colin Bulthaup (US) talked about how to create an environment that allows you to come up with the next big thing. And how do you do that?

You need to go beyond thinking about what the future can bring. Instead we need to do it. When you walk in academic environment we don’t normally have the offertunities of making real impact. But we need to.

A few innovation examples from Squid Labs, where Colin is from: Smart Rope (the rope that knows if its about to break), Educational Cartoons, Instructables.com (A way for people to work in collaboration on projects)

Potenco.com
Cell phone use is exploding in Africa, but only 10% of the population has access to electric power. People have to walk many miles for access to power.

Enter The Pull-Cord Human Power Generator! A small devise that looks like a playing top, but can produce electricity when you pull the string on the generator. For 1 minute of pulling you get eg. 25 minutes cell phone talk time! The best thing about The Pill-Cord Human Power Generator? This device is real! – and millions of units will be distrubeted within the next years in developing countries.

$100 Laptop is an example of The Pull-Cord Human Power Generator in use.

Who invented the small boats in the Tivoli Park, Copenhagen?

It was the same man who also revolutionized the fire engine. And invented one of the first (well functioning…) aeroplanes. Meet 'the Danish Edison', inventor Jacob Ellehammer (1871-1946). Presented by Louise Skyggebjerg from the Danish Technical Museum.

Ellehammer worked on everything from new types of engines to an egg opener! One of his greatest inventions – 'the forgotten success', as Louise Skyggebjerg calls it – was The Ellehammer Pump. A fire engine that could be attached to a Ford T and therefore be used in rural areas and not only in the city. Ellehammer was a true innovator who lived in an exciting age.

The Danish Technical Museum (webpage in Danish)
www.tekniskmuseum.dk

The Dyson Show...

George Dyson, son of a nuclear physicist, starts his presentation by saying: “Most of my parent’s friends were extremely boring”. Well, George Dyson is not... I think most of the conference audience is amazed that a historical mini-lecture on technology development can be this entertaining. John Van Neumann (The Van Neumann Maschine) is both stand-up material and interesting knowledge.

One of the more serious things Dyson said (a little revised):
- The computer revolution was let by Van Neumann, and due to his thinking the world has now changed to something completely different. Neumann saw the computers as something you need to feeding with instruction, but he alså made todays computing possible, where cemputers only need very few inputs. Google is an example of a computer system, that is expanding and "gaining knowledge" when we sleep.

Morning Energizer!

Who is ‘the speaker’? Jane McGonigal presents the game of the day. Who is the speaker among the audience? It could be anyone… You are not allowed to reveal yourself as a speaker – unless you are paid a compliment. If you are the first to find a speaker you will receive a high-tech gadget prize by the end of the day! Jane will come back in the afternoon to deliver the prize. Will the NEXT2006 audience succeed in creating a social network?

www.avantgame.com

The NEXT conference begins!

I have been looking forward to this day for several months, and now we are finally here. December 1, and the NEXT2006 conference is just about to begin here at the IT-University in Copenhagen. We are sitting at the back row in a huge auditory with, and all day through you can follow us on this live blog or our live LabTV stream.

Now Innovation Labs founder Preben Mejer welcomes us to the conference.
We will be back.

SkyScout

This one droped in today and will be presented at the Nordic EXceptional Trendshop during the weekend.

The SkyScout is a revolutionary, one of a kind, patented handheld device that instantly identifies and/or locates any celestial object visible to the naked eye, providing educational and entertaining information, both in text and audio. A fun learning tool for all ages, the SkyScout Personal Planetarium puts the knowledge of an expert astronomer in the palm of you hand.

Link: Celestron

Concrete Screen

Dome lights in metro stations? Interactive squash courts? Walls coming alive and the advertisement pillars of the future?

A trial of strength? A mobile technology on the increase becoming a significant reality is now being challenged by exactly the opposite. While screen technologies are currently bringing forth the most gossamer screen types – perpetually implementing new resolution and colour standards, Innovation Lab now presents a novel screen type not conforming to this trend. It does however pave the way to a new world of unprecedented possibilities

In co-operation with Christoffer Dupont, student of engineering; Line Langballe, student of architecture and Dalton Beton (a Danish manufacturer of concrete components), the Innovation Lab project team has developed the first screen of transparent concrete that the world has ever seen. A revolutionising screen type – a novel concept which will come to influence building industry, architecture, design and a vast array of business areas. The first firms of architects were already queuing up long before the manufacturing process had been completed. Innovation Lab therefore has great expectations to this creation and anticipates a massive influx of attention, national as international, cementing the significance of the see-through concrete screen...

Link: Innovation Lab

Cheoptics360

viZoo & RAMBOLL have together created an impressive new media for large city surroundings - blending digital optics with real life activity. 

Cheoptics360™ is a new medium that provides hitherto undreamt of opportunities
for narrating in 3D. The medium will move the boundaries for visual communications in public places, and will change how people in the film and advertising worlds and architects work.

You are standing in Times Square in New York. Imagine a building with a large glass pyramid on top. Inside a hologram of a full-size true-to-life Madonna is performing. Objects and symbols float around her, reinforcing the musical impression of the living images - like a music video on an MTV broadcast virtually in true life.

It may sound like a scene from the future, but with Cheoptics360™ it is already possible. The fact is that Cheoptics360™ provides entirely new opportunities for showing films and presentations in inspiring and exciting ways. Observers see floating video images, which can be viewed from all angles, 360 degrees around: a spacious 3D experience never previously encountered.

“Cheoptics360™ makes it possible to blend fiction and reality in hitherto unprecedented ways. It opens up a world of possibilities for using the medium in films, commercials, and various other types of presentations,” says Peter Simonsen from viZoo, the company that invented Cheoptics360.

Cheoptics360™ shows films based on the Free Format™ philosophy; in other words, the format is free and unframed, as the idea is to break out of the frameworks and instead use actual space as the framework for narration and the video image.

How the technology works Cheoptics360™ is a four-sided pyramid manufactured of transparent material so the audience can see through it from every side. Inside the pyramid chamber the audience can see objects that seem to be freely floating video images and computer graphics. This is done through surface mirroring and reflections. The pyramid itself is used as a kind of prism that assembles light from four video projections into a solid image.

Link: Cheoptics360

Instant ASCII Camera

Vuk Cosic from croatia will both be presention at the conferencen and exhibiting the Instant ASCII Camera during the event.

The Instant ASCII Camera is working in the same way that the instant cameras located in the railway stations. The difference is though, that this particular camera produces portraits in ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) and that it is free of charge. This means that the pictures consist of different letters; numbers and symbols that put together in a specific matrix form a portrait. The consumer approaches the camera, presses the green button and instantly receives his/her portrait on a supermarket type of receipt. Even though that you cannot use these pictures for your passport it still provides great opportunities for future application.

Using the Instant ASCII Camera it is possible to get free portraits of yourself. However you cannot use the portraits for your passport due to the fact that your portrait will only consist of letters, numbers and symbols put together to form a picture!

Link: Instant ASCII Camera