My initial thoughts about the day were: “Okay so it is supposed to be the first nice day this week and I am going to BookCamp Toronto 2010 to sit inside Robarts Library all day and listen to and participate in various discussions.” I was conflicted, I really needed a sunny day and I wanted to be outside but thankfully the weather wasn’t nice this day as it turned out to be overcast and even threatened to rain.
Welcome to BoockCamp Toronto 2010
Ever look at someone’s bookshelf? It is one of the first things I do when I enter a room with lots of books at eye level. I start scanning the spines of the books and reading their titles. But until the other day I had never really noticed all the different logos that represent the various publishers.
Book Spines
This Thursday June 11th I attended a lecture entitled ‘Tools of an attention trader’ at KDMI (University of Toronto) given by Greg Van Alstyne who is an Associate Professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design. For the first half he lectured about various aspects of what a designer does and his toolset and in the second half he conducted a workshop.
A few unique circles
On Saturday June 6th of this year Bookcamp Toronto was held at the University of Toronto. It was the first time it was held and I believe the event surpassed the organizer’s expectations. They put on a wonderful event, brought in great speakers and were even able to provide everyone with a great free lunch, which was donated by Booknet Canada.
I recently sat down with Gary who was writing his graduating thesis on the topic of newspapers. Because of my background in traditional and online news media he wanted to pick my brain about what I thought were the real issues concerning the future of the medium. This topic is of great interest to me considering I am also participating in a research group that is trying to define the future of the book.
For the love of news on paper
Last week I participated in a sLab Exploration session identified as ‘The Smartbook Project: Rethinking the Book’ at the Ontario College of Art and Design. In attendance were a diverse crowd of people, from students, librarians (information sciences) and user interface specialists to a physics professor from the University of Toronto. And within the hours that followed, this group partook in an intriguing exploration into what might end up being the future of the book.
Paperless reading
