ADVENTURES OF MINDTREK 2017

To be super honest I have to tell that writing about my experience in Mindtrek is really hard, because I don’t remember everything as good as I wish I would. Started writing this by staring into my notes from talks and looking through the photos of presentations. Wanted to write it the way it usually should be written - chronologically with quotes and my reflection of them. Decided to do the opposite. Below I will write down whatever pops into my mind in whatever order it does when I am trying to remember those two days in Mindtrek.

My friend had a badge with her name and under it as her’s occupation was written “Puppy Master”. It was official for two days. After first day at the Mindtrek after-party there was also one of the organizers who said that he remembers the Puppy Master and had a great laugh about it.

Before the Conference Opening the technical guy was putting on the presentation and I got annoyed that he was not using projector’s screen as a second screen. I checked out in the booklet the name of the event where I was sitting and read “International Technology Conference”. Looked up again to the screen and followed every step in the screen as the technical guy was opening Powerpoint in the computer. I had two following thoughts: 1) The little things; 2) Focus on the big picture.

I missed with my friend the beginning of the second day, because we got too much free drink coupons last night at the after-party.

The first big speech by the Huawei guy in the first day was really uplifting and I felt satisfaction from finding out the new term XR which is used to describe VR, AR and MR in one term.

I really enjoyed having free food for two days. Cakes. Coffees. Lunch. Sandwiches.

The health issue that I have heard about recently from VR headsets in public spaces are eye herpes. I saw that no one was cleaning and disinfecting the headsets in Mindtrek.

It was clear that Mindtrek was about selling your stuff, idea and so on, because nobody there was talking about what is bad about all these new technologies. It would be interesting to hear minuses for a change. I was curious about that.

There was this one talk about picking trees in the wood with a truck???? Okay, I cheated and looked up the name of the talk so it makes more sense. It was “Immersive Tech Reforms Machine Operator’s Work”. The start of the talk was a bit ?clumsy?, because the speaker did not speak fluently english and seemed stressed. The moment he cut to the chase about using VR and AR in his company’s work it all clicked and seemed super interesting. When you think of any of XR technology usually the first thing that pops into the mind is games, secondly art, thirdly apps/practical stuff like placing furniture in the room. Worker who needs to put trees in the truck and uses for that VR headset in his cabin was something new.

Also interesting was talk about Moomin Museum project. You can’t touch and see everything when you look at the real house in the museum. The solution for this problem was that they created a 3D model of Moomin House through which you can walk around using a tablet. They also are working on VR version. Reasons why this kind of system is still not in the museum is that: 1) One person experience; 2) Equipment pricy and it takes too lot of attention to look after it; 3) It is clever to wait for a cheaper and accessible version of VR to come out. The idea that popped into my mind was that it would be really cool to walk through this house using VR in real time so that the user can look through the windows and see the people as they are standing tall or looking inside the windows.

A big thing in Mindtrek was not only the Emerging Technologies, but also they talked a lot about Smart Cities. From one talk I remember an interesting fact about Copenhagen. People from public sector and private sector are shifting quite often and results are really good. This kind of model gives an insight from both perspectives to the well being of the city, makes city more flexible and fosters cooperation. Made me think about my hometown Liepaja where there is the same people working in the same positions for 20 years. And we are talking about being a Smart City?! Whatever that guy was selling, I bought it.

Hmmnnn, what else?

The second day one talk was about... *cheating*... “The Experience Age: Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality”. Raven Zachary was predicting that most likely the AR will survive and will be used the most in a couple of years.

After second day I was really exhausted. But the adventure time did not end just there. We took one man’s badge from recycling box to give it to our friend so all three of us could sneak in the opening party where we did not registered. Fun times. In the evening we went home and the adventure of Mindtrek ends there.