The Do idea is a simple one: that people who Do things can inspire the rest of us to go and Do things, too. So each year we invite a set of people down here to come and tell us what they Do. They can be small Do’s or big Do’s or just extraordinary Do’s. But when you listen to their stories, they light a fire in your belly to go and Do your thing, your passion, the thing that sits in the back of your head each day, just waiting, and waiting for you to follow your heart. To go find your cause to fight, your company to start, your invention to invent, your book to write, your mountain to climb. The one thing the Doers of the world Do, apart from Do amazing things, is to inspire the rest of us to go and Do amazing things too. They are fire-starters.

I really like the Do concept, makes me think about Mastermundo in a way, although Mastermundo is a lot more chaotic. But it has a nice scale, with only 80 attendees and 30 speakers so quite likely you will really meet everybody there.

Rob Poynton has a company that helps companies with issues like communication, story telling, creativity and leadership. They design programmes and workshops to help people become more adaptable, resourceful and creative. Which is very handy nowadays. In his talk he shares his ideas on how to become more flexible, adaptive by improvising.

June 16 at UN Studio, an international architectural practice, situated in Amsterdam since 1988, with extensive experience in the fields of urbanism, infrastructure, public, private and utility buildings on different scale levels.

June 23 I will be the keynote speaker at the Retail Event 2011, about challenges and opportunities in retail.

June 30 at Koeweiden Postma, one of the leading design agencies in the Netherlands.

Now in its sixth year, PICNIC reiterated its commitment to creativity and technology – in terms of content, involvement of the PICNIC community and its international reach. This event for professionals is internationally known for its innovative festival approach, combining cutting edge content with new, interactive program formats and a surprising and exciting visitors experience.

Waag Society director and PICNIC co-founder Marleen Stikker revealed the theme of PICNIC Festival 2011: “The PICNIC Festival theme is Urban Futures. We will explore the impact of global urbanization on our cities, societies and our lives and the way creative and smart technologies can play a role. The challenges following from mega urban environments in areas like demographic shifts, (natural) resources, infrastructure, health and governance are getting more and more pressing. PICNIC brings creative thinkers, developers, designers and entrepreneurs together to collaborate on possible solutions.”

“What will make PICNIC Festival 2011 really different compared to the preceding editions or any event out there is our theme as the starting point for everything”, says Creative Director, Marcel Kampman. “We are going to build an actual PICNIC City to prototype creative, urban applications and concepts and we will call upon the PICNIC community to help us build this temporary environment.” The PICNIC City will arise at a new location for PICNIC Festival: the NDSM Wharf on the North side of Amsterdam. PICNIC’s Program Director, Kitty Leering commented on the move: “We have had an amazing five years at the Westergasfabriek, but the time has come to challenge ourselves more, as well as offer our visitors a new experience. Moving our event to the NDSM Wharf gives us an excellent opportunity to take the look and feel of the festival to another level.”

According to Rob Post, chairman of the city district Amsterdam-North, the festival and this part of Amsterdam have similar characteristics: “PICNIC represents a strong pioneering spirit, innovation and creativity. That also holds true for Amsterdam North. We welcome PICNIC Festival 2011 to the sunny side of the IJ.”

PICNIC Festival will take place from 14 to 16 September 2011 at the NDSM Wharf in Amsterdam.

Since the very first edition of PICNIC, it has set the standard in its field — there was simply no event like it. Last year, we celebrated five beautiful years of PICNIC. Five years that connected people, leading to new friendships and ventures. We are really proud of that. However, meanwhile a lot has changed; TED became really big worldwide, local events started that partly overlap what PICNIC is and does. Is that a bad thing? No. That is great! They all contribute to a better world through technology, business and design. And competition helps focussing us om creating the best possible PICNIC we can make. And that is what we are going to do.

We feel it’s time for a change. A reboot. A firmware update. Past months we took the time to find ourselves again. To find out what makes PICNIC into PICNIC. And we think we figured it out. And this led to some big decisions, of which the most important one is that we will leave the Westergasfabriek terrain. Because of that, we also have the opportunity to redo everything, keep the best, redo the rest.

We’re not going to talk about the theme. We will be it, do it and live it. If you could build a city from scratch, what would it look like?
What will PICNIC Festival 2011 make really different compared to years before or any event out there is that the theme will be the starting point for e-ve-ry-thing. We are going to build a city to find solutions for the challenges of global urbanization. And everything with it. Yup, that’s stupidly ambitious, we know. But theory and stories is not enough. Best practices from elsewhere presented on a screen is nice, experiencing them in real is great. And next to that, our new location is nothing more than a concrete floor in a beautiful industrial environment near the water. Our goal is to have as little waste as possible, and leave behind only lasting inspiration and new connections.

To make this a truly impactful edition we are going to open up a lot and reinstate the network in its full 2011 glory, so everybody can join in to make it happen. The idea is to develop the area with some specialists to make sure the venue will be safe and the necessary things will be there, and to invite the community and the network to join in and collaborate. To make a prototype place, to try out new ideas or new uses of space and place. What will a temporary city look like? How can we build it with no waste? How can we facilitate a sheltered space for 700 people without going for what is easily available for rent but has no soul? Can we collectively build something that can be used after the three days of PICNIC Festival? Can we build something together we can learn from for actual cities? What can we learn from a favela? A refugee camp? What will be the role of technology on site? What does it mean for mobility? Retail? Health? How will it be livable, thriving, energetic? How can we mix functions, create hybrids, create ultimate flexibility?

In what will be created, we will program PICNIC Festival in. Workshops, talks, stories and the things you’d expect. But having an outdoor cinema, a pop-up ecological (super)market, a public transportation system, smart street furniture, street theatre, musicians and anything else you would expect in a city you can think up from scratch would be great.

For that we will ask people to collaborate, both business as the PICNIC network. It would be great to create a place that shows working prototypes of real companies and organizations, which they can try-out at the festival. And next to that, we will invite the network to help bring the city to life with temporarily facilities, art, performances, programming ideas and more. This will give the PICNIC City its own identity. After all, it’s the people that make a city come to life.

The network is at the heart of everything. Everything we do digitally will amplify the ideas, reach and goals of the network
We are totally going to reboot our website. To make this a truly impactful edition we are going to open up a lot and reinstate the network in its full 2011 glory, so everybody can join in to make it happen. Our current website does not match our high ambition. In order to realize our ambition it needs to help the PICNIC network with connecting to other people, to share ideas and inspiration, to collaborate on PICNIC Festival and other projects, and should of course inform you about everything in the world of PICNIC. Ambition is to build a lasting platform that helps to create, facilitate, exchange, make things happen. And not a conference website where you only can look up people you met in real life. To make this happen we are going to team up with Yoomee.

PICNICNewsNetwork, reporting from cities all over the world to create a visual image of the current state of affairs
Something new is the PICNICNewsNetwork, what will be a platform for continuous conversation on subjects related to the main theme of PICNIC Festival. This will be a mix of contributions in video, images and text to create an current view on the situation, opportunities, challenges globally. Because we can not work on solutions if we look no further than the personal world we live in daily. It will be a great place where you want to come back to.

Lastly for now, the design and communication: an eclectic visual eye-candy that communicates and dresses up the city, street meets heraldry meets advertising meets signage meets art
For the communication this year we go for a visual language that is highly diverse, mixing the PICNIC style with elements from:
- heraldry (like flags, coats of arms, family crests, etc.), – street art (graffiti, tags, tiles, interventions, etc.)
- widely accepted global standardized iconography for routing, signage (from airports, busses, trams, trains, subways, toilets, etc. from all over the world)
- Advertising (posters, neon’s, etc.)
- Cultural posters (theatre shows, movies, festivals)
- Election campaigns
- Architectural/spatial structures (typograpic flower gardens you know from village or city entrances, rootop structures, items floating on water, etc.)
- Screen based communication (like a visually crowded Asian city streets, Times Square in NYC, Vegas, etc.)

All of this should lead to a visual language that bridges the old with the new in a new fresh way, what you would expect from a new city. The old secures that we secure that people have enough anchors to feel ‘at home’ and comfortable, while the new should surprise and inspire them.

Will be great!

The Foundation was incorporated in 1986 as Asociación Carso A.C., changed its name in February 2006 to Fundación Carso, A.C. In May 24, to Fundación Carlos Slim, with the mission to establish a range of non-lucrative projects in education, health, justice and personal and community development by contributing human and financial resources to equip Mexican society with the necessary tools to succeed professionally and socially.

Right in the heart of Mexico City you’ll find TelmexHub, open since November 22 last year. TelmexHub seeking to become the epicenter of technological innovation and meeting place to collaborate and create tools and exchange knowledge. To achieve their objective, they make the latest technology available to their users, with a unique service in Mexico, sharing of equipment and Internet connection speed of 10 Gb/s, also, TelmexHub has an area dedicated to gaming, video space, cubicles for workshops, panels and all equipment necessary to generate proposals that promote and develop knowledge.

TelmexHub is located in the historic center, easy to access for all users who come from different parts of the city, with excellent access routes and public transport. It can can accommodate 300 concurrent users, up to 150 connected via ethernet. Everything is free, because their purpose is always looking totally altruistic, the personal and collective. Everyday collaborative work sessions, forums, conferences, workshops, courses, lectures, community meetings, gaming, product launches are organized. At the Telids from the age of 13 can work on any brand of laptop for free. Most popular: Toshiba, and not the Apple MacBook Pro’s and iPads. Why? Because Apple is not for coding, but for creative visual stuff. A myth still to be busted, so that’s why Apple will give some workshops there as well. Youngsters go there to build, share and create. Quite amazing.

In the Digital Library Program, coordinated by Casa Telmex, kids can take a laptop home (XO or Classmate). And one of the beautiful side effects of the laptop program is that obviously, they take them home and because of that also share it with their parents. So, they now also run a program for parents, grandparents and whoever wants to join in. For free of course. Note: no single laptop has been reported missing since the start of the program.

But it doesn’t stop there. Casa Telmex offers more free education in relation with technology. Over a 1,000 learning spaces have an embedded Casa Telmex or Aula Telmex program, with facilitated furniture, programs and of course all the needed hardware. And on top of that, Telmex opened up even more. Last August the institute Inttelmex was launched, where all gained knowledge within the organization, is now made open so people can go there for IT training and can even get their master degree. For free of course. And, you can even bring your kids there. For free.

Wonderful.

Translated by Google, but gives a rough idea:
Monterrey – More than 900 young people gathered at the High Performance Center inside the park Child Heroes made ​​their voices heard by using their preferred media: social networks.

This was the case during the Digital Camp 2011, organized by the Informatics Committee and Municipal Public Administration (CIAPEM) and the Youth Institute of Nuevo Leon, with sponsorship from private companies.

Those attending the event, which lasted three days, showed projects focused on social change through technological innovation.

Also participated in the contest GENERA, which is 100 thousand dollars first prize for conducting the project, so that all participants put all their efforts to achieve a quality proposal, said the office manager of the State Institute of Youth Francisco Salazar Guadiana.

The event was registered among 15 to 29 years of age from all parts of the republic, since about 50 percent were in states like Veracruz and Morelos, and even the United States, the official said. The venue was the High Performance Center inside the Parque Niños Héroes.

“Boys from all over Mexico came to Nuevo Leon to call people to use social networks proactively,” he said.

“This is the first edition, and we talked about other states to invite us to be part of the efforts of other states, and we will give the project to Morelia, Morelia is going to do next year,” said Salazar Guadiana.

The winning project called “If not bargain, Mexico did go” was created by a team of 13 young people from the municipality of Allende, which the Youth Institute awarded scholarships to enable them to participate in the contest.

Faced with the problem of corruption youth opened the internet page www.pensamientolibre.com.mx which aim to create awareness among the public through lectures on “what corruption has generated for years, making public awareness for this to change” , and urge on the website.

“Its purpose is that people who wish to be informed about events in reality such time as shootings, assaults, danger points (could have that information)”, explained on the site.

By meeting the main guidelines of the call were the themes of youth, technology and security, the proposal from these guys which is based on receiving and addressing citizen complaints through social networks, was the winner. Now they will be trained to carry out your project and access to 100 thousand dollars to crystallize.

The winning team are hairless Anselmo Gerardo Lucio, Ricardo Almaguer Armando Salinas, Ramon Salazar Alcalá, Luis Enrique Marroquín García, Gema Salazar Maldonado Rubí, Katia Daniela Cavazos Perez, Juan Carlos Cantu Tamez, Yuliana Nuñez Luna, Danya Salazar Muñoz, Gabriela Casas Vargas, Amado Garza Fuentes, Alma and Sofia Teresa Cavazos Cavazos Aguirre Jiménez.

“We created a web page where to go for citizenship, for right now we’re seeing so much insecurity, to complaints by citizens for citizens to get to those places you have to solve it and do it,” said Aguirre Jiménez.

Through social networks like Twitter, Facebook and other tools, attendees were always communicating with each other and sending news to their colleagues in other states, making them aware of what happened at the event.

“Be stupid!” He tells young people
Digital Camp 2011 began last Friday. During the three days, young people listened to lectures and participated in the Solutions Fair. They discussed issues such as social media, digital citizen participation and activism, with world-renowned experts.
Yesterday, the closing lecture was given by Dutch Marcel Kampman, PICNIC camp operator, who spoke on “Creativity applied to solving social problems.” Invited young people to generate ideas, though they are as “stupid.”
With good planning, he said, the ideas can be profitable.
“The best way to make money is the game, when you work for a company, not always let you do what you do, so I do fun things and then sell them to companies,” he said.

Agenda:

7:00pm Bienvenida

7:05-7:45pm Conferencia Dr. Luis Miguel Martínez: ” nuevas conversaciones en la educación”

7:50-8:00pm Receso

8:00-8:45pm Conferencia Magistral con Marcel Kampman

8:45-9:00pm Preguntas y respuestas