Vienna Open Design Festival - Web Design 2012-15
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ViennaOpen was a festival series exploring social and technological change in our world. I joined the festival team in 2012 and accompanied the festival for five years. During that time I designed and programmed its ever-growing website, took part in discussions about the organization and learned a great deal about open source and the maker scene.
It gives initiatives, organizations and simply anyone interested the opportunity to present their ideas and concepts to a wider public. The focus is on open technologies such as the OpenPhone, open sources of information such as OpenGovernment, and their usability. But broader questions also play a role: how can new technologies improve the way we all live together, and not just the balance sheets of large corporations? The events were always open to everyone and invited active collaboration, participation and discussion around each festival's theme.
2016 - How to open things
This was the theme of the 2016 festival: how do things get opened up, and what is it like to live with open things? Collaborative work, crowdfunding and open innovation are key concepts that come from the open source movement. With our programme we wanted to explore these new ways of living and working together and make interesting projects and initiatives accessible to a wide audience.
“Makers are designers, tinkerers and DIY specialists from a wide range of professional backgrounds and training who realize their own projects and put their ideas into practice.”
Co-organizer Gerin Trautenberger
This time, the first part of the festival was organized as a series of talks and workshops as part of Maker Faire Vienna. 200 makers presented their projects, ideas and innovations at the Semperdepot, the studio building of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Makers are designers, tinkerers and DIY specialists from a wide range of professional backgrounds and training who realize their projects and put their own ideas into practice. From 16 to 17 April, the Semperdepot celebrates the diversity of the maker scene – from open innovation and the exchange of ideas to the sharing of resources and the possibility of open collaboration.
This year the ViennaOpen Festival is being held partly together with the first Austrian Maker Faire. At Maker Faire Vienna, ViennaOpen is responsible for the series of talks and workshops.
Vimeo channel of Vienna Open 2016: https://vimeo.com/channels/viennaopen16/164472988
2015 - Pleasure Maximum
The fourth ViennaOpen Festival focused on open data, open design & architecture, but also on Otto Neurath and a visual politics for smart citizens. Like Otto Neurath before it, the 2015 festival is in search of the “Pleasure Maximum”, discussing current projects and collaborations from the cultural and creative industries, hacktivism and new critical theory. In doing so, ViennaOpen seeks to establish an open city for everyone and, with it, the Smart Citizen Lab as a laboratory and experimental setting for interested citizens.
More information about Vienna Open 2015: https://vimeo.com/channels/viennaopen16/164472988
2014 - Post-Digital Strategies for an Open Society
This year's discussions centred on the ubiquity of digitalization as well as new forms of an open society and open economic models. Workshops and talks addressed questions such as: What post-digital strategies does an open society need? Do initiatives such as upcycling, Repair it and FabLabs create a new materialism? Or do business, politics and society need new models and social innovations to respond better to the problems ahead? Current positions and questions from critical theory were taken into account regarding the relationship between society and technology, environmental destruction, alienation and social inequality. This year the festival headquarters was the Mobile City Lab (Mobiles Stadtlabor) of TU Wien. A further venue was PACKHAUS, the creative hub and former data center on Marxergasse in Vienna's Landstraße district.
More information about Vienna Open 2014: https://2014.viennaopen.net
2013 - Shared Economies and the Third Industrial Revolution
In 2013 ViennaOpen linked open design with the current discourse on the Third Industrial Revolution. The aim of this year's festival was to present international as well as local initiatives and projects in Vienna that deal with the shared use of machines, the sharing of means of production, and the economic processes changing as a result, all around the new openness of design, data, innovation and knowledge. In the context of open design, products and design processes require a lively exchange of ideas and the sharing of resources, and shared economies are the key to realizing new ideas. The festival therefore showcases not only new forms of production but also current means of production such as machines, techniques and processes that are central to the Third Industrial Revolution. Workshops and talks serve to teach techniques and tools and to learn new standards of production and design.More information about Vienna Open 2013: 2013.viennaopen.net
2012 - The Idea of Open Design
As a festival for open design VIENNA OPEN is providing a platform to discuss the idea of open design, open source and open knowledge especially in the fields of data and information, code and hardware, fashion and sound as well as product design. During the festival the VIENNA OPEN gallery where on demand produced products are on display, is also serving as a venue for various workshops and lectures about the subject matter: Visible Data, Open Organization, Open Design, Open Structures, Open Fashion and Open Sound. By exploring case studies and providing hands on workshops VIENNA OPEN tries to fathom both the open philosophy as a means of co-creation as well as provide space for applied projects and practical experience. The venue is open for the public, students and designers who are also invited to contribute to an OPEN DESIGN contest, which has been organized in collaboration with Waag Society, running from November 2012 to spring 2013.
The MeeBlip story doesn't end with buying a synthesizer. The MeeBlip was developed to build a synth community. We don't want to stop at publishing the principle of a synthesizer and its basic programming; the MeeBlip is supported by Create Digital Music and the MeeBlip community to help you bring your ideas to life playfully. www.meeblip.com
More information about Vienna Open 2013: 2013.viennaopen.net