Review Jona Andersen

Interview conducted by Vicky de Visser

Jona Anderson studied political science and history at the University of Amsterdam. He’s a developer at startup Nouncy, and is currently founding his own initiative: Mesoica.

He joined the Hackers & Designers Summer Academy 2015 because he is interested in the fields of digital art, and design thinking. He wanted to develop a better understanding of the economical, cultural and social implications of software development.

After the Hackers & Designers Summer Academy I asked him about his impressions.

Workshops

The 10 day summer academy was very learnfull and interesting but at the same time very demanding and intense. Next time I'd prefer less workshops and more days to work on idea’s, and have more extensive feedback/discussions sessions together with all participants. It would also be good to insert a break of a day during the summer academy so the participants can relax and maybe do another non Hackers & Designers related activity together. On the other hand the strict and fast deadlines made sure the different working groups 'made' something. The groups had to come up with a solution or idea as quick as possible. I really enjoyed the workshop of Daniël van der Velden (Error Messages) because it had a theoretic and analytic approach of design and coding. The coding level of some workshops was quite easy for the hackers but James always took it further and did more than what was expected. He took the given code as a starting point and implemented new ideas. This motivated me to do the same.

Participants

The intention of Hackers & Designers to arrange a meeting between different disciplines worked well. Maybe it would be good to arrange the working groups a bit more so that the different disciplines can really work with each other. Next time it would be good to invite more hackers.

By speaking to other participants I learned a lot about how research for digital media works, and how designers think about coding. Their approach to a given problem is different then a typical hackers' approach. Hackers tend to find the fastest solution, designers try to look at all the options and concepts that surround the given problem.

I enjoyed that Anja, Selby and James (organisers) also participated in the workshops. This evoked a friendly and informal atmosphere.

Excursions

We did an excursion to Waag and Lava Lab. I already had been there but I it was nice to see the other participants were really enjoy the trip. After the guided to I would have liked to do something with the available material at Waag.

Impact

The Hackers & Designers Summer Academy helped to change my attitude towards my work. I'm inspired to 'play' more with technology and implement this in my creative process.

Suggestions for next year

I would propose to do a workshop about web to print. An interessing person to invite could be Rune Madsen. He does research into printing code.